Tag: Album Review

Listened I’m Your Empress Of, by Empress Of from Empress Of

12 track album

This was one of those albums that I overlooked earlier in the year. I dived in after it came up in my recommendations in Spotify. Listening to this album I was reminded of some of the textures from Banks’ III, only to realise that they were both produced by BJ Burton.

Place between BANKS and Sylvan Esso

Marginalia

Written in a two-month break between tours in her Los Angeles home studio, Rodriguez produced the record whilst also processing some serious heartbreak, making ‘I’m Your Empress Of’ deeply personal. It also sees her soaring avant-pop imbued with a new sense of urgency.

I’m Your Empress Of is exhilarating, filled with layers of emotion packed tightly into some of the most infectious, club-ready songs of the year.

I’m Your Empress Of vibrates with the contradictions that one person can contain: how mourning the loss of a partner is bound up with anger, the fatigue of resilience, and the pleasures to be found in escaping it all, if only for one lusty night. With unexpected production and left-field samples, Rodriguez’s album is powered by a heady rawness that bucks the trend for theatrical concepts in today’s electronic pop nonconformists, producing epiphanies like hot stones spat from a fire.

Listened Free Love, by Sylvan Esso from Sylvan Esso

10 track album

Ferris Wheel seriously got stuck in my head, but I was late to the album.

The major single from the record, ‘Ferris Wheel’ is almost the opener’s complete counterpoint. It provides a series of summery vignettes providing hopes of sexual gratification and a beat that is unstoppably infectious. It’s a piece of music that can transport you to a whole new place, time and narrative. It’s a real joy. This duality is what sets Sylvan Esso apart from the rest.

This is the sort of album to just listen to. After a few listens, you manage to know all the twists and turns. There is nothing that wrong with this. Like like how Lucy Shanker captured this:

Free Love is an inherently soothing album, but placed in the context of the year in which it’s being released, its predictability is practically a gift. Each of the 10 songs continues to build on the foundation Sylvan Esso have laid over the past seven years. It’s not boring or repetitive despite it being expected; it’s just the exact album you want them to put out. After all, hasn’t there been enough shock this year?

They also released a follow-up live reworking of some of the tracks as With Love.

The six-track EP was recorded on Tuesday night — mere hours ago as of publication — as part of the final installment of their virtual concert series “From the Satellite”.

Place between Lykke Li and Matthew Herbert

Marginalia

Detractors will rightfully point out that Free Love utilizes the same sonic architecture as its predecessors, but it’s a fairly idiosyncratic template and one that Meath and Sanborn have shown great skill with over three albums now. Besides, the world always needs more dance music for introverts.

There is a word that’s been rattling in the back of my brain this year: phantasmagoric. It’s basically an illusion that has the appearance of truth but isn’t the truth. An interpretation that is created in your own mind that may not exist. The phantasmagoric appear in everyday of our lives, in our politics, in our tweets. It’s how we interact with media of all forms from allowing the suspension of disbelief for a town overrun with monster on Netflix or feeling like a beloved musician wrote a song that speaks just to us. Music is its own deception, a 3-minute escape for whatever ails you. Sylvan Esso seems to be contemplating that imaginary space as well. Ideas about authenticity, celebrity, love, music, and self shift and filter over the course of their new album, Free Love.

Listened
I remember hearing the track Foreign Bodies in a mix by Andy Barlow from Lamb.

I had recorded it on tape and then transferred it onto the computer. However, in the days before Shazam, I had no idea what the track actually was or who it was by.

It was a few years later when when I stumbled upon it. I think it was after taking a dive into the world of Matthew Herbert via Rosion Murphy.

Listened The Bends Turns 20 from Stereogum

There are plenty of fans who wish that Radiohead had never moved on from that clear, grand, driven guitar-rock sound, or that they’d return to it one of these days. Maybe they still will; you can’t say anything for certain with this band. But even if The Bends is your favorite Radiohead album — some days, it’s mine — it works better as a crucial chapter in one band’s sprawling story. Radiohead’s restlessness — their drive to constantly find new sounds and ideas — is what defines them and what makes them probably the single most important rock band to emerge since Nirvana. In any case, as soon as Radiohead moved on to stranger sounds, a whole cottage industry of soundalikes popped up, striving to capture the same majesty as Radiohead had on The Bends. In a way, it might be Radiohead’s most directly influential album; there is, after all, no way Coldplay exist without that album. So there’s another first for The Bends: It’s the first time Radiohead moved on from a sound and left it for the rest of the world to process and adapt and devour. It wouldn’t be the last.

