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Name: Chris Home Page: http://www.last.fm/user/Gecks/ Member Since: Dec 11, 2004 Rank: 3554 Average Vote Received: Correct (3.89, 46 votes) last 10 days: Correct (3.81, 26 votes) Rated 439 releases, average: 3.55 Location: Birmingham, UK Profile: Rock & Electronic Moderator _________________________________________________________________   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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Gecks's groups (11)
Global Communication - 76:14 - 28-Mar-06 04:58 AM
Milestone in ambient music? Sign me up! Except...no, it's crap. Don't get me wrong, I love my ambience, but this is almost completely devoid of quality. The only good track is the Orbital-style 9:25 which, by the way, is not ambient in the slightest. The rest of it seems to isolate the most annoying things about Eno (dated synth pads, overly crisp production), and ditch all the good stuff (interesting melodies, emotion). I read somewhere that 14:31 is regarded as one of the greatest, most original ambient tunes. Didn't Aphex Twin do almost the exact same track a few months previous on SAW II, complete with metronome/clock ticking? Now there's a quality ambient album, despite it's random noise interludes.
I can only assume that people who like this haven't heard the true pioneers of the genre - Eno, Stars Of The Lid, Aphex, and so forth. The sounds in 76:14 convey no emotion to keep you occupied when you are awake, and the percussive tracks make it impossible to sleep to. Pish.
Oh and it has a bonus disc full of what I imagine the chillout room sounds like at club hell. Boring.
Detwiije - Would You Rather Be Followed By Forty Ducks For The Rest Of Your Life? - 03-Mar-06 04:16 PM
'Post Rock', for all it's worthiness, is perhaps one of the most stale genres around. Once you've spied that term, you pretty much know what you're in for: quite beginnings, plinky-plonky guitar lines, then military-style rhythms, followed by the money shot of the effects pedal finale. To their credit, Detwiije don't always stick to the textbook post rock song structures, but they also fail to do anything interesting outside them.
There are moments of quality - the first few minutes of the opener is quite intense, but soon dissolves into pointless noodling, and much the same could be same for the closing track (of which a more succinct edit featured on their debut EP).
Live, they are a different beast entirely - dynamic performances, healthy doses of all out noise, all the good stuff. Hopefully their future releases will show a little less restraint.
Billy Corgan - TheFutureEmbrace - 03-Mar-06 04:16 PM
After the predictably messy break-up of the Smashing Pumpkins (kids, don't all be on different drugs and then try and live together in a bus for a year), Billy Corgan went down the all to familiar desperate ex-frontman career path. First he started a supergroup - Zwan who, to be fair, weren't all that bad. They were essentially the 'Pumpkins minus the teenage angst (which must be hard to get back when you're running out of places to put money), which turns out to be quite fun. It was at least better than 'Machina' - what a box of piss that was...
But I digress. 'TheFutureEmbrace' is Billy's response to the critics - an (and I wish I was making this up) electro-shoegaze voyage of self-discovery! With a Bee Gees cover! Predictably, it's a load of wank. The components themselves, however disparate, are pulled off quite well, but there are simply no tunes. Corgan should have done the decent thing and come back with a alt rock opera, in the vain of R Kelly's 'Trapped In The Closet', not this toss.
The guitars sound good, though.
R. Kelly - Trapped In The Closet Chapters 1-12 - 02-Mar-06 04:19 PM
This is R. Kelly's gift to mankind - a "hip-hopera" (his words) based on what one presumes is an average day-in-the-life of a big time R singer. He adopts the persona of 'Sylvester' (Kelly's real-life middle name), who finds himself waking up in a woman's bed. Except, this woman isn't his wife! And her husband is coming up the stairs! So, we follow the progress of our man's quest to get his "crazy ass out this house", and the various events that unfold.
As the various sexual connections reveal themselves, you quickly realize that in the world of hip-hopera's, "monogamy" might as well be an expensive wood. Despite Sylvester's frequent pleas to resolve the on-going confrontations "Christian-like", most scenes escalate to gunplay, or a good old-fashioned midget fight.
Nothing is sacred and, in one memorable scene, spatulas are involved. Should this be the last thing R. Kelly ever does (and I hope to God it isn't), it will be more than enough to assure his infamy.
"I can't believe it's a man!"
Stars Of The Lid - The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid - 17-Oct-05 08:30 AM
There is a weight to this music.
Sounds ring out, starting like a symphonic swell, and ending with a twinkle of piano, or perhaps horns? As with previous SOTL releases, it's probably treated guitar, but to the blind listener it sounds like an orchestra reverberating through some vast space.
There must be something going on here between the tones. A sadness, perhaps more palpable than any other release I have heard. How these wordless, melodically sparse (at best!) can transmit such power is astounding, but maybe this is how it should always have been done - cut the bombast, enhance the message.
