Highlights of the week from 133 items
in NEW ARRIVALS List #252 (10 Nov
2006) :
HECKER, TIM Harmony In Ultraviolet (Kranky) cd 14.98
Imagine the most beautiful music in the world. Then with an old thrift store camera, take a super grainy snapshot of that music. Fold up the photo and place it in an envelope and mail it to an address that no longer exists. 20 years later, happen upon an old abandoned post office, and discover that letter unopened, but browned with age, remove the photo and place it in your pocket. Lose those pants on a camping trip, only to discover them the next summer, all wadded up in a corner, sprinkled with a years worth of dust and cobwebs. Wash the pants, and only afterwards discover the photo. Prop in up in the window of the cabin to dry, where it sits soaking up the sun for the whole summer. Right before you leave, grab the photo of the most beautiful music in the world and place it in your book to mark your place. Place the book back on your shelf and forget all about it. Move several times over the course of the next several years, finally unpacking a dusty old trunk filled with books. Leaf through several of them, when suddenly the most beautiful music in the world flutters to the floor, dusty and tattered, worn and nearly transparent. Finally, tear it up into tiny pieces and drop them one by one into the speaker of an antique victrola, wind it up and what comes out will be Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet.
We often reference Hecker when reviewing records by other practitioners of a similar soundmaking process, but there's something so pure and organic about the way Hecker composes and creates, how he deftly assembles and degrades his sounds and songs and melodies. Managing to sound modern but antiquated at the same time, viewing the world through sleep filled eyes, everything soft and fuzzy, sometimes intense and ominous, sometimes even dark and downright scary, but always suffused with a shimmering radiant warmth, making all of his sounds glow from within. Each song a weather worn snapshot, frayed and dusty, comfortable and lived in sounding. It's a music that requires close listening, a subtly immersive sound, but once inside it, once the sound is all around you, only then can you pick out all of the details, hear the hidden melodies, only then can you let go, and get completely lost in Hecker's gorgeous world of mysterious sound. Some of the most beautiful music in the world indeed.
MPEG Stream: "Rainbow Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Stags, Aircraft, Kings And Secrataries"
MPEG Stream: "Dungeoneering"
PART TIMER s/t (Moteer) cd 15.89
We really have to come up with a name for this stuff. You know, that sort of deconstructed fragmented pop, glitchy crumbling, fuzzed out ambient weirdness, everything blurry and buzzy and soft focus. Jeck, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, and now Part Timer. It's another one of THOSE SOUNDS, the kind of sounds we can't ever get enough of, just like super hard ragga jungle or buzzy drone-y black metal, it's a sound that we are absolutely in love with. If we could figure out away to make these records go on forever and ever and ever we surely would (for now, the repeat button will have to suffice).
But as we've mentioned in the past, it's not enough just to assemble some lilting folk or some pretty ambience, and then haphazardly "fuck it up" with weird electronic bleeps and bloops or fuzzy drones. No, it takes someone special to allow organic prettiness and jagged digital disruptions to co-exist so perfectly. It's like some strange alchemical art, allowing two such disparate sounds to exist as one, as if we couldn't possibly imagine them separate.
And rarely has there been a more beautiful, and subtle example of this art than on this debut release from Part Timer.
First and foremost, this is simply a gorgeous dreamfolk record, glistening guitar melodies, languid and lazy, sweet and sundappled, with tinkling piano, fluttering flutes, ethereal angelic female vocals, drifting bits of abstract twang and distant reverbed horns, shuffling muted rhythms, a breathtaking collection of shimmery pop folk perfection. And that's before we even consider the fascinating and constantly fluctuating production, a series of bizarre treatments, rendering each little perfect pop nugget or drifting free folk flitter in a completely different light.
A little bit of soft folky twang, becomes a haunting stuttering soundscape of steel strings and weird tape recorder clicks, sweet pop vocals become totally obscured beneath filmy layers of fuzzy distortion and glitchy grit. Weird almost-IDM rhythms materialize from distinctly un-techno song parts, before coming apart into some murky ambient drift. The whole record is glazed with strange bits of sonic sorcery, a little sprinkling of dusty old looped record crackle, warm smears of fuzzy foggy melodic murmur, warped warbles and staticky grit, chopped and shuffled vocals, thick drifts of white noise tape hiss, all miraculously managing to act more as subtle accompaniment rather than overpowering noise.
