cranes - forever

.:: Having reached a new level of variety and elegant restraint combined with brusque power on Wings of Joy, the foursome continued exploring such combinations on Forever without simply rehashing the previous album. If anything, the album went to extremes in both directions -the quieter moments were even more hushed and shadowed, the louder points all that much more whipsnap cruel. "Cloudless" remains the album's most sweetly beautiful, truly haunting moment.

Over what sounds like a synthesized combination of plucked violin and keyboards, doubtless played by Jim Shaw, sister Alison delivers a softly husky vocal that slowly grows in strength. More synth strings swell up in the background, just enough, followed later by gentle electric guitar and at the end distant drums.

On a completely different tip, there's "Clear," its searing, blunt lead guitar line matched by a massive rhythm slam, only occasionally interrupted by a quieter moment or two before launching back into the full band attack. "Jewel" ended up being a surprise U.K. and U.S. hit, though thanks to a somewhat transformed remix courtesy of longtime fan Robert Smith (in fact, Forever takes its name from a Cure rarity of the same title).

.:: just for the record:
Early on in their recording and performing career, the music of Cranes borrowed from both the industrial/avant-garde, deconstructive style of bands such as Einstürzende Neubauten, and the ethereal labyrinths of acts like Cocteau Twins. Following a general softening of their sound, the introduction of pop elements to their music, and a world tour with The Cure in 1992, the band's popularity increased, and peaked with the release of the albums Forever and Loved.

The band fell silent for a period of approximately four years after the release of Population 4 in 1997, but did not actually break up. In the early 2000s, they began writing music again, and released Future Songs and Particles and Waves on their own label, Dadaphonic. These albums signified a change in the overall style of their music, emphasising its ambient, ethereal qualities. Despite heading in a more electronic direction, however, the band's music continued to revolve around Alison Shaw's distinctive singing.


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r.e.m. - chronic town

.:: Chronic Town is the debut EP by the american "unknown" rock band R.E.M., released in 1982 on I.R.S. Records. Chronic Town is the first illustration of R.E.M.'s signature musical style: jangling guitars, chords played in arpeggio, murmured vocals, and oblique lyrics.


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risser mazur duo - élan vital

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.:: One more great collaboration to enjoy by Rafal Mazur. 23 minutes of complexe mutant structures and magical interaction between bass and piano exploration.

Eve Risser: Grand Piano
Rafal Mazur: Acoustic Bass Guitar

Recorded in concert, 21.06.2008, Centre of Contemporary Arts, Krakow.
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Rafal Drewniany "Dzwiek to Sztuka/Sound
is Art" mobile recording studio.

Edited as 50 8''cdr with hand-made cover.


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the divine comedy - victory for the comic muse

.:: One of the most critically acclaimed acts to emerge in the UK during the '90s. Mixing a bit of Serge Gainsbourg with Noel Coward, Morrissey and Ray Davies, The Divine Comedy sound like no-one else and remain a musical quilt that continues to grow with each release.

The Divine Comedy, a nom de chamber pop for Northern Ireland-born singer/songwriter Neil Hannon, has traipsed through several musical wardrobes since 1989-- jangle-pop, eccentric Britpop mini-orchestra, Nigel Godrich-guided introspection-- but despite sporadic UK chart appearances and a 2002 U.S. tour with Ben Folds, critical acclaim has yet to usher in popular acceptance. The Divine Comedy's constants are a Wildean wit with an apposite sense of style, and they persist on extravagant ninth album Victory for the Comic Muse.

It's a pity that such similarly sharp-minded social observers as Evelyn Waugh and Bernard Shaw don't have more platinum records. At least there are always MySpace friends.


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alice in chains - mtv unplugged

.:: Out of the dozens of MTV unplugged performances there were two that stuck out in my mind as the best. The number two spot goes to Eric Clapton. An excellent show by the guitar marksman. But the number one in my opinion would be the Alice In Chains Unplugged. By far the best, this performance shows no matter how far down from the top you think you are, some of the best can come out it.

