i got this record maybe a few days after i finally broke down and bought
moby's "everything is wrong" which, for some reason, it took me FOREVER to
get around to buying (awesome record-buy, buy, buy!), and i was not
disappointed by what i heard at all.
"play" is actually, in some ways, a departure from what i'd think of as
moby's "sound" (though not as much as his last album, the hardcore-ish
"animal rights"), and in many ways, recalls the early 90's british bands
like primal scream, the happy mondays, et al that populated manchester
warehouse parties according to all the media hype that was generated back
then (was it really a decade ago?). that's definitely a departure i don't
mind, though. it still has a lot of the ornate instrumentation of
"everything is wrong" and his earlier work, but it's definitely nowhere
near as hyperkinetic in speed. it's a slower, mellower record, and, while
not as dancey as most of what people think of as "moby", it's a record that
really has a soul, and it benefits immeasurably from that.
among the more interesting touches on this album is the incorporation of
many samples of real cool a cappella blues and spiritual stuff, seamlessly
meshing in with the electronics, like they were meant to be there in the
first place...it's moments like those that make this, and moby's other
records stand apart and shine amid all the me-toos in electronic music. not
many artists in the so-called "electronica" scene continue to release
challenging, original, and, bottom line here, human-sounding records, and
moby is definitely at the forefront of those artists.
obligatory, tacky, comparing this to other bands dept.: he's moby. he's
kind of, you know, uh...moby. aside from the primal scream and happy
mondays inferences i made above, maybe the only other band in his genre
doing anything similar in style as well as quality'd be the chemical
brothers.
final score: **** out of *****
the london suede
"headmusic"
nude/columbia
much debate has taken place over the past few years in snobby, british
indie pop circles over whether the london suede have managed to shake off
the "bernard butler (original suede guitarist/songwriter) left the band, so
they suck now" blues. their latest effort, "headmusic", answers that
question with a resounding "hell yeah!"
"headmusic" is a swirling, sexual, intoxicating, jagged work of pop art.
expertly produced by steve osborne (curve, among others), managing to merge
psychedelia and glam into a cohesive, danceable form, and incorporating
synthesizers more thoroughly than on suede's previous records without
losing any of the edge and vitality that made the earlier records so good,
this record may be the one that finally catapults brett anderson and co.
into the spotlight enjoyed so far this decade by other british bands like
oasis, blur, and most recently, radiohead. now, if only the stone roses and
my bloody valentine would release new records...=)
obligatory, tacky, comparing this to other bands dept.: bowie, the stones
70's columbia records stuff, any number of UK glam bands from slade on
down, maybe even a slight touch of neil young that's been with them since
the bernard butler days. oh, and there's a touch of the stuff that's
likeable about the aforementioned britpop bands, so if you like them, give
this a listen.
final score: **** 1/2 out of *****
emperor
"IX equilibrium"
century media
ah. metal. \m/
for those of you not familiar, emperor are the "kings of norwegian black
metal". if that doesn't mean anything to you, style-wise, try to imagine "6
iron maidens playing at the same time", as i heard someone describe emperor
recently. they're insanely fast, insanely heavy, insanely dark, and
insanely talented. yep, you heard me right. under those 250 bpm rhythms,
the crunch of guitars being played WAY too fast, and the primal screams of
lead singer ihsahn, there's a really nice undercurrent of melody that you
don't hear too often in bands that play at speeds this high. nice touches
like layered choral sounds, tremendous, soaring, intricate guitar work, and
tasteful keyboards that give the entire record an orchestral, teutonic
feel. scary stuff. i love it.
buy all of emperor's records, actually. i mean, one of their members is in
jail for murder! how cool is that? ;) (note: for serious fans of emperor,
this is hardly a straightforward, song-by-song review of "ix equilibrium",
which is a fantastic album, if you were wondering. deal. :P)
obligatory, tacky, comparing this to other bands dept.: it's metal, you
poseur. just go buy it and scare the living shit out of your parents,
already!
final score: **** out of *****
clan of xymox
"creatures"
metropolis
for those of you who don't know who clan of xymox are: clan of xymox were
one of the premier dark pop bands of the 1980's. hailing from holland, and
signed to the seminal 4AD label in their heyday, xymox released beautiful,
brooding,
but intensely catchy and listenable pop music, that was as good for dancing
to as it was for sitting inside on rainy days when you had no friends and
your life sucked. it also weren't too bad for makin' love, either. (see my
earlier article on neil gaiman
, and substitute the first 2
clan of xymox records for the cure's "disintegration".) eventually, though,
as several of the band members left the group, and frontman ronny moorings
got more into the early ambient techno that was all the rage in the early
1990's, their sound began to falter, and the band all but disappeared until
1997, when it was announced that they were to release a new album, "hidden
faces", under the name "clan of xymox" (in the years prior to this, they
had dropped the "clan of" from their name). the album and tour that
followed were excellent, and a year or so later, preceding the release of
"creatures", clan of xymox played at
convergence 5 in new orleans, which yours truly attended. copies of "creatures" were available
there, in advance of the album's official release, so i grabbed one...and
now...
