Showcasing popular tracks from all their albums up to Stationary Traveller, Echoes is Camel’s “best of” compilation. If you’re curious about the band at all but too scared to sit through the complexities of Moon Madness or maybe you’re intimidated by the cover art on Mirage, then grab a copy of Echoes and you’ll be alright.
I was 10 when Aha’s Take on Me was doing the rounds. I didn’t have much interest in music at that age and it wasn’t until the late nineties that I picked up their “best of” compilation album Headlines and Deadlines – The Hits of A-ha.
I’d kind of lost track of A-ha over the years and there were a couple of songs on Headlines that I’d not heard before and so when I came across this album, I thought I’d give it ago. East of the Sun, West of the Moon is A-ha’s fourth album and marks the band’s transition from poppy eighties sound to moody nineties sound.
Back when I was in “lifestyle training” my mentor told me I should like Bonnie Prince Billy. Should, as in must. To gain the “Hipster – Level 8” achievement I had to listen to Bonnie Prince Billy and report back to the mentor about how much I appreciated his work.
Let loose, I went forth and researched. I discovered that Bonnie Prince Billy is actually a guy called Will Oldham who is also a sometimes actor. Much like a more laid back Chris Isaak with a penchant for doom and gloom rather than soppy pitiful whining. Deeper into the research I obtained this album, popped it on and listened awaiting enlightenment and the “Achievement Unlocked” sign to flash up in mid-air above my head.
It didn’t.
I reported back that the whole album was a little too slow and laid back for me. I couldn’t think of a particular time when listening to the album would be suited (other than when reading the Guardian supplements on a lazy Saturday while sat in my nice middle class domain). I reported that his lyrics inspired depression and lacked optimism. I explained that the affect Bonnie Prince Billy had on me was one of overwhelming “WTF”.
At this point my mentor nonchalantly held up his hand like some bearded yogi atop a Himalayan mountain to silence me. Leaned forward and whispered:
“You have failed”
I asked for explanation and was told that:
So I called him a pompous knob sock and never listened to his music recommendations ever again.
At this stage in his career, you can detect the “I don’t want to be here” atmosphere in his music. It’s like he’s not even trying.
This is Oldfield’s twelfth studio album but, unlike earlier Oldfield albums, doesn’t have a “feature length” instrumental track. Instead it is just a collection of songs featuring a variety of vocalists but mostly his then girlfriend Anita Hegerland.
Considering it fell between Amarock and Islands , two of my most favourite Oldfield albums, I was surprised that I didn’t own it before the advent of the Great Internet Free-for-all of the noughties. Of course, it highlighted the likes of HMV and Virgin Megastore were only stocking commercially viable albums in their stores thus controlling what people listen to and limiting access to less popular music thus preventing new fans from making their own minds up.
Still, it’s not his best album. Glad I didn’t buy it….Sounds like the soundtrack to a really bad, late eighties early nineties straight to video American crime film complete with neon lights and raunchy sexiness.
Take some Godspeed! You Black Emperor, stir in a bit of Mono (Japan) and top off with a teeny grating of Mike Oldfield, you have Explosions in the Sky.
I arrived late at the Explosions in the Sky party and didn’t really progress beyond this album. I like it though and have had it playing while I’ve been flying around the galaxy in Elite: Dangerous.
Live mix of concerts of Carl McCoy’s
group of forsaken dusty cowboy zombires.
Earth Inferno has all my favourite classic Nephilim songs; Last Exit, Dawnrazor and Moonchild. This was one of the last CDs I bought before the great internet download feast of the noughties. Sadly the CD was damaged but I’m happy to say I still have the rip I made.
Great for wearing black to.
If you happen to be making a 1970s porn film complete with car chase, man with suggestively large moustache and outrageous orange and brown patterned clothing, you’ll probably need this album to be your sound track.
Schaffer was a Swedish session musician who worked with Abba and Toto and this album was probably released to show off what kind of style he was good at. It’s alright and I often get comments about how the album is quite funky and exciting but repeated plays often face the cold shoulder or pleas for mercy.
If you’re a regular reader, you might remember when Klaus first appeared on the music project with Peter Namlook in Dark Side of the Moog and how disappointing that album turned out to be. We now meet Klaus working with former Dead Can Dance stalwart Lisa Gerrard in what turns out to be their third collaboration.
