Out of the rarefied list of truly classic progressive rock bands, King Crimson stands as the thorniest of the lot. You can ask someone on the street to name a Genesis song and they should be able to oblige. A Yes song, maybe. King Crimson? Not hardly. And yet of those three names, it is Crimson that has had the heaviest impact on modern music, specifically metal. You can hear the threads of building, breaking down and then rebuilding a song in groups like Tool and Porcupine Tree. The sinister heaviness underneath Robert Fripp’s guitar constructions was a major component for the downtuned nu-metal of the late ’90s and early 2000s, even if Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi got most of the lip service. Even so, they never had a top 10 hit, which given Fripp’s somewhat contrarian nature, probably pleases him to no end.
Forty years after the debut of In the Court of the Crimson King, Fripp has embarked on an ambitious project to not only remaster the band’s catalog, but with the help of Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson, create brand new surround sound mixes. Alongside the debut, the first wave also features the fan-polarizing Lizard and Red, the moment everything changed. Although the band had always dabbled in minor chords, free-jazz outbursts and improvisations, they always were tied to that rather flowery, poetic sense of prog rock that ticked off the regular rock fans mercilessly. Bowing in 1974, Red was a mean mother of a recording, the opening title track instrumental throbbing and stomping with the urgency of a runaway Caterpillar backhoe crashing through a glass cathedral. Joining in this power trio version of the band, John Wetton’s fuzzy, heavy bass does as much in trading lead lines as it does holding down the bottom end. Bill Bruford’s jazz-inflected sense of rhythm dives and weaves, but never gets in the way when it’s simply time to beat the hell out of the skins. (more…)
If Ray Bradbury decided to form a prog metal band, it would sound like Jupiter Society, and that really wouldn’t be a bad thing. There are several things in common: Bradbury was never one for believing in the benevolence of the unseen, a perspective shared by main Jupiter Society songwriter and keyboardist Carl Westholm. Bradbury enjoyed a sense of dark grandeur in his stories — a tainted nostalgia, if you will — and was not at all worried when his space stories went a little noir, with bad things happening to good people. Westholm’s musical bombast loves the dark corners of minor notes, big choral backups, dramatic shifts from quiet to loud. Both creative minds can be a whole lot of fun.
Featuring several of his former cohorts from Krux, Candlemass and other metal groups, Westholm’s latest outing, Terraform, brings up a new possibility — that there is a thread tying these disparate narratives together. On their debut, First Contact/Last Warning, we had stories of cyborgs who pondered their lack of mortality, vaguely recalling that they were the reanimated dead. We had a merciless hostile invader attacking with no other agenda than to kill human life, and the album closed with a song about a survivor of a spaceship attack — but not for long, as he’s in his lifesuit, drifting slowly toward a sun. On Terraform’s second song, “Rescue And Resurrection,” that same survivor is rescued on the brink of death, then turned into a cyborg himself. The story of the unseen predator is revisited as well, only now the hunter is the hunted on “Beyond These Walls You Are Not My Master.” (more…)
As alluded to by the title, the latest by the freak-out wizards of the Flaming Lips goes back to the embryo — or, more to the point, back to their acid-psyche roots where nothing was sacred, not even the basics of pop music, or for that matter the structured tenets of modern recording technology. Because of this, the album forces two, wholly differing opinions. If you are, in fact, a long-timer, this is news to celebrate. The first track, “Convinced of the Hex,” is drenched in noise, busted amp buzzing, Wayne Coyne’s vocals bouncing off the walls of the studio and only vaguely captured by the microphone. Believe it or not, it only gets stranger from here.
If you came to the band through their transcendent two-fer of The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, you may well be horrified. The easy hooks and gonzo soundscapes once reined in to support the songs are broken open like a squeezed sausage. You’ll hear the potential in tracks like the very pretty “Evil,” but wonder if the tune was sacrificed to this hi-fi/no-fi aesthetic. It is followed by the instrumental “Aquarius Sabotage” which, if you’re not prepared for it, is just outright shocking to the ear. (more…)
No major theme this week, folks. Next week, on the other hand, will have a theme very close to me, so don’t forget to stop by for that one. Yeah, next week’s mixtape is gonna RAWK, but this week… Eh.
Now that’s some kinda salesmanship right there, y’all.
That’s right, folks — the most disturbing Halloween EVER! From now until Halloween, the Popdose staff are going to be thumbing through their record collections in search of the music that gives them the worst case of the heebie-jeebies. Up first is Dw. Dunphy, with Jupiter Society’s First Contact, Last Warning. —Anthony Hansen
Musical sound doesn’t frighten me anymore. It did once, when I was young. The sudden, jarring strangeness of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” once freaked me out to no end, a veritable boon to all who wanted to tease a chubby, overly sensitive child. Whenever she felt like being evil, my sister would turn to me and shout, “Mamma mia, mamma mia, let me go!” which would send me running out of the room in tears.
