Upcoming releases

[roadtonowhere08]

No, I judge them by the last three albums, and I see no evidence of them wanting to make interesting music anymore.  Orchid to Damnation was sublime, Ghost Reveries and Watershed had a couple of good songs, and Heritage was pure shit.  Mikael even publicly trashed the same genre that got him famous, and he does not have the chops to make great prog rock.  He never will be a Mariusz Duda type.

[Dusty Chalk]

Link is the iTunes link.

[roadtonowhere08]

Anathema have done it again!  Distant Satellites is a brilliant, gorgeous album.  The group is still more or less on the track of the previous two albums, but have integrated more electronics in the back third and have moved toward a slightly darker tone.  Thus far, the standout tracks are The Lost Song Part 2 and Distant Satellites, but really, all the others except You're Not Alone are outstanding.  You're Not Alone should have been yanked.

 

 

Edit: Take Shelter is a weak closer for post-Judgement Anathema.  They almost always end on a high note (Temporary Peace definitely comes to mind).  Should have ended with the title track.

Edited June 11, 2014 by roadtonowhere08

[Sherwood]

Just heard Alt-J have a new one coming out in September.  Looking forward to it.

[ironbut]

A deluxe Beatles mono lp set will be released in Sept.

Looks like a must have for die hard fans.

 

http://www.analogplanet.com/content/beatles-get-back-mono-and-aaa-vinyl

[blessingx]

Isn't everything a must for die hard fans?

I went to look up a pre-sell deal in a recent email and couldn't find it. Anyone know a good price on this?

Edited June 21, 2014 by blessingx

[ironbut]

The only pre-  price I've seen is from Acoustic Sounds.

$375

 

http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/98036/The_Beatles-The_Beatles_In_Mono-Vinyl_Box_Sets

[jp11801]

Elusive Disc had it for $349 but they gave you one to pull the trigger after they sent the email. 

 

I'm on the fence on this one as 3-4 of the discs are must haves imo but I could do without a 7th copy for some of the earlier releases. 

 

I may buy this just because it is all analog from the original mono tapes but that said recent box set quality has been pretty bad. Optimal in Germany where this set is getting pressed is getting hammered for QC issues on the Led Zep releases. There is also the potential for getting better discounts if the sets sit. The mono css were sold at a premium at release and were heavily discounted months after release. 

 

The box set I really want is the SRV set from Chad at Acoustic Sounds but they want an arm and a leg for it. I'd also bite on the download (if they offered it) before I'd go LP set. 

[Dusty Chalk]

[Dusty Chalk]

Unwoman, Circling -- only $1 pre-order for digital download version (including FLAC), and it might be her best yet, methinks.

[Dusty Chalk]

15 Sep

[roadtonowhere08]

News about a new Pink Floyd album in October based on the Division Bell sessions leaked.

 

http://www.straight.com/blogra/680271/david-gilmours-wife-polly-samson-leaks-news-twitter-about-new-pink-floyd-album

 

If it is even close to Division Bell, I will be thrilled.

[Sherwood]

Link is the iTunes link.

 

This album is tremendous.  I've been on it for two days, and while I don't always love the arrangement and instrumentation, her vocals are a force.  Reminds me of Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond, in a way, but like Shara Worden's Rihanna cover album.

[Dusty Chalk]

von Karajan's 1963 Beethoven Symphony cycle on CDs and Blu-Ray (6 hours @24/96, I think) next week

[Dusty Chalk]

Scott Walker and Sunn O))) to collaborate

[Dusty Chalk]

New Lunatic Soul due October

[roadtonowhere08]

New Lunatic Soul due October

 

Dude, that's not even a nip slip of a teaser.

 

And can we stop with the Lasse Hoile and Travis Smith monopoly of every fucking album these days?

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah, it's kind of like playing the walk-on music for a band and saying, this is what the next album is going to sound like, isn't it?  But here's to hoping that there's more of that spacey-ness where that came from.

 

Cheers to all the bokeh.