Listening to Dziekuje Bardzo is sometimes like listening to a futuristic Dead Can Dance without Brendan Perry, a bit like listening to Lisa Gerrard’s solo work without Klaus Schulze (Does that make sense?) and sometimes like listening to some god awful German electronic bollocks created by an egotistical electronic musician who can’t accept that their music is tosh and are misguided enough to continue under the premise of “occasional good bits”.
Still if Lisa Gerrard like his music who am I to judge?
I’m still convinced that Kiss are the biggest and longest comedy act going.
Any day now Gene Simmons will announce that the whole band has been a highly orchestrated well scripted piss take that kind of got out of hand.
Dynasty is Kiss’ seventh studio and first break-up album in that the band started to flake apart like a giant comedy cream horn. Peter Criss had been in a car accident and replaced on tour with Eric Carr and eighteen months after the albums release, Frehley would leave the band.
The album also marks a significant stylistic change in the bands output as songs take a distinctive pop and disco flavour. However, even the stylistic change doesn’t rescue the Kiss flavour for me. There are a few songs I like and I’m fond of some of their cheesier lyrics but I don’t think I could listen to the whole album regularly.
The second of the three Bettie Serveert albums in the music project.
I’d not listened to this album entirely before writing this entry and before this project, I’d only really heard Bettie Serveert’s Totally Freaked Out track on the 4AD Presents compilation. After listening to the previous album I’d reviewed, I wasn’t too enamoured but then I wasn’t totally repulsed either so I approached Dust Bunnies in the same way.
Unfortunately, I think I must have listened to Attagirl on a day when I was feeling less critical because on second listen, I was wondering why I actually bothered saving the album from the recycling bin for. As a result, Attagirl eventually ended up a casualty of the first “purge” of unwanted previously featured music project albums.
Moreover, although first listen of Dust Bunnies wasn’t too offensive, it’s certainly not something I would probably listen to again. I think after nearly 10 years of ownership without listening, or identifying a track I’m keen on, is indicative that the music project’s second aim (#Deletion of unwanted music) is now starting to take effect and the decision making processes leading to the deletion of unwanted music (thus freeing up disk space) is now becoming easier.
Still, I’ll plough on…
Andy Latimer and Pete Bardens with their band again, this time with their 11th studio album.
Camel are a mixed bag progressively speaking in that their stuff either works or it doesn’t. I love their earlier albums such as Mirage and of course Snow Goose, then my next favourite Camel album is their tenth, Stationary Traveller along with their penultimate, Rajaz. But there is a lot of Camel that’s a bit…bobbins – Dust and Dreams being an example of bobbins.
Latimer and Bardens churn out another concept album, this time based on Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Having never (shock horror) read the book, I guess I just don’t get the same enjoyment out of it as I would War of the Worlds, 1984 or Journey to the Centre of the Earth but saying that I’ve never read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda but I really like Yes‘ Tales from Topographic Oceans.
I found Dust and Dreams dry, stodgy and forced. I got the impression that Latimer and Bardens went to their bookcase, pulled out a book and went “Let’s write a concept album based on that”. It’s as though Camel were trying their best to bring Progressive Rock out of it’s coma by beating it across the head with a heavy book.
I don’t get it.However, it is an interesting album because the sharp eared listener can hear early development of themes used later in Rajaz and further development of themes used in Stationary Traveller.
The beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that it is the year 2015, and I’m still only a hundred albums shy of being a third of the way through this music project.
Dune is a very special film and soundtrack for me. My oldest brother used to scoff that I couldn’t possibly have understood the concepts dealt with by the film, especially as Lynch’s version was edited to bits. The weird thing is, I got Lynch from a very early age. In fact, I got Dune on a deeper level through the film than I ever did with the novel. I think Lynch did a bloody good job making a sci-fi snob’s book accessible to many people.
My oldest brother repeatedly tried to “explain” his interpretation of the novel to me, but he had no need as I already understood what the author was trying to say. I understood the hidden depths, the concept of the Kwisatz Haderach, the Fremen and what the spice really was. Even the trope of the sandworms.
