If the singles preceding the release of hyde’s Roentgen were any indication, it seemed like L’Arc~en~Ciel’s enigmatic singer was trying to elbow in on Gackt’s action.
“Evergreen” and “Angel’s Tale” were soft, sentimental ballads propelled by pretty melodies and sweet guitar picking. In other words, they pandered to Japanese popular taste.
The release of a third single, “Shallow Sleep”, bode no better. The gutsy guitars certainly hinted hyde still had viscera but not enough to defy the demands of the Original Confidence charts.
Thankfully, Roentgen turns out to be much better than those singles let on. They’re probably the most forgettable tracks on the album — its real strength lies in all the other songs.
Roentgen is a beautifully dark work, seething with a sensuality not commonly associated with hyde’s parent band.
Although lush with strings, acoustic guitars and muted jazz trumpets, the album never feels cluttered, and most of the songs bubble to climax that seldom ever happens.
“Unexpected”, the album’s opener, doesn’t offer much melodically, but between hyde’s cool performance and the song’s understated arrangement, it sets the tone for everything else to come.
On “Oasis”, hyde’s near whisper matches the quiet intensity of the song, while “A Drop of Color” feels like a number straight out of film noir.
“The Cape of Storms” could have been a collaboration with Moulin Rouge composer Craig Armstrong, complete with symphony orchestra and tasteful electronica beats.
And if hyde overdubbed his voice 500 times on “White Song”, he could have affected a really good Enya.
With L’Arc~en~Ciel, hyde took every opportunity to show off his versatile falsetto, but with this dark, brooding album, the singer stays in the lower registers, where his voice takes on a fuller, resonant sound.
In short, Roentgen does a tremendous job playing up hyde’s strengths as a singer, while employing a modest but no less dramatic musical backdrop.
And it’s more than popular taste would ever require.
Only in Japan’s hyper-cyclical music industry can a band record three albums in two years and qualify for a retrospective album.
Even if Do As Infinity stuck to releasing a singles collection at this point, it would still fill a good hour of music.
Of course, retrospectives are tricky propositions — how does a band lure its most rabid fans to purchase songs they already own? Since the advent of compact disc technology, the answer is clear — bonus tracks with new songs, live recordings and rarities.
Do the Best is an apt title, not just for the quality of songwriting on the album but for what it offers fans and casual admirers alike.
Two new songs, “Hi no Ataru Sakamichi” and “nice & easy”, attempt to lure completists who need to own every single Do As Infinity song on the planet.
Released as a single, “Hi no Ataru Sakamichi” doesn’t offer anything the band hasn’t done before. The chrous almost follows the same contour as “Tooku Made”.
“nice & easy”, on the other hand, traffics in the effortless hard rock-pop Van Tomiko and company have mastered in the past three years. Not very many bands can dress up a blatant hook with grunge-y guitars.
More interesting are the live tracks which conclude the album. In the studio, Do As Infinity is totally fleshed out, complete with overdubbed guitars, vocals and an arsenal of keyboards.
The “Great Tour Band” songs, in contrast, are stripped down and practically unplugged. It’s Do As Infinity thinking they’re the Police circa 1978.
And these live versions give the songs new identities. “Tangerine Dream” turned from melancholy ballad to slow rocker with guts. “Bookenshatachi” transformed from studio experiment to red-hot jam. By contrast, “We are.” went from corny jumped-up jazz to a more suitable, wintery vibe.
Even the laid back reading of “Welcome!” manages to maintain the song’s original vibrancy.
Do the Best is rounded out by two album tracks, which is a curious choice given all the b-sides Do As Infinity could have tossed in those slots instead. “135” is a good song, but one of their best? That goes to “Raven”.
Despite its seemingly pre-mature release, Do the Best is a satisfying album. The live tracks alone are worth the effort for fans.
Avex Trax decided to copy-protect Do the Best in an effort to prevent fans from sharing the CD on file trading networks.
Allow me to disclose that I found all four live tracks and both new songs easily on said networks. After ripping the rest of the songs from the Do As Infinity CDs I already own, I pieced together my own copy of Do the Best.
I usually buy the CDs reviewed on this site, and I do intend to purchase a legitimate copy of Do the Best in the future. For review purposes, I went to the Internet.
The bassist’s new band shares pretty much nothing with his old band’s seminal sound.