Listened The Number Ones: Tears For Fears’ “Shout” from Stereogum

There is great power in simply saying fuck this shit. The sentiment doesn’t have to be any more nuanced or focused than that. It doesn’t have to have a specific target. It doesn’t have to have a solution. It can just be a feeling, and that feeling can be enough to fuel you, to help you feel like you have some kind of power. When enough people decide, at the same time, that this shit needs to get fucked, the world changes. “Shout,” Tears For Fears’ second American #1 hit, is a great moment for the fuck this shit sentiment — a rare moment where fuck this shit is the entire message of a big pop song.

Listened The Cure’s ‘Bloodflowers’ Turns 20 from Stereogum

Reaching the milestone of 40 trips around the sun may no longer have the same gravity that it once did. Take for instance the first week of the NFL playoffs this January, when three of the eight competing teams were helmed by quarterbacks of that vintage, including Tom Brady of the New England Patriots at a ripe 42. Then again, those three teams all lost in upsets, so maybe the milestone still has some weight to it. As his 40th birthday approached, the Cure’s Robert Smith could feel himself being pulled inexorably over the hill. “So the fire is almost out and there’s nothing left to burn,” he frets throughout “39,” the penultimate track on Bloodflowers, the Cure’s 11th studio album. “I’ve run right out of thoughts and I’ve run right out of words/ As I used them up, I used them up.” Little wonder that upon release it was strongly indicated that the record was to be the band’s last. In the niche category of songs dedicated to a specific numerical age, an unsurprising majority focus on

Bloodflowers was the first new Cure album that I purchased as a fan. Although I had always known ‘the hits’, I did not take a deep dive until my teens when I progressively purchased the whole back catalogue. I really enjoyed Ian King’s breakdown of both Bloodflowers 20 years on, as well as where the album sat within The Cure’s wider collection.
Listened Primal Scream’s ‘XTRMNTR’ Turns 20 from Stereogum

Sure, the universally celebrated Screamadelica was a generation-defining milestone, but as such, it feels inseparable from its date of origin. While it’s still an undeniably immersive and blissful experience, it sounds very much the product of an idyllic bygone era that can never truly be captured again. (Also, the game-changing impact of its rock/tronica fusion is harder to appreciate now that indie/dance crossovers are par for the course.) XTRMNTR, on the other hand, still feels as bold and bracing as it did 20 years ago because its defining quality isn’t a merger of once-fashionable sounds, but a crude and cathartic expression of discontent that’s perfectly in tune with today’s climate of Twitter-amplified anxiety and antagonism.

There was something strange and raw listening to this album when it came out. I like how Stuart Berman puts it:

XTRMNTR is the sound of Primal Scream realizing that achieving the utopia they envisioned on Screamadelica would require more aggressive tactics than peace signs, love beads, and bongos.

On a side note, the lack of vowels in the title was one of the inspirations for my username.

Listened Beach House’s ‘Teen Dream’ Turns 10 from Stereogum

With Teen Dream, Beach House became a touchstone for melancholic nostalgia. Their songs have such a marvelous, effortless sweep. But they were never as dreamy as they were made out to be; a lot of Beach House songs are closer to nightmares, like walking down endless hallways searching for an answer that doesn’t exist. They’d refine the formula they established on Teen Dream throughout the rest of their career, find new ways to define love by tragedy.

Listened Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 – Wikipedia from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
I totally missed the release of Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2. I recently came upon it while reading Scott Wilson on Richard D James’ use of the Disklavier. It is billed as a follow-up to Drukqs:

Part 1 is Drukqs, as that was the first thing I released that utilised computer controlled instruments, namely a modified Yamaha Disklavier, 2nd gen and a couple of midi controlled solenoid based drum mechanisms I made just after I got the Disklavier.

However, I feel that the repetitive form has is also reminiscent of Selected Ambient Works Volume II.

Place between Nils Frahm and Trent Reznor’s film scores.

Listened Talking Heads: Remain in Light from Pitchfork

The album presents such a strange artistic vision, foreign to what came before but operating as though it were the culmination of a long tradition, that it seems to declare the power of weirdness itself. To be not just strange but singular, to reinvent a form in a way that you can dance to, to smuggle beer into the museum: This is the visceral thrill of art. We want to deny it on theoretical grounds, but we can’t. So we must revise our theories

It can be easy to take the influence of Brian Eno on music today for granted.
Listened

I love Daft Punk and have always been somewhat mesmerised by their music. For me the genius is captured in the documentary Daft Punk Unchained. I think that this is eptimosed with Random Access Memories. What I love the most is the way the tracks and the album as a whole ebbs and flows. Whether it be the changes in intensity or the blend of acoustic and electronic. As a sidenote, Darkside also created a remix of the album.
Listened Scratch My Back – Wikipedia from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Scratch My Back is the eighth studio album (and fifteenth album overall) by English musician Peter Gabriel, his first in eight years. It was released in February 2010. The album, recorded at Air Lyndhurstand Real World Studios during 2009, consists of cover versions of twelve songs by various artists, using only orchestra and voice.[4] It is produced by Gabriel himself with Bob Ezrin.[5]

Peter Gabriel collects together a number of covers. Unlike Paul Dempsey’s acoustic covers shared in Shotgun Karaoke, Gabriel strips the songs back to melody and lyrics.