Take Layne Staley for example, the period of time when he was seriously losing the battle against drugs (particulary heroin) he comes out of the dark and puts on a spectacular once in a lifetime performance. Just when you think Alice In Chains are gone and lost, April 1996 comes by.

There's alot of humor in the performance as well as interactive comments with the crowd, particulary after messing up on the first take of 'Sludge Factory', an audience member yells "hey, quit f---in this up!" Even Layne's attempt at humor early in the show saying "Now we're going to break to, uh, an LL Cool Jay video, so" was kind of funny. Overall it was a great show.

Is Alice In Chains done? Or do they have another chapter to write in their incredible history? All I know is, the 400 people in attendence to this concert sure were lucky. That's all I have to say about that.


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youth group - casino twilight dogs

.:: Picking up where they left off from "Skeleton Jar", Youth Group fans will be assured once again of more incredible song writing. The first taste from their third album is the stand out 'Catching & Killing' and from here on in the music just gets better and better.

The band achieved double platinum sales and an Australian #1 single in March 2006 with "Forever Young", before playing Coachella and undertaking a hugely successful support slot on Coldplay's trek down under.

Produced by Wayne Connolly (The Vines, You Am I), and mixed by Rob Schnapf (Elliot Smith, Guided By Voices), Casino Twilight Dogs is the follow up to last year's critically acclaimed Skeleton Jar, a work of shimmering beauty full of heart, debuted at #10 upon release in Australia and has already achieved gold status there.


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el senor ciuf ciuf - as seen from above

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.:: Hello everybody, you have to give a try to this fantastic album… a must have !!!

Just check the first song "I Feel Like A Clean Blackboard": along with his mates Matteo Mohorovicich at sax & clarinet and Daniele Dalla Pellegrina at trumpet, Oliviero Farneti creates a surprisingly catchy and slightly surrealistic pop-song that knows about dance-music, lo-fi indierock and jazz (!).

Bet you'll whistle this one when you leave the house. "We The Ants" sucks you in with his beautiful warm guitar-riffing. This song didn't leave my head for weeks! It ends with a little free-jazz woodwind-intermezzo. Stunning. "I Think I Saw A Dead Person Walking Yesterday" expands olivieros sound-cosmos back to the sixties- these sweet vocal-harmonies in the middle make you think of The Beach Boys immediately.

Along with cheap synth-melodies, noisy wall-of-sound guitars and the trademark-woodwinds of Matteo and Daniele, by the way. "Demons", song seven, introduces the housy bassdrum and could have fit on the last Gorillaz-album without a problem. "The Unspeakable Chant Of A Collapsing Universe" afterwards exactly sounds like this: about nine minutes of psychedelic kraut-pop build on a small repetitive synth-motive. El Senor Ciuf Ciuf waves hello to the early Flaming Lips.

This description might sound a little weird, indeed. But: the album doesn't! Although there are a lot of genres in the mix, Oliviero's melodies, his voice and his sound of lo-fi homerecording hold it all together.


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skitsystem - ondskans ansikte 10"

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.:: Skitsystem certainly didn’t care about aesthetics or perfectionism on this release, instead opting to belt out chaotic and fuzzy, yet catchy, hardcore influenced metal, or vice versa… or punk. The songs are direct and in your face, leaving little room to relax. It’s evident that these guys gathered into the studio with beers.

Oddly enough, this album featured two members of At the Gates (you know who they are), was recorded in the same studio on said bands time and used the same gear, yet managed to not even sound at all like ATG. That’s nice. They clearly weren’t trying to ride the coat-tails of the more popular band and were simply and plainly having a good time. The guitars are fuzzy, sorta thrashy, and the bass is fucken low on top of some fast drumming. The vocals are spat with aggression and halitosis in a not too subtle shouty way that I found to be enjoyable for some weird reason.


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okkervil river - the stage names

.:: "Their fourth full-length may also be Okkervil River's most conceptually gnarled work to date, as frontman Will Sheff's intricately detailed lyrics leap from the ornate to the blunt, encompass philosophical inquiries and goofily playful riffing, invite the listener into confidence only to con them. With a voice both poetic and toughly slangy, these songs are equal parts high-concept filigree and low, street-level kicks; they're both artistically ambitious and refreshingly unpretentious."

