Shred Room LI: Senpai Claus is Coming to Town

Kate's inclusion here on ProgArchives is, to me, questionable and certainly debatable, but her penchant for creating many quirky, unusual, technology-leading "experimental" songs does make her a progressive artist--as are Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears, Cocteau Twins, David Sylvian, and The Cure. Never For Ever is the first of her masterful, "ground-breaking" albums--though often her quirk and charm is a little over the top for me (I find her videos sometimes embarrassingly cheezy/corny or melodramatic--and often her song topic choices). But, the Fairlight experimentation, the incredible vocal performance on "Blow Away (for Bill)" (10/10) and the rest of the album's unusual, quirky and highly original songs make this one a great one. Though I consider it essential in one's Kate Bush collection, I do not consider this an essential masterpiece of progressive rock music.

While I've been enjoying this album and with it Kate's more minimalist song-delivery style, I must admit to not feeling that the songs are as creative or envelope-pushing as some of her previous work (Never Forever, The Dreaming, Hounds of Love, The Sensual World). There are a few of her expected "gimmicks"--like her son Bertie's narration and singing in "Snowflake" (9/10), the choral work singing "Lake Tahoe" in the song of that name (8/10), the Himalayan choral singing the chorus in "Wild Man" (8/10), Elton John's strong and equal presence in the emotional duet about two souls re-encountering each other over and over without really fully connecting, "Misty" (9/10), and then, of course, Steven Frye's recitation of Kate's list of 50 terms for snow in the song, "50 Words for Snow" (6/10) Kate's piano playing and singing are exquisite, masterfully mature and infinitely emotional, but the songs are sometimes lacking something . . . je ne sais quois to really bring them into the realm of classic masterpieces. I think they are masterful--expressions of a songwriting master, and I personally find them incredibly powerful and deeply engaging, but I'm not sure the average prog lover will prize them equally. It is for this reason that I think the album deserves three and a half stars, rated down to three because it probably is, in fact, "Good, but non-essential" and not an "excellent addition to ANY prog rock music collection. But for Kate lovers, it is probably worthy of 4.5 stars--a wonderful presentation of emotional songs from one of music's all-time masters.

The kind of music I'd love to hear on the radio, but not from the Dear Hunter

With Migrant, the Dear Hunter has migrated into a new sound. They seemed to have stepped into the realm of generic. The Dear Hunter has always straddled the line between prog and indie effectively, but this album would feel more at home on the indie rock shelf. Many of the songs are just that. Songs.

The album starts of strongest with Bring You Down and Whisper, but the following songs fail to reach the same level of interest. Bring You Down is a great intro to the album, and really got my hopes up for what was to come. Whisper is a good song with a catchy melody, and I would LOVE to hear this come on the radio at some point, but coming from the Dear Hunter, its simply a little disappointing. Most tracks lack the standout elements that have made the Dear Hunter great and unique, and as a result the album falls into mediocrity.

While I enjoy this album, its definitely not the best of what Casey and gang have to offer. For that, check out Act II or the Color Spectrum. Perhaps I am being overly critical by giving a two star rating, but I really expected more. Decent album with good songwriting, but seems most prog elements (and excitement) have been lost here. Fans like myself will surely enjoy it, but I would not recommend this as a starting point for those new to TDH. Maybe you could listen to it with your hipster friends who generally don't like prog? 2/5 Stars.

What makes this one Genesis album stand out? Peter Gabriel's whimsy.

Looking back at the Genesis recordings prior to Selling England, Gabriel's unabashed take no prisoners lyrics dominated. He hit us over the head with Fang, the Giant Hogweed, the Knife, the Watcher, real estate developers, public suicides, and so on. Often the subject was dark. Not everybody enjoys that viewpoint, at least not at the industrial strength so often found in Gabriel's lyrics and performances. It did make Genesis stand out from many of their contemporaries in the prog tidal wave of the time.

Selling England largely gave the world a break from that dark approach. In Epping Forest we found much to enjoy in a deadly gang skirmish. In Cinema Show we chuckled at the universality of first date jitters and opportunities. Towards the end of that tune, in an extended instrumental break, we even find what I recall to be the first Genesis jazz material. In I Know What I Like we recognized that some of us do indeed lack the motivation to move up the economic ladder (and cannot spend meager disposable income on recorded music).

Still, Gabriel did not forego his fascination with the dark completely. Dancing with the Moonlit Knight opens, a frantic spin across a challenging night on the moor until it ends in a far calmer and more charming place in early morning light. Firth of Fifth, with lyrics as strident and commanding as any by Gabriel in Genesis, is my favorite in this collection, a wonderful concoction of melodic themes and variations that perfectly demonstrates why prog mattered then, and still does. Firth was composed for the Foxtrot album, and benefits considerably from the synthesizers added to Tony Banks' arsenal after Foxtrot.