Echobrain’s self-titled debut is, in fact, an unabashedly alternative rock album, chock full of listener-friendly melodies and post-grunge guitar work.
Singer/guitarist Dylan Donkin doesn’t seem to mind that Chris Cornell came before him. If anything, the trio has recorded the album Cornell should have three years ago.
“Keep Me Alive” has some fine Soundgarden-worthy moments, and it’s hard not to expect “Spoonfed” to sound like “Spoonman”. It doesn’t, by the way, but “Spoonfed” is still reminiscent of a Smashing Pumpkins outtake Billy Corgan stupidly ignored.
“Colder World”, on the other hand, calls to mind Fastball’s “The Way” — it’s probably that lo-fi-intro bursting into hi-fi thing at the start of the song.
Of course, tossing around the “G”-word nowadays is tantamount to saying around the word “disco” when New Wave was the shit. It’s a pejorative that really doesn’t apply in the case of Echobrain.
In between big guitar moments, the band makes room for lots of string-laced, psychedlic-tinged introspection. “We Are Ghosts” sounds what you might expect from its title, as does the conclusion to “Adrift”.
Shimmering guitars on “The Feeling Is Over” gives it a space-age feel, while “Suckerpunch” starts off unremarkably, then turns into a rocker’s epic.
Thankfully, Echobrain’s solid songwriting and the album’s non-flashy production saves it from any pitfalls of rock redundancy. Producer Brian Joseph Dobbs didn’t find any need to give Echobrain any sort of metallic sheen, and it works. These guys can show the Calling and Creed what the hell it’s all about.
Yes, folks — this is alternative rock the way you remember it. You know — when it didn’t suck?
Yeah, at one point in my life I owned Whiskeytown’s Strangers Almanac. It was good, but not good enough to tear me away from the Old 97s’ Too Far to Care.
Despite the album’s excellent writing, there was always something aloof about the way head honcho Ryan Adams delivered his songs. It was as if he was trying to affect Murmur-era Michael Stipe just to sound deeper than the rest of us.
What does this have to do with former bandmate Caitlin Cary’s first full-length album? Well, for folks who really wanted to like Whiskeytown but couldn’t, here’s your chance.
While You Weren’t Looking keys into the same kind of furtive, hook-filled, country-influenced rock Whiskeytown mastered in the late 90s, but this time, it sounds more personal, more immediate.
Credit that to Cary’s rich, inviting voice. It’s apparent she has the power to belt, but never once does she abuse that ability. When she lets out a slight yodel on the second verse of “Please Don’t Hurry Your Heart”, it’s a masterful flourish, not useless flash.
That tact works well when the music draws inward. “Girl, he’s killing himself in a car when you’re not driving, in a bar when you’re not looking, food you’re not cooking” Cary sings on “What Will You Do”. It’s the emotional apex of the song, and she gives the chorus a spine-tingling reading.
Cary and co-writer Mike Daly, another Whiskeytown alumnus, do a tremendous job delivering a filler-free album. Not a single song on While You Weren’t Looking is a throw-away. (In contrast, Adams’ prolific output has been described as brilliant when it isn’t spotty and inconsistent.)
Right from the opening strains of “Shallow Heart, Shallow Water”, the album doesn’t relent in delivering one beautiful performance after another. It’s difficult to single out any one track — all of them are that strong.
Producer Chris Stamey provides just the right touches to each of the songs — a big, rousing band on “Thick Walls Down”; twangy reverb on “Pony”; soulful horns on “Too Many Keys”; spare guitars and violin on “Fireworks”.
While You Weren’t Looking is the Whiskeytown album that probably could have been. Thankfully, it’s all Cary’s, and it’s all good.
This first time I heard Jack Johnson, I thought Austin, Texas, big-shot Bob Schneider finally took some singing lessons.
Johnson has so far drawn comparrisons to G. Love and Ben Harper, the latter of whom plays slide guitar on Johnson’s 2001 debut Brushfire Fairytales.
Of course, Johnson doles out the same kind of blues-y, acoustic, singer-songwriter rock as Texas phenom Schneider, and both men possess deep, seductive croons. Hence, the confusion.
But it’s hints of Johnson’s Hawaiʻi up-bringing that ultimately separates him from his co-horts.
