Musicology
CONCERTS:
The following is an exhaustive list of all the gigs and concerts I’ve been to.
i.) Linkin Park – Minutes To Midnight Tour, 22nd February 2008, Bell Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Opening act: Chiodos, and another unnamed American band
ii.) Metallica – World Magnetic Tour, 3rd November 2009, Scotiabank Place, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Opening act: Volbeat and Lamb of God
iii.) Star Wars – Live In Concert, 24th November 2009, Scotiabank Place, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Opening act: Mother Mother
v.) The Eagles – Summer 2010 Tour, 8th June 2010, Rogers Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Opening act: JD & The Straight Shot and The Dixie Chicks
Opening act: Dream Theater
vii.) Roger Waters – The Wall Live, 17th October 2010, Scotiabank Place, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Opening act: Fang Island
x.) Kitchener – Waterloo Symphony – Distant Worlds: Music From Final Fantasy, 27th November 2010, Sony Centre For The Performing Arts, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
xi.) Coheed & Cambria – Neverender SSTB Tour, 27th April 2011, Kool Haus, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
xii.) U2 – 360° Tour, 29th May 2011, Canad Inns Stadium, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Opening act: The Fray
xiii.) Soundgarden – Summer 2011 Tour, 5th July 2011, Lebreton Flats Park, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Opening act: Coheed & Cambria; Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes
xiv.) Incubus – Summer 2011 Tour, 23rd July, Stadium Negara, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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Author’s Note: I have started writing for Sputnikmusic.com; my profile page (from where you can access all my reviews and ratings) can be found here.
Author’s Note: The following section is a diary of sorts – a compendium of all my thoughts (and materialistic desires) ever since I decided to start taking my fascination with collecting albums seriously. Herein you will find a rather elaborate catalogue of what I’ve bought and tried since mid-July 2010. I find writing all this down gives me a certain sense of clarity to my thoughts, and creates and inherent appreciation of the work of art that is a music album.
04/07/2010:
I bought two albums today – Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut (2004 version) and The Division Bell (1994 original sound version):
The Final Cut
The Division Bell
The Final Cut album – Pink Floyd’s twelfth – comes from the band’s Roger Waters-led era; it particularly stands out in the band’s catalogue because it is oft-referred to as a Roger Waters solo album. The Pink Floyd bassist had dominated proceedings for pretty much all of the album’s production due to his belief that he was the soul of the band, and that the rest of his band-mates simply couldn’t be bothered with trying to keep up. Some say that part of the reason as to why David Gilmour (the band’s legendary guitarist) felt some apathy towards the body of work that was to be The Final Cut was because it was, in essence, leftover rejects from the studio time which produced the band’s world-renown double album The Wall. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t wait to give the album a listen and when I came across it at a bargain price at the Turning Point on Bank and Cooper (after a whole twenty minutes of searching) I immediately snapped it up.
In that same twenty minutes I had also come across Pink Floyd’s last ever studio album, The Division Bell. Although not as keen to pick it up as I was with The Final Cut (I wasn’t even *looking* for it), the price tag of $7.95 persuaded me to part with the final notes in my wallet ahahaha. Much unlike The Final Cut, The Division Bell has received mostly lukewarm reviews from fans and critics alike (although it did win a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance with the song Marooned). The album, the band’s fourteenth, was produced a full twelve years after Roger Waters had quit Pink Floyd, leaving only David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason as principal songwriters (although Richard Wright, the band’s former keyboardist, was sometime later re-hired as a session musician to help with production). In some ways Roger Waters had been right – he was indeed the core of the creative spark that resided within the Floyd, and the band never got close to re-scaling the dizzying heights of psychedelic and experimental songwriting that their previous works The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here had so easily achieved.
The Final Cut and The Division Bell are respectively my sixth and seventh Pink Floyd albums after The Wall, The Dark Side of the Moon, Meddle, Relics, and Ummagumma.
As a final and somewhat-related aside, I kinda wish I had a new iPod – 1.78 GB is simply not enough space to cram my varied musical tastes into lol.
13/07/2011
Although it hasn’t been too long since I last got an (or in this case, two – see above) album, I decided to skip my usual wait and gestation period of one month and picked up David Gilmour’s (the former – I guess – guitarist and vocalist of Pink Floyd) third solo album – On An Island.
On An Island
The album has had gotten many a rave review since it was released in early 2006 – the opening song Castellorizon received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental for example, and the album has also gone platinum in Canada; all while being touted as The Greatest Solo Album by classic rock station Planet Rock. Now that’s all well and good – in a nutshell definitely a good enough set of reasons to pick it up by any reckoning – but the real reason for my buying it is not that. Neither is it because I am a huge David Gilmour fan, with The Division Bell album (again, see above) ranking as one of my favourite of all time.