The film is also important to me because of how the music actually makes a good accompaniment in the way that Queen’s soundtrack to Flash Gordon makes Flash Gordon what it is. Toto do an outstanding job of the soundtrack especially considering their only other significant contribution to the soundtrack of my life is their hit song Africa and Brian Eno’s atmospherics also add to the whole parcel of the film.
Soundtracks for Lynch’s films appear several times in this music project but if asked to save one from deletion it would definitely be the soundtrack for Dune. A film that still sends shivers down my spine and, in some respects, seen by many as a premonition/allegory/parable for the events in Syria, Iraq and the Middle East as we live right now and, I believe, has been since it was written.
The nineties. A time of new beginnings. New Labour. New shoes. New hair. New protests. For some the nineties revolved around the hype over the potential “new age dawn” that the hairy bearded types, yogurt weavers, tofu knitters and floaty vagina types promised us would arise at midnight on the 1st January 2000, further fuelled by the likes of X Files and acceptance of associated “alternative” theories and television and other media’s thirst to provide Forteana via whatever programme concept they could think up over a copy of Fortean Times and a really strong joint.
The sound tracks to most of these programmes included songs from today’s album. You could almost guarantee it. More so, the band’s music began to appear in nineties dramas aimed at twenteenies such as This Life and the like. Indeed, if anything says nineties music to me, it’s Portishead.
But my introduction to their music came a long time before BBC documentaries about Parapsychology, UFOs or ghosties. It was a former acquaintance who introduced me to their music. Round about the same time as the same former acquaintance introduced me to Lara Croft. I was transfixed. Not just by Lara Croft’s figure, but by the weirdness that tracks such as Mysterons and Sour Times conveyed. Later, that same album became to be even more influential and prominent in my life.
Listening to it again for the music project, it brought back all kinds of memories. Memories long unstirred. Fond memories. Memories of experimentation. Memories of people I haven’t seen or heard from in a very long time. Happy memories. Memories of a blossoming time for me and many of my contemporary peers.
Such is the power of music.
We’ll see Portishead five more times in this music project, again, all albums that were released at significant points in my life. So I’ll no doubt talk more about the band then. But for now, I’ll leave this entry with a song that should haunt you as much as it haunts me.
Someone spoiled my enjoyment of Dead can Dance’s Lisa Gerard’s solo work. Simply, they told me to listen to her music and imagine her singing while pointing at something really disgusting. Like a plate with a dog poo covered fork, or perhaps a bowl of green olives, or that video on social media of someone having something fished out of their ear.
Yeah, that did it.
This is Gerrard’s second album without Brendan Perry, her first being the Mirror Pool, and is a collaboration with occasional DCD session musician Pieter Bourke.
As a result the DCD sound is almost there. It’s not entirely there but it is almost. It’s like a cup of coffee that’s almost coffee but turns out to be something like coffee substitute. It does, however, feature some interesting tracks that featured in the film The Insider.
You might remember Scott Walker as one half of the Walker Brothers. What do you mean you don’t know the Walker Brothers. Hmm. Ok…
That’s the Walker Brothers. Gary, John and Scott, brothers in music not by birth.
Ok, now I’ve established for you who the Walker Brothers are, let me tell you about Neo-folk. Neo-folk, according to Wikipedia, is:
a form of folk music-inspired experimental music that emerged from post-industrial music circles. – Wikipedia
Unfortunately, Neofolk gets a teeny bit of a bad name due to its links to martial music and appropriation by a minority of Neo-nazi groups who aimed to spread their filth through the medium of good music.
I like Neofolk. I discovered it through the Looking For Europe neo-folk compendium, the first track on which is Scott Walker’s Angel of Ashes which, I’m told, is Neofolk.
Intrigued by the inclusion of one of the Walker Brothers on the album, I sought out more by the artist and found that at one point in his career, he was signed to my favourite record label…4AD.
Sadly the album The Drift, is an acquired taste. A taste, I’m afraid, my aural tastebuds finds a little too rich and unusual tasting. A little bit Anthony and the Johnsons with a pinch of Current 93, topped with notes of Can.Still, like with Kiss, I’ll persevere. Just in case he gets better with age….
Kiss are a comedy parody band right?
Gene Simmons et al glam and rock their way through 30 minutes of cheesy sleazy lyrics with no apologies to any of the listeners.
