“Signs of Life” As will be the case with both David Gilmour-led Pink Floyd releases, A Momentary Lapse of Reason opens with an atmospheric instrumental, this one full of synthesizer and subtle guitar passages.

“Learning to Fly” Perhaps the most well-known song from the album (nay, post-1970s Pink Floyd) , “Learning to Fly” is great blend of progressive rock and straightforward pop. The middle section features Nick Mason speaking, as though on a radio. The lyrics are not only about literal flight, but apparently reflect Gilmour’s realization that he was stepping into his former band mate’s shoes as front man of such a legendary and respected band.

“The Dogs of War” The problem with this song is that it tries too hard to be menacing. The splashes of keyboard, the marching strings, the growling vocals- it all sounds a trifle too ridiculous to be effective.

“One Slip” In spite of the prolonged introduction and the 1980s pop sounding music, this is a great song and one of the best on the album. The lyrics describe a spontaneous romantic rendezvous that results in a pregnancy, ultimately referencing how one seemingly frivolous act can have monumental consequences. After the guitar suddenly fades in, the vocals begin immediately. The music is catchy and upbeat (this is the fastest song on the album).

“On the Turning Away” Like “Learning to Fly,” this beautiful anthem gained a respectable amount of radio airtime. The verses progress from a capella to an all-out choir, followed by a typical David Gilmour guitar solo, this one a bit reminiscent of the second one on “Comfortably Numb.”

“Yet Another Movie” This is a long, atmospheric track with a 1980’s pop-rock sound and not much going for it. The vocals are bland, and the music doesn’t really move anywhere. It’s more of the same for nearly seven-and-a-half minutes.

“A New Machine (Part One)” Not so much a song, as an introduction to the next track, this track has David Gilmour’s distorted voice singing through a Vocoder.

“Terminal Frost” Beautifully bleak, this happens to be one of my favorite instrumentals. The piano and the saxophone can impart chills. For me, this song conjures up precisely what the title describes- something cold and deadly. Nick Mason doesn’t actually play on this one- what you hear is a drum machine.

“A New Machine (Part Two)” This is essentially a reprise of part one.

“Sorrow” “Sorrow” begins with a heavily distorted, loud guitar, which was recorded in an arena through a sound system. For some of the lyrics, Gilmour borrows lines from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. There are pleasant vocal harmonies and a smooth atmospheric part in the middle. Again, there are no real drums on the track, just a drum machine, and this gives the song a really stunted feel. Nearly the last three minutes consist of additional guitar soloing.

by Epignosis


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I worry about whole lifetimes,
most lifetimes
lived in the shadows of reflected fame;
but then the singer's voice dies
and there are just your last piano notes,
not resentful at all,
carrying us to the end, into those heartfelt cheers
that spring up in little patches from a thrilled audience
like sudden wildflowers bobbing in a rain
of steady clapping. And I'm on my feet, also,
clapping and cheering for the singer, yes,
but, I think, partially likewise for you
half-turned toward us, balanced on your black bench,
modest, utterly well-rehearsed,
still playing the part you've made yours.

“Why do you write so many notes? I think you do because you’re insecure. You think that if you write enough, somehow you’ll hit upon the right ones eventually!?”

My composition teachers have imparted many words of wisdom to me over the years, and these in particular struck me quite acutely when they were hurled at me as a sophomore in college. I forget exactly what it was that prompted them, and no doubt, I likely deserved the comment. I admittedly had little or no idea what I was doing most of the time in those days. As one visiting composer, describing his own student experience, expressed to our weekly composers’ forum at the time, “I knew how to begin a piece, and sometimes how to end it, but never knew what to do in the middle!”

A lot of time has passed since then, and in spite of the increased confidence I’ve gained – sometimes painfully – over the ensuing years of trial and error in composing, the syndrome of “too many notes” seems to have persisted. I have come to the conclusion that it is simply part of my nature, and have accepted it as something to be embraced rather than something to be eradicated. Healthy or not, it is an obsessive-compulsive desire to try and get the most out of my music at any and every point in its trajectory – a need to always maximize my resources.