It’s actually because I’m leaving for Prince Edward Island and the rest of the Canadian Maritimes tomorrow, and I thought I would like a soundtrack for the whole trip so it would be easier to rekindle memories - On An Island seemed like a good place to start. Throughout my lifetime, there have been so many albums that I am able to associate with a certain time and place – a transportive ability of music if you will; examples of this reminiscence do include My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade, which can bring me back to my days at Taylor’s University College in a flash, and Hotel Paper by Michelle Branch is so breathtakingly evocative of Piala Perdana Menteri 2004 Debate Tournament in Perlis for me.
I think one of the band members of the Fleet Foxes said it best when he wrote the following excerpt in the band’s 2008 debut album:
This leads me to something weird about the power that music has, its transportive ability. Any time I hear a song or record that meant a lot to me at a certain moment or I was listening to at a distinct time, I’m instantly taken back to that place in full detail. Whenever I hear “Feel Blows” by the Beach Boys, I’m taken straight too the back of my parents car on the way to my grandparents’ place, fourteen with Surf’s Up in my Walkman and the Cascade Mountains going by in the window. Any song off Radiohead’s Kid A brings back the sounds and atmosphere of the airport near Seattle, from when we were on the way to Colorado for a wedding and Kid A was the only record I wanted to bring…
I can ascribe exact memories to songs by the microphones…and it’s a form of recall that I can actually trust. There’s no visual element to complicate things, no chance of a planted memory that wasn’t supposed to be there and that is reassuring to me.
Wonderful words, from a wonderful band. And how do they ring true.
And it is with those words in mind that I will put on David Gilmour’s Castellorizon tomorrow evening – just as the Moncton-bound train I’ll be on rolls out of vibrant Montreal and towards the quiet Atlantic, where a gentle island awaits.
Maybe I’ll do it just as the sun sets.
26/07/2010
I’m really getting into this collecting-album thing. Today I picked up Roger Waters’ third solo album, Amused To Death. Having watched this album for about a year down at Vertigo Records in downtown Ottawa, I finally decided to take the gamble and plonk down some cold, hard turkey for this concept album by the former Pink Floyd bassist.
Amused To Death was released in 1992 and features eleven songs (for a total run-time of 72 minutes and 45 seconds) which further explore Waters’ disillusionment with Western society – in particular the influence of television and the mass media. The album was inspired by the book “Amusing Ourselves To Death”, which is a critique on television and its related culture that was written by American author and media theorist Neil Postman.
Speaking about the album to the LA Times in September 1992, Roger Waters had this to say:
And I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien creature seeing the death of this planet and coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around and finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why it was that our end came before its time, and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death. Things coalesced slowly as I became more and more interested or obsessed, pick your word, with the inordinately powerful and all-encompassing effect that television seems to have on the human race… My general view is that television when it becomes commercialized and profit-based tends to trivialize and dehumanize our lives.
So I became interested in this idea of television as a two-edged sword, that it can be a great medium for spreading information and understanding between peoples, but when it’s a tool of our slavish adherence to the incumbent philosophy that the free market is the god that we should all bow down to, it’s a very dangerous medium.
Because it’s so powerful…I think the motivation is at the root of its current evil, i.e. it’s because they have to compete in an open marketplace that their standards get reduced so the programming tends to end up as the cheapest possible salable item.. I don’t believe that wanting to beat the opposition makes for good programming, but it’s an ideology that is still rigidly adhered to.
Pretty interesting concept isn’t it? Not the most brightening and optimistic of albums, but I really enjoyed how Waters made me think and ruminate deeply about the disgusting reality and absolute senselessness of war that I wouldn’t say no to another auditory and emotional lesson from the master himself.
30/07/2010
The soundtrack for the film More is Pink Floyd’s first ever full-length soundtrack, and was released on 27 July 1969. The movie More itself (also released in 1969) was directed by Barbet Schroeder and details the story of a German student, Stefan, who has just finished his studies and is celebrating by deciding to have an adventure – getting out of his conservative skin and wanting to burn his bridges in the process. He hitch-hikes to Paris, where he meets a free-spirited American girl, Estelle, and follows her to Ibiza in Spain. Along the way he discovers that she has some form of relationship with a man named Dr. Wolf, and also a history of substance abuse. It is within this premise that a tangled web of jealousy ensues, with both characters eventually succumbing to the psychedelic escape afforded them by the dangerous intoxicants.
