|
Post by MikeMusic on Oct 30, 2020 16:36:19 GMT
Just occasionally there are reviews that are *very* honest UNKLE seem to have excellent and not so good albums. I was investigating War Stories Allmusic didn't have the sample, YouTube had the whole album though Here's what Allmusic's John Bush said James Lavelle's UNKLE project has offered virtually everything to its fans and the listening public -- virtually everything, except for great music. .... the music has never fulfilled its expectations, despite the undeniable talents of everyone involved, points to a too-many-cooks problem. ... amid the many features and incredible dynamism that mark every UNKLE full-length, there are no songs to grab onto and little of real essence. John Bush UNKLE War StoriesDoesn't make it for me either
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Oct 30, 2020 16:46:08 GMT
Music reviews are so very subjective.
I remember the high fallutin' reviews of new albums in New Musical Express when I was a student, clearly written by proto-writers hoping to win a prize for their frequently contrived nonsense. During the punk era, any new prog album was immediately consigned to derision and dismissal. Looking back on it, I would reverse those fortunes in many cases.
So many times I have tracked down albums subject to glowing reviews, only to be terribly disappointed.
|
|
|
Post by jandl100 on Oct 30, 2020 17:19:38 GMT
For classical music, the best review source for me is the American bi-monthly magazine Fanfare. I've had a subscription on and off for the last 20 years.
Not so much for being in line with my own opinions, which is rather hit and miss, but simply for identifying new recordings and new music to try. It must have well over 500 half to full page reviews per issue. A wonderful source of information.
It always has a mixture of glowing, ambivalent and absolute stinker reviews!
|
|
|
Post by Slinger on Oct 30, 2020 18:11:39 GMT
I think the phrase " honest review" is a bit of an oxymoron in a lot of cases. Obviously there are " genuine" reviews, as Jerry seems to have proven with Fanfare, but I'd trust a review from somebody who owns whatever is being reviewed, and who paid for whatever it is out of their own pocket, over most magazine reviews every time. For music I always referred to Uncut magazine, for a long time. Their cover CDs were a thing of wonder, and I lost count of the number of bands and solo artists I discovered on them, and in the body of the magazine itself. Then they started championing people like Diamanda Galas and Joanna Newsom and I let my subscription lapse.
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Oct 30, 2020 22:20:00 GMT
Then they started championing people like Diamanda Galas and Joanna Newsom and I let my subscription lapse. I shudder to think, then, what Diamanda Galas is like.
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Oct 30, 2020 22:29:02 GMT
Gawd, I've just had a listen. Definitely Newsom territory!
|
|
|
Post by jandl100 on Oct 31, 2020 4:51:56 GMT
Joanna Newsom - not on Spotify so had a 20 second go at YouTube. Two words. Kate. Bush. I thought she was popular? So I'm a bit baffled by the apparently widespread (2 out of 2) antagonism for JN. Maybe my randomly chosen 20 seconds wasn't typical. But I can't say that I want to go back for any more. I've just sampled some more... I'm coming round to your point of view!
|
|
|
Post by MikeMusic on Oct 31, 2020 10:10:20 GMT
I sampled her once. Terrible
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Oct 31, 2020 10:57:24 GMT
It's beyond me how she has any fans, but she really does.
|
|
|
Post by MikeMusic on Oct 31, 2020 14:54:25 GMT
Music reviews are so very subjective. I remember the high fallutin' reviews of new albums in New Musical Express when I was a student, clearly written by proto-writers hoping to win a prize for their frequently contrived nonsense. During the punk era, any new prog album was immediately consigned to derision and dismissal. Looking back on it, I would reverse those fortunes in many cases. So many times I have tracked down albums subject to glowing reviews, only to be terribly disappointed. I used to buy a music mag every week for years then swapped my allegiance Think from Melody Maker to NME can't be too sure Some of the album and gig reviews must have been from a parallel dimension. Used to like Chris Welch a lot then went right off him
|
|
|
Post by MikeMusic on Mar 1, 2021 16:15:55 GMT
This Jon Hopkins review has made me want to access Pitchfork on Jon Hopkins - Singularity "Jon Hopkins is playing God. That much is clear as soon as “Singularity,” the lead and title song on his first album since 2013’s Mercury Prize-nominated Immunity, shivers into being. A ferrous wasteland of synthesizer overhung by evaporated strings and guitar merge into a remarkably complete sonic landscape — the land and sky of a new world, with its own alien physics, its own genesis and apocalypse. Hopkins keeps hanging these strange planets in wobbly orbits throughout Singularity, forming a universe that pulses with deep consciousness and a sense of endless discovery. Hopkins was known as a hired hand for Coldplay, Brian Eno, and Imogen Heap, with a sideline in tasteful IDM records until Immunity promoted him to noted techno auteur. Like that breakthrough, Singularity is a beat-music odyssey pitched between acid house and introspective ambient bliss, constant change and eternal return, sublunary and sublime. It also combines many other opposites into thrillingly unstable wholes. The producer’s distinctive techno is coarse and granular, as if electricity were a solid you could grind in a mill, yet it flows in a graceful stream. It squelches like muck and shines like crystal. It beats like a body, but it moves like a mind. Singularity begins with a three-song voyage through a realm that’s recognizable from Immunity epic “Open Eye Signal,” one where much of the rhythm occurs in negative space. For a techno producer, Hopkins has a counterintuitive way of treating sound as something huge and immobile, then scything crop circles into those heavy frequencies to create a sense of motion. His beats are blanks, and his tracks feel unbound from the metronome. “Emerald Rush” climbs a ladder of Laraaji-like arpeggios and mountainous chord changes to some hidden summit of consciousness. The track features additional drum programming by Clark, another tailor of the fabric of spacetime—something Hopkins turns inside out at the drop on “Neon Pattern Drum.” This is the kind of album that could only be realized by an expert technician and holistic composer, but Hopkins’ taste for popular music is also apparent. Even his most arcane compositions, like the sideways wobble of “C O S M,” are generous with melody. He taps into something distinctly spiritual and medicinal on Singularity, an urge to transform and heal through a trancelike ritual fusing techno with pop. That quality goes deeper than some meditation-tape song titles (”Everything Connected,” “Feel First Life,” “Luminous Beings”) and a couple of new age piano pieces. Hopkins recently told The New Yorker that Singularity capped a period of seeking in his life, a time when he devoted himself to “desert treks, controlled breathing, [and] freezing baths.” He bottled that intensity in grooves that heave themselves into being, discovering their forms moment by moment. The songs here are about 75 percent build and 25 percent release, which is gripping, faintly exhausting, and, if you’re ready to go there, transcendent. Hopkins seems to model his music on the infinite cycles of destruction and rebirth that power the universe—but we, too, are part of the scheme. Singularity is ultimately grounded in the personal, not the cosmic, which is what makes this head music so rich.
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Mar 1, 2021 19:22:48 GMT
It's a bit more homogeneous and accessible than Immunity, but I have grown to like the latter a great deal. He's right about Open Eye Signal, which features without a doubt one of the most beautifully artistic accompanying videos ever.
|
|