Not my cup of tea but my friend Jim swore I’d get used to it. Curiously though, he said exactly the same about The Darkness and Athlete. He was right about them so I’ll persevere…
Some time ago I was working in a help desk for a major university in the UK. It was at a time when software and media piracy was looked upon with the same fondness one might have for free toys in boxes of cereal. With that attitude and super fast internet, some of the computers in the main help desk became literal media suckers by day, downloading all manner of treats.
Often partial downloads would be left in folders on the computers on the main desk. These folders would be digital gold mines of interesting music and films.
One day I found a folder containing several music files. Some of the files were of the Ditty Bops, others were the Decemberists but the ones that struck a chord for me were those featuring the Dresden Dolls. Now we’ve met the Dresden Dolls on the music project before but in their constituent parts; Brian Viglione (who also played with Rasputina, Black Tape For a Blue Girl and Revue Noir) and Amanda Palmer. This is their first album. The one they released before everyone went Amanda Palmer cray-cray and reimagined themselves as hipsters.
I’m particularly fond of the Dresden Dolls, though not so much their solo works. I really like their quirkiness and how they’re like some naughty anti-christ version of the White Stripes. We’ll see more of the Dresden Dolls later in the music project, so as it was an introductory album for me, here is an introduction for you, dear reader, if you have been living under some sort of hipster rock for the past ten years or so…
Every so often during my exploration of the aural soundscape, I find interesting albums. Usually they are collaborations of some artist I like or a member of a band I like getting together with another band or artist that I like.
This is an example find.
Steve Hillage, formerly of Gong, plays guitar along side Evan “Bluetech” Marc, a chap who has made a living out of playing records at people. Of course such a collaboration is either going to be mind-blowing or a pile of steaming manure.
I guess my aural rhubarb is going to be bountiful.
Peter Namlook has appeared on the Music Project before. You might recall how I wrote about how basic and hellish his work sounded. Well, Dreamfish is no exception. Even with the assistance of a chap called Mixmaster Morris.
Anyone that calls themselves “Mixmaster” is obviously overconfident in their abilities. It’s like if I went round Banbury or Daventry calling myself Blogmaster Gnomepants or Spreadsheetwizard Stegzy; I’d end up facing ridicule, embarrassment and probably have to hide myself away. It’s clear here that what ever “mixing” Mr Morris does, it’s probably with the bag of cement that went to make the recording studio’s floor.
For the purpose of the music project I subjected myself to the full album. By the end of track 2 I was hoping that my iMac would stop working so I had an excuse not to continue listening to the dirge. Well actually, that’s a little unfair because out of the whole album it was track 2 that blended naturally into the ambience of the game of Elite: Dangerous I was playing at the time.
Back in the 80s there was a television programme on BBC2 called No Limits. It featured the young Jenny Powell and some other bloke who hasn’t done owt since, poncing around the UK playing popular music.
There was a section of the show where they played “new” or “interesting” music. Songs such as The Hooter’s Satellite and Men Without Hats’ Safety Dance would be played often as well as other contemporary songs.
One song that featured regularly was Gary Wright’s Dream Weaver. I liked it. Like all the songs I liked at the time, they very rarely got airplay. Usually because they were too old or because I liked them. Even after appearing on the popular film Waynes World, airplay of Gary Wright’s Dream Weaver didn’t increase. So when the free-for-all internet download frenzy of the early to mid noughties was in full swing, I looked for the song and was surprised to see that it was a great deal older than I thought.
Wright released the song on his titular album The Dream Weaver back in 1976, way before Wayne’s World and way before No Limits back in a post-hippy pre-punk time. The album is contemporaneous and the influence of Wright’s friends, Lennon and Harrison, is evident in its floaty-vagina peace-love-man tones. As a result, and with the passage of time and a hint of personal attitudes, this is far-out tosh that probably should be given to a charity shop or thrift store.
Two albums here. Well, two versions of an album with the same name by the same artist.
Imagine, if you will, you are a girl. Imagine going to an all girls school. Now stop imagining hockey sticks being jolly and sneaking around the dormitory trying to outwit the headmistress and think more about being in a school choir.