This record dynamites the moss-covered castle walls of 2005's "Black Sheep Boy" to let in the glaring sun. Riddled with characters real and fake, with the relics of high culture and the crumpled up trash of low culture, "The Stage Names" is a cinemascopic take on the meaning of entertainment in the modern world.

Reverberant with echoes of Motown snap and girl group pop, redolent with ripe whiffs of dirty rock 'n' roll, shining with the shimmy of Bo Diddley, with the shimmer of the Velvets, with the swagger of the Faces, and with a glittery sprinkling of cheap perfume to disguise the stink, "The Stage Names" is a relentlessly paced and ruthlessly thrilling journey.

This is the sound of a band at the height of their powers, effortlessly making good on their earlier promise long after the point where they remember or care that they even made that promise in the first place.


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pedro the lion - achilles heel

.:: David Bazan, the driving force behind Pedro the Lion, hasn't reached Jay-Z's level of material success, and even fans of Pedro the Lion's work might not recognize Bazan's name outside of the context of his band.

Recorded in his home studio near Seattle, Achilles Heel enlists previous collaborator TW Walsh, along with fellow Jade Tree label mates James McAlister and Ester Drang. The album jumps off with "Bands With Managers", a catchy, ironic song reminiscent of a slowed down Grandaddy ditty that seems inspired by a run-in Bazan had with an arrogant lead singer or actual manager.

Achilles Heel is filled with a few deviations from Pedro the Lion's previous style. For example, long-term fans will wonder at the higher falsetto with which Bazan sings, and speculate if he is attempting to emulate the success that groups like Coldplay have found recently. But for the most part, Pedro the Lion continue to mine the rich vein of material they've been concentrating on from the beginning.

Much of Achilles Heel focuses on Bazan's attempt to hold his relationships together no matter the cost. His relationship with God, his wife and himself all bend under the strain, but he'll break his bones holding them together. Ultimately, Bazan continues to sound more like a distillation of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and The Counting Crows' Adam Duritz than the latest flavor of pop star.

Bazan uses the context to separate himself from other groups that are so obviously "going places", using the occasion to posture that his relationship with longtime contributor T. William Walsh is far more important than getting to open for U2 on their next stadium tour. Lyrics like "But I trust T. William Walsh and I'm not afraid to die" are a testament to friendship and loyalty that Bazan takes more seriously than the trajectory of his career.

Somehow a band that existed in a foundation of Christian indie rock found an audience with songs that dredge the banks of the river misery. Would the achievement destroy the very fabric that made Pedro the Lion great: poignant, somber songs about Bazan's moral struggle with faith, marital fidelity, and the reason to keep going in this life?


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waiting room - la estulticia del cognicidio

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.:: Edited under Creative Commons License (CC) "La estulticia del Cognicidio" is one of the best albums I've ever listened from a spanish band (dont forget Ekkaia). These collection of songs are based on improvisation and experimentation.

Although, Waiting Room was conceived as an instrumental band, they recently added some human voices (catalonian and english lyrics) without losing their warm, delicate sound.


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kurregomma - 8bitconnection

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.:: Broken rhythmic, blurry poems, epileptic fillings: this is the language chosen to commemorate the relationship between the existence of men and machine, programmed to explore the hidden shadows of suffering: ignorance.

8-bit connection is a furious descent into an aseptic hell from the heretic unbalanced cables.


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sam king - two

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.:: Prodigal painter and sometimes musician, Sam King (Fire Don’t Care’s guitarist and singer) bring us his second solo album "Two", a collection of indie pop bedroom songs that reside on the hi-fi end of the lo-fi spectrum.

Consisting of nothing but his voice and acoustic guitar, this set of captivating, haunting folk songs is simply perfect and beautiful.