The perfect blend. Catchy and simple, dreamy and lovely, but slightly off kilter and subtly damaged. Like discovering a tape of some lost folk pop classic, all degraded and decayed, and then trying to repair and reassemble it, but realizing that there is too much tape hiss and too many drop outs to fully restore the tape, only then realizing that somehow, the final product, this, is even more lovely than the original could have ever been.
MPEG Stream: "Unwritten Letter To No. 9"
MPEG Stream: "We Made A Big Mistake"
MPEG Stream: "Daytona"
REICHEL, ACHIM & MACHINES Die Grune Reise (The Green Journey) / Erholung (Melting Point) cd 21.00
How is it that these long overdue A.R. & Machines reissues just keep making us fall in love with Ol' Achim Reichel over and over again? 'Cause it's some of the best krautrock EVER that's how. Die Grune Reise is a re-release of the first official A.R. & Machines LP from 1970 and, while slightly less epic and grand than the blissful Echo (part of the double disc reissue we raved about a few months ago), it's no less mesmerizing, exploratory and exciting. Reichel's trademark meandering, repetitive guitar and percussion are in full effect -- spacey and grooving, but instead of totally transporting the listener into the realm of ether, there's something more rockin' and also sometimes ridiculous that keeps it in the realm of the studio. Well it had to be since EVERYTHING on here was performed and recorded by Achim Reichel himself, a total one-man-jam! Sounds like a whole hairy freak-troupe though. Die Grune Reise is like watching a preview of the even more awesome journey that Reichel eventually takes you on with Echo (which, by the way, is finally back in stock!). It's entirely possible that all the weird, sometimes goofy-hippy vocals on this album maybe make us a little self-conscious... Yes, there's a lot of the madhouse 'digga-digga-aahh-waaahhh!??" type vocals on here that at turns challenge and delight us, but they're tempered with a more than generous helping of signature chug-jams to keep us totally boogeying (dig the ZZ Top guitar riffery on track 2!) and lilting interludes to help us come down gently. When absorbing this album, it's hard to shake the very specific image of a naked, twirling free-spirited German longhair in the desert at night alone with his arms wide open holding a hand rolled cigarette/joint in one hand and doing graceful hand maneuvers with the other...and that's fine by us. We grok that dude and these albums. There's actually two of them (albums) here, as this disc also includes A.R. VI, Echolung, originally released by Brain in 1975. Compared to Die Grune Reise it's a bit more mellowed out, if anything more cosmic and spacey... real nice! Total krautrock essentials, both of these. Fans of both Can and Circle need to hear 'em...
MPEG Stream: "Station 1: Globus"
MPEG Stream: "Station 1: In The Same Boat"
MPEG Stream: "Gute Reise"
BUFFALO Volcanic Rock (Aztec Music) cd 21.00
We LOVE this band. You should love this band. How can you not, that is if you're lookin' for some proto-metal, psychedelic stoner '70s rawk action?? Buffalo is 100 percent the Real Deal. These Aussie rockers were basically what Monster Magnet (and all the other bands in the modern "stoner rock" scene) would have liked to be, doing it first and best back in the day. Once upon a time, we used to stock a 2-on-1 reissue of Buffalo's Volcanic Rock and Want You For Your Body albums (from '73 and '74, respectively) but that's been out of print for ages now. So we're super thrilled that the Aztec label from Down Under has brought Buffalo back into circulation, as part of a '70s reissue campaign featuring a bunch of other Aussie acts we're eager to check out, like Coloured Balls (reviews pending). Both of these Buffalo discs are authentically heavy '70s cock-rock from the band we've judged to be Australia's answer to, if not Black Sabbath, at least Grand Funk... no, better n' heavier than that. Sir Lord Baltimore, for sure. Did we say cock-rock? Hell, there's even a penis on the cover of Volcanic Rock! The lyrics are of the sort that amusingly confuse being sexist with being sexy (a la Spinal Tap), as in Want You's lead off track "I'm A Skirt Lifter, Not A Shirt Raiser", and they're delivered with much gusto and backed by some powerful guitar riffing that blows those stoner rock bands of today out of the (bong)water.
