All posts by Deb

The Top 25 Songs of 2015: Part III

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7. “The Serpent” by Sisters of…: Album The Serpent, the Angel, and the Adversary

We have reached the part of the list  where the order of the top tracks almost doesn’t matter; at this point they are *all* monster, heavy-rotation superstars. So it is apropos to begin with a beast of a track from an insanely heavy album;  it also illustrates the kind of stuff I have lately found to be what greases my wheels most — blistering full-on prog/black/metal/post-metal…man when that is done right, it just doesn’t get much better. And these guys do it right.

 

 

6. “YANA” by Dead Letter Circus: Album Aesthesis

The album is a bit inconsistent, for some reason Dead Letter Circus have trouble living up to their enormous potential.  But this  soaring alt/post-punk track never fails to give me chills. Just one of those songs I inexplicably love.

 

 

5. “Oko” by Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster: Album Wires/Dream\Wires

An absolutely epic track from a long-anticipated album; these guys can pull off some of the best, heaviest, most thoughtful instrumental post-metal out there, and this is just a taste of what they can do.

 

4. “Planck Length” by Au4: Album And Down Comes the Sky… (2013 release)

The album this song is from came out in 2013, but I only discovered it this year. And it is an absolute *killer* of an album, it is by far the best thing I heard this year and then some, it really is my album of the year, except I can’t make it official.
It is hard to pull a favourite track from it, I could have listed four or five, but this one snuck up on me.  Industrial trip-hop about physics — and really, any song that can use “One point six times ten to the negative thirty-five” as a lyric, and make it work  — well, that’s some awesome songwriting right there.

 

 

3. “Annabelle” by Sisters of…: Album The Serpent, The Angel, and the Adversary

Another track from one of the best most intense albums I have heard this year. “The Serpent” was face-melting in intensity…and somehow “Annabelle” manages to take it up a couple of skull-cracking notches from there. This is the kind of stuff that eviction notices are made of.

 

2. “Everyone is Everyone (and Everything is Everything)” by Au4: Album And Down Comes the Sky… (2013 release)

Yes, this album is so extraordinary it supplied two songs in the top 5 of 25. Believe me, if there were songs from 2015 as good, I’d stick ’em here. But there aren’t…or at any rate, since the album can’t qualify for Album of the Year I’m going to promote it this way. You can find my review of the album here:

I cannot get enough of this track.

 

 

1.  “Caterpillar and the Barbed Wire” by Riverside: Album Love, Fear and the Time Machine

The album might not be their best, but this song…!! I really cannot stop listening to it; there are days when I think it just might be the greatest song Riverside ever created. Everything comes together in this track for me: the great martial rhythm compliments of Piotr Kozieradski’s drumming; Piotr Grudziński’s beautiful and nuanced guitar themes, the organ, the bass lines, the words, the singing…man it just hits every sweet spot, it digs deep into my soul where transcendence lies. It goes beyond mere words.

The Top 25 Songs of 2015: Part II

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14. “Saturate Me” by Riverside: Album Love, Fear and the Time Machine

The most purely prog track on the new Riverside album, just effortlessly done without ever sounding derivative or neo- or like anyone else in prog today, and probably the heaviest track on the album. And besides — this track just kicks *epic* ass live.

 

13.  “Discovery One” by Eschar:  Album Nova

A mighty track from the first album by Eschar, post-metal that is imaginative and heavy and melodic all at once, and performed with confident aplomb. Unfortunately it seems as if the videos of the Nova tracks have been removed.  For a taster, here is a live version of “Monolith” from the same album.

 

12. “The Drifter” by Klone: Album Here Comes the Sun

This is a beautiful album, rich and atmospheric, and I could have chosen a number of tracks from it. The video is worth watching for the drum playthrough.  All the members are great musicians.

Continue reading The Top 25 Songs of 2015: Part II →

The Top 25 Songs of 2015: Part I

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This is the first year I have decided to compile a Songs of the Year list, but then 2015 has been a rather good year for music.   It was hard to restrict the list to just 25 tracks; there could have been many more.  Not only could most of the year’s best albums have contributed more than one, there are several songs from earlier years that I have included in the list, because I only discovered them this year, and they are too great to leave off.   Most of the tracks do have associated videos, but not all of them do.  I will note that when relevant.

So: starting at No. 25 and working my way up:

25. “He Is” by Ghost: Album Meliora

A great sing-along track from an album that is definitely fun and listenable but not truly “great” (at least in any real meaning of the word).