[Dusty Chalk]

Katatonia, Last Fair Day Gone Night 

(link is to ultimate pack pictured last, you can find the first two)

[Dusty Chalk]

Lamb's upcoming Backspace Unwind

[aardvark baguette]

*vibration increases*

 

[Knuckledragger]

French electronic music pioneer has his alternative soundtrack to Frank Herbert’s cult sci-fi novel Dune remastered from original tapes by legendary Berlin engineer Rashad Becker.  "Zed aka Bernard Szajner’s 1979 masterpiece Visions of Dune is to be reissued on vinyl for the very first time"

[roadtonowhere08]

I do believe this sums my thoughts up nicely (taken from sputnikmusic):

 

You can choose to mar Opeth's recent releases for any number of reasons, but when you boil it all down, the reason Heritage and now Pale Communion aren't well-accepted by Akerfeldt and company's long-standing fanbase is because neither is an Opeth album. Yes, yes, they're "Opeth" albums, but they're not Opeth albums. There's absolutely some cool stuff on the classic prog-turnabout of Heritage and Pale Communion, but neither deliver on promises made and self-fulfilled by Ghost Reveries or Watershed. Sure, Mikael is entitled to do whatever he well pleases, but the Opeth of 2014 is little more than Opeth's mildly self-influenced prog side-gig and it feels foolish to deny that. Whether that will last the rest of Opeth's already storied carriers or not remains to be seen, but for the immediate interim, we need to accept that the latest "Opeth" album is not great, and the aforementioned doppelganger hypothesis has a lot to play into it because:

We love Opeth, not "Opeth."

Opeth is a band that brought us a dark and appropriately austere death metal sound that could conjure up the ghosts in your closet and incite them against you all while simultaneously drowning you in the placid despair of a folk-based acoustic passage. Akerfeldt would cast his voice as the roaring shadow beckoning you to embrace the darkness or as an angelic light guiding you out of the shade... if only for a moment. While some of the mellifluous harmonies we've come to expect out of the big man are present on Pale Communion, that rich floor of merciless anguish is raised to a platform of mediocre crooning that simply doesn't create the same voluminous space Opeth need to develop the same sort of complex narrative we've heard on past albums.

With lower vocal and musical headroom it just doesn't happen in the same way. The magic ofOpeth gives way to the prog bearings of "Opeth." And sure, we'd herald them if it were any other band, but for Opeth? There's just a sad sense of gothic magic that's had its black candlelight flame blown out by a hippie's bong smoke pervading the album. "Moon Above, Sun Below" probably comes closest to recapturing that magic with its monotone chant, strained calling, and very Opeth vibe to its hand-off from free flowing (hard) rock solos to medieval sounding acoustic passages, but in the end it's still not the authentic product.

Tracks like "Goblin" feel like '70s prog ripoffs that Opeth are better than, while "River" feels like some sort of Woodstock jam that's simply foreign amid the rest of Opeth's finer works. "Eternal Rains Will Come" strikes as one of few memorable tracks on Pale Communion and it's not hard to see why - it and "Moon Above, Sun Below" bear the brunt of Opeth's historical sound on this album, while the relevancy of much of the rest is gone with the wind.

Was this expected after Heritage? Sure - but does that make it any more acceptable? Certainly not. This is a well-defined, if experimental group that's somehow gone back to a school of musical thought that was prevalent forty plus years ago. We've come to expect forward thinking from Opeth - experimentation, combining genres in new and exciting ways, playing on your expectations of the dark with the light and vice versa, but what we get fromPale Communion is mostly a second full delving into a theory of the past with little to be said for innovation. So, sure, it's a solid prog album, but it's boring because, well, let's face it, if you're looking to do something new, you don't rip off something old.

[en480c4]

Yeah, I saw a pretty damning review that confirmed that after Heritage, I didn't need to check out Pale Communion. While that initially made me sad, I said fuck it and listened to My Arms, Your Hearse and realized that I'm cool with whatever they do moving forward because they produced an absolutely perfect album already.

[Dusty Chalk]

I totally dig it.  I think it's the best thing they've done.  But I've always hated cookie monster vocals.  It's just one note, there's nothing musical about it.  I do have to admit, though, it's nothing like anything from the golden lineup of Akerfeldt, Lindgren, Mendez, Lopez, which was kind of a bizarre combination (in being half Swedish, half Uruguyan) and magical.  But that stopped being magical when Akerfeldt became the focal point of the band.

 

Kayo Dot appear to be heading in a similar direction (less extreme).