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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Amph What Album Did You Just Hear?

Discussion in 'Community' started by Rogue1-and-a-half, Oct 7, 2014.

  1. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jul 13, 2008
    OH COME ON! :p
     
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  2. Harpua

    Harpua Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Mar 12, 2005
    That's precisely what I was going to post, Ramza. :p.


    I think you'll like his 70s stuff better.
     
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  3. slidewhistle

    slidewhistle Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2015
    except for Bongo Fury
     
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  4. Harpua

    Harpua Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Mar 12, 2005
    lol.... yeah, he should probably skip that one.
     
  5. Ezio Skywalker

    Ezio Skywalker Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 29, 2013
    I've been frequently listening to Game of Thrones Season 6's soundtrack, particularly "Light of the Seven," track #3. Ramin Djawada has quickly become one of my favorites through his material on this show, and season 6 is wonderfully scored imo.

    But this soundtrack made me think of an old flame:

    [​IMG]

    Brian Tyler's score of Children of Dune is without a doubt the best thing to come out of the Dune-verse on screen. While many tracks are similar, the standout pieces, to my ear anyway, are Irulan's Regret and The Ring of Paul, the latter being one of my all time favorite pieces. Tyler's gone on to do work for big budget projects (such as Marvel films, I believe), but this remains one of his best works, imo. His work on this and on Assassin's Creed: Black Flag are quite possibly the most engaging pieces he's composed.
     
  6. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    My reaction to Hot Rats is the standard one, so I had to really dig to try to say something controversial in that review. :p Nah, I mean, they're fine really. I could live without them, but even with them, I still think Peaches & Willie is an unbelievably strong opening section of the album. They don't really detract at all; first time, I kinda thought they did, but on repeated listens, they're fine, if unnecessary. I don't know that they add that much (except, I guess the title!), but it's still a four star song and a four star record, so I apparently don't really mind them.
     
  7. slidewhistle

    slidewhistle Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2015
    I found it pretty jarring when I finally heard the version of Peaches (the original?) that's on the recent-ish remaster. The drums are weird and there are some long bassy notes in the second half. The jacked up rhythm section kinda dulls the impact of my favorite part, the horns coming back in after the organ part.
     
  8. Harpua

    Harpua Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Mar 12, 2005
    The live version on Filmore East 71 is better than the studio version (and I really like the studio version).
     
  9. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Nov 2, 2000
    Yeah, I wish the Lumpy Money set would get here so I can do a straight up comparison between the original mixes and the 1980s/90s remixes Zappa did. Apparently, there's a whole controversy because he just straight up re-recorded the bass and drum tracks and those were the only ones available on CD. Now, the original mixes are being released on CD. So, it's confusing and I often don't know for sure which one I'm actually listening to. So far, I think I've heard. I do know that the version of Peaches that I heard on Hot Rats is different from the version of it that I heard on the Strictly Commercial compilation, so I'm not sure which is which, but I would guess that one of them was the remix and one was the original mix. Just an extra layer of confusion. And I can't wait to hear it done live.
     
  10. MOC Vober Dand

    MOC Vober Dand Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jan 6, 2004
    [​IMG]

    I picked this up on used vinyl a few days back after listening to Joe Strummer's radio show, which played some rockabilly, amongst many other things. It's really great and such an immediate sound. It feels like these cats are playing in the room next door!
     
  11. Jedi Daniel

    Jedi Daniel Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 7, 2000
    Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik. The quintessential RHCP album and the one I'd recommend first and then Californication. They found their voice and mainstream success. This was the first album I ever bought with my own pocket money, at the age of 8! I remember watching 'Under the Bridge' on the music channel in awe. The album does have abit of filler towards the end though.
     