I admit that the movie (which I have watched) had me frustrated most of the time, due to its extremely slow pace, and annoying (to me, at least) cast of characters – particularly Estelle and Stefan. That said, one thing about the movie that did leave a lasting impression on me was the music – scored by none other than the Floyd themselves. Although not exactly on the top of my “must haves” list, More was the only (remastered) Floyd album present at the Turning Point today (the 30th of July 2010). Thus, even though I had come in the hopes of picking up A Momentary Lapse of Reason, I returned home with a copy of More instead.
The mountains of British Columbia will be alive with tunes like Green Is The Colour and Ibiza Bar this August.
03/08/2010
I had actually hoped to get the Floyd’s Wish You Were Here for my personal soundtrack up in the Cariboo; when that didn’t work out, I decided to look for Animals…when that didn’t work out either I ended up with this instead: A Momentary Lapse of Reason - the band’s penultimate album and one of their most poorly-rated (incidentally, it is also the album I was looking for last time I wrote here). Reason spawned three singles: Learning To Fly, On The Turning Away (an instant favourite to mine ears btw, and IMHO one of David Gilmour’s best lyrical efforts), and One Slip - none of which were very big hits. But I bought the album anyway. Brand-new too (but with a $5 iRewards discount coupon =p).
What can I say haha; I’m a completist, and a bad Pink Floyd album is still a Pink Floyd album nevertheless.
Furthermore, this album comes from the David Gilmour-led era in the band’s history, and the fact that I have also become a huge fan of the man’s amazing slide guitar play, and breathtaking solos was yet another reason (as if I needed any more) to take the plunge. Permit me to tweedle a bit on how much I love David Gilmour’s work here – the man is a phenomenal guitar player, and I even learned how to cope with his decidedly second-rate lyrics in the process of understanding and appreciating his compositions =)
So here we go yet again – a flight of fancy on a windswept field!!
28/08/2010
So deprived of music connoisseur-ing, I went crazy on my first full day back in Ottawa, visiting all three of my favourite record stores: The Turning Point, Vertigo Records, and HMV Rideau. I picked up a single record at each, and – having ripped them all onto my computer – am very much looking forward to getting my musical tastes satiated.
This I picked up at The Turning Point (which was unfortunate because I saw the exact same album for three dollars less later on at Vertigo Records); Is There Anybody Out There – The Wall Live 1980 – 1981 is (rather obviously) a 30-year old recording of a series of live performances of Pink Floyd’s epic two-disc effort The Wall at Earls Court in London. Only released in 2000, Is There Anybody Out There captures Pink Floyd at the peak of their popularity, and touring in support of the album which is incidentally one of the top five best selling albums of all time in the U.S (it sits at 4th highest to be exact, with 23x platinum sales).
I’ll be honest here: The Wall – not one of my favourite Pink Floyd albums. It sounds very ordinary and although it does have its moments I think I enjoyed Meddle more than I did it, and even the much-lambasted The Division Bell has more listens than it on my iTunes. That said, what tempted me this time around was the fact that the album was very well-packaged (lol), the presence of several non-album tracks in the set-list, and fact that I’ll be seeing this very album live in less than two months on what may very well be the final official full tour of any Pink Floyd music in any incarnation.
I have left this album for last (I actually have already given the other two records that I bought today a full spin) but I am still very much looking forward to it. It’ll definitely help psych me up for my one-and-only Pink Floyd experience this October, and I want to revel in every moment =)
I would also like to note here that the very finding of a mint-condition album at less than half price itself was already quite monumental and virtually worth the price of admission. Lol.
Oh man I love The Turning Point =)
Next up is yet another Pink Floyd-related album (so far all of them here have been eh?), and this time it’s 1977′s Animals, the album that preceded The Wall. As I mentioned earlier, I have given this album a spin, and have already gotten an initial impression – that it is probably going to end up as one of my favourite Floyd albums of all time. Seriously.
Animals is unusual in that I got it for only 8.99 it has only five songs, with their lengths skewed completely off balance – Pigs On The Wing Part 1 is a minute and 25 seconds long, and Pigs On The Wing Part 2 only a second longer. The songs that they book-end however – Dogs, Pigs (Three Different Ones), and Sheep (I swear that is actually the name of all the songs on the album LOL – no wonder it’s called Animals XD) are 17.08, 11.28, and 10.20 respectively. Pretty interesting song-writing, if you ask me.
The album deals mainly with delivering a scathing critique of the social-political conditions of 1970s Britain, and is loosely based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm – but with a twist in that it functions mainly as a thinly-veiled attack on capitalism – taking up the mantle where Wish You Were Here (the album just before Animals) left off. As was custom, the task to create the album’s cover design was given to Hipgnosis, designer of the band’s previous album covers, who offered three ideas, one of which was “a small child entering his parents’ bedroom to find them having sex—”‘opulating, like animals!’”