Brushfire Fairytales draws its biggest strengths from its laid-back mood. Johnson sticks to a spare, minimal sound throughout the album, never dressing up his songs to be more than they are and seldom venturing to the faster end of a metronome.
Even when he does rock out on “Middle Man” or “Mudfootball”, Johnson sounds positively cool. Here’s a guy who doesn’t need to emote to get his point across.
Subtle “island” touches also makes Johnson’s music stand out.
Slack key picking informs the opening licks of “Inaudible Melodies” and “Sexy Plexi”, the latter track sauntering to a reggae rhythm. Steel drums add a dash of flavor to the mournful “Flake”.
And while “Posters” and “The News” don’t contain any overt Hawaiian references, the single-guitar-and-voice arrangement is a time-honored aesthetic in Hawaiian music.
But don’t think for a moment Johnson is gunning to take a few Na Hoku awards away from the Brothers Caz. Johnson’s “local” touch is as subtle and effortless as his memorable melodies. Plus, he possesses a really, nice, soothing voice.
Brushfire Fairytales is, as critic-types are wont to say, a strong debut. Johnson doesn’t let flash get in the way of his songs, and he injects enough of his own background to make his music truly personal.
It’s always gratifying to see a musician establish a creative pinnacle, then top it with a following work.
John Zorn’s ninth Filmworks album, Trembling Before G-d, was his prettiest and his most beautiful score to date.
Limiting himself to keyboards, clarinet and percussion, Zorn produced an intensely emotional score with very minimal elements. It was hard to imagine anything better.
Then Zorn goes and records Filmworks X: In the Mirror of Maya Deren.
Using much of the same instrumentation as Trembling Before G-d — replacing only Chris Speed’s clarinet with Erik Friedlander’s cello —
Zorn once again creates an introspective, melodic, intimate score, at the same time creating a work totally different from its predecessor.
On Trembling Before G-d, director Sandi Simcha Dubowski requested Zorn include a specific Masada piece in the score. That restriction led Zorn to pillage his Masada songbook.
On this film, director Martina Kudlacek placed no such requirements on Zorn when he started working on the documentary about film director Maya Deren. Instead, he explores Deren’s own interest in classical and world music, as well as her early years living in Kiev.
The resulting music jumps from Indonesian-influenced percussive pieces (“Teiji’s Time”, “Nightscape”), mournful Eastern European melodies (“Kiev”, “Nostalgia”), tribal-like drumming (“Voudoun”), and sparse, string-and-piano duos (“Drifting”).
Zorn’s ability to speak different musical languages comes through, but instead of jarring listeners with the abrupt quick jump cuts of his past, Zorn channels his fluency into a single, cohesive sound.
Just because he can be flashy doesn’t mean he needs to be. In that regard, Zorn’s compositions have definitely matured.
Where Trembling Before G-d felt at times incidental, In the Mirror of Maya Deren feels like a work that can stand separate from the film. A listener doesn’t need to see Kudlacek’s documentary to appreciate the music.
(There’s probably little chance a film about an obscure director is going to nudge the latest Ben Affleck vehicle out of the multiplexes.)
As such, In the Mirror of Maya Deren makes for good listening regardless of context. Let’s see Zorn top this one.
Being on the cutting edge is Kronos Quartet’s bread and butter, but after 30 years, even the most pioneering of spirits can seem quaint.
When Kronos released Caravan two years ago, the quartet was essentially upstaged by its Eastern European guest musicians, revealing more obviously than before the Kronos don’t always have the flexibility to perform outside the Western art music spectrum.
For Nuevo, a collection of music by Mexican composers and performers from divergent disciplines, Kronos enlisted noted rock en Español musician Gustavo Santalaolla to co-produce with long-time collaborator Judith Sherman.
No slag on Sherman, but Santalaolla was just what Kronos needed to rejuvenate its sound. Santalaolla has a reputation for coaxing emotionally-charged performances out of such artists as Juanes, Café Tacuba and Molotov. And on Nuevo, the quartet reknowned for its “serious” work sound like they’re actually having fun.
Right from the start of Severiano Briseno’s “El Sinaloense”, the Kronos delivers a frantically joyous performance filtered through distortion. David Harrington and company transform themselves from a string quartet to a four-person street accordion.
