I Talk To The Wind: Prog Blog and Reviews

Not sure I agree with you there ... but then, that was agreed 

^
Thanks Caio, though I'm sure we'll have to agree to disagree a lot on certain other albums by that particular outfit 

^ Cheers for the recommendation Roger; can't remember if I'd heard it before.

The Quiet One wrote: Hey Rob, your Awake review surprised me, great review!   Although I did remember that you once told me that Awake was, in your opinion, Dream Theater's finest. Though I don't agree with the rating, with the review itself I'm very much in agreement with almost everything.

Cheers Pablo; the rating is a bit of a rationalisation issue on that one. If I find a modern band that can frequently put out remarkably consistent 70-minute albums without becoming somewhat homogenous, it may drop to four.

Also, just seen mis-hit gets censored


Edited by TGM: Orb - March 31 2010 at 21:44

Hey Rob, your Awake review surprised me, great review!

Loops And Reels, Peter Hammill, 1985

A particularly (even for Hammill’s generally unremittant work in the 80s) dark and disturbing album, with not a hint of levity either in the recording or the retrospective on it. Loops and Reels is an entirely experimental offering with little patience for breathing spaces, though it includes, in fragmentary and complete forms, some of the melodic quality Hammill’s more sane work profits from. Conceptually, each piece has a design behind it, and together it is (in spite of the diverse providence of the various inclusions) a masterpiece in black; one of the greatest collections of dark, ‘ambient’ music I’ve ever heard.

Those familiar with comfortable integrations of ‘world’ music a la King Crimson and Talking Heads are going to be somewhat shocked by the intensely terrifying and xenophobic conflict (‘the song of a culture/Not yet immune to/ The virus of progress’) in this piece. Hammill’s experiments in world music appear violently aware of his status as a sort of intruder, and this tension makes Rhythm Of The Heat sound like The Police.

Critical Mass is the first song employing the titular Loops and sound manipulation. Fragments of music forms together a haunting tension, before driving their catharsis through a series of speeded and slowed loops.

Song and not-song, the hypnotic Moebius Loop drags you around in a circle of confusion over a bell-like chime, surrounded everywhere by looped vocal parts and ambiguous words. The exquisitely direct and entangling detail of the lead (listen to the incredible vibrato on ‘recognise’) pulls you onto the conveyor belt of melted, droning harmony vocals.

An Endless Breath. The sonic background seems to cluster into a voice-like buzzing, as heavily distorted guitar and organ snarl in voiceless protest against it. Two points stand out in the haze: the carefully integrated use of a momentary guitar ‘riff’ and the resplendent organ-over-pulse at the end.

Hammill’s take on a ‘dance piece’ is every bit as virulent as his flirtation with world music. Layers of gibbering guitar and some thick smog courtesy of impenetrable exercises in analogue sound manipulation convey a sense of alone-ness in the crowd. The version here is rather sparser and more horrifyingly lonely than the disquieted narcissism off A Black Box.

My Pulse has the immediate sense of a hospital bed, with its direct rhythm and decisively clean piano and guitar melody running contrary to the winding delirium of sound effects that underpin it, before eroding into the sonic grit of the rest of the recording. A piece of modified piano with a drone impact, entirely electronic parts running underneath forcefully repeated chords and behind the pulse. There’s a deep psychological weight behind every part. When the pulse runs out, the breath stops, and when it resurfaces as part of the piano, the breath starts again. The outbursts of humanity in massed choir vocals or the rare untreated acoustic piano are as warm and intimate as the surrounding loops and distorted sounds are strange and chilling.

And then -
The Bells! The Bells!
A slice of death, run out with the motif of the pulse.

Not for the faint of heart.

Rating: 15/15, Five Stars.
Favourite Track: It doesn’t work like that.



Edited by TGM: Orb - March 31 2010 at 10:19

Heavy Horses, Jethro Tull, 1978



Tull’s second devoted folk album escapes my hatred for all things gratuitously vaguely woodsy. Aside from a mixed but improved set of lyrics relating Ian’s pastoral images to actual human life, Ian’s voice has grown a bit huskier and the music, while still full of nice melodies, does actually tend to go somewhere. Drummer Barriemore Barlowe outdoes himself here, and the band are completely tight wherever the music has direction.

