Reviews by markjazz

This is one of those jazz albums that, if your a fan of jazz, would have to be living under a rock not to have heard it. It was Oscar Peterson's most succesful album and helped push his trio to even higher popularity than it already was, after his time when he was on tour with the JATP with Norman Granz. The trio featured Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums and thiers was one of the tightest trio's at the time. The album is pretty much filled with classic smooth and bebop jazz tracks that all transfer very well from one to the next making it a well produced album as well (which of course was done by Norman Granz). There's something so striking about the cover art as well with this big ominous metal train speeding down the tracks. A great album to have on vinyl if you can get as the bonus tracks on the CD don't offer a whole lot more except the usual retakes and versions.

This is a great and well recored concert from 1957. You can hear each artists instruments clearly, including the bass, and I love that. The track selection is very good too. Lots of bop and nothing too slow. I will say that one thing I don't like it this tick-tock sound done by Herb Ellis on the track Gal in Calico. I find it very annoying and I'm not sure why it's done. The first four tracks feature the classic Trio and then 6-9 have Jo Jones, Roy Eldridge and Sonny Stitt brought it. It's a good mix of artists and these songs showcase all their talents. It's also great hearing Oscar Peterson talk during the show in between tracks too. Overall, this is a great live album and if you love this Trio, and live jazz albums, in general pick this one up.

This is my first taste of this artist, who lives in my home town of Edmonton, Alberta. I was surprised at how well this album sounded. The Orchestra is brilliant, though not really heard a lot during some of the tracks. Harlem Nocturne and The Old Castle are amazingly beautiful! I love the medleys too and this has me wanting to check out this guy some more. Great orchestral jazz!

I love Verve Master Reissues. The digipak looks very nice and the insert gives some great info. There's also usual extra takes and bonus tracks, which this release has as a tone of. It includes 7 false starts of the track Leap Frog alone! I think I'd still rather have the original vinyl, as always, but this reissue is nice. Bird and Diz work together so well to create some great Bop'n jazz and a prime example is the battle the two seem to have on some of these tracks, like Leap Frog. This album has a good pace to it too and most of the tracks are upbeat too. This album as an all-star cast too. Thelonious Monk on piano and Buddy Rich on drums...wow! A great listen and a good start for someone looking for a good classic Verve album.

For months I never knew who sang this piece of shit song and I finally found out. I only cared about finding out so I could rate this song as low as I could. It's kind of ironic that the only time I would hear this track was when I was taking a piss at McDonalds. Seriously, everytime I took a piss this song was playing. It was played a couple times in a Boston Pizza's bathroom but mostly I'd hear this at McDonalds. I had to take a shit once there but once again this song was on and there was no fucking way I was gonna listen to this and take a shit at the same time....it would have ruined the whole experiance for me.

Of ohGrs three solo albums to date I think this is his strongest one. It seems to be very tight and I like a lot more of the tracks than I do with the other releases. His music style is pretty unqiue and although I think it works well for his project I can't stand the fact that he pretty much implemented this music for Skinny Puppy. I don't mind his vocals at all and I like the effects he puts in them at times, like in WaTergaTe where he makes his vocals go a mile a minute, just like he did in the track Pour on Welt. There's some crap on here too, like DoG and EnDai. DoG has some good lyrics but the pounding bass drum is so damn annoying I'm always forced to skip this track. The CD comes with the video for maJik, which is a good song on it's own but the video is kinda dumb and has a bunch of odd shit flying around. It looks more like a backing video for one of his concerts or something.

Back in 2001 I was downloading rare Skinny Puppy tracks and this one called Pour came up. I didn't remember ever hearing it so I downloaded it and loved it! I found out later that it was from this album and then promply bought it the next week. I still love this album to this day. It was such a unique blend of industrial and ebm and other oddness. Kinda has a cyberpunk feel to it too.

I'm not sure if I prefer this album over SunnyPsyOp, but both have their charm. It's hard to review this album and comment on the music because it's pretty different and there really isn't anything to compare it to. There's nothing I really skip on here either but the top 3 track on here, for me, are Pore, Solow, and Suhleap. All great numbers and I've heard Pour being played a club in my town a couple times too, which rocked!

An interesting note about the artwork on this album is that it was done by Roman Dirge, who did the Lenor comic books. This surprised me when I first bought the CD and thought it was so cool at the time. How did Ogre score such a cool artist to do his cover artwork?

It took me a while to finally listen to this album and when I did I had mixed feelings. After the first listen I thought I'd give it another go before I rated it and reviewed it. I found that pretty much half of the tracks on here were just plain useless, even for filler tracks, and as for the album as a whole it's just way to long and drawn out. There were some good moments on here, like the first two tracks, which I absolutely love and I wish the whole album was more in the same style as those first two.

The problem with some tracks is I really think they would have been better with some vocals and some other tracks sound like a 6 year old wrote them as well. I think what Trent should have done was just released some of these Ghosts as in between tracks on an album, kinda like what Aphex Twin did on Drukqs.

I'm one of the few that didn't really care for the original version of this track or the video but I do like the remixes. They all provide their own unique take on the track and the one I actually like the best is Nine Inch Nails as it's broken down in three parts and after the half way point the beat contains a great hard pounding distorted drum that I love the band best for. The only track I was disapointed in was The Orb's as it's just plain weird and I was expecting something more techno-like, but the swirling samples and odd bass gives it its own flavour and I like hearing it once and a while. I'm not usually a fan of remix albums or EP's but this one works for me and although it didn't make my purchase any of the remix artists albums I still like what they did with the track.

I don't care who you are or what rock you hid under but if you haven't heard of this album, or any part of it, your an alien to me. This is probably one of the Top 10 Classic industrial albums of all time, in my eyes, and I'm probably not alone in saying that either.

Even after 15 years it still sounds current and the music still kicks ass. It spans so many levels too. We have hard brutal industrial/rock with Mr. Self Destruct. Awesome hard pounding industrial with Heresy. Soft melodic organ music with A Warm Place. The acoustic cover song of Hurt. We even have a #1 hit with Closer, which I actually got sick of after a while. I've heard this song on the most pop of radio stations and it surprised me. I also hated the fact that people thought they were so different and unique because they liked that song; "I listen to everything, even NIN." My reply, "Oh really, I love that album The Downward Spiral the most, you like Pretty Hate Machine?" Long pause..... "Pretty what?" ARG!!! Anyway, this album helped popularize industrial music in a way, and maybe that's a good thing and maybe not. All the singles that came from this album were great too so that made me enjoy it even more.

Useless notes:
In the lyrics the word "I" appears 143 times. That doesn't include the words "I'm" or "Me" either. Trent loves himself.

On the start of the track Reptile you hear the looped sample of the Pedulum swing from the classic Vincent Price movie Pit and the Pendulum. Another reason why I love this album.