  12. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    [​IMG]

    Over-Nite Sensation (1973) – The Mothers

    I figure the odds be fifty-fifty
    I just might have something to say

    On Over-Nite Sensation, Zappa finds a way to make standard music forms co-exist with his own unique, perverse perspective. This isn’t at all a standard rock album, not even a post-Dylan standard rock album, but it is Zappa feeling more comfortable using more traditional modes of song-writing. His lyrics remain strange and elliptical; he still utilizes shifting time signatures and unique instrumentation at times. But the music all meshes here. These are recognizable as songs with beginnings, middles and ends. He’s telling actual musical stories, albeit odd ones, and doing so in a catchy, smart and clever way. And it’s a masterpiece. I really loved this album start to finish. The lyrically brilliant Camarillo Brillo, instant raunch-rock classic Dirty Love, menacingly grim I’m the Slime. Then there’s horror movie rave-up Zomby Woof, which is almost certainly going to be on every Halloween party playlist I make from no one, third after Thriller & Monster Mash probably. Montana is some kind of brilliant, a shaggy dog story no one but Zappa could have ever come up, with wonderful backing vocals from Tina Turner and the Ikettes. And a word for Dinah-Moe Humm, one of the funniest songs I’ve ever heard. I’m not super big on comedy music (which is maybe another reason I’ve struggled with Zappa on other records), but the opening lines of this song elicited a strangled gasp of mingled shock and hilarity combined. Is this the best song ever about the female orgasm? Not that there have been a lot, but, you know, yeah. The only song here that I’m not super high on is Fifty-Fifty which is a bit long, but I’m a sucker for musical impressions (basically the reason I tolerated Of Montreal for as long as I did) and the impression of the Doors on the title couplet is unbelievably dead on. Over-Nite Sensation is, I think, Zappa having learned that the modes, styles and methods of mainstream rock (and maybe even pure pop) aren’t actually inherently evil. It wouldn’t be satisfying for Zappa to make a purely traditional rock record though and he hasn’t. He’s just learned how to make things work together, using more mainstream elements and his outsider weirdness to create something that’s better in aggregate than either of them would have been on their own. Over-Nite Sensation is an album that I respect artistically and also enjoy listening to. Call it the best of both worlds; I’m glad Zappa finally got here. 4 stars.

    tl;dr – album mixes more traditional rock elements with Zappa’s unique perverse perspective; the best of both worlds adds up to more than the sum of its parts. 4 stars.

    More Music Reviews!

    P.S. harpua, just listened through Burnt Weeny Sandwich the first time. We'll see how it goes, but your prediction about that one may be incorrect. My initial reaction isn't super-positive, but it's also not really negative. I like the last half a lot better than the first half, but, well, after I hear it a couple more times, I guess we'll see where I end up.
     
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  13. ShaneP

    ShaneP Ex-Mod Officio star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
  14. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    Rogue sort of correctly guessed that I didn't like Over-Nite Sensation as much as the earlier more nakedly experimental stuff, and he's not wrong but I still like it a lot (it's easily on the jazz fusion spectrum so it's... kind of hard for me to dislike). It has the unfortunate distinction of marking almost precisely the location in his discography where I start qualifying my enjoyment (my love of Läther's sprawling messy grandeur notwithstanding) and albums just don't stick with me the way everything up through Grand Wazoo does. It's hard to summarize: on paper there's nothing here that puts me off, but it doesn't work for me the way other prog rock acts from around the same time do.

    It may boil down to something as goofy and simple as "I like my Zappa either off the wall or jazz fusion and never the two shall meet," because they meet here and... yeah, it's fine.
     
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  15. slidewhistle

    slidewhistle Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2015
    I always just end up replaying "Camarillo Brillo" several times. It's the same thing with "Inca Roads" on One Size Fits All. They both start off on the peak.
     
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  16. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Nov 2, 2000
    Super negative review here guys, so if you love this one, read with caution. :p

    Uncle Meat (1969) – The Mothers of Invention

    [​IMG]

    And where does that fit into that . . . into my part there?

    This is the music.

    Where? Where?

    This . . . whole thing is the music.

    Uncle Meat is an album measured in heavy sighs. It’s one of Zappa’s highest concept albums. It’s the soundtrack to the Uncle Meat movie, a movie that didn’t exist at the time (and now only exists as a kind of patchwork). It’s made up of lengthy instrumental pieces, snippets of dialogues, weird brief songs and a lot more. And it’s kind of the ultimate example of Zappa being completely insufferable and unlistenable. Uncle Meat is the sound of Absolutely Free being set on fire and shoved into a blender. The music is almost totally dissonant, chirpy and annoying. Weird spoken word bits are edited into the music tracks. Sometimes there are minutes at a time of someone just banging without the slightest rhythm on a drum set. Look, I haven’t seen the sheet music (what a thing that would be to see), but I’m pretty sure that there are several tracks here where the instrumentalists are literally playing in different keys. They’re certainly playing in different rhythms, to different beats. I hear little in the way of music here; this album is two hours of noise. Not even noise music. Just noise. This is a more extreme version of the argument over Absolutely Free, so I don’t think I need to spend a lot of time really making the argument that this kind of self-conscious weirdness doesn’t really add up to much.

