Music Disc Reviews
Categories in section: Music Disc Reviews
| Audio CD (1118) | DTS 5.1 CD (26) | DualDisc (38) |
| DVD-Audio (88) | SACD (37) |
Tuesday, 01 May 2007 |
Written by
Matt Fink
|
format: 16-bit CD
performance: 8
sound: 9
release year: 2007
label: Kill Rock Stars
reviewed by: Matt Fink
Though experimental rock has been bubbling under the artifice of mainstream rock ever since Nirvana brought Sonic Youth and a generation of underground bands to the fringes of commercial acceptance, it’s possible that no other time has been better for avant-garde musicians than the current moment. How else to explain the strange ubiquity of Deerhoof, an ineffably odd San Francisco trio that has opened for everyone from Radiohead and Wilco to the Roots despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that their music has adhered to few pop music conventions over their 12-year career. Verses, choruses, guitar solos, vocal melodies – nothing is nailed down in their constantly shifting sonic palette, and all sound as if they are jostling for position at the same time. And yet somehow, ...
Sunday, 01 April 2007 |
Written by
Matt Fink
|
format: 16-bit CD
performance: 7
sound: 8
release year: 2007
label: Astralwerks
reviewed by: Matt Fink
As much as she is considered a punch line for most music fans who have only a passing knowledge of avant-garde rock, Yoko Ono is finally beginning to earn recognition for her music as she enters the middle of her eighth decade on earth. No doubt, it was outrageous (if not downright unthinkable) when post-punk bands such as Sonic Youth and Public Image Ltd went on record as saying that Ono’s music was more important to them than her late husband’s thick catalogue of canonized hits, but the idea of taking Ono seriously as a composer and pop songwriter is becoming increasingly less radical. The fact is, while she is certainly more recognized for her conceptual and performance art musical pieces, Ono is actually a fairly talented (if still unconventional) ...
Sunday, 01 April 2007 |
Written by
John Sutton-Smith
|
format: 16-bit CD
performance: 8
sound: 8
release year: 2006
label: Catasonic
reviewed by: John Sutton-Smith
Los Angeles-based artist Weba Garretson has been performing for more than 20 years now a dense and sensual, cathartic cabaret and vocal theater, against a funky/punky backdrop that spans a range of musical time and space, from Kurt Weill to the Chili Peppers via Waits and Beefheart and lots of other strange and wondrous views along the way.
A worldly wise feminist, Garretson wears her political agenda on her sleeve, but with tongue firmly in cheek. A music veteran of arty new wave bands and the Weill/Brecht cover band the Eastside Sinfonietta, she weaves image-laden vocal riffs and wordplay against avant-garde lounge music, her spoken-word poetics bouncing off and slapping up against the heady mix of jazz, punk and rhythm.
This latest collection with her longtime sometime band Puttanesca is a ...
Sunday, 01 April 2007 |
Written by
K L Poore
|
format: 16-bit CD/DVD
performance: 8
sound: 9
release year: 2004
label: New West
reviewed by: K L Poore
There’s a history behind my love for Steve Earle, and with it, Live from Austin, TX. I wish I could honestly say that when he came onto the scene my music speedometer roared up to 90 mph and that I grabbed ahold of Guitar Town like it was the Holy Grail – but that’s not the case.
You see, it was 1986, and I was really fed up with music in general. So much so that I’d basically stopped listening. “Say you, Say me.” Say what? I couldn’t even understand what that fucking song was about. I was in a really deep funk. It was my friend Paul, who has one of the finest musical sensitivities I’ve ever observed, who said “Check this guy out, you’ll dig him.”
There’s ...
Sunday, 01 April 2007 |
Written by
Scott Yanow
|
format: 16-bit CD
performance: 8
sound: 7
release year: 2006
label: Kind Of Blue
reviewed by: Scott Yanow
Phil Woods has been one of the major alto saxophonists in jazz since the mid-1950s. Originally influenced strongly by Charlie Parker, Woods has had his own sound within the bebop/hard bop tradition for half a century. His style is open enough to reach from Benny Carter to Cannonball Adderley and even Eric Dolphy while always sounding like himself. At 75, he is still very much in his playing prime.
After playing in a countless number of situations, in 1973 he formed the Phil Woods Quintet, a group that included bassist Steve Gilmore and drummer Bill Goodwin. 34 years later Gilmore and Goodwin are still with Woods, and although Woods utilized several other pianists along the way, Bill Charlap has been with the altoist for several years, while trumpeter Brian ...
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