With less of the tedious repetition and a little more in the way of hooks, the actual quality of the band becomes a little more obvious again. Psychotic opener And The Mouse Police Never Sleeps has the rather underrated Barriemore Barlowe at his finest and a slightly experimental flute sound, while Acres Wild sees John Glascock’s bass interwoven into a neat mandolin part. Daryl Way’s violin makes the slightly mad jig part and adds an extra flavour to the finely constructed verses.

No Lullaby is the first (and by far the worst) of the album’s speed bumps. While it’s nice to see Barlowe in a soloing capacity briefly at the start, Anderson’s lyrics (and rather grating vocals) seem to have slipped back to an idea without any particular content and for an eight minute song, it appears to have little ot no sense of direction and more of the Songs-From-The-Wood moodless reprises. Good start, good end, not much in the overlong middle.

Moths has one of Palmer’s lush orchestrations coming to the fore around a smooth flute part; Anderson’s rather cracked vocals work unreasonably well, perhaps it’s the calibre of the lyrics or the inexplicably uncluttered feel of the actually quite dense background.

Clear break, followed by Journeyman, the first piece where John Evans and Martin Barre really stand out, with a murky, watery organ and some snarling guitar leads in between a fairly typical little Tull riff... the side two opener has a detail in the orchestration and pulsing rhythm section that rewards repeated listens.
Rover has one of Tull’s best multi-part riffs, and bursts deliciously out of the opening percussion/bass thing. Anderson’s a bit hit and miss on this one... flute great, lyrics have a couple of nice moments but don’t really seem to mean much, vocals rather too harsh, though the chorus melody is pleasant. Vocals aside, this could well be one of Tull’s finest numbers.

One Brown Mouse has the album’s best lyrics and a neat acoustic (the final flourish is delicious)/vocal combination in its favour. The legato-ish organ part in the background is also rather nice. On the minus side, we have some stereotypical Tull instrumental bits (of the sort I really rather disliked on Songs From The Wood) that don’t really go anywhere or connect back to the verses.

Heavy Horses is the second extended track (this time, a pleasant nine minutes) and benefits vastly from such basic tricks as contrast, variation and spacing. Aside from some rare piano accompaniment by John Evans, the piece is finely arranged with more of Daryl Way’s wonderful folk violin. If I’ve little sympathy for the beasts in question, Anderson’s vocal and lyrics have a fairly winning affection in them (erk, ‘slipping and sliding free’... folksiness does not excuse directionless writing). I’d quite happily cut out one or two of the verses and choruses, nice though they are, and most of Martin Barre’s limp solo at around 6.00; oddly enough, it constitutes one of Tull’s better later longer songs, but I still think its basic content far exceeds the final performance.

Weathercock is a basically satisfying conclusion to the album, with a very fine organ performance and some masterfully brought out folk rhythms. Anderson’s rhetorical lyrics, while generally deserving the answer ‘no’ (I’m a bit of a cynic with regards to yon aulde authenticke folksiness), work for it and his flute part is solid.

Final analysis: mixed bag, where the two long songs drag the whole thing down. Bonus tracks none too shabby, rather less sympathy for Living In These Hard Times than the very fine Broadford Bazaar (whatever that wind instrument is, it’s gorgeous). Recommended to any Tull fan and a damn sight more substantial than Songs From The Wood.

Rating: 3 stars, 11/15
Favourite Track: Broadford Bazaar if we count the bonus tracks, otherwise Moths or Acres Wild

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Toying with expectations again...

Congrats on joining the 100 most prolific reviewers list.

Have you heard Strange Days, by any chance? would imagine it's on spotify and definitely worth a shot even if you're not a huge fan of the band's output in general

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Review, LA Woman, The Doors, 1971

Last Doors album with Morrison (distinctly sagging) held up throughout by the vastly underestimated Ray Manzarek’s keyboards... rest of the album’s content somewhat patchy; a more prominent session bassist in Jerry Scheff an excellent investment and the album is admittedly very well-arranged, though I think the individual songs. Writing of a mixed calibre and some decidedly uninspired cuts displaying a lack of creative focus. Not a bad album, by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly one with weak material, and I feel that almost regardless of the quality of the rest of the material, any Doors album without Morrison’s alternated screaming and crooning at their best is going to prove somewhat lacking in power compared to Strange Days or the debut. Anyway, since this is so highly regarded, I’ll start with the problems:

Hyacinth House is three minutes of a much weakened Morrison crooning rescued from the skip button only by Manzarek’s snaking organ (according to Wikipedia, with reference to Chopin). Somewhat telling that only one minute reference is made to this song in the four or so generally glowing professional reviews I’ve read, and it hasn’t cropped up on any of The Doors’ many, many best-of type compilations. Throwaway material.

