Reviews by markjazz

I don't own much Cabaret Voltaire and I honestly don't like the band a whole lot and this album is a good reason why. It's not that I hate it it's just to odd and spans a couple genre's I don't care for. I don't like the lyrics for the most part either and if I had my pick of 80's industrial bands this group would not be in the Top 10.

The first track, L21ST is kinda like a mix between 80's Herbie Hancock meets Art of Noise. Very odd and funky and not my bag at all. I Want You is a fairly good track and very dancable. It sounds so aged though, but so does most of this music at its time. I like this track though and the keys in the course are good too. Hells Home just sounds like a mess and almost sounds like it was played live. Kickback, again, has that Art of Noise feel to it mixed with some funky bass pads. I don't mind this song too much but it suffers from the fact that it's to long and the lyrics repeat themselves often. The Arm of the Lord is just pointless filler.

Onto side B with Warm. This kicks off the side very well and this is a pretty good track. It's fast and dancable. Almost very club sounding for 1985. Good use of sexual moan samples too! Golden Hales goes back to that funky sound with it's slap bass guitar. It's a slower moving track and I like this one too. I has a good flow and good use of samples and it's not to complicated. Motion Rotation nearly made me laugh the first time I heard it with it's fucked up vocal sample splicing at the start. This track is pretty good too and is probably my favourite from this LP. Heavy beat and not too funky. Whip Blow I don't like at all. I picks up near the end but for the most part it's slow and lifeless sounding. The final track, The Web, bring back the funky sound again and I don't like it much. It has it's moments but the keys are very jazzy sounding and it doesn't work for in this genre.

Overall this isn't a bad LP, but it sure ain't great either, and I rate it higher than I normally would simply because of the time it was made. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone as a first CV album and I would infact tell them to start a few years back.

This is the album that's going to get me into jazz-funk. I own a lot of jazz-fusion records but not much jazz-funk. This one is filled with pure soul and I absoutly love it. I've played the B-side about 4 times in a row one day, which my two favorite tracks are on, Witch Hunt and Woman of the World. The music in this record just fills you with joy and this is the type of jazz that you just sit back, close your eyes and let the music take you away. I'm now on the hunt for more Donald Byrd albums and ones like it. Beautiful!

This is a good LP but it's not the best work I've heard from Donald Byrd. The flute and tumpet are the only really things that stand out but everything else is pretty average, as far as funk-jazz goes. There's no real favourite track I have on here or any least favourite. I can play them all without needing to skip any, so that's good. I personally love the album Street Lady so I'm not sure what it is about this one that I don't like as much, maybe it's too slow for me. The vocals on some of the tracks are nice to hear but I prefer instrumental funk. Overall it is a great album to own, just not one of the best out there.

I don't really no what the cover has to do with the album itself because it's a picture from 1897 and if you don't know the artist it might be misleading. You'd think the music contains some old blues-jazz before Donald Byrd was even a thought.

Credits:
Bass - Chuck Rainey (tracks: A2, A3, B2 to B4) , Wilton Felder (tracks: A1, B1)
Flute, Saxophone - Roger Glenn
Guitar - David T. Walker (tracks: A2, A3, B2 to B4) , Dean Parks (tracks: A1, B1)
Percussion - Bobbye Hall (tracks: A1, B1) , Stephanie Spruill (tracks: A2, A3, B2 to B4)
Piano [Electric], Synthesizer, Vocals - Freddie Perren
Piano, Piano [Electric] - Joe Sample
Trumpet, Vocals - Fonce Mizell
Vocals - Larry Mizell

This is an all-star cast for sure on this album but, to me, it's pretty much just your standard jazz. There's only a couple of tracks that got my brain moving and it's the type of jazz you'd hear at a club on any given weekday. I think the music is tight and I love that but it's a fairly boring release from this crew.

Not my favourite from Mr. Braxton but it's some pretty far out there stuff for the early 70's. While everyone else was getting into Fusion Jazz Anthony was just doing his own thing and writting some of the most complex music to play on a saxophone. It's impossible for me to have a favourite track on here and it's pretty damn hard for me to review something like this but overall I have to be in a certain mood to listen to something like this. I do like the slower moving ones on here best though, like NR-12-C (33 M), for example. I like free jazz but I much prefer it as a group and not just solo works, which is what Anthony has pretty much done during most of his career.

This album surprised me when I first borrowed it from the library. I often do that and I ended up loving it so much I had to buy it. It took me a while to find it and I was actually looking for the CD but then my eyes popped wide open as I saw this album on vinyl sitting right in front of me at my favorite record store. An instant purchase.

As far as the album goes it's a classic, in my eyes. The title track is one of the most beautiful reworks of a non-jazz track I've ever heard and the fact that it's over 10 minutes makes it even more remarkable. The 2nd and 3rd track follow as one piece and are a bit more avant-guard that the first track. Brilliant tracks as well. Movements that have a little bit of an ambient feel to it as well.

The B-side also contains some good tracks. There's another change up in style with the track, Coming Back, Jamacia, which is, well, Jamaican jazz. It's my least favourite on here but I still like it because it's a good variety change. Nonet is another awesome avant-guard style piece that's a bit better than Lament as well. Such a perfect album and another bonus I got from this was that it came with a poster of the whole line up that is now hanging on my wall. This is jazz and it's a great example of why I love the music...it's art!

I seem to like this group better when they're working with either Merzbow or Sunn O))) and it's probably because I'm not a hugh fan of Psychedelic Rock to begin with. I don't mind this album but it doesn't blow my mind or anything. I personally don't like the vocals much and would prefer just straight instrumentals.

Like their albums I own from this group I much prefer their slower tracks. The fast sounding punk-rock ones aren't my style at all and I tend to skip them. My favourite tracks on here are My Neighbor Satan, which starts off mellow and then gets fuzzed out and crazy, and You Were Holding an Umbrella. This track has such a 60's feel to it and I wish the whole album was more like it.

Overall it's an ok album that I play when I feel like I'm in the mood for some rock, which doesn't happen often. After owning a couple of this groups releases I see no reason in me wanting to buy anymore from this crew. I know thier sound pretty well and it's not 100% my style.

"They say they love mah ass in
Seven Jeans
True religion
I say no
But they keep givin
So I keep on takin"

So let me get this right. Men love her humpy ass in her jeans and it's now a new religion with people. She says no but if you keep at it you can fuck her lumpy humpy ass. You know, everytime I think I've heard the worst in music I get shown something even worse. This pile of junk-crunk takes the cake!

Damn this is an awesome album and it took me 16 years to finally hear the whole thing. I use to have a compliation that had Who Do You Love? on it and I love that track so why didn't I seek out this band then?! Anyway, this is such a great mix of industrial, industrial-metal, and EBM. I think I even hear influences of Technotronic on here at times! I love the vocals and the lyrics and I even enjoyed this album more than the "classic" Error of Judgement one.

Boy do I miss the early days of Autechre. It seems that with each passing album I'm liking them less and less and with this latest on it's pretty forgettable. More than half the tracks develop into nothing and are just fillers, which is rare to say for AE, and even the decent tracks aren't even that good when you put it next to say material from EP7 or LP5. I will say that rale is one of the best AE tracks I've heard and would make my Top 10 list but apart from that this is their worst out put by far, and as far as the other version tracks go, I'd say the same thing about them too. It just sounds like AE got a new toy and let it do all the work for this one.