    But two hours? It feels way, way longer than that. It’s an album that isn’t as rage-inducing as Absolutely Free. It’s a parade of sounds that eventually just becomes unbearably tedious. Hence the weary sighs. The Voice of Cheese: first explosive fart sound - *sigh*. Zolar Czakl: assault of clattering clanking racket - *sigh*. Louie Louie: spends more than a minute building up to the song, plays the song for exactly four measures, then smash cut to the insane honking of the worst saxophone solo in history - *heavy sigh.* You know, honestly, there’s a delicious sadism to bits of this album. Like this one. “So, I’m going to title this track ‘Louie Louie’ so you think we’ll actually play the song. Then I’ll burn like a solid minute just saying the title over and over and prattling on about nothing.” Then a stentorian BUM BUM BUM . . . BUM BUM. Then in comes the bass, drums & guitar in a glorious frenzy of one of the coolest musicl progressions ever: BOOM-BOOM-BOOM . . . BOOM BOOM. And then *smash cut* HONK TWEET TOOTLE HONK BEROO SNORT BEEP TOOT HONKITY HONK. Oh, that’s great. I think this is what people mean when they call Zappa a trickster. HA HA HA that is pretty funn - **** YOU. It’s not that Zappa wants to be experimental or subversive that’s the problem; it’s his steadfast, unshakeable certainty that ANYTHING that resembles melodicism or harmony or beauty or riffs be eradicated from his music with a merciless hand.

    Then there’s the track of dialogue from the film and behind the scenes of the film. The nearly FORTY MINUTE track. Lengthy discussion of a woman’s sexual obsession with monsters. “Oh, manstah, can I have a bat of your ahpple. *heavy smacking* [orgasmic]OH MANSTAH[/orgasmic.]” - *very heavy sigh*. Realizing there is still half an hour of this track left - *extremely heavy sigh*. Lengthy dialogue in which a woman rubs herself with a hamburger in order to sexually stimulate herself/realizing there are still more than twenty minutes left - *weary sigh*. People repeat “I’m using the chicken to measure it” over and over for more than two minutes while others make clucking sounds - *sigh of utter desolation*. Still ten minutes - *literally banging head on steering wheel*. “Comedic” retching sounds - *weary sigh*. Then you get through that and you’re not even rewarded with the album being over. After forty-odd minutes of nonsensical dialogue and sound effects, you’ve still got eighteen minutes of King Kong to get through and boy that is not good at all. Minute three of King Kong IV - *incredibly heavy sigh*.

    I mean, you guys, I have never, I would say, encountered a work of art (?) that tried my patience this severely. I struggled through this damnable thing four times. That’s probably the most times any one person has listened to this album in a week in years. Maybe decades . . . maybe EVER. All the people praising this album as some kind of a masterpiece really need to go back and listen to it, because I have a challenge. Listen to this album three times over a period of, let’s say, four days. Then think about listening to it again. Allow yourself to truly feel the emotions that wash over you. The dread. The boredom. The depression. Then force yourself; start listening to it again. When you get to the thirty-eight minute dialogue track, take a breath. Really think about the fact that the next thing you’re going to listen to is THIRTY-EIGHT MINUTES of abstract, surrealist nonsense. Allow yourself to truly feel the emotions. Do you want to continue? I didn’t think so. You may even feel a sigh coming on. Let it out. Then walk away. Feel the freedom of knowing that you will never listen to this album again. Feel, as I literally felt, an actual feeling as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders after my fourth time through. And this is how the journey ends: *contented sigh*. 0 stars.

    tl;dr – a work of intensely abrasive, dissonant experimentalism; a soul-destroying, joy-sucking, tedious chore; music for people who don’t like notes; utterly without merit; God, what a racket. 0 stars.
     
  17. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jul 13, 2008
    Rogue, honest question since you throw this accusation around a bit, and it's going to read more harshly than I intend it: what, exactly, do you consider noise music? This is nowhere near more dissonant than what I usually see the label applied to, and while you're certainly entitled to your opinion that Uncle Meat isn't something you find listenable I think you'd be hard pressed to find serious consideration for the "this is worse than noise music" argument.