Although that would have been interesting, the album cover’s concept was ultimately – and unusually – provided for by Roger Waters, who lived near the Battersea Power Station near Clapham Common at the time, and chose to float a 30 foot pig-shaped balloon (known as Algie) over it, the resulting image of which later ended up as the album cover.
But essentially what matters for any album is what lies behind the cover, and in this case I can assure you that it’s very good -
Big man, pig man, ha ha, charade, you are!!
(Finally – something non-Pink Floyd-related!!)
One of the hardest things about being on Castle Creek for the whole of the month of August was missing out on the official release day for Iron Maiden’s 15th studio effort, The Final Frontier – meaning that I would not be able to join in the excitement (and the scrum) at HMV Rideau on the morning of the 16th of August…as people all around the world rose up and followed Bruce Dickinson’s orders to buy his band’s CD.
On the plus side though, I hadn’t been completely certain (read: 120% sure) that I wanted to embark on yet another band – with so much of Pink Floyd material yet to be consumed; however the two week extended waiting period gave me the benefit of about 10 different reviews from numerous critics and guitar/metal mags, and they had one thing to say in common – that this has been the best Iron Maiden album in a while (not that the previous few have been even close to bad anyway). And I was sold.
I picked up the Deluxe Mission Edition of The Final Frontier at HMV Rideau today, and have been very satisfied by what I’ve heard (and had in the package) so far (the wallpapers and the video have been great). Hopefully there’ll be a time for a full review on my blog at some point, as I think such a big 2010 release deserves it.
But for now,
UP THE IRONS!!!
And do check out the review here.
29/08/2010
Released half a decade before Amused To Death (see above), Radio K.A.O.S. is Roger Waters’ second solo album; the work is yet another concept album from the former Pink Floyd bassist, and is based around the story of a 23 year old Welsh disabled man named Billy, who can hear radio waves through his head. Throughout the album’s eight songs, the plot slowly thickens as Billy grows to harness his innate mental power and eventually ends up making contact with Jim – a DJ at a station called Radio K.A.O.S., and they become radio friends. However, as this is unfolding all around them the world collapses as Reagan and Thatcher bomb Libya, and telecommunication is used to trivialize important issues and propagate the massive soap opera that is the affairs of the state; a form of political “entertainment”, if you will.
Eventually Billy grows to develop his expertise at manipulating the waves to the point that he can control the most powerful computers in the world. With the world’s nuclear arsenal at his fingertips, he simulates nuclear attack everywhere, but denies the military’s capability to hit back – setting the stage for a showdown of extreme perceptions.
I had read about this album for quite a while now, tracking it down on Wikipedia and Amazon and reading numerous reviews about it; however actually finding a physical copy was an entirely different matter – no remastered copies exist (there is only the original 1987 version kicking around) and I honestly never expected to come across the album without first making a concerted search for it.
So imagine my surprise when I saw a rather worn copy sitting quietly on a CD rack down at Vertigo Records in downtown Ottawa. I had been casually browsing through the store’s rather extensive used Pink Floyd collection when I stumbled across an unusual-looking CD with a lime-green cover that was lurid enough in tone to stop a train dead in its tracks. So I picked up the CD to examine it, and found myself staring at Roger Waters’ second solo album, randomly sitting in a used record store along with a stack of other Pink Floyd paraphernalia, looking all of its 23 years in a scratched and slightly smudged CD case.
Ordinarily I tend to skip albums that are in a significantly less-than-mint state, preferring instead to fork out the extra five dollars or so for a pristine, fresh and clean copy elsewhere. I collect albums, and I usually (and rather obviously) prefer fresh, good-looking copies, for the very fact that they make a musical collection all that more dignified.
But this was Radio K.A.O.S.…an album just about next to impossible to locate a physical copy of without going online and ordering it. And truth be told, I actually felt that the scratches and worn CD booklet gave the record character.
So I bought it. For the equally derelict and rather appropriate price of CAD 6.99.
04/09/2010
I am actually quite bemused with myself at the moment. Now, today I had gone out to the HMV on Sparks Street to take advantage of the “2 for $30″ deal that was running around for the Pink Floyd back-catalogue. I had already made up my mind that one of the two albums would be either 1975′s Wish You Were Here (see below) or the much earlier A Saucerful of Secrets (it was impossible to get both at once because the HMVs in downtown Ottawa only had one or the other); the choice of album for the other one was a bit up in the air – aside from the aforementioned two, The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, Obscured By Clouds and Atom Heart Mother were the only Floyd albums that I did not own. Since Piper did not fall under the deal, it was instantly eliminated and I was left with Clouds and Atom Heart. Now, between these two, the former is the soundtrack for La Vallee – a French film by Barbet Schroeder, which I have not watched yet (I prefer to watch my movies first before getting their respective OSTs you see) – which made Atom Heart the remaining option.
