Latest Nov 2011 Album Reviews
Mutemath ODD SOUL. Warner
I saw this USA band perform couple of years ago in Manchester and was impressed. ODD SOUL is the band’s third full-length release and as the album title implies it majors on soul sounds, but with a powerful rock twist. Arguably the most indicative tracks are the epic ‘Blood Pressure’and the highly original narrative ‘Tell Your Heart Heads Up’. There are much calmer examples also with the contemplative, gentle and melodic ‘All Or Nothing’. There’s also clever and surprising tracks like ‘One More’ which opens with ghostly, mesmerising electronics but soon opens out in rocky soul splendour. There’s much to like about this album that could so easily have misfired with its soul intentions.
Highly recommended.
4/5
Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo ALMANAC. Everyone Sang
A thoroghly likeable modern folk album with Barker’s fluid, easy vocals coming through loud and strong. The song writing is intelligent and at times memorable. I’m immediately impressed with the album’s second track, ‘Reckless’, which encompasses everything that’s good about this album. Lovely vocals and harmonies, strong melody, wonderful instrumental performances, meaningful lyrics and excellent production. ‘Dancers’ reminded me of an acoustic Beatles track during its opening passages, while ‘Pause’ is the standout track with its darker subtext, mesmerising slow pace, haunting vocal quality and telling vocal harmonies. This album gets better with each play and for lovers of singer/songwriters and the folk genre, this is pretty much a must-have.
4/5
Daniel Pearson SATELLITES. Saint In The City Records
Satellites’ is the debut album from UK singer-songwriter Daniel Pearson and features ten examples of alt. country and classic rock ‘n’ roll. Pearson has a pleasant, easy voice and here proves he can write a decent song. However, there’s not enough here to convince me that he’s up there with the very best UK singer/songwriter talent, as has been claimed by others. Opener ‘Masquerade’ is a pleasing solo acoustic folk-pop effort with strong melody and good lyrics. But it lacks the ‘wow’ factor for me. Next track ‘Wishing Well’ is better with very effective background instrumental, clapping sounds and backing vocals, however, it sounds initially very like the ‘Wishing Well’ from Phil Campbell/White Buffalo…
‘Tracks’ takes an alt-country route with guitars and Pearson making appropriate sounds. It works and is one of the the standout track here. ‘4th July’ and ‘Black N’ Blue’ liven things up with fast-paced rocky numbers boasting tangible melodies that win my vote. There’s little to complain about here but there’s also little to shout out from the rooftops about. But what do I know…
3.5/5
Amplifier THE OCTOPUS
The Band Explains…
We are, or were, AMPLIFIER.
We’ve had enough of all that now.
Now we are just us.
We spent a long time trying to fit in being a band in the music industry, but it just didn’t work out. Looking back, basically we were more interested in playing music together than anything else. That kind of approach just doesn’t work out with business. So we’ve ditched that now. We found it unhealthy for our happiness. We just do what we want. And this is what we wanted to do. The Octopus is actually a kind of experiment:
Firstly
The Octopus is an exercise in not compromising your artistic output. We wanted to prove that you can do something world class without all the interference and watering down that happens when you have a record company or in fact, any kind of third party involved with what you do.
Secondly
The Octopus is an experiment in how we relate to people in the outside world.l mean - If you really think about it - music only really exists where there is a listener. That’s where you fit in.
The Octopus is a kind of ongoing experiment in creating and evolving something much more than just some record by some band. There are no time limits to it’s growth. If you dip into it, we think that The Octopus is representative of some core values that we all share as people. This makes it timeless. We are humanistic - We are fedup with all the faceless and valueless rubbish that seems to invade every level of modern life. We want to make things of value and worth. We do not agree that cash and profit should be the overriding factor that drives all elements of existance and creative output. We think that some things are worth doing just for the pleasure of doing them and in the hope that they make the world a better and more thoughtfull place. We don’t agree with the idea that what we make can’t be grand in scale and intellectually stimulating - because people don’t want and don’t have the time for that kind of thing in their lives.