When he eventually decided to make a full album of covers, Mr. Gabriel ruled out drums and guitars. He went on to renounce the funk, soul and world-music elements that have filled his past albums. He was determined to strip the songs down to the bare melody and lyric.(source)

Through the use of voice and orchestra, he provides his own tangent.

He also inverted his usual recording process. Instead of writing and arranging songs before completing the vocals, for “Scratch My Back” the vocals came first, recorded on sparsely accompanied demos. The performances are slow and somber, dropping to a whisper or building to a breaking ululation. Mr. Gabriel’s voice sounds desperate and exposed, clinging to the melody like a life raft. “As you get older, some top notes drop off and bottom notes appear, which I quite like,” Mr. Gabriel said. “You listen to Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash, and you see the advantage of the lower end.”(source)

Listened Methyl Ethel – Triage from triple j

Two years on from their breakthrough hit ‘Ubu’, Methyl Ethel return with their third album, Triage.

I love stumbling upon an artist by chance and just diving in. I did this over summer with Client Liaison and I have done this recently with Methyl Ethel. I came upon the music while watching Rage one night and was hooked. There is a slickness to the production, whilst still maintaining space to move. I would place Triage somewhere between Twin Shadow, Sarah Blasko and Miike Snow.
Listened Paul Dempsey, Bernard Fanning, more Aussie all-stars unite for collaborative project Vast from Double J

Introducing the new compilation album and creative project inspired by the stunning landscape and culture of the West Pilbara region.

I have been intrigued in the place of Western Australia and sounds produced there since watching the documentary Something in the Water. This is something that Jack Antonoff touches upon a lot, often referring to Bruce Springsteen’s association with New Jersey. This album recorded with a group of artists camped out in the Pilbara is an interesting exercise.
Listened Re-appraising Drukqs by Aphex Twin from Duncan Stephen

When it came out in 2001, Drukqs divided critics. But for me, it’s still the most important Aphex Twin album.

Drukqs was not the first Aphex Twin record I listened too. I had already spent years both mesmerised and horrified by the videos for Come to Daddy:

And Windowlicker:

I had also dived into both Selected Ambient Works Volume II and Richard D. James Album.

Drukqs however was the first album I had gotten into when it was actually released. For me, it was both everything I expected, but also a complete shock to the system all in one breath.

In an interview with Annie Clark aka St. Vincent, she discusses the intent for her live shows:

My goal with any show is that it will be an experience. You might love it or you might hate it or you might be completely confounded, but you won’t forget it.

I think that same could be said about Aphex Twin. Whether it be an album or seeing him live, they are usually experiences that you do not forget. (I will never forget seeing him live in 2004.) I think that Drukqs is one of these experiences. Although it could have been broken up into three distinct albums, it would no longer be the same uncanny experience that in some respect makes it work. As Tom Breihan captures:

Drukqs is also one of our first true internet-era data-dump albums. Many more would follow. As a data-dump album, though, Drukqs is simply glorious. For mostly-clueless listeners like me, who knew the creepy videos and the Aphex logo but not the man’s whole busy arc up to that point, Drukqs fucking ruled.

Listened Review: Muse Get Lost in the Eighties on ‘Simulation Theory’ from Rolling Stone

There are some pretty creative uses of their electronic obsessions, however, and that’s reliably becoming one of Muse’s more interesting moves. Though maybe too close to at least two different George Michael songs, “Dig Down,” has a very cool, wubbing, minimal feel and a bravado mix of poptronic pulse and theatrical bombast. And despite its completely ridiculous lyrics and Rush “Roll the Bones” rap vocal effects, “Propaganda” is a excellently weird song: think Prince getting a Swizz Beatz makeover with a steel guitar solo. Basically, where Muse, one of our last huge rock bands, is at their best and smartest is when they’re not being a rock band at all.

I love the idea of Muse taking on the eighties, but something just does not seem to click. It is interesting that they engaged with the likes of Timbaland, but musically and thematically it is a little confusing. I think Christopher Weingarten captures this best:

Most of Simulation Theory could be about our surveillance state and/or a relationship. The blurring results in clunkiness.

I am sure that live it would be a stadium spectacular, as it has many of the usual licks and baselines, but as an album it was short of what I hoped for.

On the flipside, I was really intrigued by the ‘alternative reality’ versions of a few of the songs. Along with Snow Patrol, Kimbra and St. Vincent, this seems to be becoming something of a trend? I wonder if this is a part of the move to digital consumption, therefore providing more opportunities for different takes?