However, Atom Heart Mother is a Pink Floyd album that has had…let’s say “less-than-savoury” reviews from critics and even the band members themselves. It has been strictly classified as “for completists only” or “please only buy used”; with these warnings in mind I wasn’t too keen on plonking down CAD 15 for a brand-spanking new copy – even if it was remastered. However, the search for a used remastered copy of Atom Heart Mother has been going on for quite a while now and for the life of me I could not find any used copies for the past four months.
Or so I thought.
In truth, I had actually come across a few without knowing it. In my searches, I had come across several copies of Atom Heart Mother at used CD stores; however, I thought they were of the original sound version because the back of the CD inlay listed the album’s copyright as the “1970 original sound version”. I immediately took this to mean that this was the 1970 version I was looking at, and therefore not the one I was looking for.
Wrong, and wrong again. Had I examined the penultimate page of the CD inlay, I would have discovered a second copyright listing – this time in 1992, for the remastered edition of the songs. Unfortunately I didn’t do that with the used copy, and only did it with the one I bought today. Imagine my surprise and intense chagrin when I discovered that my album bore the same 1970 copyright; this chagrin abated somewhat when I quickly discovered that my album, no worries, was indeed remastered…the chagrin gradually transformed into a slight tinge of agony when I realized how I had been fooled into thinking I had not found remastered copies of Atom Heart Mother in used CD stores.
I can only hope that this five-track album somehow conjures up strong and positive likings in me. But I am not terribly optimistic.
Agony aside, Wish You Were Here was released in 1975; like Atom Heart Mother this album contains five tracks. It spawned one single – the moderately successful Have A Cigar. Perhaps most notable for its massive, sprawling two-part ode (Shine On You Crazy Diamond – Parts I – IX) to the four-piece’s desultory former band mate, Syd Barrett, the album is also a thinly-veiled attack on the materialism and interfering policy of the modern music industry – described by Roger Waters in the album as a betrayal of greed and success.
The album’s cover image was inspired by the ideas projected by the songs Welcome To The Machine and Have A Cigar - that of that people tending to conceal their true feelings, for fear of “getting burned”. Thus it was that long-time Pink Floyd album sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson placed on the cover two businessmen were pictured shaking hands, one man on fire. Further deepening the nuance was the fact that “getting burned” is also a common phrase in the music industry, used often by artists denied their royalty payments.
Two of the band’s lineup from that era have gone on record to say that Wish You Were Here is their favourite Pink Floyd album of all time – David Gilmour, speaking in 1992, said that “I for one would have to say that it is my favourite album, the Wish You Were Here album. The end result of all that, whatever it was, definitely has left me an album I can live with very very happily. I like it very much.”. The band’s keyboardist, the late Richard Wright, echoed this sentiment: “It’s an album I can listen to for pleasure, and there aren’t many Floyd albums that I can.”
And that says a lot in itself I guess.
11/09/2010
September 11th 2010 (ominous date, I know) was an important day for me because, for the first time ever, I got a review published on a music-critics’ website (Sputnik Music). As of September 12th, the review (of Iron Maiden’s The Final Frontier - see above) has gotten 270 views, four comments, and four approvals (out of four) from the Sputnik Music community. It does make me happy, but to be completely honest the numbers are quite low compared to other reviews published on the same day. But still, I feel that it is a very important step in my overall music indoctrination and hopefully a sign of bigger projects and dreams to come =) As always, I pledge to keep fine-tuning my writing, and constantly be on the look-out for more opportunities that might come knocking.
In any case, I was also starting to feel that my musical database needs more variation – particularly as the stuff I’ve been listening to lately is at least 35 years old (i.e Pink Floyd) and is characterized by a complete dearth of radio-friendly material. It was for those reasons that I finally settled on the Kings of Leon as my next musical endeavour, and picked up Only By The Night and Because of the Times (see below) on a “2 for $20″ deal at the HMV in the Rideau Centre. The Kings of Leon are an American rock band that consist of three siblings (Caleb, Nathan, and Jared Followill) along with their cousin (Matthew Followill); oftentimes their music has been classified as alternative southern garage rock, although some would argue that their current efforts have a bit more of a “rock and roll” sonic edge and isn’t really “southern” any more – the jury’s still out on that one (as is the case for just about every band these days).