Who needs bells and whistles when songs are this strong and the voice is this perfect?. Folk is reinventing itself and, as the Kings of Inconvenience's first album announced, "quiet is the new loud."


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caribou - the milk of human kindness

.:: The first record after changing the band's name from Manitoba (before a threatened lawsuit from a similarly-named artist caused the switch to the similarly-Canadian Carobou), Dan Snaith delivers a heavy set of his most developed music to date, touching on influences as distinct and impressive as Neu! and Soft Machine. Full of life and tasteful production/instrumentation, this art record's got antlers, though still progresses like a more delicate animal.

The songs that will jump out a first time listeners, however, are the ones where Snaith makes the transition from organic samples to a more simple band performance, but while the compositions mark a major shift in his musical approach, they still remain true to the Caribou sound.

The leisurely five-minute jam "Bees" centers around a relaxed '60s garage/blues rock groove, complete with cool touches, such as a memorable recorder solo, only to be briefly interrupted by string samples and more of Snaith's thunderous drum fills.

The warm "Hello Hammerheads", meanwhile, is straightforward, late '60s folk pop, the plaintive acoustic guitar and layered vocal harmonies greatly resembling both Simon and Garfunkel and Nick Drake.

Although The Milk of Human Kindness sounds more stripped down, its simplicity is deceiving, as Snaith has drawn from a much wider musical palette that he ever has in the past.


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spirit elevating brains - pulsos temporales memorias estables

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.:: Pulsos Temporales Memorias Estables' is the second album from SEB here at test tube and this time he made it even bigger than the previous one.

Twenty tracks of SEB's trademark 'digital nostalgia' style of clicks 'n' cuts and weird sampling. After a couple of listens, it's clear that Sebastian has been refining his sound. He's more precise and to-the-point when he tries to capture an emotional essence into a track or simply by telling us a story.

Most of his new tracks are also smaller and more effective, like a new engine model that consumes less but takes you farther. Some of this tracks work a bit like interludes of sort, filling the gaps between heavier, denser and more mesmerizing ones.

In the end, Sebastian Alvarez offers us 20 wonderful tracks for us to dream about metaphorical titles and the unknown dimensions that inhabit his mind. Have a nice trip.


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crash test dummies - god shuffled his feet

.:: Hailing from Winnipeg, Canada, with its dense, richly textured production and the distinctive baritone vocals of Brad Roberts, the Crash Test Dummies are ready to crash this party.

The band, which is considered a mainstream pop act in Canada, developed a modest following in the States following the release of its 1991 debut album, The Ghosts That Haunt Me. On God Shuffled His Feet, the band departs from its acoustic roots and heads toward an alternative sound, with a crisp rhythm section and supremely over-dubbed guitars and keyboards.

The fact that the production on the album (which was recorded in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin) is flawless is not surprising, considering that Jerry Harrison (of Talking Heads fame) was at the helm.

Basically, It's a great album with catchy lyrics and tunes. The quirkyness is missing for music nowadays.


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scott joplin - the entertainer

.:: Scott Joplin (between June 1867 and January 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an American musician and composer of ragtime music. He remains the best-known ragtime figure and is regarded as one of the three most important composers of classic ragtime, along with James Scott and Joseph Lamb, and also a precursor to Stride Piano. Decades after his death, his music enjoyed a considerable surge of popularity and critical respect in the 1970s, especially for his most famous composition, "The Entertainer." wikipedia

He combined the traditions of Afro-American folk music with nineteenth-century European romanticism; he collected the black Midwestern Folk rag ideas as raw material for the creation of original strains. Thus, his rags are the most heavily pentatonic, with liberal use of blue notes and other outstanding features that characterize black folk music.

In this creative synthesis, . . . the traditional march became the dominant form, and the result was a new art form, the Classic rag – a unique conception which paradoxically both forged the way for early serious ragtime composition, and, at the same time, developed along insular lines, away from most other ragtime playing and composing.

After his death, Joplin's music and ragtime in general waned in popularity as new forms of musical styles, such as jazz and novelty piano, emerged. However, a number of revivals of ragtime have occurred since. Scott Joplin created many different styles of ragtime and made it what it is today.


