Reviews

This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound.

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Re: Reviews

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FAP wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 5:56 pm Yeah, your video game music was much better :roll:
ok so let's keep critical comments about of the review thread :bounce: :rofl: :roll:

have you even seen a Tibetan bell?
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Re: Reviews

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what a shitty attitude you have, FAP.
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Re: Reviews

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FAP wrote: Sat May 21, 2022 9:53 am FYI, I'm going to be slowing down on these reviews, because at this point they're starting to eat into the time I need to address more pressing maters in my personal and professional life. I recently spent over an hour, perhaps two hours writing single a review (can't remember for what), and that simply can't keep happening. I've also been thinking about publishing reviews i.e. making a little money on the $ide; even if that turns out to be a wild goose chase, I'm still listening to new [to me] music constantly. I just need to pull back on analyzing it as hard as I have.

Anyways,
So my ex used to write stuff for online whatever crap...medical...legal stuff. She was really good at the legal stuff (she should be an attorney) but she was getting paid pretty much the same as fucking writers in the 1930s.(she got really mad at me when I pointed this out the her...she was working for a friend's company...friends that I think are exploitative shitheads)
She made ok money but it was still bullshit pay for the amount of work in my opinion.

I'll send ya $10 or $20 to keep writing reviews.
Admin...hire him to write reviews for the forum!



Luke...don't be a dick.
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Re: Reviews

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drip wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 8:04 pm what a shitty attitude you have, FAP.
You just earned a solid week of bullying from me.
Don't reply and don't try to hide... :uhuh: ;)
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Re: Reviews

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Les Rallizes Dénudés - The Oz Tapes (2022):


The first official LRD album in over thirty years, and in my opinion the cleanest-sounding LRD recordings collected to date.

Now of course, The Oz Tapes isn’t technically an ‘album,' let alone a new album: it's a collection of uncut versions of songs originally released on the 1973 Oz Days Live compilation, as well as some previously unreleased recordings. The track structure and overall presentation makes it feel like an album, though, and the Temporal Drift label ought to be commended for their excellent work on this release (and for snapping up the rights to one of the hottest properties amongst record collectors today, those cheeky bastards!).

That said, I feel like the first version of LRD staple “The Last One” somewhat ruins this illusion of The Oz Tapes being a de facto LRD album. Maybe it’s just me, but to my ears it sounds like it was recorded in a different studio or something, which is kind of odd since it was one of the original Oz Days Live tracks (albeit in a significantly abbreviated form). It also doesn’t sound like any other version of “The Last One” I’ve heard before; the second version of “The Last One" doesn't sound familiar either, but I much prefer it over the first.

While I think this is a supremely solid psych/garage rock record, it’s yet again another LRD offering that lacks the prominent noise aspect of ’77 Live. It’s possible I could yet be proven wrong-–lord knows there’s still plenty of bootlegs to sift through (and still more official releases likely on the way)-–but I think the writing is on the wall: ’77 Live was the exception, not the rule.
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Re: Reviews

Post by Soloman Tump »

Thank you for the LRD review. Another band I really need to dive into at some point. This looks like a good enough leaping off point
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Re: Reviews

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Soloman Tump wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 4:05 pm Thank you for the LRD review. Another band I really need to dive into at some point. This looks like a good enough leaping off point.
As I said, the album that really blew me away was '77 Live: that album, so far, is LRD at their noisiest. In light of Oz Tapes' more accessible nature, though, I'm rather conflicted as to whether I should recommend one over the other as a starting point: I don't want to set an unrealistic precedent with '77 Live since I haven't found anything nearly as brutal anywhere else in the LRD rabbit hole, but on the other hand I haven't gone all the way down that rabbit hole so maybe there's something comparable?

Here's '77 Live:


FYI the Heavier Than a Death in the Family bootleg is basically a gutted/rearranged version of '77 Live, and the "Most Violence Version" floating around is just '77 Live with a lot of compression: I wouldn't recommend either.
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Re: Reviews

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various artists - Classroom Projects: Incredible Music Made By Children In Schools (Trunk Records, 2013):


As the title suggests, Classroom Projects is a compilation of various private press recordings made by elementary/primary school students, dating from approximately 1959 to 1977. The lion's share of this collection consists of children's choirs, though the styles vary from folk to avant-garde to even musique concrète (more on that later). If the introductory track is to be believed, all performers featured within Classroom Projects were aged 8-11 years old at the time of recording.

It bears mentioning that most of the info I have about this release comes from the label themselves, so if this sounds interesting to you, I'd strongly suggest archiving their web page about it for future reference.

Now, this is why I generally don't seek out v/a compilations anymore: they're a total crapshoot. If I do decide to review them–-regardless if said review is published or not--they're impossible to discuss without going track-by-track.
This time, I'm going to do a sort of pseudo-track-by-track. In other words, I'll be discussing select highlights from the collection in brief snippets; this will give you, dear reader, a good enough idea of what Classroom Projects is all about, with the added benefit of saving my sanity.