 

24.   “Beyond Metropolis” by Shriekback: Album Without Real String or Fish

The 80s are back…in a big way this year, and 80s alternative icons Shriekback do it the best.  The cleverly post-apocalyptic track “Beyond Metropolis” is the one that grabs me most from this album, but there is no video for it alone.  Start at 17:33 in the link below, or listen to the whole album.

 

23.   “Happy Returns” by Steven Wilson: Album Hand. Cannot. Erase.

Wilson does pop.  Or something like that.  This track does have its poignant moments, but I simply cannot muster up the interest to place it higher.

Continue reading The Top 25 Songs of 2015: Part I →

The Gigs of 2015: Part 2 (Shows 8 – 1)

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Continuing on with the Gigs of the Year…now we are into the good stuff.  I saw some great shows this year as well as some no-so-great.  The best concert of the year also turned out to be the last one I saw — I had high hopes for this gig, and the guys did not disappoint.

 

  1. Riverside (The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland)

This was the fourth of the four gigs in a row that I caught during the Love, Fear and the Time Machine tour in North America.  It was a difficult show; Duda was sick and exhausted, battling some kind of throat infection. Cleveland came the day after blowing the roof off in Chicago and Mariusz was essentially running on fumes, doing his best to not just phone it in but clearly struggling, short on energy and fighting his way through the songs.  However, towards the end he got a huge injection of energy when the crowd belted out Happy Birthday (and mangled his name; his expression was priceless).  That really seemed to make him happy and boosted the last few songs.

Cl_MD and PG

 

  1. Árstíðir (Church of St. Stephen’s-in-the-Field)

I can’t remember exactly how I came across this outfit, gentle folk rock/post-rock from Iceland; I tried a few tracks from youtube and they didn’t really grab me, far too sedate; but the idea of seeing a band like this in a church seemed like something worth checking out.  And they really were very good, very musical, personable and intimate, a beautiful setting, it was a special evening.

 

  1. Riverside (The Mod Club, Toronto)

Toronto audiences are a bit weird.  Really hipster alty and metal types, not really into prog, and I was a bit nervous about the turnout for Riverside given the size of the venue.  And the crowd was smaller than I had hoped for, a couple hundred people or so, but the show, being the first of four in a row I was to see, was a great introduction to the new material and new stage presence of Riverside.  They were much heavier on stage than the new album would have suggested, lots of energy; and it was the first time to experience the beauty of “Found” with the lights.

T_MD 5T_MD and PG 4

Continue reading The Gigs of 2015: Part 2 (Shows 8 – 1) →

The Gigs of 2015: Part 1(Shows 17 – 9)

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As the end of 2015 looms, it is time to start thinking about the Musical Year that Was.  I will begin with a two – part post on the gigs I attended, starting at the bottom and working my way to the Show of the Year.

I took in a lot of gigs this year, more than I realized.  A few of those were post-rock or related shows in the style that generally does not appeal to me; I went in large part because some notable bands in the genre passed through town.  I was willing to give them a chance because more than once I have been pleasantly surprised by a band’s live performance when I was not a fan of their albums. The major news of course was the return of Riverside to North America; I managed to take in four of their shows via a massive roadtrip.

  1. Swans, (Opera House)

I was actually excited to see Swans, a rather legendary band in some corners, and one that has been around for a long time.  Their last two albums have been interesting.  But…an hour and three long drony meandering musical excursions later I had had enough.  Bored to tears, I left, the first time I had walked out of a gig in memory.  Even a naked Thor Harris was not enough to keep me there.

swans 5_1

  1. Mono (Lee’s Palace)

Mono is a well-regarded Japanese post-rock outfit and would seem a shame to miss them, but that slow atmospheric going-nowhere-fast style of post rock is just not for me. I stuck it out for most of the gig but split early.  I got the point,  and I can say that I saw them.

  1. Haken (The Hard Rock)

I wrote a brief and rather scathing review of their album The Mountain for Prog Archives, and I still do not understand what appeal these guys have.  However, I decided to take a chance because sometimes a band whose studio stuff you don’t like can put on a decent live show (see: Anathema)…but nope.  Their derivative style of prog is no better live and the frontman is exceedingly irritating with all his rock-star posturing.