Only By The Night is the Kings’ fourth album and was released in 2008; it was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 51st Grammy Awards (it ultimately did not win). Incidentally, the singles Sex On Fire and Use Somebody both picked up the Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals (on separate years, obviously), with the latter also garnering the Record of the Year accolade.
My only concern regarding my investment at this point is on the issue of how I will respond to what I probably subconsciously perceive as pop and – if I may – “lowbrow” music (by this I mean endless tirades about parties, getting drunk, and the general attractiveness of the female body). There’s no denying that the Kings are a very commercial band, and I suspect their musical experimentation and daring will suffer as a result – I cannot stand bands that stagnate.
So we’ll see =)
Also helping me decide on the Kings of Leon will be the band’s third album, Because of the Times. It may have won no Grammies, but this album spawned three hit singles – On Call, Fans, and Charmer - and was ranked by NME as the 6th best album of the year, and the Rolling Stones’ 31st best album of 2007. This album is notable for showing a clear and clean-cut progression in the band’s trademark sound, and was perhaps the primary instigator for the sense that the band’s trademark “southern-fried” swagger was gone.
And that sounds promising.
So let’s get under the hood and see what these guys can do!!
14/09/2010
So that Kings of Leon experiment turned out to be an epic disaster – a truly glorious way of wasting 20 bucks. I’ll be more careful in my CD purchases next time. Also, I should really be a bit less of a spendthrift when it comes to music. I mean, yeah it’s true that I would like to be a professional music reviewer someday – yet it doesn’t mean that I should throw away all my parents’ turkey on it right?
But where am I going with this lol. Today, September the 14th, was perhaps the only time this year that I was truly excited for the release of a new album (and actually went out to get it on release day). Linkin Park’s A Thousand Suns is the band’s first studio album in over three years (the disastrously misguided Minutes To Midnight) and sneak previews have yielded a techno-rock album under wraps that’s as promising as hell. Borrowing heavily from the Bhagavad Gita, A Thousand Suns effectively picks up where Minutes To Midnight left off and sees Linkin Park ditch their alt-rock sound to embrace a rather avant-garde techno-crunk-metal. Is it any good though? Well, I’ll be damned if I reveal too much here, but first single The Catalyst is easily the best new material that Linkin Park have come up with in the past four years, if not more; second single Waiting For The End is also incredibly solid.
More importantly (for me, at least), A Thousand Suns is intended to be the next album that I review on Sputnikmusic.com (I will be sure to post the link here, like I did with Maiden’s The Final Frontier). Already I have made liner notes and done some preliminary research that I hope will make my writing tighter and give it a gritty edge – ideally going on to help form a coherent and critically-sound review. I am actually looking forward to it…it’s like discovering a passion one never knew one had, really.
Obscured By Clouds is Pink Floyd’s seventh studio album (after Meddle and just before Dark Side of the Moon) and is not a formal album – in the sense that it was conceived primarily as the soundtrack to the French movie La Vallée, which was in turn directed by Barbet Schroeder (see Soundtrack for the film More above) and released in 1972.
My opinions on the movie aside (I simply cannot watch Barbet Schroeder films), Obscured By Clouds is one of the more…ahem, obscure albums in the Pink Floyd back catalogue, and tends to be passed over in favour of other more prominent works by the band – or even for More instead. It is this anomalous and shrouded character that intrigues me all the more, and caused it to rocket high up on my “to-buy” list, where it has stayed for quite a while. So when the “2 for $30″ deal came up at HMV, it was a bit of a no-brainer to be honest =)
The album spawned a lone single – Free Four, a rock and roll theme that deals with the death of bassist Roger Waters’ father and the evils of the recording industry, among other things, which in retrospect intriguingly foreshadows the themes that Waters and the band would tackle on other albums like The Wall and Wish You Were Here.
The final album I got today (yeah lol, I really was spending >.<) was Pink Floyd’s sophomore effort, A Saucerful of Secrets. Unique in that it is the only Pink Floyd album to feature all five of the band’s members, A Saucerful of Secrets was also the last official Floyd recording to feature the talented but extremely eccentric guitarist Syd Barrett. It was released in 1968 (wow it’s over 42 years old o.O) and contains seven songs, of which only one (Remember A Day) I have heard the original studio recording of (I have also experienced the live versions of A Saucerful of Secrets and Set The Controls For The Heart of the Sun, courtesy of the Ummagumma live disc which I own).
Since it comes from the more “raw” and psychedelic eras of Pink Floyd, this record should contrast nicely with the material that I’m more familiar with i.e the more polished band performances of the 70s and 80s. At some point I’m also hoping to put up my own take on a Pink Floyd album at Sputnikmusic.com, and I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if either one of Obscured By Clouds or A Saucerful of Secrets made the cut.