The album’s blues inspiration comes in various shades and standards. Transforming John Lee Hooker’s deliciously subversive Crawling King Snake into what we suspect Jim Morrison perceives as an ode to little Jimmy is rather regrettable. Morrison’s static vocal lines take out the creeping dynamic in the original piece, and the band’s backing seems more or less uninspired. Even the usually reliable Krieger’s bursts of soloing are rather feeble. Been Down So Long, other than some convincingly ultramarine lyrics with a vicious edge, features two howling solos from Krieger (a man who has the idea of blues rock down better than anyone), suitably shouty vocals and repetitive stabbing bass to fill out the mood. The slower Cars Hiss By My Window is a nice straight blues, albeit with Morrison’s incredible vocal imitation of a wah-wah solo and a cool set of lyrics.

L’America is decisively odd in both riff and content and Morrison’s lyric and vocal are involving enough to fit it. Love Her Madly: some very fine work from Krieger and Morrison pulls out a comparatively strong vocal... not one of their best hits, in my view, but fine enough. On the opening Changeling, Morrison’s more visceral moments are met by a particularly solid organ performance and a very fine jam from the rather unfairly neglected surviving Doors.

L.A. Woman is the first of the album’s two side-closing long tracks (part of the album’s success seems to come from its format: long intense rock song set up by mid-length blues denouement in contrast to long calm blues/country-inspired song set up by the album’s hardest rocker) and a success. Aside from the evil distorted keyboard intro and a pulsing bassline, it’s consistently full of quality riffs, Morrison’s vocals and lyrics are good enough, though not the song-making things they were on, say, When The Music’s Over. Riders On The Storm now so symbolic of The Doors that it’s odd to think it provoked producer Paul Rothchild to abandon them. Not really in need of any introduction, given how it sprawls everywhere over classic rock radio, and following the punchy and powerful WASP (credit to John Densmore’s drumming on that one), it makes for a very intriguing conclusion to the album, and Manzarek’s e-piano soloing (vaguely reminiscent of a harp) is a perfect evocation of the song’s rainfall.

Odd comment on bonus material, Orange Country Suite has Morrison’s crooning at a rather better level than anywhere on the album proper, and the cover of Willie Dixon’s You Need Meat equally shows the band’s renowned front man on a form he’d summarily missed for the recording of the album proper.

Well, for an acknowledged classic, I find LA Woman remarkably inconsistent. Two very weak pieces,  and a more or less 50% success rate on the vocals. It must be said that the two supporting short-song-long-song pairs closing the sides are decidedly classics, but also not the album’s only highlights, and consequently, any fan of the band’s rather more constant earlier albums shouldn’t hesitate about getting this, sooner or later. Something of a pity Morrison's swan song is an album he most hinders.

Warning note: I’m listening only to the 40^th Anniversary mix. I am aware that this is different to the original, I’m not aware quite how.

Rating: Three Stars, 10/15
Favourite Track: Riders On The Storm, comfortably

Edited by TGM: Orb - March 29 2010 at 11:26

Pretentiousness and You

Magma, s/t, 1970

Much as writers in Rolling Stone and the dying breed of punk fans may accuse Jon Anderson’s astral wailings and vague concepts, Gabriel’s William-Burroughs-writes-nursery-rhymes lyrics and Peter Hammill’s existential musings of being pretentious and irrelevant, they have, sadly enough, no idea of how pretentious human beings can be. For instance, they’ve probably never heard Magma; Magma’s entire career (with the exception of the moderately hilarious Call From The Dark (Ooh Ooh Baby)), takes the astral biscuit of ethereal Vauncah and devours it whole. The band’s theme is a vague (exception: this album?) space opera sung in some form of b*****dised Anglo-Russo-German because real languages are not worthy of the vague, often to the point of indecipherable, story. Really, next time you feel like venting venom on the comparatively earthy and humble Emerson, Lake& Palmer, please take a moment to remember that you would be devaluing the whole idea of pretentiousness.

However, if you ever need to be reminded that pretentiousness can have positive side-effects, Magma will do that. I have not heard more confidence in music outside the realm of classical: Magma are willing to leave themes hanging, to drop out for a moment, to incorporate genuine classical ideas, to build tension without respite... they don’t feel obliged to wait for the listener: the sheer confidence that comes through about what they can do with their music should impress if nothing else. This first release has that confidence, though it’s entirely different to their later ones... aside from a much more jazz-oriented ensemble, the double-album format, the avant-garde nature usually appears to be drawn from classical or free-jazz inspiration (Christian Vander, drummer and mystic prince of the space-people, was, after all, classically trained) rather than the truly ground-breaking psychosis of, say, MDK.