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  1. Explosions in the Sky (Nathan Phillips Square)

Another iconic atmospheric post-rock outfit, this time from the US.  It was a free gig around the PanAm games that were held in Toronto over the summer, and that was the main reason I went; I already knew I was not fond of them.  They were energetic, and skilled, but all the songs ended up sounding the same.

band 3

Continue reading The Gigs of 2015: Part 1(Shows 17 – 9) →

Au4: …And Down Goes the Sky

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Released: 2013

Personnel

  • Ben Wylie: Vocals; keyboards; guitars; sequencing
  • Aaron Wylie: Vocals; keyboards; programming
  • Jason Nickel: Bass; vocals
  • Nathan Wylie: Drums; percussion

Contributors:

  • Melanie Krueger: Vocals
  • Anna Vandas: Vocals
  • Daniel Moir: Electric guitar
  • Niki Piper: Violin
  • Clara Shandler: Cello
  • Malcolm Aiken: Trumpet

Tracklist:

  1. Everyone is Everyone (and Everything is Everything)
  2. Lost Her Way Home
  3. The Propagation of Light (Through the Ether of Emotion)
  4. So Just Hang On, Beautiful One
  5. In Three Seconds I’ll Be Gone
  6. Forever Dancing Under a Fallen Sky
  7. Wherever We Begin to Fall (Broken Glass Will Surely Follow)
  8. The Empty Gorgeousness of All
  9. Planck Length
  10. Over the Edge It Goes

The great thing about social media is the sheer amount of music that can be found, via recommendations and links from friends, from various genre-based Facebook groups…Youtube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp…there is more great music out there than I will ever get to hear if I live to be a hundred. The disadvantage of social media is, well, the sheer amount of music… yeah.  I could spend my entire day online just clicking links.  It is both exciting and daunting at the same time. I simply have to bypass most of the stuff that people share: no time, no ability to focus on it, whatever.  I know I have missed a lot.

But eventually there comes some time to poke around, to sample the links that folks seem to be most excited about.  On one day I decided to try out a video shared by a few of my friends who were so enthusiastic they were almost incoherent. The band had a strange name seemingly taken from the Periodic Table, and the album cover was a rather beautiful bit of art.

This, the very first track I heard — which I believe is the last track on this album — stopped me dead in my tracks.  I could not quite fathom what I was hearing.  All I knew was that I had to hear more of the album, and when I did I had to hear it again.  And the more I played it, the more I had to play it.  It dug in deeply and insistently and relentlessly, like some musical version of Cordyceps, and zombie-like I was compelled to play the thing. Over and over.  This does not happen very often, and usually if it does, the album does not last for very long.  It gets overplayed and then set aside.  But so far there seems no evidence that I can overplay …And Down Goes the Sky.  This album seems to have found a special niche in my soul.

Continue reading Au4: …And Down Goes the Sky →

Shrine of New Generation Slaves (SoNGS)

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Released January 2013 Europe; Feb. 2013 RoW

Tracklist:

  1. New Generation Slave
  2. The Depth of Self-Delusion
  3. Celebrity Touch
  4. We Got Used to Us
  5. Feel Like Falling
  6. Deprived (Irretrievably Lost Imagination)
  7. Escalator Shrine
  8. Coda

Bonus Disc:

  1. Night Session Part 1
  2. Night Session Part II

Confession time…and some context. I will say right off the bat: I struggled mightily to review this album when it first came out.  I made a few attempts, and even posted some, but frankly none of them ended up worth the time it took to launch Word.  It pains me to say that they were pretty much the sort of hagiographic piles of adulatory crap I deplore reading from others, and deep down, even at the time I wrote them, I knew it.  But I chose to ignore my gut.

What I think happened was this: Shrine of New Generation Slaves was the first album that Riverside released after I discovered them and became a fan, and I had just spent most of the preceding year immersed in the band’s (and Lunatic Soul’s) discography, listening to almost nothing else, stunned and exhilarated by the discovery of music I had been waiting for all my life.  Naturally I had a huge emotional stake in the new material.

When the special blue vinyl pre-order arrived (the first of the several versions to hit my doorstep) and the playing began…well, things started to go south from there.  My immediate reaction was: This is not the album I have been waiting for.  But because at some level it had to be that album, and the accolades began pouring in from all directions…I suppressed my instincts and spent the next year trying to talk myself into loving it. Even the video accompanying the first single, “Celebrity Touch”, didn’t dismay me as much as it should have.

