Reviews

That'd be cool, I think.

i'll start with *Queensryche operation mindcrime* wich is my favorite non-floyd album.


operation-mindcrime is a prophetic masterpiece of storytelling weaving young idealism, drugs, social revolution and cynical political betrayal around a timelessly tragic love story. The album chronicles the tale of a killer for hire (with a conscience to boot) caught in an Orwellian web of his own making. you can tell the music is a blend of rush, iron maiden and pink floyd...

Suite Sister Mary, which I consider the masterpiece of the album, has a kind of mysterious sound... with choirs, and a simple guitar riff throughout most of the song, who switches to a faster riff in the chorus, this song just has it all.

I think it could be made into a great movie a la the wall, There are plenty of spoken word bits a la Pink Floyd that enhance the entangled and claustrophobic nature of the web weaved by the protagonist. this concept album is the closer thing to the wall you can get... 10 stars out of 5!!!



"Religion and sex are powerplays.
Manipulate the people for the money they pay.
Selling skin, selling God,
the numbers look the same on their credit cards.
Politicians say no to drugs,
while we pay for wars in South America.
Fighting fire with empty words,
while the banks get fat,
and the poor stay poor,
and the rich get rich,
and the cops get paid to look away,
as the one percent rules America."
--Queensryche, Spreading the Disease

__________________
pink floyd wallpapers:
http://www.pinkfloydfan.net/files.php
______________________________
And when you loose control...

An picture of it...

Attached Images

background.gif (74.4 KB, 16 views)

__________________
"thought i oughta bare my naked feelings;
thought i oughta tare the courtain down"

I was reading the lyrics carefully, and it talks about rebellion, and a new begining for all. though it's powerfull message about media and religion's hunger for money and about policists rotten and fool power system, i sub-understanded this personal tragedy and the album concerns more about people inside thoughts, solitude and feelings during crises situation than about the global system issue.

"Is this all that's left
Of my life before me
Straight jacket memories, sedative highs
No happy ending like they've always promised
There's got to be something left for me
And I raise my head and stare
Into the eyes of a stranger
I've always known that the mirror never lies
People always turn away
From the eyes of a stranger
Afraid to know what
Lies behind the stare [Lies behind my stare]"
.................................................. ..................

"How many times must I live this tragedy
How many more lies will they tell me
All I want is the same as everyone
Why am I here, and for how long"

__________________
"thought i oughta bare my naked feelings;
thought i oughta tare the courtain down"

Firstly, a bit of band history:

An abstract, down-tempo UK electronic act comprising Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin, who attracted accolades from all quarters of the music press with three limited edition 10-inch vinyl EPs on their own Impotent Fury label, released between 1998 and 2000. The releases were notable for their dazzling, 60s-influenced artwork, their childlike melodies and vocal samples taken from children's television programmes. Referring to a 70s children's television character, the magazine Straight No Chaser described the sound as "Bagpuss with breaks." Franglen and Deakin were childhood friends but did not form Lemon Jelly until 1997, after attending a 23 Skidoo concert. Before this, Franglen composed commercial music for adverts for clients such as Sony Playstation and Sega and occasionally for film and television soundtracks. He also contributed his keyboard and drum programming skills to Primal Scream's Xtrmntr and to projects by Björk, Hole, Blur, Spice Girls, All Saints and Daphne And Celeste. Deakin's background was as a club DJ (the wacky "Impotent Fury") and promoter but he also worked as a designer and illustrator for magazines such as The Face and Nova and indeed, it is his designs that grace the sleeves of Lemon Jelly's releases. The EPs, In The Bath, The Yellow EP and The Midnight EP led to the duo being named by the New Musical Express as one of the "Tips for 2000". Released in October 2000, Lemonjelly.ky (named after their website that was registered in the Cayman Islands in order to gain the "ky" suffix) gathered the three EPs on one disk and received universal praise. Drawing comparisons with the Beta Band, Air, Groove Armada and Bent, it was described by The Times newspaper as "the music playing in the cocktail bar at the end of the universe."





from The Guardian website

Lemon Jelly: Lost Horizons

(XL)

Pascal Wyse
Friday October 25, 2002


What on earth am I doing with my life? Unless you are six, that is a question you might find yourself asking halfway through this album. We've had the sweet little Play School piano part of Space Walk, and actor John Standing listing things soothingly over chummy guitars and smiley electronics: "Over, under, around, apple, orange, banana, lemon." Then comes: "All the ducks are swimming in the water, falderalderaldo, falderalderaldo."
It may sometimes have that broadcast-for-schools feel, but it makes for great exuberance. When the flugelhorn arrives on Nice Weather for Ducks it is impossible to believe there is any evil in the world.