Wimp. Definition of a wimp. Today I recognize the utter campiness of the tune and have grown to love the better part of the Queen catalog. In fact music that once struck me as strange and dissonant has become more attractive, not more repulsive, in my adult years.
But lyrics still have the ability to get in my head and cause the spiders in there to revolt. I’m currently fascinated by — and a whole lotta disturbed by — a group called Jupiter Society. Their sound is prog metal, heavy on the synths, but the scenarios in their lyrics are all Stephen King in space.
The dread that falls over a fan when they hear their favorite band is about to release a live album or an umpteenth greatest hits compilation is palpable. You didn’t get this far being a music appreciator without seeing the hints. Those releases often signal a way out of a contract, a quick fill in order to move on with the messy business and start looking for a new label or, worse, a way of shuttering a career. In the late 1980s and on into the ’90s, artists found new wine in the old skins of the back catalog by recasting those tunes in an acoustic setting. MTV’s Unplugged phenomena held strong for a period of time, but then everyone felt the need to pull out the guitar cable, settle on a stool (or a haybale if one was really trying to make things rustic) and acousticize the hits. And now, the acoustic album has fallen into that same chilly subgenre, the filler album category.
This brings us to Marillion’s latest offering, Less Is More, a collection of their songs spanning the years featuring vocalist Steve Hogarth, roughly 1989 to the present. A couple things to mention up front are that the acoustic arrangements are not a new idea as Hogarth, guitarist Steve Rothery and bassist Pete Trewavas often tour as the acoustic and abbreviated Los Trios Marillos. Also, while the band generally plies in the sound of electric rock/pop/prog, they’ve never been shy about turning off the power for recordings such as the 1997 release This Strange Engine, roughly half of which features acoustic instrumentation. Even so, one can’t help but feel this is a group who has been forced to wait for their muse and have made this album in the interim. (more…)
The important thing to remember is that I didn’t set out to make this mix as it is.
The initial concept was to pull out the box of CDs I seldom listen to and pull tracks from them. It is not a judgment call as to why the Beasties’ Hello Nasty is down there on the Island of Misfit Toys; I just don’t listen to the album much and, if I have a yen for the Boyz, I go for Ill Communication or Paul’s Boutique. If I am in a really regressive state of mind and nostalgia has me by the nosehairs, out comes A Flock Of Seagulls (which is amazing considering how tiny my nostrils are.)
(Who am I kidding? My nostrils are HUGE.)
There are songs here that I never listen to. The dust on Orgy’s Vapor Transmissionand the Pushmonkey CD are like instant mud – just add water. Some of these tunes are fondly remembered, some barely remembered and still others come from the “what was I thinking” file, but in combination, this constitutes the strangest mix I think I’ve ever achieved and, quite rightly, I’m afraid of it.
I say this with only a slight bit of embarrassment; The Cars’ debut album is my most-purchased title ever. I received it on vinyl one Christmas (way back when humans licked scum off the rocks for sustenance… 1978?), wore that out, repurchased it a year later, bought the CD at the dawn of the digital era, rebought the Rhino remaster because that initial release was horrid, and finally it has come to this — the Mobile Fidelity half-speed mastered vinyl edition. Can you imagine?
For those who like to geek out on the technical end of things, in the vinyl world a sound source is fed into the machine that lathe-cuts the groove into the metal master disc. It is this disc that subsequent vinyl imprints will be pressed from. For modern vinyl cutting, that source is a digital file and the cutting is in real time, meaning the lathe cuts at the same rate as the song is normally played. Mobile Fidelity, or Mo-Fi as they’ve branded themselves, goes back to the original analog master tape for source material and plays back the tracks at half the speed, thus being able to grab much more audio material, hence the “Half Speed Mastered” headline so famously pasted across the tops of their sleeves.
Does it make a difference? I begrudgingly have to admit that it does, and I say this because I am famously candid on the point that my love for vinyl is strictly irrational. I believe it is equal parts nostalgia, fetish and perhaps an attraction to the “bigness” of the record presentation, and that most of the time the much mentioned “warmth” and clarity of analog is the listener hearing what they want to hear, but not what really is. Yet those first palm-muted guitar plunks of “Good Times Roll” followed by the keyboard pings from Greg Hawkes definitely have something my remastered CD doesn’t, and the creeping fear that I’m becoming another arrogant audiophile has started to settle in. (more…)
When a band soldiers on with new personnel after a loss — such as, say, the overdose death of original Alice in Chains lead singer Layne Staley — the preeminent task is always to try and reassure the audience that, yes, this is the same band you knew before, yet this has to be accomplished in a subtle manner. By plopping in a sound-alike replacement, you risk losing your credibility and, worse, you come off as insensitive to the band’s legacy. On the other hand, if you go too far in the opposite direction, you alienate your original fanbase.
