TANGERINE DREAM - EXIT

The problem with much of Tangerine Dream (apart from their name) is that the vast majority of the band's output from the late 70's to mid 8'0s can and does blur into one. Not to say that it's not massively listenable. I just wouldn't want to play a game of 'Name which album this Tangerine Dream track' is from because I'm guessing that not even Edgar Froese would get a perfect score.

So the source for the review is from one of the 'remastered' definitive CD's released by Virgin. They did a horrible job, flimsy sleeve, no notes and according to a mis-print on the spine this is a live album. That gripe aside the CD works and it sounds a lot better than a vinyl copy might.

What?

Oh come on. Do you really want the slightest crackle or pop to pepper the musics more quiet passages? I have much of the groups catalogue and can't think of an instance where I have preferred hearing it on vinyl. It's a case of the practicality of a situation outweighing the romance that might be involved in listening to this in it's original form.

Anyway, why am I reviewing this? Well somebody in the office just started playing M.I.A and it offended me to the point of having to drown out her racist hate-mongering ramblings with the closest thing to hand. Lucky for me it was this rather than a copy of the first Opeth album.

'Exit' starts off easy enough, the opener, imaginatively also called 'Exit' wrong-foots a little and ends up sounding like a reeled off list of holiday destinations bringing to mind mid-80's travel shows and that orange faced camera slut/reader's grandmother Judith Chalmers. Despite that it's not a bad way to kick off the album, suitably enigmatic and futuristic.

Much of the 'Exit' comes across as either Horror soundtrack or Porno music, maybe both, Horror/Porno. The type of sound that thanks to the like of Steve Moore and friends is well and truly en vogue. Basically it's like seedy new-age music.

Onto the album's other stand out 'Pilots of the Purple Twighlight', why? Because of the awesome name? No, because if you listen to the keyboard in the background this is where James Earl Jones voiced wunderkind Tay Zonday got the loop for 'Chocolate Rain' from.

Despite my best efforts of turning this up to eleven M.I.A still seeps through the more silent parts and my teeth grind in time. Can't she be arrested for something? Inciting violence or just making criminally bad records comprised of half-arsed samples and utter gibberish and mono-tonal lyrics.

'Network 23' comes on and as I am transported back to the 'Blade Runner' inspired audio future/past of 'Exit' all thoughts of a juvenile public school girl glamorizing terrorism fall away in favor of a wide and empty soundscape inhabited by nothing other than electronic pan-pipes and a machine that generates keyboard riffs especially for midnight chase scenes.

Great album. Any better than the three before it or the four or five after it, who can really say for sure? Edgar?

No, thought not.

ZOLA JESUS - STRIDULUM II

I am reviewing this because it's been on my work desk and staring at me for the best part of 5 months. Also because I am not entirely sure that the fawning and in-depth write up I want to give Deftones 'White Pony' would be appreciated by anybody apart from me (Just to say it's in my top 50 albums and if you don't own a copy get over that Nu-metal labeling and treat yourself).

I've had this in and out of the CD player (also on my desk) since around Christmas and it's really grown on me. To be honest I hadn't been sure what to expect. The personnel listing wasn't exactly inspiring: One person (Nika Rosa Danilova) with a keyboard. It could quite easily have fallen flat like a Jamie Lidell gig with a broken sequencer. But it doesn't. Given the lack of other instrumentation it's a surprisingly dense piece. It's brooding, dark, haunting, it's all of those other words that appeared in reviews of the record when it came out in the middle of last year.

The whole album is like an elongated study of This Mortal Coil's version of 'Song to a Siren', and if you ever saw that track used in the trailer for the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre then those visuals add even more credence to that line of thinking. It comes from a very black and pained place, somewhere close to death.

Another thing that undoubtedly every review of this so far will have pointed out is how close her Nika's vocal range is to that of Siouxsie Sioux. At first her delivery was massively grating but like the music that accompanies it, in time you find yourself immersed.

Despite all of this and my repeat listening at work, I am trying to think of circumstances where I might choose this as a soundtrack and I am coming up short. You can't really have sex to it unless that sex involves ropes and potentially knives. I wouldn't want to drive to it, unless my driving culminated with a high-speed and slow motion chase resulting in my untimely and messy crash based death. It's not ironing music unless I am contemplating ironing my hand and or face. You get the picture - It's very emotional, borderline wallowing music or like I said, maybe something you play when you are having knife sex.

So given I don't intend for copious amounts of blood to feature in any love making in which I might partake I will leave this on my desk, safe in the knowledge that it's a suitable accompaniment to putting together elongated and over-styled Power Point presentations.