Heading off to bed now; night folks! =)
01/10/2010
After successfully my album-buying temptations in for a full two weeks and a half, I finally caved in at the beginning of October and spent $20 at HMV Rideau Centre on Arcade Fire’s first two albums – Funeral and Neon Bible.
Now, the Arcade Fire are a band that I have been meaning to try out for a very long time. In fact, I had been aware of the band even before I came to Canada (for the uninitiated, the seven-piece are actually Canadian - from Montreal, to be precise), mainly due to a gushing half-page review on their sophomore effort (Neon Bible) by the New Straits Times, one of the larger English newspapers back in Malaysia; if I’m not mistaken the album actually got a full five stars out of five in that review, but I digress.
After I came to Canada, I discovered that these guys had actually quite a large local and international fan-base. Several opportunities to actually see them live in concert turned up, but since I had never actually given their music a go, I had no inkling whether their style would be to my liking and subsequently ended up letting each chance pass me by. however, with the band’s release of their third album (the as-yet-unpurchased The Suburbs), I decided the time had come to try out this indie band and see what the fuss was all about.
Funeral (pictured above), was released in September 2004 and was a huge critical success – it was lauded as the 4th best album of the decade by Sputnikmusic, Pitchfork Media’s best album of 2004, and Rate Your Music’s 2nd best album of the 2000s.
The band’s 2007 follow-up – Neon Bible (which is pictured just here) – was equally as successful; it ended up as the Album of the Year on both The Onion and Q, and placed as 2nd best album of 2007 with Blender Magazine.
Suffice it to say that with all this hype, I’m more than excited about actually being able to try out the Arcade Fire for the first time – after a wait period of just under four years.
02/10/2010
That said, the aforementioned wait period to try out Arcade Fire may turn out to be extended just a little bit more – for although I did decide to try out Funeral and Neon Bible (and take advantage of the epic 2 for $20 deal), I also ended up with the following:
Coheed & Cambria’s 2005 release of Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star, Volume I: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness -
Along with their debut album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade.
If ever there’s a time where I can be accused of being greedy and of failing to know where my limits (possibly) lie, this would be it. That said, Coheed & Cambria have been one of the most interesting bands that I’ve read about in quite a while – mainly because of the fact that all of their five studio releases have been based around the (very long) concept of telling a science fiction saga entitled The Amory Wars.
When I first learned of the existence of this background story, I was like WHOA and thought for the briefest of moments that it was all a very elaborate Wikipedia hoax; no way a band dedicates its entire career to telling a single story – and therefore end up limiting their songwriting scope to only creating numbers that would be able to further the plot of The Amory Wars as a whole. But the arbiter of truth that is Wikipedia had yielded fact once more: Coheed & Cambria’s studio releases have indeed revolved around a slowly unfolding science fiction tale; in fact, the band’s name comes from the name of two of the series’ main characters.
Aside from expanding the story through albums and other studio releases, Coheed & Cambria have also elaborated on the Amory Wars concept with the release of several graphic novels, comics, and even paperback books. All told, this has made for a very interesting eight year career which uses progressive rock and pop punk like never before.
And depending on how well I respond to the music, I might actually go down to London during my fall reading break and catch Coheed & Cambria live on their currently ongoing Year of the Black Rainbow Tour…
06/05/2010
I got a package in the mail today – a full month after I had ordered it online.
Without going into the full details of chapters.indigo.ca’s incompetence, the package which I had received was – as you can see above – a remastered version of David Gilmour’s 1984 release, About Face. Released just after The Final Cut (see above for a brief description of the aforementioned Pink Floyd album), About Face was Gilmour’s attempt at distancing himself from the Floyd and to create a sound + atmosphere that was uniquely his own.
Whether he ultimately succeeded or not as a solo artist is a point of debate amongst many Floyd fans up to this day; his third solo release (On An Island – again, see above) was in my opinion, a rather weak release bogged down by some extremely uninspired songwriting. That said, About Face was written in what was arguably Gilmour’s prime, and features some heavy involved by quite a few huge names in the music industry: among them are composer Michael Kamen, Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord, and also Pete Townshend (of The Who fame). All told, this makes About Face a very enticing prospect, and one I quickly jumped at when given the chance.
I still have quite a backlog of albums to get around to listening (particularly as I’ve started writing for uOttawa’s student newspaper The Fulcrum as well), so it’ll probably be a while before About Face is even mentioned in any more capacity here – but rest assured, it will come eventually!!
