Meredith Monk and her vocal troupe cut a line between experimental theatre and music, marking a passage through the Ancient Greek tragedy, the opera, world-music, the archaic ritual and the mystical chant. It started with "Gotham Lullaby", presenting a contralto over a desolate and stark piano sonata. Then "Travelling" set a feverish gypsy dance, a wild ritual stirring the primeval forces at play. The sonata returned in "The Tale", as the backbone to an offbeat pantomime/ theatrical performance. The album got progressively more ambitious, with "Biography" combining the operatic wail, what seemed like twisted reflections of some tragic torch song, and an experimental Ancient Greek tragedy. Yet the masterpiece was "Dolmen Music", an archaic ritual, a mystical chant that reached from the depths of time to the far reaches of the universe, a menacing polyphonic counterpoint between the male and female choir, like a cosmic beam resonating through the edges of the universe, and leaving behind a streaming echo of mass-subconscious particles.Get it here.
It'd be wrong to say that Dream Theory In Malaya was jazz/ ethnic. It was much more than that. Jon Hassell was a musician researcher delving into the realms of Jung-ian psychology. Dream Theory In Malaya was expressionist, futuristic, impressionistic, surrealist. It was folklore set in a sub-chamber in a void. It was a subconscious dream.
"Chor Moire" was a futuristic camouflage for a world-ethnic music, vivisected and rearranged, miraged from a shapeless reality. "Courage" was an ectoplasmic ethnic-ritual stream, floating over a jungle landscape, formulating the turmoil of the spiritual-dance "Dream Theory". The end of the journey was the ghostly landscape of "Datu Bintung at Jelong".
The focus had shifted from the jungle to the sky, it was a subliminal landscape, reflections made out of aether.
It reflected both towards the future and towards an unimaginable past. "Malay" was an impressionistic sketch, it was the memory of hundreds of small streams running in the jungle to connect with a bigger whole. By "These Times", all that was left was a whisper, an inaudible gust of wind. By "Gift of Fire" the spiritual forces had gathered again, ready for yet another day of dance, condemned to be repeated in eternity, like seashell resonance. Get it here.
The Residents turned to ambient-concrete and ethnic in Eskimo, whose tracks were accompanied by text explanations, thus patronizing what should have been a visceral experience.
Purely musically, the ambient ceremonial chant "The Walrus Hunt" artificially recreated the feel of the arctic wasteland, whereas the starlit ritual "Birth" got some of the Residential weirdo treatment. Then in "Arctic Hysteria", the internal ethnic-concrete collage hinted at Jon Hassell's work to come. Similarly, "The Angry Angakok" reminded of Pink Floyd's concrete chaos in "Several Species" from Ummagumma. "A Spirit Steals A Child" was a deformed ethno-theatrical performance, while surprisingly, in "The Festival Of Death" the ritual metamorphosed to a delicate concerto, a warm moment in the frozen land.
Basically this album represents the point in The Residents' career when their music moved from being a stream of lava of abstract junk-culture to a conceptual art-rock.
EDIT: Dead link because of complaints to Rapidshare.
Yello maintained their place amidst the most creative bands of the 80's with Stella. "Desire" was one of their fluid, atmospheric, soundtrack-based, exotic tinged, electronic doom jazz themes. "Vicious Games" occupied the same territory, as if a haunted disco theme for a surreal soap-opera. In "Oh Yeah", the ever present deformed disco-theme was vivisected with an abundance of distorted vocal effects.
The epitome of elegance, "Desert Inn" was a mixture of ethnic ritual chanting, disco beats, jam-rock flourishes, and an epic ambient electronica awe. "Stalakdrama" was a symphonic experiment in tension, it's Wagnerian overture magnified to a point of feverish splendour. In "Koladi-ola", another ingenious piece of electro-pop, prevailed a digital funk-rock whose elements came from all sorts of disparate sources.
This wild eclecticism continued in "Domingo", a mix of heavy-metal, soundtrack themes, chanting, classical, banging beats etc. "Sometimes" returned to their elegant and gentle side, yet still managed to sound like a rolle-roaster ride. Similarly the desolate but grand synthscape of "Ciel Ouvert" evoked images of spiritual delirium. The amazing creativity encapsulated in these synth-rock tracks would make indie favourites like New Order or Depeche Mode blush at their own mediocrity. Get it here.
A classic record from the otherwise anemic Greek new-wave scene. Metro Decay's gloom-rock was electronic flavoured and lyrical ("Μαύρος Κύκνος"), occasionally acquiring an austere and epic tone ("Ανάμεσα σε 2 Κρεσέντα"). They were also capable of crafting ambitious compositions, such as "Το Ταξίδι", that vibrated amidst sinister synthesizer drone-oscillations, a robotic beat, ethereal piano brushstrokes and the melodic outburst of the chorus.
"Εισαγωγή στην Κινηση" was clearly influenced by Joy Division's "Isolation", but the ace up their sleeve was the traditional Greek-music garnishes amidst the frenetic electronic march. The same fundamentals were also applied in "Παιχνίδια στην Επιφάνεια", where the solo splashes veered almost into jazz territory. They were also competent at constructing fluid environments, like in the moving-blindly in the darkness threat of "Απειλή".
The ethereal gloom-rock returned in "Το Πάγωμα του Πάθους", where the cosmic sheen in their music simulated a free-fall in an ecstatic whirlpool. With the robotic beat replaced by a ritualistic trance and abstract symphonic ambience, "Υπέρβαση" reached for a sorrow far deeper - like Fra Lippo Lippi did in In Silence. It was a trend repeated in the galanty-show of "Λίμπιντο", that moved menacingly beneath the surface like a tectonic rift.
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Having embraced a more pop orientated direction, the Sound gave it their best shot with Shock Of Daylight, starting with the triumphant technicolor splash of "Golden Soldiers", all the while their gloom-rock assumed a more elegant and humane garb in "Longest Days", which was washed off in a melancholic stream in the paean "Counting The Days", and accompanied by minimal strumming and keyboards in "Winter" (the highlight). They also half embraced new-romanticism in the melodic funk-rock "A New Way Of Life" and the nocturnal "Dreams Then Plans". Emotion and melodies had replaced dark-punk edge.
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The Essence were always perceived as Cure copycats, and rightly so. But then again they always wrote great songs, and at their best (A Monument Of Trust) they could tackle glimmering drama with ease. So it was with Nothing Lasts Forever, making it's case with bruised and elegiac pop ("Separation"), spiraling mood-swings ("How You Make Me Hate"), autumnal paeans ("September"), shimmering dramas ("Out Of Grace"), sparkling sorrowful sighs ("Everything"), triumphant pop that rose like a phoenix out of it's ashes ("Never Let Go"), wind-torn rain-soaked landscapes ("Thirty Second Song"), fragile farewells ("All Is Empty" and so on.
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