Volcanic Rock is unstoppable, definitely an aptly titled album. Music for rolling Mad Max style on the highways across the Australian outback. Bonus tracks include the single versions of crucial cuts "Sunrise (Come My Way)" and "Shylock". Want You For You Body is equally awesome, and features the powerful "Dune Messiah". Killer vocals on that one and you can't get much more '70s than a song about Frank Herbert's popular sci-fi classic, short of writing songs about Tolkien! Bonus tracks include a live version of "United Nations". And the fact that you can't get both albums on one disc anymore is made up for by the presence of the aforementioned bonus tracks on each cd, digital remastering, thick booklets, and generally nice presentation in digipacks.
So if you're a patron of our "proto-metal" section, into Blue Cheer and Bang and Leaf Hound and the like, you've gotta get Buffalo!!! Same deal if you're a fan of Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Heavy Rocks style Boris, etc... Highly recommended.
[Also available, is the Aztec reish of Buffalo's debut Dead Forever, which we'll list next time!]
MPEG Stream: "Shylock"
MPEG Stream: "Freedom"
BUFFALO Only Want You For Your Body (Aztec Music) cd 21.00
We LOVE this band. You should love this band. How can you not, that is if you're lookin' for some proto-metal, psychedelic stoner '70s rawk action?? Buffalo is 100 percent the Real Deal. These Aussie rockers were basically what Monster Magnet (and all the other bands in the modern "stoner rock" scene) would have liked to be, doing it first and best back in the day. Once upon a time, we used to stock a 2-on-1 reissue of Buffalo's Volcanic Rock and Want You For Your Body albums (from '73 and '74, respectively) but that's been out of print for ages now. So we're super thrilled that the Aztec label from Down Under has brought Buffalo back into circulation, as part of a '70s reissue campaign featuring a bunch of other Aussie acts we're eager to check out, like Coloured Balls (reviews pending). Both of these Buffalo discs are authentically heavy '70s cock-rock from the band we've judged to be Australia's answer to, if not Black Sabbath, at least Grand Funk... no, better n' heavier than that. Sir Lord Baltimore, for sure. Did we say cock-rock? Hell, there's even a penis on the cover of Volcanic Rock! The lyrics are of the sort that amusingly confuse being sexist with being sexy (a la Spinal Tap), as in Want You's lead off track "I'm A Skirt Lifter, Not A Shirt Raiser", and they're delivered with much gusto and backed by some powerful guitar riffing that blows those stoner rock bands of today out of the (bong)water.
Volcanic Rock is unstoppable, definitely an aptly titled album. Music for rolling Mad Max style on the highways across the Australian outback. Bonus tracks include the single versions of crucial cuts "Sunrise (Come My Way)" and "Shylock". Want You For You Body is equally awesome, and features the powerful "Dune Messiah". Killer vocals on that one and you can't get much more '70s than a song about Frank Herbert's popular sci-fi classic, short of writing songs about Tolkien! Bonus tracks include a live version of "United Nations". And the fact that you can't get both albums on one disc anymore is made up for by the presence of the aforementioned bonus tracks on each cd, digital remastering, thick booklets, and generally nice presentation in digipacks.
So if you're a patron of our "proto-metal" section, into Blue Cheer and Bang and Leaf Hound and the like, you've gotta get Buffalo!!! Same deal if you're a fan of Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Heavy Rocks style Boris, etc... Highly recommended.
[Also available, is the Aztec reish of Buffalo's debut Dead Forever, which we'll list next time!]
MPEG Stream: "I'm Coming On"
MPEG Stream: "Dune Messiah"
CHARTIER, RICHARD Incidence (Raster-Noton) cd 17.98
In many ways, the work of Richard Chartier is anathema to the aesthetic course embraced by Aquarius Records. It can't be tangentially connected to the expanding definitions of metal, and only liminally parallels the feral dronecore of Birchville Cat Motel and the Double Leopards. It doesn't lend itself to ridiculous ruminations on the artifice of memory and loss, or any hyperbolic rhetoric for that matter. It's hard even to call this type of work beautiful as the rigor embedded into the process is attuned to an cold sterility rather than an aspirations for aesthetic transcendence. Thus, Chartier's work simply is what it is: a pure manifestation of sound elegantly moving through time with a highly refined sensibility for the subtle transition. The simple perfection from the minimalist ethos is difficult to champion as the manifestations are hardly theatrical enough to warrant any of the marketing strategies listed above to make most people jump up and down; but here we are, announcing that Richard Chartier has crafted an exquisite album, one that may be his finest recordings to date.
