more music miscellany

[reverancepavane]

Musical aquisitions for this month include: Real World's Big Blue Ball, which is a compilation of various songs recorded at the Real World studios over the last decade or so. I believe I've already mentioned how much I enjoyed the intricate complexity of Joji Hirota and Sinead O'Connor's Everything Comes From You. John Krane's Doris, Buzz & Friends, which incidentally gets the award for the longest subtitle for any individual song. For example we have Sarah (With A Hidden Track About Alaska That You Can Find At Home) and Cal Ripken, Or Chan Marshall's Neck Vein (No Disrespect Intended To Either). There wasn't even room to list the full title to The True Story of the Japanese Bat Bomb (By The Scientist Who Invented The Bomb, in the song's listing. Nicely mellow and relaxed. Hmmmm. I must be getting old. Love Is Colder Than Death's Eclipse continues my exploration of this Swedish band's work. I quite enjoyed my previous acquisition of Spellbound, and it does look like I will have to acquire their complete collection eventually, even though I'll probably have to order in the early and later stuff specially, so it may take a while. Speaking of ordering stuff in, I must pick up some of Helium Vola's stuff. Nice German operatic darkwave with agreat female singer. Apparently the keyboardist was involved in early QNTAL works. Why don't local record stores stock more German and Swedish darkwave I ask you? [<grin>] A slight shift into more avant-garde electronica with Allo Die & Martina Galvagni's Eluseun Lullaby. Very ... ambient, but not quite at the level of Brian Eno's works. Whether this is good or bad is up to the listener. [I am beginning to think that my main reason for purchasing it was the hour of music I got for less than a dollar. <grin> Which is not to say I don't like it.] Then it was time for some more arabic music from Californian group Niyaz and their (first) self-titled album. I quite enjoyed their latest album Nine Heavens although I don't think I have a great desire to completely collect their work. Speaking of self-titled albums, we have the Atlantean [what do you call someone from Atlanta Georgia (the state, not the country)?] The Changelings. I'll have to listen more closely, but they have violins, a female vocalist, and reference Neil Gaiman, so they can't be too bad. They seem to be very ethereal alternative/goth/indie types. In actual fact they are not bad at all. And finally we have Austinite Matson Belle's Goodbye Juggernaut, which is probably going to be much too poppy to become one of my favourites, but I still have plenty of downloads left this month (which ends in a week), so I don't mind experimenting. I probably will have to reduce my subscription soon. The nice thing about subscribing to a music subscription service, is, not only is it cheaper, but it encourages you to experiment with new artists. The bad thing is, it means that it diverts income from music you have to have. But less than the cost of one local CD (Oz music prices are very inflated) for a half-dozen album downloads, it's worth the expense.