…But now a couple of years have passed, and I hope I am far enough distanced to deal with SoNGS fairly. The truth is, I don’t love the album, and that is tough to admit.  So let’s get this party started.

Continue reading Shrine of New Generation Slaves (SoNGS) →

Memories in my Head (EP)

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Released June 2011

Tracklist:

  1. Goodbye Sweet Innocence
  2. Living in the Past
  3. Forgotten Land

After the release of Anno Domini High Definition, four long years passed before the fifth full-length album appeared in 2013. However, the guys were not idle: Mariusz Duda released two albums for his Lunatic Soul solo project:  Lunatic Soul II in 2010, and Impressions in 2011, and the band continued to work on new material.

As it turned out, 2011 marked the 10th year of the band’s existence, and the Memories in My Head EP became part of the celebration of their first decade.  It certainly seemed as though the band had reached a high water mark: Their label in Poland, Mystic Productions, released the 6-cd Reality Dream box set (combining the first three albums with additional material), and Inside Out released several limited edition coloured vinyl versions of their first four albums.  The band then embarked on a “Jubilee Year” tour of Europe, which culminated with the release of this EP; they also began talk of a new album.

“When something ends, something else begins/We are moving on”. 

Memories in My Head was intended as a farewell nod to the foundational Riverside sound of the Trilogy years (and perhaps to placate the fans impatient for a new album): as ADHD (and subsequent albums) demonstrated, the musical intentions and direction and of the band had shifted, and would continue to do so.  Still, the EP may well be one of the band’s most beloved releases, and it is not hard to see (or indeed hear…) why.  MiMH truly is a magnificent little album, a consummate distillation of everything that made the Riverside sound unique, an almost perfect summing up of ten years of musical and lyric artistry, inspiration and influences, writing and touring.

Clocking in at a shade under 33 minutes (and by now the numbers game should need no explanation), the three glorious tracks merge seamlessly into each other, creating a musical flow that makes the EP feel almost like one long, magnificent song.  Driven by Piotr Grudziński’s hallmark melodic winding guitar themes, and Mariusz Duda’s powerful leading bass and fine vocals, it is packed with musical metaphors and classic Riverside tropes and themes, lushly atmospheric, full of the vast, cinematic soundscape that is so fundamental to their sound.  Lyrically Duda is very much on the ball; there is some excellent word-smithing here, at least on the first two tracks, evoking both nostalgia for the past and hope for the future.  “Forgotten Land” does break the continuity in that regard, being one of the very few songs he has written (for any of his projects) that is not from an intimate first or second-person perspective.  However, the track was used in a trailer for The Witcher 2 video game, so it works in that respect.

Memories in My Head looks back to the more expansive, more progressive, much-beloved sound of the band’s origins, and winds up that era of the band’s history in an almost perfect fashion.  There could hardly be a better way to commemorate their first ten years.

Anno Domini High Definition (ADHD)

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Released: June  2009 (Poland); July 2009 (Europe and RoW)

Tracklist

  1. Hyperactive
  2. Driven to Destruction
  3. Egoist Hedonist
  4. Left Out
  5. Hybrid Times

And then there were four….

Mariusz Duda, when interviewed, often likes to draw attention to a couple of things: that Riverside has a recognizably distinctive sound, and the band does not like to remain stylistically static.  These facts are abundantly clear nowadays, but I warrant that even after three albums, the second point was not so obvious. The Trilogy introduced an unmistakable Riverside-ish musical Gestalt, one that essentially defined them and even though there were some differences from album to album (especially in regard to how heavy they became), there really was a unity of sound that likely has helped pigeonhole them in the “progressive” category from which it is proving difficult for the guys to extract themselves (in fact, anyone who has paid any attention at all to interviews and comments over the past couple of years will realize that being styled “progressive metal” is somewhat of a Duda bugbear).

Anno Domini High Definition (ADHD), their fourth album (with its four-word title and double-entendre acronym) was the first album where this desire for stylistic change became undeniably manifest.  And what a change it was.  It must have seemed as if they were not just abandoning their lush progressive roots, but dropkicking them into the next solar system.  The guys took their sumptuous atmospheric sound and slammed it head on into a heavy metal wall; they embraced it so enthusiastically one might even suspect they were eager for a change.  The keyboard sound acquired a much harder edge.  The guitars are dense and raunchy and full of relentless energy, the bass punchy and riff-heavy, taking the lead like it had never done before. Piotr Kozieradzki must have been in drum heaven on this one, with his extensive death metal background.  No acoustic guitar, no ballads, no real soft pieces except the start of “Left Out”.  For all that, Duda’s first point stands: There is no doubt we are listening to Riverside—their distinctive core remains untouched.