09/10/2010
Perhaps some of you have already noticed the increasingly strong predilection that I’m starting to have with American prog rock/punk rock band Coheed & Cambria. Well, today I decided to further expand my collection of their music – a decision mostly precipitated by the fact that their 2005 release of Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness was one of the best prog rock albums that I have ever heard, period (it definitely wins over Iron Maiden’s The Final Frontier, which I am incidentally starting to feel is ridiculously over-rated).
In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 is the band’s sophomore release (it hit stores in October of 2003) and – like its many successors – continues the story of The Amory Wars, a sci-fi tale composed by the mind of Claudio Sanchez (the band’s vocalist). I haven’t listened to it all that much yet, with lead single A Favor House Atlantic being the only song off the album which I am truly familiar with.
But check back with me by the end of the week 
Cheers folks!
13/09/2010
Today was the day that I finally received my copy of Coheed & Cambria’s Year of the Black Rainbow that I had ordered online two weeks earlier on Amazon.com. As things stand, it is probably the epic-est CD I own, and it looks exactly like the version above.
Yuppers folks – I got the Limited Deluxe Edition. I simply couldn’t resist. And after having received it I have to say it’s bloody gorgeous.
Collector-fetishes aside, Year of the Black Rainbow is Coheed & Cambria’s fifth and most recent studio album. It was released on April 13th this year and contains twelve tracks (unless you purchase the Deluxe Edition – in which case you actually get fourteen tracks…but I digress), principle among which are first single Here We Are Juggernaut and video-based release World of Lines. As is the case with any other Coheed & Cambria release, this album also forms part of the story of The Amory Wars; but where previous releases had a comic book accompaniment, this latest studio production is designed to instead work in tandem with a full-length novel, co-authored by lead singer Claudio Sanchez himself.
Suffice it to say I can’t wait to get started on either one (I’ve held myself back for the past few days so I can better concentrate on preparing for Roger Waters’ The Wall Live Tour this Sunday the 17th of October LOL).
Oh music albums, how I love you.
23/10/2010
In a rare instance where I’ve actually thoroughly listened to the album prior to posting it here (I blame my uber-hectic schoolwork schedule) for that, I will commence by announcing that Coheed & Cambria’s fourth album – Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume 2: No World For Tomorrow – is definitely not one of their best albums. It’s not bad by any means – in fact some songs like the title track, The End Complete II: Radio Bye Bye, and Running Free are great rocking numbers – it’s just that compared to the rest of their repertoire, it does come off as a bit uninspired and non-special. Whereas Second Stage Turbine Blade was differentiated by its raw sound and catchy arrangements, and In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 by its all-round mixture of epic pieces and short + snappy punk numbers, No World For Tomorrow sees Coheed & Cambria attempt to create a straight-up rock album that is infused with moments of fancy guitar playing and some glam-rock elements.
It works to some extent, but is nowhere near their best. Which is a shame, considering that I actually walked over five kilometers last weekend simply to pick up a deluxe edition of this album (the only copy of which could be found in the depths of Hull in Quebec). Oh well.
With this purchase, I’ve officially completed exploring the main body of Coheed & Cambria’s studio releases – and just in time too, for I’m seeing them live in two days! Nothing they play now will surprise me! Haha!
AND, there’s a meet & great at HMV Masonville just prior too! SOOOO very excited =D =D =D
26/10/2010
The Prize Fighter Inferno is the solo project of Claudio Sanchez, the lead singer and lead/rhythm guitarist for the band Coheed & Cambria – the project’s first release is called My Brother’s Blood Machine, and was released on October 31st, 2006. The sound of the project is a little bit of a departure from the traditional Coheed & Cambria style to say the least, as it is mainly rooted in the genre of acoustic/electronica – as opposed to straight up hard rock.
I picked up this album at the HMV Superstore down in Toronto, just off Dundas Square; the place is a haven for music lovers, and I must visit it again someday – but I digress. I had actually picked up the album because I would be seeing Coheed & Cambria live in London, ON the next day – and I was hoping that I could get Claudio Sanchez to sign my copy…
And I was successful…pictures to come =)
But in that same day I also managed to take advantage of the 2 for $30 deal that was affixed to My Brother’s Blood Machine, and picked up David Gilmour’s self-titled solo album – his first release outside of Pink Floyd.
Like The Prize Fighter Inferno solo release – and Gilmour’s second album About Face, plus the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and Funeral - I haven’t got around to listening to this yet, but rest assured that a full-length review will be forthcoming for this album for sure! Promise!!
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ANNUAL MUSIC REVIEWS:
i.) 2007 Review
ii.) 2008 Review
iii.) 2009 Review
* The 2006 Review is lost to the gods, due to my having hosted it on my first ever blog…which was on Friendster.
*waiting*
TA-DAA!!! DONE!!!