    Also I completely agree on the dialogue tracks from the CD version making repeated listens highly unappealing. I get wanting to include bonus tracks but, like, put them at the end of the album where they belong. Hell, the entire original double album fits on one CD, you can put the bonus stuff on a bonus disc. I'm not a fan of how Zappa would continually adjust his stuff for CD release and with Uncle Meat in particular I think he took a somewhat overlong album and ballooned it up nonsensically.
     
  18. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Nov 2, 2000
    No, I think you're right. That's not really a correct usage of the "noise music" label. I'm more thinking of popular music that utilizes elements of proper noise music, like industrial and that kind of thing, and only the more mainstream of even that. Like NIN isn't a proper noise music artist, but he certainly utilized elements of it or was influenced by it on some of his albums. That said, I guess it does kind of go back to what we did talk about earlier which is that I find dissonance and harshness in music to often be okay when those things are being used in service of evoking emotions like rage or unease or even fear. But when everything's in a major key and it's all tootling horns and such, I don't know what dissonance is supposed to prove in that instance. I mean, the dissonance there isn't in service of evoking anything in the way of dark emotions, so what is it doing there? I guess that's why I would still say that I find tracks like Zolar Czakl, which is just a collage of banging noises and dissonant notes, to be much more "noisy" than, say, The Velvet Underground's Black Angel Death Song or things of that nature. In actuality, it strikes me that the latter is more dissonant and harsher in the sounds it makes, but it's in service of evoking a proper emotion, whereas the former is just annoying and pointless to me.

    I've now heard some of the 1980s/90s remixes that Zappa did versus the releases from this last decade which went back to the original mixes from the 60s & 70s and I would definitely say that I much prefer the original mixes to the remixed versions on the original generation of CD releases. I think it's a good thing that the Zappa folks are putting out the original mixes on CD now. I think for people who've only heard the original CD remixes, these new releases have the potential to be genuinely revelatory. Why do artists feel the need to do things like change the mixes for CD releases and such (or, you know, add special effects to their movies *ahem*)? I dunno. I mean, with Zappa it's obvious that he's a tinkerer. You can tell he's just a guy who loves playing around in the studio (and I don't mean "playing around" in a negative way), so I get that it's in line with his personality to keep changing things on his albums even after they're officially released. But, yeah, the original mixes seem better to me. Even on the records I don't like on the whole.

    As to bonus tracks, I kind of liked the way it was done on Absolutely Free with the single put in the middle of the album, between the two sides of the original release. Almost like an intermission or something. But with Uncle Meat, I think you're right; the proper album on one disc, uninterrupted, and then the bonus tracks on a second disc. I mean, the bonus stuff is forty-five minutes or so. More than enough for a disc of its own.

    I'm currently working on Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Chunga's Revenge, Waka/Jawaka & The Grand Wazoo. Nothing's settled for sure, but I think I may have found another four star record. Place your bets now on which one it is. I'll hint that it's not the most obvious guess you might make based on my previous two four star records. I kind of feel like maybe I'm kind of in the thick of the discography at this point. I doubt I'll find anything worse than Uncle Meat or anything I love more than Hot Rats. Which would be hilarious since they came out the same year. Zappa certainly refuses pigeonholing. :p This stuff I'm on now kind of all seems to be falling in the "eh, OK" to "yeah, pretty good" range at this point.
     
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  19. DeltaRecon226

    DeltaRecon226 Jedi Knight

    Registered:
    Sep 20, 2012
    I actually was just listening to the multi-plantium hit Smooth by Santana featuring Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20. This happens to be a choice cut off of Santana's multi-platinum studio effort Supernatural (1999). It's a great little ditty. 9.5/10.
     
  20. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Put Your Lights On feat Everlast is 154% better man come on.
     
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  21. Darth_wanderguard

    Darth_wanderguard Game Host star 6 VIP - Game Host

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    Apr 26, 2005
    In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel.

    Probably in my top five albums of all time
     
  22. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    [​IMG]

    Burnt Weeny Sandwich (1970) – The Mothers of Invention

    Although you don’t want me no more
    Oh, but it’s alright, it’s alright with me
    Cause you know, you’re gonna want me some day
    Oh, you will want me & I’ll run away.