Everything is approachable and purely crafted, but Lost Horizons cheats banality with some choice quirks: Magnificent Seven strings, astronauts chatting, panoramic sound effects. Return to Patagonia shifts to a more after-hours club feel, upbeat jazz colliding with the big Russian sound of a male choir.

All this means that the one pool of darkness - Experiment Number Six, in which a detached scientist narrates a death by drugs - comes as quite a shock. Otherwise, Lost Horizons should make you feel like a Tellytubby.

from www.bigchill.net

B I G C H I L L R E C O R D O F T H E W E E K
14/10/02

Lemon Jelly
Lost Horizons
(XL)

The new Jelly is a very different beast to the first album – which itself was a composite of the first three hard-to-find 10? EPs. Make no mistake, 'Lost Horizons' moves things forward forcefully and cohesively, with a strong and engaging selection of new material.

Initial rumours that Deakin and Franglin had hit a creative impasse in the studio seem to be totally without substance. What we have here is wall-to-wall Jelly classics, kicking off with 'Elements' complete with LJ trademark spoken word voiceover. Lemon Jelly are quick to set the tone for an album that will appeal to many – a relaxed, carefree, highly melodic, tour-de-force that should put a smile on the face of all but the most cynical. Never predicatble, towards the end of the opener comes a Macedonian folk tune – sounding like something you might hear on a Blowzabella record – to keep us on our toes and offset the lounge vibes nicely.

'Spacewalk' – 36 with a bullet in the pop charts on week of release – starts with astro space chat before moving into an ornate strummed acoustic guitar and tinkling piano shuffler, overlaid with a repeated sampled 'beautiful' vocal.

'Rambin Man' is the Jelly's paean to the loose-footed adventurer in all of us. Over a highly cathchy chord-progression – one of those epic workouts that just builds and builds – the ultimate global checklist is recited … Paris, Tibet, Sydney, Naxos … good to see the Aegean's finest making it into the LJ lexicon. Not sure about Kentish Town and Felixstowe though!

If there's another chart contender here, it's the totally original 'Nice Weather For Ducks', (a Naxos classic in no uncertain terms) which starts from a re-created lift from what sounds like an old English folk song (?All the ducks are swimming in the water, al-deral-deraldo?) , before mutating into a unique dance groove – part acoustic guitar strum, part drum'n'bass drum pattern, part triumphant Herb Alpert tijuana brass motif. And then that glorious salsa break! Spin the wheel and see what comes out … fit it all together and you've got one glorious and quite unique musical melange.

Elsewhere, we have the darker 'Experiment No6', which features some fine muted trumpet, a subtle grower 'Closer' and two groove-led jazz-filmic excursions 'Return To Patgonia' and 'The Curse Of Ka'zar', the latter of which starts with a stunning vocal choir arrangement not unlike The Kings Singers.

An album of contrasts, surprises and delights, made by two people who clearly love many styles and influences and one which proudly expounds The Big Chill ethos. Experimentation, fun and musicality – in this case producing one of the records of the year.





and from www.robotfist.com

LOST HORIZONS
Lemon Jelly
Sony

I AM naturally suspicious of novelty packaging for new albums. It immediately plants a seed of cynicism in my mind that this CD is likely to prize style over substance. All that time and effort put into producing what is merely the clothes of the music - we are more interested in the naked truth. It seems like they are trying to draw attention away from the fact that the accompanying album is actually not very good.
Of course, there are exceptions, as Spiritualized have proven once or twice but not invariably. Thankfully, this debut album proper from Lemon Jelly, a.k.a. pals Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin, does not purely rely on it's cardboard colour collage of a case for it's undoubted pleasures.

Lemon Jelly are on of those irritating groups you'll have probably heard subliminally all over the place before you actually listen to the album. Thanks to my flatmate's impeccable taste in candle-lit, chilled-out, jazz-tinged music, I'd previously heard their collection of EPs, and this new release blends seamlessly in with that musical extravaganza of sound.