While I think that this pathology asserts itself most dominantly in my music for guitar, I have to cede that all of my music tends to embody this quality to some extent. I am not sure where it comes from, only that I somehow “feel” a certain density within me that ultimately expresses itself in the form of music that has a similar quality. I have a hard time writing a three-note chord, and find it nearly impossible to write a melody without resorting to copious grace notes, turns, trills, harmonics, arpeggios, and other forms of embellishment. When it comes to textures, I like 4 against 5 against 6. I don’t care if they’re played exactly together – what’s the point? I only want them to sound like churning, boiling clusters. I like that feeling of contained chaos being directed along a carefully and clearly directed path. Maybe that’s how I perceive my own life to some extent.

“What we really love is resonance – we’re all resonance junkies!”

Obviously, I am a guitarist, and I love the instrument, but I will be the first to admit that it presents many problems. For one, it is very quiet, and its sound tends to die away almost immediately after the onset of its attack. With little sustaining power – at least relative to a bowed string instrument or even a piano – creating a resonant body of sound can be a challenge. There are ways to work around this by using open strings (which resonate quite nicely), but overuse of this particular aspect can lead to tired chords and sonorities. The other way is to simply flood the air with a steady stream of notes – cram it so full of vibrations that the illusion of a luminous body of resonance is perceived. I admittedly have a particular fondness for this last method, as it tends to feed my obsession with notes quite satisfactorily, albeit at an often great expense of practice time.

I think it is this desire to create resonance – along with an obsession with complicated surface textures – that has caused many to describe my guitar music as virtuosic. As a composer, however, I feel compelled to confess that I have never really consciously attempted to make my music difficult in a “virtuosic” sense. The instrument is always there to serve the composition, and the concept of the music always comes first. That being said, and as a player, I also have to admit that I will stop at next to nothing to realize an idea if it falls even remotely within the boundaries of what I might consider to be technically possible upon the instrument, and I will practice a passage or even a bar obsessively over long periods of time before even considering whether or not I should give up on it or change it. I have this mentality that I will not be defeated, at least not in the studio!

For me, when it comes to composing, there is definitely an interplay between the physical and the imaginative, regardless of the intended instrument or ensemble. To some extent, my intuitive interaction with the guitar in the form of improvisation often leads me to ideas when I am writing pieces, but these beginning phrases rarely last more than a few bars, and I am fairly soon left trying to give a voice on the instrument to things that I hear in my mind. At this point, the whole process seems to become something of a game. Sometimes the things I hear are impossible, but with some compromise, I can find a way to render a “kernel” of what I originally conceived – the “soul” of the idea, so to speak. Other times, what I hear turns out to be very manageable, and I realize that I may have an extra finger or two left over with which I can elaborate and ornament the idea further. It is in this last situation where my previously mentioned neurosis seems to assert itself. Never let a finger go to waste! Add another note to that chord, find a way to include that unused string, and put a trill or a tremolo before that other note because that would sound really good! All of this, no matter what the cost.

 “To play the guitar well is easy, to play the guitar poorly is difficult.”

–Pepe Romero

When it comes to performing, I have never really thought of myself as a “virtuoso.” While there are certain aspects of playing the guitar that come quite naturally to me, I essentially feel that I have to work too hard to get to a place where I really feel comfortable with a piece. Some pieces I wrote 5 and 6 years ago are finally beginning to feel somewhat automatic for me now. From a technical standpoint, I have never thought of myself as possessing that super-refined level of technique that the ordained virtuosi have – that sense of truly inevitable effortlessness. While I don’t mean to come across as self-deprecating, I think of my playing as being too labored over and self conscious to truly cross the threshold into the upper echelons of what this term has come to signify in the “modern-concert-music-world” sense. 

At the same time, however, I do feel that my bull-headedness when it comes to finding ways to work around limitations have given my technique a somewhat unorthodox quality, which is then recycled back into the composition of new works. Perhaps, in the end, if I am considered to have some virtuosic qualities as a performer and a composer, it will perhaps be more from a conceptual angle than a sheer technical one. If there is just one thing that I would love to try and accomplish through my life as a creative artist, it would be to contribute some body of work for this instrument that shows it to be one capable of great artistic depth, sensitivity, and integrity. I don’t know if I have managed to do this yet, but I hopefully will have some years ahead of me and a few more chances.

After many years of musical obsession completely removed from a record player, my pile of vinyl now grows incrementally, aided by the quality LP sellers of New York City. Baubles from the treasure chest will be posted here whenever it seems appropriate...