Continue reading Anno Domini High Definition (ADHD) →

Blowing the Dust Off: Walking Into Mirrors

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Welcome to the second post in a new occasional project: revisiting music that has sat, unplayed, in my vinyl collection for so long I don’t remember what it sounds like. Often these are albums from artists whose other work I like, or that I bought because a song or two caught my attention, or that thought I “should” have for whatever reason. Sometimes they are albums that once got a lot of play but for some reason drifted out of consciousness.  I think we all have managed to accumulate a few of these albums.

So I’ve decided that this blog is a perfect excuse to haul them out, dust them off, give them a spin, and write up short reviews to tell you about them. With luck, I will discover some forgotten treasures. On the other hand it may inspire me to get rid of stuff and open up some much-needed (Much. Needed.) space for albums I might actually want to own.

Walking Into Mirrors by Johnny Warman

Released: 1981

Lineup:

Johnny Warman: music, lyrics, vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar

Guest Musicians:

  • Jerry Marotta: drums, percussion
  • Larry Fast: keyboards and synth effects
  • Tony Levin: bass, stick
  • John Giblin: bass
  • Dave Lawson: synthesizers and sequencing
  • Peter Gabriel: vocals (track 5)

Tracklist:

  1. Walking into Mirrors
  2. Radio Active
  3. Searchlights
  4. Martian Summer
  5. Screaming Jets
  6. Three Minutes
  7. Will You Dance with Me?
  8. (S.O.S) Sending Out Signals
  9. Dancing Dolls
  10. Fantastic Light

Johnny Warman is a British singer/songwriter whose most successful phase was during the 1980s; he has made a few albums over the years, and is still active, but Walking Into Mirrors was the only album that really made any kind of impact. The track “Screaming Jets” became a minor hit and probably is the only song that Warman may be remembered for–and that is largely due to the guest vocals of Peter Gabriel who was hitting his stride as a solo artist in that decade.

And yet…while Warman may seem to be a One-Hit Wonder, it does not feel right to actually call him that, mostly because it is unlikely that Walking Into Mirrors got the play or attention it really deserved.  “Screaming Jets” as a single had the name cachet of Gabriel to drive sales, but the entire album is stellar, with several tracks arguably superior.

Walking Into Mirrors is unmistakably an album of the 1980s, with its short, bass-heavy, densely synth-driven pop songs, effortlessly evoking the night-club dance-fests and the unquiet angst that the relentless clubbing could never quite dispel.  But dig beneath the surface: the lyrics, the superb arrangements — these songs are piercingly intelligent, incisive both lyrically and musically; the lyrics are full of anxious trepidation, loneliness, desperate hope, quietly apocalyptic, but the music is upbeat, poppy and sometimes even cheerful – the world may end in a blinding flash, but the aliens are here because they are lonely without music of their own…and will you dance with me?

Much of the success of the sound of this album is down to the outstanding roster of guests. Warman was held in such regard at one time that iconic 80s musicians were happy to show up to lend their chops: pioneering synthesizer whiz Larry Fast; drummer Jerry Marotta (who stepped in because Phil Collins couldn’t make it) and who went on to become a hugely in-demand player for just about everybody; prolific studio and guest bassist John Giblin; and the legendary Tony Levin on bass and stick.  And of course, Peter Gabriel…. Warman wrote the music and lyrics, and does the vocal job with his distinctive Cockney accent (which may make or break this album depending on one’s tolerance for … “interesting” voices).

This was an album that I used to play a lot.  Most of the songs are eminently listenable, ranging from pure 80s synth-pop to gentle, almost ambient electronic-based balladry.  The standouts include not only “Screaming Jets” with Warman talking the lyrics and directing the key changes while Gabriel wails and cries eerily in the background; but also the disquietingly cheerful “Dancing Dolls” featuring Levin’s distinctive stick bass sound.

But the real crank-to-eleven show-stopper is the last track, “Fantastic Light”.  Majestically funereal, an ominous slow synthesizer line and massive snapping snare underlie Warman’s desperate keening vocals: “I’m waiting for that one fantastic light” — an apocalyptic warning if ever there was one.