The thing that this album is, above all, is fun. Most of the tracks have a acoustic base, from which is built soundscapes of great integrity and ingenuity but with a healthy dash of humour, wit, spoken word and wackiness. Witness the terrifically fruitily English contributions of John Standing to Elements and Ramblin' Man and the excited spaceman commentary of Space Walk and this is an album that genuinely makes you smile as you listen. You will be laughing out load when the ridiculously wonderful Nice Weather For Ducks spins round and left utterly bemused at Experiment Number Six's wilfully abstract tones.

The sound itself lies somewhere between early-doors Air, dark-edged Zero 7 and a whole ghettoload of hip-hop, trip-hop and chill-out. The backdrop of layers of superbly constructed melodies and waves of sound added to the crazy excerpts and spoken overdubs is a seducing brew of muzak that is as entertaining as it is sonically enjoyable. And the extravagant packaging and design only add to the experience, instead of consisting of it. That spirit of fun persists through the entire record, as you would expect from a band that registered their name in the Cayman Islands for the sole reason so that they could be www.lemonjelly.ky. Says it all really.



listen to a tiny snippet from the first track, 'Elements'

see the 'Nice weather for ducks' video

buy 'Lost Horizons'

visit their stonking feel-good website

Mark's rating: All your lovely memories of running through sunlit cornfields and discovering birds eggs out of 10

__________________
When Bucks Fizz’s tour bus crashed they all survived. When Metallica's bus crashed Cliff Burton died. Why?

Avril Lavigne - 'Let Go' (Arista, 2002)

Everyone seems to remember Avril Lavigne for 'Sk8er Boi' and the fact that she can't sing. That's what I've experienced, at least. It seems like everyone is against the poor girl - just because she was just eighteen and a a little bit of an in-your-face additude.

However, few of her so-called critics have ever heard Let Go. Not only is this great pop, it's also a gem of a record that seems to be little-known to people of 'alternative' stature.

While naive in some bits, and certainly overproduced, it makes a compelling picture of a new talent.

The record starts with 'Losing Grip', a song of loss and anger, and the guitars in the first chorus really kick the album off - sludgy and dense. Follow that off with the great 'Complicated' and you know you've got a good record in your hands. This song is catchy and plenty poppy, but seems fresh to my ears. A memorable verse makes this one stand out.

Following that is 'Sk8er Boi'. I recommend you skip this one always, or burn a copy without it - it's kinda superflous, and I think it interrupts the album's flow, not to mention that it's too sugary and cute - Avril's (or her managers') way of trying to break her into the rock circles. Unfortunately, it's not 'rocky' enough and backfired, IMO, and made a song that was plenty annoying.

And, after that, is the oasis of 'I'm With You'. Avril's vocals on this track are pretty damn good, and it's not a bad song either... good instrumentation.

After this are a couple of really good ones, and not singles, to boot - 'Mobile' and 'Unwanted'. The former is a bouncy song about instability (with a great chorus), the latter a slow, distorted rocker overflowing with feelings of isolation. Album tracks don't get much better than this.

By the time 'Unwanted' ends, the feeling it leaves is smarting... and that's when gentle 'Tommorow' comes in. Good planning there. Very much an acoustic number, with some good vocals (even though the backing vocals number high and get in the way a lot).

After this, sadly, the record goes downhill. 'Anything But Ordinary' sounds *too* individualistic, if you catch my drift, and sounds like a soda commerical in some parts. 'Things I'll Never Say' has some memorable parts, and a good verse arrangement, but isn't worth too much. Both 'My World' (entirely too poppy) and 'Nobody's Fool' (Avril rapping? Sorry, it's horrible) are almost entirely forgettable. The badness lightens up with 'Too Much to Ask', a dreamy piece that isn't too bad on the ears.

The last track begins perfectly - a creepy delayed guitar line, which reminds me of Radiohead's 'Lucky', actually - and continues to be a pleasing song. It's called 'Naked', and is a great album-closer.

As the song ends, with Avril stating that she feels optimistically real around her significant other, and the delayed guitar line from the beginning trailing off to end, I realize that this record might end up being one of those undiscovered classics, that everyone will be hyping in twenty years.

There's other qualms - the mixing, by Tom Lord-Alge, is too light and happy and glossy; I wonder what shapes it would take if someone more alternatively-minded took to the mixing board; and the whole argument of "Who really wrote this?", which might never get solved - that more often than not, don't get in the way of the album. One needs to forget a lot of that, sit back and enjoy it.