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london after midnight - selected scenes from the end of the world

.:: Los Angeles goths London After Midnight open this, their debut CD, with a provocative sample from one of Hitler's speeches. Whether it's meant to shock or educate or both, it's one of the few moments of drama on this otherwise fairly straightforward disc of glam-manqué death rock.

Songwriter, instrumentalist, producer and founder Sean Brennan is known for his strong stances in favor of animal rights, pro-environmental and human rights issues, anti-corporate control of media, and support for progressive and liberal politics.

London After Midnight began performing live in Los Angeles in the early 1990s at the legendary club Helter Skelter, which also hosted bands like Nine Inch Nails and many others. The live band immediately began to draw large crowds and always had elaborate stage settings including stage props that could have come from the Universal Studios' back-lot.

Needless to say the extreme stage settings attracted as much attention as LAM's music, which soon grew in popularity. So much so that the original four song demo cassette tape released in 1991-1992 was the hottest selling item in Hollywood's trendy Melrose Ave indie record stores, even beating out new releases from Duran Duran and other major label artists.

For 2 years the most sought after item Los Angeles area club kids searched for in LA area independent record stores was the LAM cassette tape. Signs hung in record store windows proclaiming "yes we have LAM's tape IN STOCK". Stores from as far away as Australia ordered multiple shipments of the tape each month to meet demand.



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jimmy page & the black crowes - live at the greek

.:: Jimmy Page, one of rock music's greatest guitarists combined with The Black Crowes, one of today's best live bands, delivers ripping Zep classics.

Recorded in October 1999, this double-disc slab will certainly stick to your ribs, chock-full as it is of burly, brawny riffs, and it is as flavorful as it is filling. Without question, the pairing of Page and the Crowes sounds as strong on your player as it does on paper.

Page's playing is more focused and incisive than it has been of late, the Crowes sound energized and inspired by the esteemed guest, and Chris Robinson makes a fine Robert Plant. The Zep covers, which account for 14 of the 20 tracks, stay close to the original arrangements--you can sing along most of the way based on your knowledge of the Zep studio albums.

Zeppelin fans are going to go three ways on "Jimmy Page [ tickets ] and the Black Crowes Live at the Greek": those who want anything that smoking Jimmy lays his axe to; those who heard that these two October 1999 shows were the best thing in rock since medical marijuana and want to hear what it was all about, finally; and that little group of naysayers who just might be onto something when they say, "Why not just listen to the original Zeppelin albums?"

Track by track, there's plenty of screaming soloing by Page, who blasts out his devil-take-the-hindmost blues on "Woke Up This Morning," works the slide soulfully on the rocking "In My Time of Dying," and cuts himself a nice slice of the wah-wah pie on "Ten Years Gone," one of the more interesting Zeppelin tunes that the Crowes homed in on.

THIS IS ROCK BABY !!!


download: jimmy page & the black crowes - live at the greek (disc 1)
download: jimmy page & the black crowes - live at the greek (disc 2)


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circle of dust - disengage

.:: Circle of Dust - the 90's cult industrial act, released it's final record (Disengage) in 1998 before Klayton retired the act to pursue other ventures.

Originally released in 1998 on Flying Tart Records, but barely noticed due to inadequate distribution and both label and distro tanking quickly thereafter, a Limited Edition (only 1000 made) version was re-issued by Retroactive Records October, 2005.

Not only do fans get the Disengage album, but another entire album's worth of bonus tracks, i.e. Refractorchasm, which fills out the disc, making it a twofer. It was digitally re-mastered and features enhanced artwork. This was the last album ever released by the most influential Christian gothic industrial metal band ever.

Later Scott Albert (aka Klay Scott, Klayton, and Celldweller) would go on to release mainstream albums by Angeldust, and most recently Celldweller. Expect pounding, aggressive gothic industrial metal full of angst and dissatisfaction with the status quo. For fans of Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, HIM, Argyle Park, Klank, Ministry, and Prong.


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