The sonic explorations don’t just end at effects processors. On Alberto Dominguez’s “Perfidy”, the quartet overdubbed itself multiple times to recreate the lushness of the 101 Strings. Don’t think the Kronos is getting soft — they’re backing Carlos Garcia playing on a musical leaf.
Yes — a one-armed guy who uses a leaf from an ivy tree to create music.
Kronos definitely keeps up with singers Alejandro Flores and Efren Vargas on the traditional and rhythmically complex huapango song “El Lloar”.
Even a cover of ¡Esquivel!’s “Mini Skirt” feels fun. The quartet hasn’t been so on track with its humourous side since including Raymond Scott’s “Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals” in its repertoire.
Kronos does remind listeners it is indeed a classical ensembles, as evidenced by its remarkable reading of Silvestre Revueltas’ dramatic “Sensemaya” and Osvaldo Golijov’s introspective “K’in Sventa Ch’ul Me’tik Kwadulupe”.
Toward the end of the album, Kronos takes makes its most daring creative leaps.
With “Chavosuite”, an arrangment of a television comedy score, Kronos sound sufficiently at ease with itself to deliver some really silly music. They put their instruments through loads of effects on their interpretation of Chalino Sanchez’s narco-corridos “Nacho Verduzco”.
Dig it — Kronos covers a song about drug smugglers.
The album’s apex is the epic “12/12”, composed by and performed with Café Tacuba. A sprawling, sonically-challenging work, “12/12” is the most experimental track on Nuevo, the kind of piece that would have been comfortable on previous Kronos albums as Howl U.S.A. or Short Stories.
It’s also pretty neat to know the most dissonant and jarring work on Nuevo was written by a rock band.
Nuevo is Kronos’ most extreme album to date. Santalaolla really uses the studio to stretch Kronos’ sound, and as a result, the quartet offers up some of its punchiest string playing ever. They really do sound new again.
When Craig Armstrong recorded his first solo album The Space Between Us in 1998, he was just a classically-trained composer who happened to hang out with big rock stars.
He was also Baz Luhrmann’s film score composer of choice, an association that would later garner Armstrong a Golden Globe Award for his work on Moulin Rouge and all the visibility that goes along with it.
As a result, Armstrong’s second solo album, As If to Nothing, is packed with such marquee-worthy guest musicians as Bono, Evan Dando and Mogwai. Where The Space Between Us sported only two collaborations and some “covers” of Massive Attack, As If to Nothing is rife with collaborators.
Yeah — the words “sell out” might just might come to mind.
The thing is, Armstrong is a damn fine composer. Unlike the John Williamses and Howard Shores of the scoring world,
Armstrong tends to draw from that murky period in classical music when 19th Century grandiose evolved into 20th Century darkness.
The stormy imagery on the album’s cover is more than just a visual cue — it’s the heart of the album’s content.
Like before on The Space Between Us, Armstrong manages to combine classical music’s lush orchestral power with subtle touches of electronic rhythms. Tracks such as “Amber” and “Finding Beauty” could have stood on their own without the beats, but they’re all the better for them.
This time, Armstrong uses this aesthetic as a springboard to more daring gestures.
The poignant “Waltz” is uncomfortably offset by Antye Greie-Fuchs arhythmic chanting. The heavy-handed rocker “Inhaler” sounds like Armstrong was jamming with Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore on a guitar.
Even when Armstrong brings in singers and delivers straight-forward pop songs, they feel remarkably full of emotion without resorting to predictable gestures.
Evan Dando’s whiskey-voiced performance on “Wake Up in New York” is at once mournful, gruff and tender, a fitting match for a song about the Big Apple. Dave McAlmont delivers a beautifully restrained reading of “Snow”, and even Bono gives a nuanced rendition of U2’s “Stay (So Faraway Close)”.
Steven Lindsay concludes the album wonderfully on “Let There Be Love”. He starts off sounding a bit like Bono but finds his own voice as the song progresses.
Like Anne Dudley before him, Armstrong works remarkably well as a rock musician and a classical composer. He speaks the disparate musical language of both idioms well, making As If to Nothing something indeed.
If the Art of Noise recorded In No Sense? Nonsense! in 2002 instead of 1987, it would probably sound something like Honda Yuka’s solo album, Memories Are My Only Witness.
One half of the now-defunct Cibo Matto, Honda hung out with the likes of John Zorn and Arto Lindsay before teaming up with Hatori Miho to sing about birthday cakes and crazy food.
