God's Weird/Obscure Music Reviews

[God]

Another rehash of an old review of mine, this time the very first of this thread:

White Noise ~ An Electric Storm (1969)
Psychedelic/Electronic

White Noise were one of the first bands, along with the equally inventive Silver Apples, to mix psychedelic pop music with experimental electronic music, managing to create An Electric Storm in 1969, a totally unique album that is truly completely ahead of its time, much more than most, if not all, albums described as being so.

White Noise at the time consisted of David Vorhaus, who continues to record under the name today, Paul Lytton on percussion, three vocalists and Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Derbyshire was the person who arranged the Dr. Who theme into its famous (in the UK at least) eerie and (for its time) futuristic electronic format, and Brian Hodgson was in charge of creating much of the programme’s sound effects using all sorts of bizarre techniques - the sound of the TARDIS for example was created by dragging house keys over the strings of an old gutted piano, and then electronically manipulating the sound.

It is with similar methods to this that An Electronic Storm was created from. The group used tape manipulation techniques, with an original sound being played, often on Vorhaus’s bass, and then slowed down or sped up to create a new note. This was repeated for every single note before they were all painstakingly placed together. One song in particular, ‘The Visitations’, took 3 months to finish in this way. To create echo effects two identical tapes were played slightly out of phase.

Unfortunately An Electric Storm was released just before the introduction of the Moog synthesiser which made many of the innovative ground-breaking techniques used to create this music pretty much obsolete by making electronic music much easier to create. However, the unique way in which it was made makes An Electric Storm sound totally different to anything else. Yes, it is obvious the album is from the 1960s, the compositions are quirky trippy psychedelic songs not that unlike those of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd and the album is filled with now completely cheesy sound effects but it still manages to sound fresh, as if a modern band was trying to imitate the style of 60’s psychedelic bands with modern techniques.

Even though it was all basically copied and pasted together, the melodies are totally fluid, weaving in and out of each other totally smoothly and effortlessly, giving much of the album a very relaxed feel. Different effects cover the album, fading in and out constantly. Nothing on the album sounds at all rough and despite the experimentation the tunes are often very catchy. An Electronic Storm is split by the first side, named Phase-In and the second side, Phase-Two.

Phase-One contains the more poppy, light-hearted psychedelic pop tracks, often with Syd Barrett-influenced lead vocals. Luckily, White Noise are not at all pretentious despite the experimental music, retaining a quirky sense of humour. This is especially noticeable in the cheesy yet hilariously insane ‘Here Come the Fleas’, featuring zany female singing and lyrics and a collage of more edits than the entire Sgt. Pepper’s album. Another bizarre part of the album is ‘My Game of Loving’ which features the sound of an orgy(!) along with chaotic drumming in the middle of the song.

At this point of the album you might think you know where it’s going, but as soon as Phase-Out starts the sound and atmosphere changes completely. Gone are the pleasant poppy tunes of Phase-In, replaced by a much heavier, creepier and darker sound. ‘The Visitations’ is one of the highlights of the album, a haunting song about a biker dying in a crash and his spirit trying to speak to his lover who is with him at the time. While it can be genuinely quite creepy, the age does show and it is also slightly cheesy. The final track, ‘The Black Mass: An Electric Storm In Hell’ was written in a rush to finish the album on time. Instead of writing another conventional song however, the band used little more than a powerful barrage of percussion and weird sound effects, creating a similar ‘scary’ atmosphere to ‘The Visitations’. It sounds great even though the sound effects are slightly similar to the sounds made by those toy laser guns...

An Electric Storm is one of the most unique and ground-breaking albums ever created, blending avant-garde electronic music with very well composed and memorable songs. It is a huge shame that it never got the recognition that it deserved due to the introduction of the Moog soon after its release, which also prevented another similar album being made in the future. White Noise II - Concerto for Synthesiser (1974) and White Noise III (1980), played only by David Vorhaus and created in a much more conventional and less experimental way, actually sound far more dated despite being released years later. A must for any fan of psychedelia or avant-garde music.

/5

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Your Hidden Dreams

Firebird

The Visitations

[God]

Yes I really did listen to this (though I skipped the last quarter or so of many of the songs), pausing it for King Crimson every now to prevent myself going insane. Why did I do it? Attention? Some sort of demented musical masochism? Yeah, probably.