The fact that Black Gives Way to Blue, the album by the mostly reunited Alice in Chains, deftly straddles the two is quite an achievement. New singer William DuVall fits into Staley’s timbre, but he sounds unique enough to avoid being called a clone. The new songs seize upon everything that AiC had come to represent musically, so it’s a comfortable transition in that respect, too. Truth be told, however, that’s all that can be considered comfortable, and so much the better for that. I have never walked away from an AiC recording wanting to pick wildflowers and draw smiley suns and rainbows, and Black Gives Way to Blue continues that streak. From the opening confessional, “All Secrets Known,” to songs like “Acid Bubble” and “Private Hell,” you can be assured a heavy time in the offing. (more…)
Out of the rarefied list of truly classic progressive rock bands, King Crimson stands as the thorniest of the lot. You can ask someone on the street to name a Genesis song and they should be able to oblige. A Yes song, maybe. King Crimson? Not hardly. And yet of those three names, it is Crimson that has had the heaviest impact on modern music, specifically metal. You can hear the threads of building, breaking down and then rebuilding a song in groups like Tool and Porcupine Tree. The sinister heaviness underneath Robert Fripp’s guitar constructions was a major component for the downtuned nu-metal of the late ’90s and early 2000s, even if Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi got most of the lip service. Even so, they never had a top 10 hit, which given Fripp’s somewhat contrarian nature, probably pleases him to no end.
If Ray Bradbury decided to form a prog metal band, it would sound like Jupiter Society, and that really wouldn’t be a bad thing. There are several things in common: Bradbury was never one for believing in the benevolence of the unseen, a perspective shared by main Jupiter Society songwriter and keyboardist Carl Westholm. Bradbury enjoyed a sense of dark grandeur in his stories — a tainted nostalgia, if you will — and was not at all worried when his space stories went a little noir, with bad things happening to good people. Westholm’s musical bombast loves the dark corners of minor notes, big choral backups, dramatic shifts from quiet to loud. Both creative minds can be a whole lot of fun.
(2001)
Well, you can’t say they didn’t warn you.
and 
, you may well be horrified. The easy hooks and gonzo soundscapes once reined in to support the songs are broken open like a squeezed sausage. You’ll hear the potential in tracks like the very pretty “Evil,” but wonder if the tune was sacrificed to this hi-fi/no-fi aesthetic. It is followed by the instrumental “Aquarius Sabotage” which, if you’re not prepared for it, is just outright shocking to the ear. 
(2001)
(2003)
(2004)
(1991)
(2008)
(1997)
(2007)
(1973)
(1996)
(1972)
(1992)
Musical sound doesn’t frighten me anymore. It did once, when I was young. The sudden, jarring strangeness of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” once freaked me out to no end, a veritable boon to all who wanted to tease a chubby, overly sensitive child. Whenever she felt like being evil, my sister would turn to me and shout, “Mamma mia, mamma mia, let me go!” which would send me running out of the room in tears.
The dread that falls over a fan when they hear their favorite band is about to release a live album or an umpteenth greatest hits compilation is palpable. You didn’t get this far being a music appreciator without seeing the hints. Those releases often signal a way out of a contract, a quick fill in order to move on with the messy business and start looking for a new label or, worse, a way of shuttering a career. In the late 1980s and on into the ’90s, artists found new wine in the old skins of the back catalog by recasting those tunes in an acoustic setting. MTV’s Unplugged phenomena held strong for a period of time, but then everyone felt the need to pull out the guitar cable, settle on a stool (or a haybale if one was really trying to make things rustic) and acousticize the hits. And now, the acoustic album has fallen into that same chilly subgenre, the filler album category.
, roughly half of which features acoustic instrumentation. Even so, one can’t help but feel this is a group who has been forced to wait for their muse and have made this album in the interim. 
is down there on the 
or 
. If I am in a really regressive state of mind and nostalgia has me by the nosehairs, out comes 
and the 
CD are like instant mud – just add water. Some of these tunes are fondly remembered, some barely remembered and still others come from the “what was I thinking” file, but in combination, this constitutes the strangest mix I think I’ve ever achieved and, quite rightly, I’m afraid of it.
(1987)
(1998)
(1984)
(2005)
(1995)
(1994)
(1973)
(1975)
(1992)
(1999)
(1982)
(1987)
I say this with only a slight bit of embarrassment; The Cars’ debut album is my most-purchased title ever. I received it on vinyl one Christmas (way back when humans licked scum off the rocks for sustenance… 1978?), wore that out, repurchased it a year later, bought the CD at the dawn of the digital era, rebought the Rhino remaster because that initial release was horrid, and finally it has come to this — the Mobile Fidelity half-speed mastered vinyl edition. Can you imagine?![41KwE8vxMcL._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/41KwE8vxMcL._SCLZZZZZZZ_1.jpg "41KwE8vxMcL._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]")