Clearly that is just a lie. We want to play our part in removing that lie.
Most importantly - we believe that ordinary people like us can make all the chances and opportunities that we need for ourselves by being pro-active and inclusive of other people who share that ideal, hopefully like you. We tiptoe a silver tightrope. To one side you fall to your death selling your soul to the money machine. To the other you fall on your sword in failing to feed your family. Maybe being in a band is even more important than both of those things. Because it is actually a way of understanding the world. And The Octopus is how we have come to understand the world.
We never intended to have a manifesto. But somehow we have ended up with one. All our future decisions and plans will now be based on The Octopus. So, Away we go….
Review
The first thing that strikes me here is how on earth an unsigned band can take on something of this weight, complexity and length - and succeed. For a long time now I have liked this band but have never been totally convinced - I’ve consitently witnessed flashes of brilliance along with moments of frustration. From a dispassionate viewpoint, Amplifier had nothing to lose but everything to gain. The Octopus therefore seems to be a do or die effort both musically and from a marketing perspective. In fact The Octopus may be the only album in many years to become its own major marketing tool/brand with its tentacles harnessing support from a worldwide audience.
But what about the music…? An early question from me was could this have been compacted down from 2 hours on 2 CDs to a single 75-minute CD? I think so and could have been managed without compromising artistic integrity or short/longer-term aims (perhaps even allowing for a follow-up). As the album opens I’m reminded of Pink Floyd who it appears are a major influence for this band, as are other older prog rock bands. But what Amplifier have achieved is an original, long musical narrative punctuated by great heavy rock riffs and underpinned by tangible melody and a sense of adventure rare in today’s rock/pop marketplace.
Break this down into songs and it’s then that the strength of the album shows. ‘Minion’s Song’, ‘Interglacial Spell’, ‘The Wave’, ‘Planet Of Insects and ‘White Horse At Sea//Utopian Daydream’ from the first CD are all excellent songs in their own right and some of the best from any UK rock band in 2011. Production values are incredibly high for a self-funded album and so this works on several levels with the potential to appeal to serious lovers of rock.
My only criticism therefore is its length which has the potential to turn the listening experience from engrossing to a tad boring… Think Dark Side Of The Moon in terms of length and timelessness. The Octopus is different of course and not yet of such enormity, but there’s an interesting future emerging here for a band who have been underground and undervalued for far too long.
4.5/5
Rodrigo y Gabriela Tour 2012
RODRIGO Y GABRIELA ANNOUNCE NEW STUDIO ALBUM
‘AREA 52′ RECORDED IN HAVANA WITH CUBAN ORCHESTRA
Mexican acoustic rock duo Rodrigo y Gabriela will release their new album on 23 January 2012. Entitled ‘Area 52′, the album is their first recorded collaboration with another group of musicians; a thirteen piece Cuban orchestra composed of some of Havana’s finest young players, collectively known as the C.U.B.A.
The album has been produced by Peter Asher, known for his work with James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, 10,000 Maniacs and Diana Ross; as well as being A&R at Apple Records. The album was co-produced by Rodrigo. It has been mixed by Rafa Sardina, 25 times nominated (and 11 times winner) at the Latin Grammys. On ‘Area 52′ Rodrigo y Gabriela revisit nine of their compositions and reinterpret them in a new and dramatic fashion, this is Rodrigo y Gabriela as they have never been heard before.
The new arrangements were done by Switzerland based composer / arranger / pianist Alex Wilson, best know for his work with Courtney Pine and Ernest Ranglin. Recording took place during the summer at Abdala Studios in Havana and later at Rod & Gab’s studio in Ixtapa, Mexico. Guests on the album include Anoushka Shankar on sitar, rock drummer John Tempesta (The Cult, White Zombie, Testament) on two tracks, jazz bass player Carles Benavent (Miles Davis, Chick Corea) on two tracks and Palestinian group Le Trio Joubran.