The Roger Water's Amused to Death is one off my favorite albums. The album should be funny, if it wasn't the fact beeing so near to reallity. On Radio K.A.O.S. and Billy's joke positvie end, on the contrary, Amused to Death's final is pessimistic. It should be funny, if wasn't so possible to happen.

Waters again satyrised the modern man, allienated, tired of the supermarcket shopping kind of live, wanting to knows how much time an TV colour set will last, and hou many time a quenn-beea sorvive, but confunding the two answers. It show how bannalized technology is and shows our knodlege superficiality.

And then, it was fun. It was the greaetest show on heart. We eat our caviar and drive our sport cars. We taste, spend and waste our natural recources, proffiting till the end the banquet that's was prepared for us in this planet. We watch war on T.V. and even didn't notest teh show is over. Maybe that bomb in the screen finally was droped on us.

Apreending our last ligh remain, this alien race arrives on earth to study all human's life data. After checking and recheking information they concludes this only result: human kind amused themself to death.

A nice Roger ears-pushing. To chame it isn't quite apreciated.

Attached Images

b0000027i6.jpg (23.5 KB, 9 views)

__________________
"thought i oughta bare my naked feelings;
thought i oughta tare the courtain down"

Shame this thread doesn't appear to have any legs.

No other reviews that people'd like to put forth?

__________________
When Bucks Fizz’s tour bus crashed they all survived. When Metallica's bus crashed Cliff Burton died. Why?

I guess I'll preach this one up:

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica (1969)

Now there are a lot of messed up CDs out there, usually done in a short amount of time in a chemically enhanced state to give it a haphazard feel to them. One example might be Faust, which is also an awesome band. But Captain Beefheart (aka Don Van Vliet) mythically wrote all the songs for this album in one 8-9 hour writing frenzy. With the songs transcribed, he and the band spend 9 MONTHS rehearsing and refining the material, usually in 15 hour days, isolated in a foreboding pink house in California. (It is now a mecca for Beefheart fans.) Well, when one day when it was decided that the music would finally be recorded, the Captain got his childhood friend Frank Zappa to produce the album. They recorded the whole album in one day, because they were so well-rehearsed. Now when one first listens to the album, the usual initial reaction is: "These guys can't play their instruments!" The fact is that they sure can, and play such twisted and angular rhythms and melodies that they form a cacophonous tornado of sound, melded with the Captain's off-beat (literally, he recorded the vocals by listening to the reflections of the backing track, resulting in a delay) grumblings, whoops, hollers, and recitations of his colorful poetry (Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish, anyone?) After the first listening, most people usually never end up talking to the person who showed them the album again, fearing for their mental stability, or maybe attempt to exorcise the musical demons that have infested in the compact disc. Well, after two or three more listens, I was able to "get it" and soon, the songs start to almost sound like catchy pop songs (yes I got a few stuck in my head) The album was a double LP, so it barely fits on a CD, and I highly believe that if he condensed it down to a single album, it would have been even better, because personally I haven't been able to listen to the whole album straight though. Some songs are great, but others sound like "filler". Also, the bass does some really crazy stuff, and it would be great if it was louder in the mix. Besides that, I think this a great album. Most bands just push a button and can distort their guitars and create mayhem through timbral distortion, but these guys create rhythmic and tonal distortion, if that makes sense, so this is a very monumental album, because I guarantee it doesn't sound remotely like anything else. I'd give it a 9/10, recommended for those seriously interested in avant-garde music, or just want something goofy to laugh at!


Fast n' Bulbous!

If it's supposed to be a Trout Mask, then why does he have the face of a Carp?

__________________
I have always been here.
I have always looked out from behind these eyes.

Beats me, maybe the store ran out of Trout. All I know is that that's a real fish head stuck on his face!

My review of The who's Quadrophenia is that it's a ****ing great record and every rock fan should own it, and every music fan should listen to it sometime.

__________________
It's a crime that the swift should be held back by the slow, and it's criminal that nothing is going to rectify it.

I'd give you a review of something or other but I really can't be arsed. Life's too short.