Anyone who's been in my personal radius over the past month or so has had Dazzle Ships, the lost masterpiece by occasional 80s hitmakers OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark if yr nasty), thrust into their consciousness. While I can practically guarantee that all members of the blog reading rabble would know the band's chart apex "If You Leave" (thanks John Hughes!) even the most astute and obscure among my circle of nerds was caught unaware. The likely reason was that upon its 1983 release, the record was cut to ribbons by critics calling the record's experiments with found sound and music concrete flatly unlistenable. But while those are indeed melancholy colors in Dazzle Ships' muted rainbow, the quality of the sad pop laments on this record cannot be overstated. Pitchfork's Tom Ewing, writing in March about a 25th anniversary reissue that went otherwise critically ignored and remained invisible on the shelves of even the most pretentious New York City shops all year, posited that:

"Dazzle Ships seems a lot less radical than it did on release: The Kraftwerk records and musique concrète it obviously borrowed from have been more fully absorbed into pop music. You'll have heard uglier noises than the title track's mechanical grindings and foghorn blurts, and stranger constructions than the layered robot voices on "ABC Auto-Industry". Those songs won't sound like clumsy shock-tactics to a new listener, just more parts in the album's sad, effective synth-pop collage."

But it's weird to me that the songs themselves weren't enough to ensure a stay of excommunication from the zeitgeist, that continues to the present. Parsing the Pazz & Jop poll from 1983 doesn't reveal a lot of enduring classics to supercede it. Sure, New Order's Power, Corruption, and Lies is like the more outgoing cousin DS secretly resents, Murmur is still definitive for some, and there's no arguing against Thriller at this point even if you wanted to, but hardly anything else that I'm familiar with there has as many tracks at such a consistently high level. It embarrasses Bowie's Let's Dance, I'm certain. That slick Peter Saville album cover shouldn't have hurt either. I don't get it.

But it found it's way from eBay to me, in spite of it all. Now, for your pleasure, here's just three of the standouts...

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - "The Romance of the Telescope"

"The Romance of the Telescope" is just a great name for a song, first of all. I wish I was a famous astronomer just so I could title my autobiography that. Maybe I'll get started on that career path, actually, for that express purpose. But removed from the delusions of grandeur it inspires, the song stands as a pristine statement of longing. It pines for understanding, and serves as an elegy of sorts for science as faith. It's as lonely as you might expect. The crisp, echoed drum machine aches like a solitary heartbeat in a metal lab. The warped synth sound that follows seems obsolete and maybe slightly damaged, as if dust was cleared from their keys minutes before recording. Singer Andy McCluskey keeps his lyric sheet as graceful, spartan, and evocative as its backing track.

"We're just waiting, looking skyward
As the days come down
Someone promised there'd be answers
If we stayed around"

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - "Radio Waves"

"Radio Waves" starts as a Teutonic experiment, marrying a juggernaut rhythm to blurts of squealing blip, and ends as a lo-fi Kiwi pop track, voices warbling ecstatic while jockeying for space alongside cheap party organs. Where the rest of the record can sometimes be chilly and disconnected, this ode to the synthetic comes sparking with current.

"Radio waves have life! Radio waves have life!
Machines are living too, they're working for me and you!"

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - "Of All the Things We've Made"

Dazzle Ships' last song is a gorgeous Eno ballad, whose oddly tuned guitar strokes fail to jostle the pristine glide of its piano notes. That melody, combined with some solemn, if slightly adenoidal, choir boy singing from McClusky and accomplice Peter Humphries successfully obscures the track's otherwise rough elements. The drumbeat never evolves from a caveman thwack, and the aforementioned strokes never congeal into a melodic component. But it swoons onwards, regardless.

"To want this.
Of everything we've made.
The times it's worked before.

Of all the things we've said.
Times that worked before today."

Previously:

- the Raincoats, live @ the BBC

- Linear Movement play "the Game"

- A hole where the Romeo should be

- Pete Shelley, also a homosapien

- Not nearly the only Stereolab tour-only 7"

- Monochrome Set transcend the singles scene circa '82

But with that in mind, the ’77 edition of Supertramp have taken a few sidesteps from that acclaimed effort. While I still recognise the lean, at first glance innocent and carefree panache superimposed on every song, I miss the defining edge and hunger of Crime Of The Century. All that anger and frustration resonated so well with the lighter musical themes, quirky tweaks and perfect mastery of accentuating orchestral arrangements. On most of the songs here on Even In The Quietest Moments, only the basal ingredients remain, making the experience hollow and lacking in profundity.