Incidence is a vacuum of external references, beginning and ending with the same hissing static. Chartier plunges the album into a series of interlocking subsonic frequencies. While these frequencies were never intended to achieve the heaviosity of SUNNO))) or Earth, Chartier's understanding of psychoacoustic principles actualizes an impressively claustrophobic display of blackened tones. As Chartier introduces a simple half-step melody against these extended drone vibrations, his work opens a small referential window towards the grim isolationism of Thomas Koner or BJ Nilsen. Time manages to stand still on the best of Chartier's work, and at over an hour in length, Incidence is over before you know it. Very, very well done.
MPEG Stream: "Incidence (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Incidence (excerpt 2)"
DALTON, KAREN In My Own Time (Light in the Attic) cd 14.98
Wow!! It wasn't just but three lists ago when we were lamenting that Karen Dalton's second album (and only other recording), In My Own Time had yet to be reissued, and now here we are reviewing it (thanks Light In the Attic!). And we have to say, it has never sounded better! Recorded in 1971 with a full band at Bearsville studio in Woodstock, In My Own Time has a much different feel then Dalton's spare and smoky first recording, It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You the Best. Since Dalton had so little recorded output, the differences between the two records has given In My Own Time, an unfairly maligned reputation over the years by folk purists and others due to its more contemporized feel and bluesy folk-rock arrangements. True, In My own Time, doesn't quite meet the folk majesty of It's So Hard To Tell, and there are a couple of song choices, such as the all too familiar "When A Man Loves A Woman", and the saccharine Motown stalwart, "How Sweet It Is", that we could probably do without (however, in Dalton's defense, if we had to hear either of those songs again, we would prefer her versions to anyone else's! Such is the strength of her musical interpretations.). But every other song is purest gold, from the heartbreaking opener by Dino Valenti, "Something's On Your Mind", to the traditional tunes "Katie Cruel" (covered recently both by Bert Jansch and White Magic) and "Same Old Man", where we get to hear her play her mighty 27 fret banjo. Produced by Harvey Brooks, who played bass on her first album, In My Own Time is right up there with the best folk and roots rock albums of the time put out by Dylan, The Band, The Byrds, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Featuring a 30-page booklet with lots of pictures and extensive liner notes by Lenny Kaye, Nick Cave and Devendra Banhart. Reissue of the year and of course absolutely essential!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Something On Your Mind"
MPEG Stream: "In My Own Dream"
MPEG Stream: "Same Old Man"
DREAM / AKTION UNIT Blood (Volcanic Tongue) cd 19.98
This is indeed some kind of dream unit! Thurston from Sonic Youth, free jazz legend Paul Flaherty, free drum wunderkind Chris Corsano, Heather who runs Volcanic Tongue and some mysterious bassist called Count Hejnowski.
Together these monsters of abstract free jazz avant noise whip up a slow burning frenzy of roiling instrumental fury.
But let's take a step back first and talk about the cover. Wow, is the artwork cool. The cover is a painting of some strange vampiric sideburned man with a bloody beaked raven on his shoulder clutching a bloody eyeball. On the back, a headless man, all bloody necked, clutching a skull. Inside, wolves with bloody mouths and owls with bloody talons. On the disc, bloody eyed nun attacked by birds. The theme is definitely blood, and that theme runs through the music as well.
A dark roiling maelstrom of burbling, minimal groove, that builds into a furious tangle of angular guitars and bloody drum splatter, horns bleat and squeak, lap steel slips and slides and gives everything a haunting unhinged vibe. Really quite beautiful in an overthetop, head shearing free music blowout kind of way.
Most of the tracks fall into that template, a sort of skittish circling, each player warily eyeing the other, feeling the situation out, offering up little salvos of sound, before eventually all launching into the fray and wildly tearing the throats out of the instruments in glorious musical bloodbath after glorious musical bloodbath. The brooding, murky, slow swirly passages are the most moving, but it's impossible to not stand transfixed, watching as they slowly twist and contort into something fearsome and fanged. The listener like one of the cover paintings, frozen like a deer in the headlights, or a helpless teenager before a mysterious monster, just waiting to be devoured.