    Based on my history with Zappa’s music, it was predicted that I’d hate this album; thankfully, that’s not the case – I’m having more trouble with this album’s companion, Weasels Ripped My Flesh. But this one works surprisingly well in a kind of conceptual fashion. It starts and ends with covers of fifties songs, WPLJ & Valarie; in between those more traditional numbers, there’s a lot of time spent on instrumental experimentalism. Somehow, the contrast elevates both the traditional numbers and the experimental pieces; you’d think the two styles would clash, but somehow they add up to more than the sum of their parts. That said, I did find much of the instrumental stuff to be pretty bland and forgettable. Now, bland & unforgettable is far preferable to teeth-grindingly grating/rage-inducing, ie. a lot of Zappa’s experimental stuff up to this point, Uncle Meat particularly. Igor’s Boogie & Holiday in Berlin are too experimental for their own good, I’d say, but they’re not terrible, just not really engaging at all. When the instrumental stuff focuses on Ian Underwood’s great piano skills, it gets better. Aybe Sea is a lovely, lilting tune (**** that title though) and the solo piano intro to The Little House I Used to Live In is perhaps the best bit on the album. The Little House, somewhat surprisingly to some maybe, works really well for me actually. It’s probably a bit too long and the spoken word coda is pointless, but it walks right on that line of revealing some of Zappa’s off-beat sensibilities without plunging into them headlong. There’s a section about halfway through where things start to get wilder and wilder and more chaotic and I kind of figured, “Well, I guess the last half of this track is going to suck,” but then suddenly, the drums come in mixed a little louder than the other instruments and lay the beat back down and those drums just pull the rest of the instruments back into one of the piece’s themes. And I loved that. And I genuinely did love the two covers. The first opens the album in a surprising, witty & energetic way and the last one, Valarie, feels as emotionally sincere as anything I’ve heard from Zappa so far. There’s none, at least that I can hear, of the sardonic distance that, for better & worse, kind of colors a lot of Zappa’s music (almost all of his vocal music, actually). I quite enjoyed this. The instrumentals in the first half were quite lacking, but the vocal stuff was dead on and the instrumentals in the second half were really good as well. This isn’t a masterpiece, but in a career as varied as Zappa’s, I’ll take a non-masterpiece any day. 3 stars.

    tl;dr – a couple of great covers and a couple of great instrumentals share space with a fair amount of forgettable trivia, but there’s not much beyond occasional blandness wrong here. 3 stars.
     
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  23. Talos of Atmora

    Talos of Atmora Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 3, 2016
    Well, I've been listening to three albums that I haven't revisited in a while.

    Immortal - Pure Holocaust (1993)
    [​IMG]

    This was Immortal's second album. I know black metal is really niche even amongst metal fans but this album is legitimately awesome. Tracks like Frozen By Icewinds, Unsilent Storms in the North Abyss, The Sun No Longer Rises, As The Eternity Opens and the title track cement this album as a classic. It's up there with Darkthrone's five albums after Soulside Journey (thanks Ramza!) for me as examples of this genre done right. It never lets up and finishes really strong.

    Solstice - Lamentations (1994)
    [​IMG]

    This is a really good doom metal album from Solstice. It's in the vein of other bands like Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus. That being said, there are many things here that make this album stand on its own. The lead vocalist is also pretty great. The tracks I recommend here are Neither Time or Tide, These Forever Bleak Paths, Last Wish, and Wintermoon Rapture.


    Van der Graaf Generator - Still Life (1976)
    [​IMG]

    This album is tremendously unique. Van der Graaf Generator, for some, pretty much goes the way of a band like Gentle Giant whenever it comes to discussing them. I often see them skipped over in a lot of lists in progressive rock and while it is acclaimed, I want to draw some attention to it here. It's up there with Red by King Crimson, Animals by Pink Floyd, Selling England by the Pound by Genesis and Octopus by Gentle Giant for me.
     
  24. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    Really, you're going to go on record saying Soulside Journey is a black metal classic? :p
     
  25. Talos of Atmora

    Talos of Atmora Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 3, 2016

    Well, ladies and gentlemen...I done goofed. [face_laugh]

    No, I meant from A Blaze in the Northern Sky to Total Death. Soulside Journey wasn't bad though.
     
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