After the Ordeal, an instrumental, is another great example of melodic themes and variations. In the 21st century we have all but forgotten that Peter Gabriel was once a woodwinds player; this along with Firth and Cinema Show are places where his woodwinds make terrific contributions.

After Selling England, the next and final studio album with Gabriel, the story of Rael, was a study of dark absurdity and abandoned the gentle good humor lyrical viewpoint dominating Selling England.

Five stars is justified for Selling England. Few other bands have delivered so strong and steady a product.

On my phone: Dancing, Firth, Epping Forest, and After the Ordeal. I will probably add Cinema/Aisle as a single track in the near future.

Great to find James Blood Ulmer included in this prog page. This record moves towards and has all the best elements of Jazz that are so close to Prog, as to become invisible borders. For newcomers JBU sounds like JBU. No latin or world jazz fusions, closer to old traditional blues standards, his language in composition makes no compromises to this school not another. His approach is completely free of cliches, in fact it is quiet wild, BUT not funky at all. Intelligent songs performed tightlly by an interesting bass-less trio. Violin, drums and the virtous JBU electric guitars and mysticaly subversive vocals. This effort is completely prog do not mistake its intentions, because of the tagging. In fact if the Post/Jazz-Rock tagging was available ODYSSEY will fit in perfectly. So as mentioned do not expect, Mahavishnu, Chick Corea, O. Coleman or even Miles kind of prog/jazz . Odyssey stands alone, closer if need to compare to with Hendrix personal song writing without the funk and bass player but with all the prog-fury and gentleness required. The comparisson comes in quiet handy considering JBU s guitar playing skills. Highly recommendable for any prog audiophile, it trascends its own roots to become a any prog follower great aquisition. ****4 perfectly attained Progarchive Stars!

Only filling gaps here.

I welcome Ulmer's inclusion here, although I do acknowledge that it's skirting the definition of Prog criteria as applied by PA. Many of Ulmer's albums have been treasured possessions in my music collection for quite a few years, so I am definitely not complaining.

His style is raw, rough and generally hard to box into any one genre. Electric Blues is perhaps the most dominant, alongside Jazz, Free-Jazz, Funk, R&B mixed with some Avant. But at times he also sounds like acoustic John Lee Hooker, or even Hendrix. He is not a "directionless bimbo", but a versatile and very productive artist. His unique style on the guitar often appears to be amateurish, but in reality, it's very much like instinctive Blues roots. The coarse talking vocals matches it perfectly.

"Blue Blood" is a decent album, but not one of my fave Ulmer releases. Largely due to his choice of supporting musicians, some of whom are recognized artists on their own. Here they either excessively dominate (Laswell), or fail to impress (Worrell). The end result is a bit of a hybrid, more of an experiment than a resounding success.

Bill Laswell (bass) is another talented any very unique artist, but with a habit of imposing himself on others. Be that Pharoah Sanders, Ginger Baker, or even long gone Miles Davis by "reconstructing" some of his early 70's tracks. Here, he managed to nail Ulmer down as well.

A true chameleon in music, playing styles between Jazz, Jazz-Rock, Indo-Raga, Industrial, Avant, but largely Dub. On "Blue Blood" he wears his Dub hat and it doesn't really come off to my liking as a successful combination with Ulmer.

Bernie Worrell (organ) is also represented in my collection as a sideman on many albums. In all honesty, his contributions have never really captured my attention and here it is of no exception, Chances are that I am missing something, but truly, I wouldn't miss him on this album, either.

My conclusion is that it's a somewhat enjoyable release, but far from Ulmer's best - due to the Dub elements..

I have to give this 5 stars simply because of 'Supper's Ready' - if this is not essential for anyone claiming to like prog then I can't think what is. Gabriel's voice, Hackett's guitar, Banks' keyboards combine to make this a defining long track. The other tracks do serve only to provide a supporting role here , but that doesn't matter! Overall, 'Selling England...' is perhaps the more consistent album and there were so many goods songs later in their career, but 'Supper's Ready' represents the band delivering a unique piece of magic, never to be bettered by them in a prog context

If you like your music to speak to your soul in an intimate way, Arena is not for you. This is pure bombast and what some might call pretencious. Even their ballads have over-dramatic vocals.

On Immortal, their fourth album, they go for a hybrid of new prog and metal. One might be tempted to criticize it, because metallizing your sound is usually done to bolster your commercial fortunes by appealing to the younger male crowd. By in Arena's case it's a right call, you can't go on imitating Genesis/Marillion and Pink Floyd forever. And even though Arena is not the only band to do new-prog/metal hybrid, they were one of the first and the best at it.

The first track, Chosen, immediately announces the change in direction, beginning with an almost industrial intro and a whispering rap-like spoken vocals. And as if it were not enough, a duet siren synth and metal guitar come crashing in. The song develops into a menacing mid tempo hard rocker with an acoustic break. Climbing the net is an upbeat 80s style neo progger. The folksy Welcome to the flood and power ballad Friday's Dream are ballads. The second one is better, because the first is too much of a Queensryche's clean guitar-picking Silent Lucidity rip-off with a synth solo.