MPEG Stream: "Birth Of The Ghoul"
MPEG Stream: "Tales Of Entrails"
ELECTRO QUARTERSTAFF Gretzky (Willowtip) cd 14.98
Winnipeg, Manitoba has certainly spawned some notable music artists -- Bachman Turner Overdrive, the Weakerthans, Neil Young, and uh, Burton Cummings. Now firing up their own prairie block heater are Canadian metallers Electro Quarterstaff. Yes, let's repeat that... all hail, sheer instrumental heavy metal wizardry from Winnipeg, Canada: Electro Quarterstaff! That band name alone would pique our interest here at AQ. But actually we've been waiting for this release for AGES, as one of the EQ boys is an AQ fan and was cool enough to send us down some of their cd-r demos a while back, thinking we just might like his band's brand of mega-mathy, tech-metal madness. And he was right!! So, now suitably signed to the Willowtip label, here's the thus (to us) long-awaited Electro Quarterstaff debut! And it's a doozy. These blasting, bombastic songs practically turn themselves inside out with all the insane drumming, dual guitar shredding, and chunky chops crammed into 'em. Hectic heaviness overload!! We're happily dizzy after just a couple tracks. And the Zakk Wylde fans here appreciate all the pinch harmonics one of the guitarists flings like picks...
No surprise their thanks list includes members of Gorguts, Voivod, and Breadwinner! Basically, if you'd like The Fucking Champs to sound even more like Carcass, on crack, this is for you. Or, it's like a haywire super computer programmed to defeat Zebulon Pike at their own game. Damn. Some cuts, like, "Charmony" slow down a bit for some classic, majestic rifferama, giving more reason to make Champs comparisons... Oh yeah and like the Champs they've got that half-ironic, smart-ass post rock song titling thing down, getting the biggest groan from us with "Something's Awry In The Hetfield Of Dreams" (an eleven-minute epic by the way). Thank God they're an instrumental band! They're a bit more straight-forward with other titles like "Neckwrecker" (so true!) and "Twisted Squid" (sounds like it, if anything does). They've also got some really sweet artwork adorning this disc, not your usual metal stuff (though there's skulls) but way cool. Not sure what more to say to recommend this to the right folks, we just don't want any fans of the Champs, ZP, Girth, Loincloth, Hematovore, Suzukitron, etc. to miss this!
MPEG Stream: "The Right To Arm Bears"
MPEG Stream: "Charmony"
MPEG Stream: "Titanium Overlords"
F/I Paradise Out Here (Lexicon Devil) cd 16.98
Maybe the most anxiously awaited release in Lexicon Devil's comprehensive series of F/i reissues. Paradise Out Here, originally released in 1989, might just be the heaviest, most freaked out, most spaced out of all the F/i records. All it takes is about one minute of opener "From Poppy With Love", an acid fried, ultra freaked out, swirling psychrock blowout to understand why. A chugging scuzzy garage rock riff scratches out a relentless spacey stomp beneath a massive roiling cloud of FX that make Acid Mothers Temple's arsenal look like a broken down collection of Casio distortion boxes and Fisher-Price keyboards. So heavy and so spacey. Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, AMT, Colour Haze, UFOmammut, White Hills, Comets On Fire, the Heads, the Telescopes, Atomic Bitchwax, Loop. If those are the kind of bands that get your blood boiling and your bong bubbling then this record is definitely for you. Extended excursions into the outer reaches of deep deep deep space, where the stars blink and twinkle in dizzyingly psychedelic colors, everywhere you look guitars are all twisted and distorted, thick slabs of rumbling bass plow through reverbed swirls of shimmer, melodies explode and splinter into jagged bits in gloriously incendiary bursts, everything is blurry and swathed in a thick drug rock haze, and everywhere you look huge slabs of blown out wah guitar drift past, like fluffy prismatic clouds, underneath it all, drums pound a never ending rhythm, while being endlessly pelted with synth squiggles and a veritable hail storm of bleeps and bloops and beeps. Woah. This record is so relentless and about as tripped out and psychedelic as a record can get without completely collapsing in on itself.
If there was ever a record that made us want to get super high, turn off all the lights, rock the fuck out and drift WAY WAY WAY OUT.... it's this one.