Avril Lavigne - 'Under My Skin' (Arista/RCA, 2004)
(or, a review of a record you probably won't listen to anyway, pretty stupidly)

Well, I waited a while for this follow-up. Where was she going to go? Was the music going to be harder, softer, poppier, cliche, dumb, heavenly, horrible? One might not take me seriously when I say this (and I don't blame that person at all), but I believe that Avril Lavigne is the person who is going to save pop music, and surely a horrible follow-up wouldn't help that trumped-up (and also nearly impossible) statement.

Unlike her first album, 'Let Go' (see other review), I wasen't suddenly introduced to this new record after it had been released. I got to experience the sometimes-exciting, often-nervous feeling of one of your favorite artists going through the motions of releasing a new record.
'Don't Tell Me' was the first single, released in February. I heard it on the radio, and was kinda impressed - it had a good chorus, and a hard feel to it - but wasen't quite won over. After buying the promo single on eBay, I took more listens to it, and it warmed up to me. The more I listened to it, the more I liked it, so it seemed. I began to compile material to burn onto a CD, just so I could have the new single in my car. (Just three other songs, but a good mix nonetheless).
This made me even more impatient. There were more playings of the single, and also some press began to come in. Everything said that the new record was more mature and less naive then Let Go. I decided to wait and see for myself.
A few days before the album proper was released, I found the official 'Don't Tell Me' single. Being the completist dork I am, I bought it. It featured an acoustic version of the single and... new stuff? One new song, 'Take Me Away'. I ate it up, to tell you the truth. The single didn't leave my car CD player for a couple days, and I often listened to 'Take Me Away' again and again. Distorted guitars, great strong vocals, everything a smash Avril song should be.
Little did I know what was in store for me...

Yes, I admit it. I bought her new record on the day it came out. The mall was a convenient place to go to (and would definately have it in stock), so that's where I went to buy it. The girl behind the counter, a mall-emo-punk affair of short black hair and horn-rimmed glasses, said with some contempt 'You're buying this?!' as I slapped the CD on the counter. Deciding to not take her up on her stupid comment, I let the incident slide.
I stuck it on while I was driving to my friend's house, and then all we did the rest of the night was drive around and listen to it, three times in all. She loved it and so did I.

The album is hard to catagorize. It's not pop. It's rock, but what kind of rock? Not the older type, not the newer type. One can't compare it with Creed, if need be; Scott Stapp seems to put some kind of emotion into his singing. Avril's vocals on most of this record are deliciously deadpan. One can't decide if its serious or if she's playing a joke on us, singing about lonliness and despair and hate only because it's what's expected of her. Rolling Stone and I finally agreed on something the other day; their review of this album called her a 'clean slate' who wasen't notable for anything, if one got down to it (unlike Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson or most of Avril's pop comtemporaries). They are right, in my opinion. She defies catagorization, still.

In my review of Let Go, I talked about each song on the record as its own entity. Each could have been a single, and it would have been confusing to lump each song together as an accepted 'album'.
That's hard to do on this new record. It starts out with 'Take Me Away' and that basically sets the mood for the rest of the album. The one after that is one of my favorites, 'Together', which made me realize that Let Go is missing piano entirely and that it's a shame that it had to happen that way. 'Don't Tell Me' is after that and it fits in to the flow marvelously... it doesn't seem like a single if one is just listening.
Then there's 'He Wasen't', which is this album's 'Sk8er Boi' (for lack of a better description). They're actually quite similiar; they are both catchy and have great parts to them (the older having a nice kind of chorus and last verse, the newer much the same) but also, sadly, quite skippable.
Here structure is the same as Let Go; the fast song leads into a soft, slow one, only on this album it's called 'How Does it Feel?'. This is one of the album's few moments of inconsistency; it gives the rest of the album a kind of introspective background, as Avril sings of being scared and lonely, but being strong enough to overcome it.
After this, the album melds together into a solid piece of mid-tempo kick-ass classic Avril, everything Let Go wanted to acheive but didn't quite reach. There's too-catchy choruses and awesome chord structures and both soft, femine pleading and in-your-face verses, very often on the same song. If a song seems to slip into repetition, there's always a little vocal anomaly or a great chorus or middle-eight to keep your attention. This is good songwriting, I insist, this is fine music, fine singing, a great feel and one hell of a record!

But all my friends say is 'I know I won't like it'.

Buy the album and give it a chance, you might like it. When you pick it up, you're holding some of the best music released this year and a bit of history as well - as no-one will recreate Avril Lavigne.