The album is called ‘Area 52′. Rodrigo explains: “we felt like Mulder and Scully approaching this; it was just a crazy idea, to see if a big Cuban band could play our music, a step in the dark”. He adds: “we knew it was out there, everyone has heard of Area 51, but we wanted to take it a little further.”
Rodrigo y Gabriela have sold in excess of 1.2 million albums, and earlier this year collaborated with Hans Zimmer on ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’. They have sold-out world tours that span London to Los Angeles, Paris to Tokyo and Dublin to Sydney. In recent years they have worked with Robert Trujillo from Metallica, Zack De La Rocha from Rage Against The Machine, Al Di Meola, L Shankar, Alex Skolnick from Testament and Strunz & Farah.
‘Area 52′ will be released on Rubyworks on January 23rd 2012.
RODRIGO Y GABRIELA ANNOUNCE LIVE UK TOUR DATES FOR FEBRUARY 2012
Rodrigo y Gabriela and C.U.B.A. will be live in the UK and Ireland at the following venues:
Sunday 19th February - The Olympia, Dublin
Tuesday 21st February - The O2 Academy, Glasgow
Wednesday 22nd February - HMV Ritz, Manchester
Friday 24th February - The O2 Academy Brixton, London
Rodrigo y Gabriela will be touring the UK and Ireland with the C.U.B.A. in February - the dates are the first time Rod & Gab will have toured with a full band, and the shows will offer a unique opportunity to experience this already amazing live act as never before.
David Motion’s Never Let It End
David Motion NEVER LET IT END. Crystal Groove Records
Composer, producer, sound engineer, wine merchant David Motion (whose past work includes sountracks for Orlando, To Live And Die In L.A., TV series Trial & Retribution, and contemporary classical album Neo Classic) has created one of the most fascinating releases of 2011 with Never Let It End.
Having studied at London’s Royal Academy of Music (piano and composition) and performed and recorded as a member of the techno pop band Home Service, David Motion went on to establish a highly successful career as a recording engineer and record producer. Between 1984 and 1991 he produced singles and albums for such artists as Strawberry Switchblade (including the UK number 5 hit Since Yesterday), Red Box (including the UK number 3 hit Lean on Me), Carmel, Black, Win and Tom Robinson. He also produced the Japanese artists Chara, Toshihiko Takamizawa and Mimori Yusa.
Subsequently David has concentrated on composing music for picture. He composed the score for Sally Potter’s highly acclaimed feature Orlando, earning glowing praise from The Hollywood Reporter: “Visually and aurally ‘Orlando’ is jaw-dropping, a tour-de-force…the robustly delicate music score is a scrumptious delight, one of the best film soundtracks in recent memory”. He has also released 2 albums displaying an extraordinarily wide musical palette of which Never Let It End is a prime example.
Whilst the album includes a strong diversity of sounds, the whole hangs together beautifully and is certainly one of my albums of the year. It mixes ambient, rap, classical, pop, rock in a way that I’ve never heard before. The guest performances are amazing and often out of character/out of comfort zone but Motion has managed to inspire some truly wonderful performances from tenors, sopranos, actors, and even a psychologist. Check out the real military narrative on ‘Touching The Face Of God’ which I promise will blow you away. The album is underpinned by strong door-opening melodies and interesting, intelligent lyrics.
This is a unique, innovative album which is highly accessible and hugely entertaining.
4.5/5
My new album - almost 4 years in the making. David Motion
I really had no idea what kind of album I was going to be doing next. I’d finished my neo-classical album, which had done nicely and there was pressure building on me to do another in the same area. I’ve often had the sense that you write the music that you’d like to be listening to. I wondered what would come out if I kept it totally open, just writing freely and naturally without trying to limit or confine it by genre. What seemed to emerge was electronica with lots of classical elements.