MPEG Stream: "From Poppy With Love"
MPEG Stream: "The House Of The Pharoah's Daughter"
FURZE Trident Autocrat (Candlelight) cd 16.98
We used to stock this when it was out on the Apocalyptic Empire empire label, sadly it went out of print but now Candlelight has reissued it (in a nice slipcase) along with Furze's other album Necromanzee Cogent (listed last time) so now y'all have another chance to dig the fucked up blackness of Trident Autocrat. Unfortunately, it's more expensive than it was before, but it's worth it, and at least we can get 'em at all!
Here's how much we love this stuff (from when we listed it the first time a few years back):
Everybody went so nuts for the newest Furze record we listed recently we figured we oughta track down the first one as well. And it's just as freaked out and damaged and totally brilliant. Unlike the weird droning doom of Necromanzee Cogent, Trident Autocrat is all black metal. But that doesn't mean it's not as bizarre, because it most definitely is. The song titles again are totally perplexing: "Zaredoo Knives Endows Thy Sight", "Devacamo Possessed Black", "Witchboundator", "Scolopendraarise" and the lyrics and imagery are quite ridiculous as well. The logo, which features three witches brooms and the slogan: "Trident Black Metal Feast", the back of the record that features a long exposure swirl of light in a spooky hallway, and lines like "The overall vibration of the preacher, The way of sneaking teeth and hypocrisy, It's the destruction ritual of the holy trinity" all combine to form the perfect framework for one of the coolest weirdest black metal records ever. All the BM hallmarks are present, buzzing riffs, growled vocals, chaotic lightning speed bast beats, but the black metal of Furze turns these seemingly typical elements into completely insane musical madness. The growling vocals squirm and morph from demonic growl, to howled distant anguish, heavily reverbed as if they were being recorded at the bottom of a well, to maniacal gremlin like chatter, and creepy cartoony chanting. The riffs, are super affected and sometimes sound totally heavy, sometimes completely brittle, lo-fi and tinny one minute, buzzing and snarling the next. The most surprising thing is how damn catchy some of these riffs are. The first song has been stuck in my head like crazy, and unlike most black metal, you'll no doubt find yourself humming along. Only a half hour long, but so much wonderful weirdness is crammed into those 30 minutes you definitely won't be left wanting.
MPEG Stream: "Zaredoo Knives Endows Thy Sight"
MPEG Stream: "Devacamo Possessed Black"
GERSCH, THE s/t (Tortuga Recordings) cd 12.98
A resurrected slab of blown out heaviness from this druggy sludgerock combo, featuring a current member of metallic post rock heavyweights Isis and the Red Sparowes. You won't hear much epic moodiness or brooding metal lope here though. Most folks compare the Gersch to bands like Sabbath, Sleep and Kyuss which is definitely fair, but if you ask us, we're hearing a whole lot more Amphetamine Reptile, like a total timewarp back to the good ol' Amrep days, you know, Halo Of Flies, the Cow Bullies, Lubricated Goat, Unsane, Surgery, Tar, Killdozer, the Cows, Boss Hog, Helmet, Vertigo, King Snake Roost and the rest...
What's weird is that the recording quality sounds genuinely old, almost as if it could have been recorded in the seventies, although the band sounds just a wee bit too metal to actually be from way back then. But the combination of Amrep style heaviness and that seventies production, makes for a deadly combo, and had us imagining the miraculous discovery of some lost tape from this weird band from 1971 called the Gersch, who were somehow channeling the spirit of Sabbath though a super chaotic metallic freaked out buzz. By now you should be able to tell whether this is your cup of tea or not. It most certainly is ours. A steaming hot cup of dense jagged guitars, convoluted mathy rhythms, chugging downtuned grooves, shouted and grunted vocals buried in the mix, massive slabs of rumbling low end, all stretched and twisted into churning, thrashing, pounding seventies-via-nineties metallic RAWK. Awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Listwish"
MPEG Stream: "Magnificent Desolation"
MPEG Stream: "Residue Three"
GLASS, PHILIP Analog (Orange Mountain Music) cd 21.00
It can be quite daunting to figure out how to navigate the releases of most 20th Century Composers. What is essential and what is not. That may be especially true for Philip Glass who has often walked the line between totally daring, trance inducing, mind expanding compositions and somewhat schmaltzy, overly sentimental syrupy pap. But there is no doubt, that when he's really
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