The highlights are the trembling and spooky Butterfly man (a perfect soundtrack to a Victorian horror story) with mesmerizing guitar lines, and Arena's only 20-minute epic, Moviedrome. The later is a kind of a hotch-potch, with industrial, piano, Pink Floydian parts and a thunderous symphonic metal finish. But it holds your attention, and this is Arena's trademark dark bombast at its purest. And the album is mercifully short, so you could digest all the diversity, if not originality, that Arena has to offer.

8.5/15P. Remarkable A-side, unremarkable B-side.

This brief review intends to cast some light on the Pinder/Laine composition From The Bottom Of My Heart, recorded in 1965, which might be the first recording made by The Moody Blues which abandons the pop music rules for a while. Even on their more straightforward numbers which dominate the original Magnificent Moodies release they often managed to lend that special gloomy mood, with the deep pianos and huge backing vocals, even to classic R&B songs; James Brown's I Don't Mind, also covered by The Who at that time, is so much more interesting and emotional with Ray Thomas' falsetto and Denny Laine's weird guitar picking than in any other version I've ever heard. And My Baby's Gone is a similar case: basically it's a straightforward clap-along R&B thing, but the strange sustained guitar notes which enter somewhere in the middle do give it a pretty unexpected taste - even though it still remains pretty 'basic'.

The slow and moody From The Bottom Of My Heart, however, is a much more unconventional affair, mixing up some wicked classicisms with somewhat primal drum work and an R&B chorus. It begins with a piano variation on the famous Rodrigo Adagio motif from his Concierto di Aranjuez without a clear rhythm, and you actually don't know the direction which the song heads to until circa 20 seconds into the song when the operatic backing voices and Denny Laine's desperately crooned lead voice end up in a late-50s Elvis-like chorus. Afterwards the clear rhythm dissolves again until the next chorus - a bit like the equally experimental Dedicated To The One I Love by The Mamas & The Papas. After three minutes Ray Thomas brings in his flute and introduces the finale of this song which features Denny Laine and the band desperately wailing on top of an ever-growing two-chord vamp. It's actually one of the most frightening and shrill vocal parts I've ever heard on a R&B/pop single. Of course this stuff is still miles away from Mike Pinder's quasi-ambient textures on later Moody Blues records, but provides an unexpectedly unique development of the R&B roots into a more independent sound frame. Get it as part of the Magnificent Moodies expanded reissues!

Italy.....Germany

With a particularly mad and adventurous weekend still roaring through my body, I find myself continuously reaching for albums that soothe my mind. The music was way too loud for something like 4 days, laughing, dancing, drinking, partying like it was 1999 and all that jazz............ - it really takes a toll on you, but then again it's days like that you remember for the rest of your life - the times you went all out with your friends and ignited the heart of the city itself.

The slow recovery process of such decadent behaviour luckily also spurs moments of pure and utter joy - moments of music and images from a slightly deranged mind where everything magically comes together. Integrati....Disintegrati was one of those special occasions where I felt like my mind was unable to stay in one place like its usual self, and suddenly started floating very casually round the room, only held up by the music I suppose. There's a powerful dream-state enveloping this thing, that's for sure, but not in a hazy and husky manner. With Leprino you get the feeling of being massaged with olive oil, while the sofa you're lying on elegantly swoops through a magic portal of sound.

Through warm and slow synthesiser pulses, this album interweaves many different endemic Italian trades - making it something of an outsider in the Berlin School electronics family. You get the warm oak tree note of the acoustic guitar doing beautiful folk inspired passages - delicately played piano that takes the music into vast symphonically inclined soundscapes - small breezy flute shadings, and add to those a serious flirtation with the unique Italian brand of avantguarde music. I've talked about this before, and that larval Battiato feel in the electronics - the same you encounter on an album like Pierot Lunnaire's Gudrun, is indeed also present here. Though more refined and subtle, it takes the listener into some wonderfully strange corridors throughout the coarse of the record.

Lying completely exhausted on the floor now with the computer in front of me, I can safely say that Integrati....Disintegrati is a great way of escaping the madness of burning days without end. There's an echoing guitar right now that feels as if the winds from outside my window have turned into liquid and are now seeping onto the floor. An unwet sensation of taking a bath in music.

Coming back to the real world here before I dose off(or explode), I just want to say that Franco Leprino's sole album from 77 is a classic - or it certainly should be! It is a beautiful album, and just saying that hardly puts into perspective just how befitting a word like beautiful can be. I've heard soooooo many unsuccessful attempts at recreating the Berlin School of electronics - trying to build on something that was perfect as it was, and while most end up as Tangerine Dream clones with this record you get something unique............ Even if this slithering sound serpent started out way up in Germany, you can still hear it snaking it's way over the Alps and into Italy to get to the melodies.