Soulja Boy ~ iSouljaboytellem (2008)
Hip-Hop

One of the biggest of the many criticisms of the much hated album Souljaboytellem was that every song sounded exactly the same as the last. When the new album’s title, iSouljaboytellem is exactly the same as the last one but with one letter added on, you probably wouldn’t expect anything to have changed. And nothing really has. Soulja Boy seems to be doing nothing here but attempting to emulate the success of ‘Crank That (Soulja Boy)’. Nothing at all is new and nearly every song is based on the same style of repetitive dull melodies.

The album seems to start fine with ‘I’m Bout Tha Stacks’ which opens with a rising keyboard sound that almost believably suggests that the beats will be slightly deeper and not quite as bland and irritating as those of the debut’s. Unfortunately, the quality quickly declines, settling into a boring melody to go along with Soulja Boy’s equally boring monotonic rapping, including a chorus where he merely repeats ‘I’m bout tha…’ and then a random word for what seems like 10 minutes. This opening track does show one of the biggest strengths of iSouljaboytellem though - many of the songs have different producers, breaking up the never ending monotony of the debut.

It is always clear which songs are produced by Soulja Boy himself as his beats are ultra-sparse, repetitive and irritating. There is a lot more variety with the guest producers though. Some tracks such as ‘Easy’ (produced by someone named Zaytoven apparently) are actually quite catchy and listenable, at least at first before getting totally irritating, despite containing sound effects that sound like they belong on a bad 60’s psychedelic album. However, straight after this comes the truly atrocious ‘Kiss Me Thru The Phone’ (produced by Jim Jonsin and featuring singing from Sammie), which sounds like it was recorded over a mediocre polyphonic ringtone. The singing is quite a nice break from Soulja Boy’s terrible rapping, but it’s not really a huge improvement.

The lyrics are equally as bad as those of the debut’s. In fact, they’re worse, lacking the surreal humour of ‘Crank That’. Instead Soulja Boy settles for annoyingly simplistic, often meaningless and usually very childish lyrics, usually focused on himself. The worst lyrics can be found in ‘Hey You There’, featuring such classic lines as ‘Hey, this right here is my theme song/I bet it is you ringtone/I farted and it smelt/It smelt like a stink bomb’ and the phrase ‘hey you there’ along with variations of it, repeated a hundred times, with little more than an occasional drum beat at funeral doom pace to back it up. And I hope he isn’t really expecting us to feel sorry for him in ‘I Pray (Outro)’ where he whines about his haters and how his life is rubbish. Boo-hoo. Also making a comeback is the ‘yuuuuh’ shouts, most noticeable in ‘Bird Walk’, a completely blatant rip-off of his own song, ‘Crank That’, complete with a new dance. The worst part about this is that it actually manages to be more annoying than the original, and is not at all catchy.

Hilariously, along with the usual nonsensical lyrics, Soulja Boy here seems to be attempting to convince us that he’s somehow ‘tough’ in the song ‘Shopping Spree’ which opens with the sound of a shotgun, followed by a ‘menacing’ synth sound and ‘gangsta’ guest rappers Gucci Mane and Yo Gotti. Of course this new found toughness would be very convincing if Soulja Boy said anything more offensive than ‘big fat police dude’.

While some of the songs by producers other than Soulja Boy can almost rise above being totally useless even those get dull after one listen, and every song produced by Soulja Boy, unfortunately most of them, sound identical and all equally awful (except ‘Hey You There’ which somehow manages to be even worse). We can only hope that without a hugely successful single like 'Crank That' to promote it, this album will instantly sink and be forgotten about forever and ever.

/5

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Bird Walk


Kiss Me Thru The Phone

[vizi]

Terrible reviews are always the best part of any magazine

[bomberboy]

You did Soulja Boy! That "music" was that bad, that you gave it a 1/5 its true what they say and what I always believed.

Edit: I waon't even listen to the songs in fear of either liking them or getting freaked out.

[Garrigan]

Classic review god

[Dom9127]

Why people ever took an interest in Soulja Boy, is one of those eternal mysteries of human stupidity.

[Pra]

Or the genius of Soulja Boy using nothing but youtube to sell like a million off of a track that someone could have used from a preset tune on a keyboard.

He should probably work on marketing for some big firm. He'd be perfect.

[vizi]

^^^
Marketing is always better for making money than making art.