...the bad news: this one's a real let-down, after their previous record,
"hidden faces", which made a lot of us feel like xymox had finally
sidestepped some of their musical miscues of the past few years, and were
ready to give us a few more good albums. production is sorely lacking, and
the songs just aren't there. i've tried giving it a bunch of tries, and (as
does often happen with records i'm really let down by) perhaps at some
point in the future, something will grab me about it and make me want to
hear it, but for now, i'd say take a pass on "creatures", and pick up
either their excellent "medusa" album (which has FINALLY been released
domestically, so you don't have to pay $25 like i did...), their
self-titled debut record, "twist of shadows", or the afore-mentioned
"hidden faces".
obligatory, tacky, comparing this to other bands dept.: xymox, at their
best, have a sound resembling, in some ways, early cure and "some great
reward" to "music for the masses"-era depeche mode, but with touches that
made them very unique, and in many ways, unparalleled at what they did.
this record doesn't do the band justice, but their earlier efforts are well
worth looking into.
final score: a very disappointing * 1/2
atari teenage riot
"60 second wipe out"
digital hardcore recordings
i'm still not sure why i buy atari teenage riot's albums. i think it's to
keep up with "what the kids are listening to these days." me being 25, it
kind of scares me that i already feel that ATR are the first sign of a
musical generation gap between me and the "young'uns". now, it could also
be, as many people have suggested, that i don't "get" atari teenage riot
because they flat-out suck. i don't really buy into that logic, though,
because in between the endless screaming of the band's name on damn near
every song they've recorded, the tuneless, completely non-rhyming,
non-flowing, borderline illiterate raps on damn near every song, and the
atonality that, in a complete 180 for me, i don't find appealing, i hear
something that says to me, "these guys are onto something here." they
haven't nailed it just yet, sorry to say, but i'm planning on keeping an
eye on them until they do.
obligatory, tacky, comparing this to other bands dept.: this is kind of a
tough one. i guess i'd have to go with...einsturzende neubauten (for the
atonality), kmfdm (for the annoying habit of saying their name in every
song), a few different early-to-mid 80's english hardcore punk bands,
crass, discharge, and the subhumans are who come to mind (for the lo-fi,
low talent, sloppy playing and the "fuck everything up!!!!!!" message), and
just a smidgen of the beastie boys and public enemy, because they
definitely owe at least some of their attitude to their individual brands
of hip-hop.
final score: a very favorable, interestingly enough, ** 1/2
new feature here...
raid the used bin:
earth eighteen
"butterfly"
the medicine label
"earth who?", you say? well, you're not alone. earth eighteen, a band
fronted by ex-void frontman jon dupree in the mid 1990's, were sadly
overlooked by just about everyone, and the few who didn't seem to have
forgotten them. i first heard about them right about the time they
supposedly broke up, in 1996, and upon getting their first full lp,
"butterfly", i fell in love.
"butterfly" is a grand-scale, subversive, dirty epic of an album, an
unearthly, wickedly ironic tale of a guy who grew up to be a rock star and
bed teenage girls. the whole album is written in almost a concept album
form, as a long-playing seduction of the young and innocent, vocalist
dupree luring "all the little girls from the carnival, with their starry
eyes" into his den of rock 'n' roll inequity.
from the opening, lennonesque strains of "la la song", to the ending art
rock jam of "blood revival 99", this album is incredible in it's scope. it
runs the gamut from glam rock, to new wave, to goth, to psychedelia and
back again, recalling a slew of great artists along the way, but
ultimately, carving out a sound that is theirs and theirs alone. lyrically,
as i alluded to above, the whole record has a major underlying theme of the
rock 'n' roller seducing teenage girls, at times so over the top that it
borders on self-parody, but never entirely reaches it. there's a disturbing
quality to jon dupree's words, in that you're never entirely sure if he's
serious or not. given the tremendous uproar people get into these days over
the rather touchy issue of statutory rape, if this record hadn't been
muddled in obscurity by the people promoting it, surely, a song like
"dahlia" ("trickle trickle blue blood pretty lemming won't you trust in me
blindly?") or "dolores haze" (any of you who've read nabokov's "lolita"
know what i'm talkin' 'bout...) would've gotten the muckety mucks in a
tizzy, like all good rock 'n' roll should. earth eighteen pushed all the
right buttons, wrote amazing music to accompany amazing words, and,
according to people i've talked to who've seen them play, were an awesome
live act, and yet...
this record flat-out scares me, as a musician who'd like to earn his living
making music. "butterfly" is, in my opinion, almost indisputably one of the
great rock masterpieces of the 1990's (and, in my opinion, one of the 10
best albums i own, out of about 4000 or so), easily holding it's own water
with the "nevermind"s and the "siamese dream"s that had so much more
commercial success, because of aggressive, savvy promotion. a great example
of this is spacehog's "resident alien" cd, which was released at around the
same time as "butterfly". the spacehog record, which got tremendous airplay
and did moderately good numbers based on the mega-push of their "in the
meantime" single, has at the very least, a peripherally similar sound to
earth eighteen's effort, but as an album, doesn't touch "butterfly". still,
as the marketing monster often dictates, better is often overshadowed by
"better packaged".
that jon dupree and co.'s major label debut (and, apparently, final
album...) has been heard by nearly no one in the grand scheme of things
makes me fearful of signing a deal with any record label, as, placed in the
wrong hands, your blood, sweat, and tears can be grossly mishandled, and
relegated to the $3 CD bin for all eternity. i strongly urge all of you who
have the means to rescue earth eighteen's "butterfly" from that $3 bin.
obligatory, tacky, comparing this to other bands dept.: wow. lots in here.
think cheap trick meets t. rex meets bowie meets love and rockets meets
ultra vivid scene (a band i'll get into in a future column...) meets queen
meets the cars meets iggy pop meets mark lanegan of the screaming trees on
vocals.
final score: ***** out of *****. get one of the best records of this (or
any other) decade, while there's still copies floating around.
Scott Crawford can STILL be reached at sdcrawford@earthlink.net, or, if
you're feeling especially daring and your mommy and daddy say it's ok, go to
and visit his home on the web.