Now Honda is on her own, making the kind of textured, beat-friendly rock instrumental that made the Art of Noise the godfather of electronica.
To be perfectly honest, the Art of Noise comparrisons are ear-deep. On “You Think You Are So Generous But It’s The Most Conditional ‘Anything’ I’ve Ever Heard — Jumping the Gap Between Me and Myself –” (yes, that’s the full song title), Honda uses the infamous orchestral hit reportedly pioneered by AON’s J.J. Jeczalik.
Other parallels are more spiritual. The 45-second “Driving Down By The Hudson River, We Saw the Blood Red Burning Sky” feels like a lost remix of “Moments of Love”. “Some Days I Stay in Bed for Hours” sounds like the distant cousin of “Robinson Crusoe”.
Aesthetic similarities aside, Honda shares with Anne Dudley a keen musical instinct that turns odd timbres into orchestral fodder.
No, Honda and Dudley don’t share conservatory credentials, but they may as well have. The demented samples that weave in and out of “Schwaltz” could have felt at home on In Visible Silence.
Besides, how can anyone listen to the breakbeats of “Sun Beam — nothing hurts — On a Cold Winter Morning I Walked Back Home on a Street Paved with Pieces of Broken Heart” or “Single Silver Bullet” and not think of “Close (to the Edit)” or “Paranomia”.
Although most of the tracks on the album clock around the four- to five-minute mark, two tracks in particular demonstrate Honda can handle longer compositional forms as well.
“Why Do We Mistrust The Machines We Made?” is a three-part suite that doesn’t feel like it occupies eight minutes. “Night Diving”, on the other hand, is straight-forward jazz piece, complete with muted trumpet and lots of steamy improvisation.
Memories Are My Only Witness is melodic and accessible, but also smart and complex. Honda has crafted a pleasant listening experience, every bit as sweet as her explorations into food-themed music but never laying heavy on the additives and preservatives.
Here’s something disturbing: half of the tracks featured on Sony Music’s Japan for Sale, Vol. Two come from artists reviewed on Musicwhore.org.
You think maybe this site had an indirect hand in determining the album’s track listing? Hmmm …
Like before, Japan for Sale, Vol. 2 slants heavily toward electronica artists — namely, Ken Ishii, DJ Krush, Yoshinori Sunahara, and Takkyu Ishino.
Sony is clearly attempting to position itself on the cutting edge of the foreign music market by stacking the track list in such a manner. There is a bit of misdirection going on, however.
Kitaki Mayu starts the album off sounding a lot like Nomiya Maki of Pizzicato Five on “Nakanaide”. Kitaki’s sweet voice fronts a sea of twittering blips and four-on-the-floor beats. Don’t think for a minute this one track exemplifies Kitaki’s muse — she’s really an idol singer.
Dt., represented by “Yume no Naka e -Malted Milk Mix-“, actually sounds harder than this particular track lets on. The original mix of the song is propelled by a lot of buzzing guitars.
In recent years, Supercar has transformed into an electronica outfit, but the band’s early work is definitely rock. The Pet Shop Boy-ish “Yumegiwa Last Boy” shows the band has come a long way.
Conversely, Boom Boom Satellites has done a lot to bridge jazz and electronica, but the track featured here, “Soliloquy”, is the hardest rocking track from the band’s album Umbra.
Does any of this detract from the disc itself? Not in the least. In fact, Japan for Sale, Vol. Two is a lot tighter than its predecessor. Some of the songs chosen for the disc are true gems.
James Iha’s sunny songwriting on “Skirt” fits Chara’s raspy, bittersweet voice nicely. “Spirit Dreams Inside” shows L’Arc~en~Ciel finally mastering a tough rock sound, and “Candle Chant” by DJ Krush is one of the best tracks off of Zen.
Of course, Puffy AmiYumi show up once again to appeal to the American otaku who prefer their J-pop with a little less substance. Why Polysics’ second-rate imitation of DEVO warrants further inclusion on this disc is still puzzling. Spoozys does it far better.
Despite Sony’s “selective criteria”, Japan for Sale, Vol. Two demonstrates the diversity and breadth of Japan’s music scene. In fact, the full work of the bands featured on the disc shows these 13 songs only scratch the proverbial surface.