School choirs are fun, I was in three when I was younger, but what makes them so much more fun is having a great choir master who chooses some good material for you to sing. When I was at school it was more Schubert’s Masses, Faure’s Requiem and Belshazzar’s Feast but these days a more secular approach is taken with popular music being the choice.
I like to think that whatever school the girls in Scala went to was forward thinking enough to employ the Kolancy Brothers as their music teachers and that the Kolancy Brothers are cool dudes with a broad taste in popular music.
Yes, this is a women’s choir from Belgium singing pop songs. Not just ordinary pop songs, pop songs with attitude. RHCP’s Under the Bridge, Depeche Mode‘s Dream On, even Rammstein‘s Engel are given the Scala treatment; kind of the school choir version of Gregorian.
Of course, such material is the stuff of proud new-age grandparents and not that of young people, like me, trying to up their street cred. But such material is popular enough to have had several releases as well as several follow up albums. Dream On in the music project appears as two albums, the official extended 2010 rerelease and the unofficial preview release from 2004 which has mostly the same music on but also some sneaky bootlegs and a couple of reinterpretations of material from their other release On the Rocks.
Sometimes the album title makes the acquisition seem like a good idea.
This is case in point to not judge an album by its cover. It’s truly awful nonsense featuring the “best” of Scandinavia and Europe’s Operatic Metal scene.
Appearing here are Trail of Tears, Evanescence, Avantasia, Leaves’ Eyes, Sirenia and Lacuna Coil. Also joining the cacophony we are subjected to Persephone, After Forever, Tristania, Theatre of Tragedy and a number of other bands before being treated to some Nightwish with their Dark Chest of Wonder.
The band list alone makes it sound like an ideal compilation except for the fact there is no cohesion to the compilation (This is an unofficial compilation anyway so it is more than likely fan generated) and because of that it suffers becoming dirge.
Shame really.
A live recording of Tim Buckley in London in 1968
.
Having heard Buckley’s Dolphins and Happy Time at a time when my contemporaries were exploring the joys of Buckley’s contemporaries such as Creedence Clearwater and Airport, I was, of course, going to see what all the fuss was about Tim Buckley.
Drug adulation, tragedy and too much vibraphone, that’s what.
Chris Squire, bass player and founding member of Yes, passed away a few weeks before I began writing this entry. His passing was about to leave a massive uncertainty with the bands future in that how can you possibly fix a giant Chris Squire sized hole in the fabric of the Yes continuum. Then came news that Squire’s colleague and former band mate and Music Project attendee, Billy Sherwood would step up to the plate.
Which is nice.
Drama arrived at an interesting point in Yes’ history. Jon Anderson had left the band to pursue projects with Vangelis. Rick Wakeman had gone too, his goal to add ice skating and twiddly keyboards to everything. That left a huge hole in the band. No singer; No keyboard player. What to do?
It was about this time that the band met producer to be, Trevor Horn and keyboard jedi, Geoff Downes. You might remember Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes from global supergroup and ground shaking behemoths the Buggles. That’s right, the band that brought you Video Killed the Radio Star. In recognising their potential, Chris Squire invited the two to join Yes and fill the shoes of Anderson and Wakeman and history was made.
This is possibly my most favourite Yes album. I really wished that the Drama era Yes line up had produced more music like this. Contrasting between the previous Yes album Tormato and the following 90125 it’s certainly a distinctive sound. Horn struggles to reach the same pitches as Anderson, while Downes seems to lack the fingers to compete with Tony Kaye and Rick Wakeman, yet it isn’t a disaster. There are some songs on the album that were many, many years ahead of their time and it certainly shows what sort of geniuses makes up the band.
What we have probably learnt from the music project so far is three fold:
This album highlights the third point.
I came to Curve quite late. I’d never heard of them before 2004 but apparently they had been around for many years. Formed in 1990, the band falls under the Shoegazing, dream pop, alternative rock genres.
It’s the unique sound of Curve I like. The haunting ghostly etheric singing with the wide echoing on the guitar. It reminds me of the out of tune radio one might hear on very late night car journeys. Awesome stuff but I no longer have the lifestyle where I can listen to the same music over and over again without people (bosses/wives/doctors) complaining that important things (work/playing with cats/hearing) are more important than sitting there with headphones on all day.
Stegzy's Music Project 