It quickly became clear that some of the tracks needed voices, some spoken, some sung and it was a real pleasure to be thinking about who or what would be great for each track. It became an album of collaboration, woven from different voices and textures.
Some tracks needed spoken words. The soothing voice and words of Dr Terry Morris the Hypnotherapist on “Colours Of The Sky Relax”. DO NOT DRIVE or operate heavy machinery while listening to this track! Even hoovering may be dangerous…
My Dad, Artist and Poet David Freeman, gave my wife Vera and me a poem on our Wedding Day in June 2009. I thought it might work well with one of the pieces I was working on. I cornered Edward Fox at my wine shop and he very kindly agreed to come to my studio to record a reading of the poem which became “As Long As Longing Lasts”.
Evelyn Glennie and I worked on a Lynda La Plante series a few years ago. One day she was mucking about, playing a standard drum kit in the most unorthodox way - with 2 beaters in each hand. Fortunately I managed to capture it before we moved on. It forms the long 32-bar tom-tom sample on “Never Let It End”. There was also a John and Yoko moment on this track, when Vera and I found ourselves running a poem she was writing over the backing track. Now we had words. I asked our singing Diva friend Kim Criswell to come in to do a
soprano section. She was due to come at midday as I had to be somewhere else at 15.00h. She finally rolled up at 14.35h. Didn’t take her hat off. There was even time for harmonies and I was out of the studio at 14.50h. What a pro!
I was a bit the worse for wear one night with my brother-in-law Ray. At one very fuzzy point he told me how much he liked the tracks I did with Carmel back in the mid-80s. I dug the album out and, fuelled by pints of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, found myself banging out a gushy message to her online. She wrote back a day or two later and within weeks I found myself in Altrincham near Manchester working on a couple of tracks with her. “Dress of Green” (a backing track I had all but abandoned in the meantime…) and “I Want Your Love”. She encouraged me to sing backing vocals. At first I was sceptical but then totally got carried away with it. Now try stopping me…
Johnny Daukes Album of 2011?
Johnny Daukes A FALSE PARADE. Mumbo
It’s criminal that artists like Johnny Daukes can’t get arrested on radio here in the UK whereas a lucky (very) few less-talented get played to death. There’s no justice with the end result that millions of real music fans never get to know some really incredible music from some of the most talented artists.
A FALSE PARADE is rapidly becoming one of my favourite albums of the year because it delivers on every musical front - by the truckload! ** Click the below live clip to see and hear how good this chap is
‘Shoot You Down’ opens in pathe news style with a snatch of Luther King (”…free at last”) before it settles into a downbeat, deathly dirge punctuated by soaring choruses using those famous words. The melodic is on the monstrous scale and the whole is cleverly produced and performed to accurately reflect the melancholy nature of the message. ‘The Emperor’s Old Clothes’ is next and sustains a lumbering pace (albeit a slightly lighter tone) as it communicates another political message. Another powerful melody underpins the song together with some diving guitar riffs and highly expressive vocals from the man. ‘Atmosphere’ ups the pace with some great guitar passages introducing the third consecutive great song here.
Folk/rock/alt country - it’s all here - and with songs that I have been playing on radio since I first received the album. In fact each time I listen to it it gets better which, for me, puts it in the super-league of releases in 2011. The quality and intelligence of songs continues with some truly exceptional ones in ‘A Roll Call’, ‘America Sleeps’ and ‘Vincent’. This is an exceptional album and for those of you who are capable of discriminating between mass-market mediocrity and excellence this represents essential listening. Go for it and be inspired… 4.5/5
** Below are two clips, both songs are taken from his debut LP ‘Promise’
Queen DAYS OF OUR LIVES DVD
DAYS OF OUR LIVES
THE DEFINITIVE DOCUMENTARY ON THE WORLD’S GREATEST ROCK BAND IS COMING TO DVD AND BLU-RAY
Released 28th November 2011 – Universal Music
“This fantastic and moving two-parter tells the story of the finest live band in the history of rock. There’s archive footage of past performances, interviews with the members and, best of all, plenty of insider anecdotes; the choicest being Elton John’s reaction to Bohemian Rhapsody: “Are you off your head? You’ll never get that played.” The Guardian.