So it’s a step back. Songs like the hit-single Give A Little bit, with lush guitars in a sweet melody and a lyrical hook that is repeated ad nauseam never really affects you as a listener, being just slightly too sugary and eager to please. Where COTC in general is a bleak cry for help, EITQM is a sunshine-story; inconsequential and flimsy. Loverboy stands a little taller, in having some instrumental muscle, but the composition and progression is once again disappointing with its linearity. Downstream and from now on is much in the same vein, benefiting from the same strengths and suffering from the same weaknesses, sax solos and nice piano aside; they are fleetingly pleasing – especially as relaxing background music – but fail to engage.

They all have two important redeeming features though – they’re never done without heart, and you can feel that this is an active choice of direction towards poppier music that will ‘culminate’ on the popular Breakfast In America.

The three songs that are left are all what I’d call classic Supertramp, and as such highly enjoyable. Crisp and mellow guitar beauty with soaring background organ and some great bass work in a discreet but effective build-up create a rich and warm track that surprises as being so powerful in spite of what it should be.

Babaji is just extremely catchy, revolving around and about a couple of motifs that are impossible to dislike, even with the reflective nature of the song. Great group effort that gives the arrangement quite a punch, clinging to that restlessly wandering bass. First track that gives me the same feelings of restrained panic as some on COTC, even though it doesn’t deal with the same sorts of lyrics.

And then we have Fool’s Overture. A welcome return to the orchestral grandeur and arguably Hodgson’s crowning achievement as a composer, this mini epic moves through many a notion after the great melancholic piano part that serves as its humble beginnings. Interesting blend of some sturdy electronic sounds from the synthesisers and more classically oriented sounds make for a defining song of the late part of the ‘70s. Traces of Rudy (oh…and Dreamer) can be found for the attentive, and Hodgson’s vocals are nothing short of spectacular.

So it’s a mixed album, not guaranteed to really please those who expect Crime Of The Century, but neither those who expect Breakfast In America funnily enough. But I don’t expect it to truly disappoint a fan of aforementioned albums either.

3 stars.

//LinusW

by LinusW


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“U inat godinama” (“In Spite Of the Years”) is a 2CD collection that does not belong to the above category. Issued by Croatia Records, a legal successor to Jugoton who had issued the most of their prog titles, it presents perhaps the best collection of the progressive rock side of the band with literally none of the vocal pop/schlager/easy listening tunes, which were always present in different quantities on their earlier compilations. Therefore, this title is extremely important for the progressive rock community in general.

Special treat for the collectors are five tracks of previously unreleased early songs showcasing the band’s strong involvement in the mid-1960s British Invasion sound. These include covers of THE BEATLES’ “A Hard Day’s Night” and THE ROLLING STONES’ “Time Is On My Side” as well as the first vocal song of INDEXI, “Dječak iz obične ulice” (“The Boy From Ordinary Street”) recorded in early 1965 with the then newcomer Davorin Popović as lead singer. Actually, almost entire Disc 1 (first 11 tracks including these 5 rarities) was already published as a single promo CD in September 2006 following the concert tribute to INDEXI in Sarajevo and promotion of the INDEXI biography by Josip Dujmović under the same title “U inat godinama”. That promo CD was not widely available since it was shared free of charge with a Sarajevo magazine, so its inclusion here is more than welcome.

Dujmović is the man who deserves all credits for the selection of songs. He was brave enough not to include any of sleazy mainstream ballads (from the prog point of view of course; the musical quality of many of these is nevertheless high) and festival hits on this double disc collection, opting instead for progressive rock tracks. Arguably all essential prog moments of INDEXI are present here, with possible exception of “Dvojnik” and “Hej ti”, but it is my general observation rather than a critique. The CD contains a nicely designed informative booklet with short chronological details about each of the songs and some rare photos and cover images.

“U inat godinama” is much better compilation than similarly packed 2CD Komuna release “Sve ove godine-Best of Indexi 1962-2001”, so it is absolutely recommended for any prog listener.

PERSONAL RATING: 4,5/5 P.A. RATING: 5/5

by Seyo


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