With that out of the way, here's what I learned from Classroom Projects:
  • The Chelmsford High School girls’ choir (referred to in the liner notes as “Folk Group”) start things off with the hauntingly beautiful, yet somewhat poorly produced “Portland Town,” a cover of a then-contemporary anti-war folk song. I think this opening track sets a solid precedent for what’s to come; it’s hard to recommend something like Classroom Projects without acknowledging its inherent novelty, and the unintentionally eerie vibe of “Portland Town” exemplifies the appeal of this compilation as a whole.
  • Two tracks later is “Music For Cymbals,” a fairly rudimentary but legitimately likable avant-garde piece for, well, take a wild guess. This is one of several recordings sourced from a 1969 LP titled Sounds And Silence. No artists were attributed on this LP; we know what schools were featured on it, but not on which tracks. Therefore, on Classroom Projects, “Music For Cymbals” is simply attributed to “Sounds And Silence.”
  • Similarly, little info exists for the following track, “Puppets,” a short and charming solo piece for piano. What is known is it came from one of a series of three LPs, all titled The Searching Years, produced sometime around 1968. Like with the previous track, “Puppets” is simply credited to “The Searching Years” in lieu of a proper attribution.
  • The next track, Heslington Primary School’s “Autumn,” is genuinely one of the weirdest, creepiest pieces of music I’ve ever heard. It’s a melismatic whorl of sinister-sounding xylophone which punctuates the far eerier voices of children. How this composition ever got approved for use in the curriculum of any elementary/primary school music program is beyond me.
  • Following immediately thereafter, in stark contrast, is “Bright Eyes,” performed by The Small Choir of St. Brandon's School. This is arguably the best track of the entire compilation: a genuinely excellent choral track with superb instrumentation. The parents ought to have been very, very proud.
  • Skipping ahead a bit, the next track of note is another one from The Searching Years series, titled “Action Beat.” Like “Puppets,” it’s also very rudimentary, but I like how similar it sounds to stock/library music of the 60's-70's. It reminds me of Conrad Schnitzler's composition “Silvester Anfang,” which would famously be repurposed as the intro for Mayhem’s Deathcrush EP. Who would’ve thought I’d be comparing children’s music to fucking Mayhem?!
  • Like the opening track, “A' Soalin’” is another then-contemporary folk song performed with a strange, ghost-like timbre. While the song itself is a fairly well-known number by Peter, Paul & Mary, the origins of this particular iteration of it are predictably obscure. Credited to “The Lyttle Folk,” it was performed by a group of five school children from St Michael’s School, Burton Park, Petworth, and taken from an esoteric 1966 private press LP. Good luck finding out anything more than that.
  • “Musique Concrete” is exactly what it says it is: a musique concrète composition. Now this is the kind of far-out stuff I love to find; it’s nothing amazing, relative to more prominent works in the genre, but hearing how children some 50+ years ago approached such an odd, abstract concept is as priceless as it is fascinating.
  • Nothing much of note happens for a bit after that. The Nick Nack Kids’ “Strawberry Fayre” has some neat bells and other percussion, however the shrill chorus gets rather annoying.
    After that, The Hutton School Choir performs “Busy Streets," which is just kind of odd, but not in a particularly captivating way.
    Rhoda Ashfield’s following contribution, “Piece for Oboe and Piano” is nice, short, and straightforward.
  • The next major track of note is “Jimmy Whalen,” another haunting Peter, Paul and Mary cover by The Lyttle Folk. Not much else to say about it other than it was superbly done.
  • “The Lyke-Wake Dirge” is the last entry out of the Sounds and Silence series, and by far the spookiest track on this compilation. A purposefully slow, mysterious monologue accompanied by distant and atonal instrumentation that builds to an uneasy conclusion. This is the kind of stuff David Tibet (Current 93) wishes he could write.
  • By comparison, Peter Brewis’ “The Lonely Coast” sounds like it’s trying too hard to be scary: “The Lyke-Wake Dirge” is a tough act to follow, for sure.
  • Unlike most of what came before, the penultimate track of Classroom Projects, The Hutton School Choir’s “Don't Drink and Drive,” is so abrupt and unambiguous that it’s absolutely hilarious.
  • The compilation concludes with its final track, “Humoresque,” a more grounded and strangely fitting end to such a wild ride.
In summary, Classroom Projects is an intriguing look into an oft-overlooked niche of independent recordings, and provides a fascinating insight into the creative thought processes of children. The curator of this collection, one Mr. Jonny Trunk, readily admits that most of what he finds in this niche is unremarkable ("terrible," in his words): his garbage-sifting efforts deserve a heartfelt applause, because without them, obscure gems like these would likely be lost to time.
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Re: Reviews

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a good review which captured a quality, without making hearing the album redundant.
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Re: Reviews

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captured something
it is slightly awful reading a 40 year old reviewing children singing as if it were a serious work of "art". that wasn't wasted on me.

where are these kids now eh? bulimic / myself / drug offences / etc..
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