[God]

Next review will be of psychedelic/progressive folk album Swaddling Songs

Marillion ~ Brave (1994)
Progressive Rock

When thinking of progressive rock, the images that come to mind are of the original bands such as King Crimson, Yes and Van der Graaf Generator and the more modern 90’s and 2000’s prog rock and metal like Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree and Opeth. Forming in 1979, Marillion managed to gain moderate success in the 80’s when prog rock was hated by much of the general public with their upbeat quirky early Genesis-inspired sound and lively singing of vocalist Derek Dick (better known as Fish). After the 4th album in 1987 though, tensions between Fish and the rest of the band members caused him to leave the band.

The story was not over for Marillion though, as they brought in a new singer, Steve Hogarth (aka H.). While the first album with H. was very successful, Marillion could never achieve the success they previously had, releasing a poor attempt at a pop rock album, Holidays In Eden in 1991, Brave was released in 1994 as a return to Marillion’s progressive rock origins. Unfortunately, despite critical success, Brave was largely ignored by the public.

Brave is a concept album, based on a news story H. heard on the radio about a girl taken into police custody after being found wondering across the Severn Bridge between England and Wales. The girl did not know who she was or where she came from, leading H. to write the lyrics as a fictional story of how she got there. While prog rock albums are often criticised for being emotionless, Brave stands completely against this stereotype, it’s sad lyrics and beautiful melancholic melodies creating a strong atmosphere that can easily drag you into the story.

The album is played mainly at quite a slow to mid pace with a lot of the focus placed on the bass and atmospheric keyboard sounds and a densely layered sound, creating a deep and haunting mood. To add to this, many sounds were recorded in a cave to use as background ambience (a technique later used by Radiohead in OK Computer).

Despite this complex symphonic approach, Brave is surprisingly accessible, though it still may take a few listens to fully appreciate. Producer Dave Meegen spent months going through every new tape made every day by the band, making sure that every riff and melody included would be perfect for the album. Because of this perfectionist approach, the subtle and sometimes quite sparse melodies on the album still all manage to be memorable and powerful. Most of the melodies are played on piano or guitar.

The biggest problem with Brave is that it follows this formula with little variation, and at it’s very long running length of an hour and 11 minutes, it does end up just dragging on, especially if you’re not paying attention to it fully. There are some highlights where it breaks the formula though, such as the more electric guitar-led and faster paced tracks such as ‘Hard As Love’ and ‘Paper Lies’ which add much needed bursts of energy into the music to keep it interesting, and to stop it from becoming totally depressing, which it comes close to at times. Unfortunately there are not quite enough of these moments, and the album definitely can become dull by the end.

While not as complex or cryptic as Fish’s, H’s lyrics, focusing on themes such as child abuse, drugs and depression, are still extremely well written and work better for this style of album, making the story more gripping, easier to follow and more emotional. H’s singing is also full of emotion, always singing in a bleak tone as if he knew the girl wondering alone on the bridge personally. The singing is always excellent, easily coping with many different styles from calm, mellow but never at all weak singing throughout much of the album to near shouts at the more hectic parts.

Overall, Brave is an excellent prog rock album and one of Marillion’s best, and it is a shame that it has been almost totally ignored in favour of early Marillion and more modern prog bands. With it’s dense, emotional and atmospheric sound I highly recommend Brave to fans of Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree and similar bands.

/5

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Great Escape


Brave

[bomberboy]

Never heard of these before. Have you heard of Black Rebel Motor Cycle Club? I've just started to listen to them, I might even review them.

[God]

I've heard of them but never listened. They look quite interesting though - alt/indie rock with psychedelic influences, eh?

And Marillion are really good, but I recommend their first 4 albums over Brave.

My fav Marillion song



New review will be up soon.

[bomberboy]

You should hear all the effects they do with the guitars. I'm currently listening to the second album.

[Arto]

A personal question for you.

Which band is in your opinion better?

Smashing Pumpkins or Manic Street Preachers?

[bomberboy]

Me or God? Well I don't know about them but I have heard MSP before but not a lot to judge.

[God]

Yeah, I don't know either that well myself, but I'd say SP are better of what I know.

[God]

Mellow Candle ~ Swaddling Songs (1994)
Folk/Psychedelic Rock/Progressive Rock

According to the booklet that comes with the 2008 reissue CD, Mellow Candle’s only album, Swaddling Songs, was at one point the single most sought after major label folk rarity of all time. While these booklets can be expected to exaggerate (for example, later on in that same paragraph it calls the album ‘a genuine masterpiece’ which could be considered a slight exaggeration perhaps) this is probably true. On its release in 1972 Swaddling Songs was totally ignored. It was not until the late 80’s and early 90’s that anyone started paying attention to it, and it quickly gained a large cult following. This fanbase is definitely well deserved, as Swaddling Songs is an excellent album that manages to fuse Celtic folk-rock, psychedelia and progressive rock effortlessly, taking ideas from all 3 genres without truly fitting totally into any of them, instead creating their own unique style.