In 1971, four college students got together to form a rock band.
Since then, that certain band called Queen have released 26 albums and sold over 300 million records worldwide. The popularity of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon is stronger than ever 40 years on. This past month in front of an estimated TV audience of 1.2 billion they were honoured with the Global Icon Award at the 2011 MTV EMA.
But for Queen the journey was no bed of roses. No pleasure cruise. Queen had their share of kicks in the face, but they came through - and this is how they did it.
Set against a backdrop of brilliant music and stunning live performances from every corner of the globe, Queen: ‘Days of Our Lives’ - available in both Blu-Ray and standard DVD formats, released 28th November through Universal Music, brings Queen’s 40th Anniversary year to a close in suitably regal style.
‘Days Of Our Lives’ began as a two-part documentary produced by long-term Queen collaborators and life long fans Rhys Thomas (the comedian who famously broke the Mastermind all time record points score with a specialist subject of Queen) and Simon Lupton, and directed by the renowned director Matt Casey. After 10 years of making Queen DVDs, Lupton and Thomas were asked by the band to produce the definitive 40th Anniversary documentary and after almost a year of painstaking research and editing, this was the result.
Split over two episodes, Part One covering 1970-80, Part Two 1980 – present day, the documentary is a genuine rollercoaster of rock and roll history.
In this film, for the first time, it is the band that tells their story. Featuring brand new interviews with Brian May and Roger Taylor and unseen archive footage - including their recently unearthed first ever TV performance - it is a compelling story told with intelligence, wit, plenty of humour and painful honesty.
Rhys Thomas comments, “We set out to make the definitive Queen documentary. It’s a funny, honest, inspiring and ultimately tragic account of ‘a certain band called Queen’, as told by the band themselves. We tell the story of four students who met in West London, slogged hard and conquered the world, ultimately changing rock music forever.”
When originally broadcast in the UK on BBC 2 across two nights in May of this year, ‘Queen: Days of Our Lives’ was the highest rated TV show on in its slot, beating every other channel and peaking with 3 million viewers. It has been widely regarded as one of the finest rock documentaries made and the critical reaction was outstanding. “Funny that,” says Thomas, “considering Queen were always denounced by the press!”
Say Queen’s Brian May: “The Boys did a fantastic Job on this documentary … with little interference from us! I think this one will set the bench mark for years to come.”
Thomas explains the transfer of the original BBC documentary to DVD release: “When originally making the series it wasn’t easy condensing 40 years of Queen down to just two hours. In fact, there was so much more to be said and so much more to be seen. Thanks to Blu-Ray and DVD, so much more of that story can now be told.
“As the two documentaries worked so well, we resisted the idea of making an epic 3-hour ‘Extended Cut’. They are always boring, and as Freddie said to his manager Jim Beach in his last days: “Do anything you want with my music dear, but never make me boring!
“So rather than simply dump a load of ‘deleted scenes’ onto the DVD and Blu-Ray, Simon and I decided to edit them all with as much love, time and care as we put into the main documentary. What we have as a result is a great companion to the main story and some real gems, most notably covering the formation of the band and the making of the last three albums which was only touched upon in the televised version. For instance, we learn from Brian how John Deacon made a cut in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ for the record company and Freddie’s reaction; the revelation that Freddie was not sober during the making of ‘Spread Your Wings’/’We Will Rock You’ in Roger’s back garden, and a hilarious sequence about Queen and their love of Scrabble.
“As well as the new sequences, there are 7 new videos. Excerpts were featured in the main documentary, but we have completed them, and here on DVD and Blu- Ray they appear in full.”
The Blu-Ray format allows for additional bonus material and therefore differs in content to the Standard DVD release. Please check credits for each release.
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