In some ways, I think this album will be much more accessible than its followers, even if it gives less of an idea of what the whole outfit is about; in some ways, it is perhaps more enjoyable, and the calibre of the musicians gathered and the writing is . The opener Kobaia is probably the strongest statement of the album, with an opportunity for most of the ensemble to stretch out a bit, ambitious structure, an awesome free jazz-styled guitar solo, a neat bass riff and a soul-crushing piano and vocal break. If it’s still on the archives at the time of reading as an MP3 sample, take a listen to it. Thereafter, the album tends to be a bit more standardised, although nonetheless excellent; while Aina is incredibly creative in terms of melodies and a very tight piece of classically-influenced (listen to Teddy Lasry’s wonderful flute flourish) jazz work, it doesn’t really quite hit any particular moods as powerfully. Malaria is fairly similar in terms of impact, and is similarly well-arranged as a mostly jazz piece with some sweeping electric guitar and an unusual vocal.

More of a departure is the first piece not penned by Vander, Teddy Lasry’s Sohia (though I think for everything the band has as large a role in constructing stuff as the writer). This is a rather odder piece, where Francis Moze’s bass-work underscores some haunting classical-ish flute harmonies, before the jazz band comes back. Vander’s fills (the man is really a very talented drummer, here supported by a very talented bassist) here are perhaps the closest the album gets to the territory of rock, while Richard Raux’s saxophone neatly expands themes in the harmonies. It sort of continues the strange internal logic of the album, and even the more solo-based bits. The incredible winding flute-and-piano spiralling around the guitar towards the end and the militaristic outro are certainly some of the most absorbing moments on the album.

Another non-Vander piece (‘Sckxyss’, for those of us with paranormal gifts for pronunciation...), this time by pianist Francois Cahen, who takes a solid riff under which the song grooves and pulses frantically in between schizophrenic breaks. Francis Moze’s electric bass is very powerful indeed, the sax interplay is insane. Cahen’s classically crisp piano parts tend to keep the album together and connected, and no exception is the segue between this and the final piece of disc one, Vander’s Aurae.

Aurae seems to take the classical inspirations further than they have yet gone, with a flute melody underlined by Claude Engel’s very bizarre electric guitar and some sort of perverse waltz switching into the blaring declarations of intent. We see the first glimpses of the more symphonic ambitions of MDK here with the various distorted or cleverly harmonized vocals, as well as the characteristic blocks of classical ambition. It also suggests some of the unique merits of this album: the variety is wider than anything MDK will really achieve, more melodic writing, cleaner guitar and a more or less unintrusive display of the unbridled originality that will give Magma their generally well-earned cult status.

Part two doesn’t quite live up to the writing quality of the first side, I think, though it includes some very unusual content for Magma - yes, voyageurs, producer Laurent Thibault’s Nau Ektila frequently verges on folk and includes a straight rock guitar solo, much as the whole piece has a berserk centre... the combination and diversity makes it one of the best here... by contrast, Stoah is a psychotic high-pitched chant (the vocals here are very... diverse) rolling into free jazz and some rather odd attempts at mock-national music mixed with heavy use of sound effects and a couple of pleasantly unexpected pastoral breaks. Without meaning to exhaust all the tracks here, I think it’s fair to say that this side more or less sets the style for future Magma releases, albeit with more classical instrumentation and more distinct leads...  all in all, I think side two is perhaps a touch weaker musically than side one, though I think it deserves credit for the drama and storytelling it includes (if you don’t get it at first, I recommend taking a stab at the very simple French sleeve-notes with some sort of online dictionary), though it still contains a lot of very exceptional stuff.

While not really comparable to its followers, Magma’s debut album is a very fine album indeed. The rhythm section is incredible, there is no questioning the ability of any of the performers and the concept is used in a slightly ridiculous but basically entertaining way. Moreover, the writing is versatile and accomplished enough to make most of the tracks stand out... I’d note Thaud Zaia as a bit of a non-event, much as it has a neat mysterious flute. Four shiny buttons for a very, very accomplished debut with a bit more deflation and variety than its more intense successors. Worth having.

Favourite Track: Kobaia, or maybe Sohia
Rating: Solid four stars, 13/15