While Mellow Candle can best be compared to other acid folk groups of the time such as Fairport Convention and The Incredible String Band, they actually share little with their peers musically. Instead of using acoustic guitars, Mellow Candle rely here mainly on piano and very prominent melodic bass-lines, though other instruments also make appearances, such as electric guitars, flute and a harpsichord on the album opener ‘Heaven Heath’. The only other constant instrument is the drums, which are also played excellently with a lot of variation.

While all of the usually piano-based melodies that make up the songs are always short, memorable and catchy enough to remain in your head for days after, because of the progressive influences they still manage to remain complex and never lack depth so don’t become at all stale.

Swaddling Songs swings between calm, relaxing and sometimes genuinely stunningly beautiful folk songs such as ‘Silversong’ to much more rock-influenced songs like ‘The Poet And The Witch’. The calmer songs have aged slightly better, but the other songs still sound fantastic and full of energy. This mix of styles works very well for the album, preventing it from becoming at all dull and keeping it varied. While at first the album sounds totally happy there is always something sinister just below the surface, and this complexity in mood is a large factor in what makes the album so successful.

The lyrics cover a large range, with dark folk tales of witches and even hell and the devil in the heavier songs (unusually for a band created in a Catholic school) and songs focusing on themes such as nature in the lighter ones. While not amazingly complex, the story-like lyrics nonetheless add perfectly to the very Celtic sounding folky mood of the album. One of the songs, ’Lonely Man’, was written when vocalist Clodagh Simonds was only 12 years old, so when someone uses an artist’s young age as an excuse for the music being poor, point that out to them.

The real highlight of the album though is the incredible singing of the 2 vocalists, Clodagh Simonds, who often sings the lower parts and Alison Williams who usually sings the higher parts, though both singers have an incredible range and often switch roles. All of the singing on the album is absolutely brilliant. Both vocalists sing in a haunting ethereal style that fits perfectly with the dreamy music and neither singer shadows the other at all, both contributing equally to the music. The album is full of beautiful vocal harmonies and melodies. Occasionally, such as in ‘Buy Or Beware’ each vocalist sings different sections in the same way you’d expect Q-Tip and Phife Dawg to trade verses in an A Tribe Called Quest album. The voices compliment each other perfectly and flow together so well it can even be difficult to tell when one singer stops and the other begins, despite the obvious differences in their voices.

Overall, Swaddling Songs is an excellent album, filled with great melodies, easily enough variation to keep it interesting throughout it’s length and always beautiful singing. At times it can sound a bit dated, but compared to most other 70’s folk-rock bands it sounds completely modern. If you have any interest in folk or piano based music or just want to hear something with great singing I highly recommend this.

/5

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Silver Song


Sheep Season


Reverend Sisters (Demo)

[bomberboy]

Theres a pattern in some of the reviews that have folk influences, they all sing in ethreal style vocals and I think its used too much. There has to be more styles than that, I mean they're supposed to be making something different and thats what they can think of.

[God]

Theres a pattern in some of the reviews that have folk influences, they all sing in ethreal style vocals and I think its used too much. There has to be more styles than that, I mean they're supposed to be making something different and thats what they can think of.

Nah, not really. I like the style so that's the stuff I listen to and review, it's not as if it's all like that. Anyway the only other folk singer I think I've described as having an 'ethereal' singing style is Comus's Bobbie Watson. Other than that, Julee Cruise & Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard... neither of which are folk.

And I use that word to describe singing too much myself

[Noble Savage]

This album is beautiful from start to finish. Clodagh Simonds voice is beautiful. I'm very surprised that my favourite song of the album (Silversong) hasn't been covered by a more contemporary act.

God recommended me this album at the start of the year. It's my find of 2008

[God]

This album is beautiful from start to finish. Clodagh Simonds voice is beautiful. I'm very surprised that my favourite song of the album (Silversong) hasn't been covered by a more contemporary act.

It's not even on youtube, it'd be in that spoilers link if it was, definitely

And check out the Marillion review above