Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Music I Liked And Didn't - 1/23/07

Adds -

None


Did Not Add -

GHOST: In Stormy Nights DLP (Drag City) - By now the music cognoscenti are probably falling all over themselves in slave-like fashion to extoll the virtues of the great new album from Ghost. Well, let me be the first to raise a voice of dissent!

I’ll be kind enough to assume that during the development of this material the band actually thought the bombastic, percussion-focused final product would be an outstanding artistic statement. To these ears, however, the majority of the tribal jamming on, “In Stormy Nights”, is just an obnoxious and boring, rather than being trance-inducing and inspirational. Furthermore, the lengthy and wide-ranging mega-jam, “Hemicyclic Anthelion” (which sounds like one of the stupid, academic titles Eric Arn used for our jams when I was in Primordial Undermind!), is shambolic waste of nearly half (28 minutes) of the entire album. And no, I’m not even going to countenance any punters trying to claim that I just am not down with noisy, free jamming freak-outs, so that’s why I can’t relate. Bullshit, utter, bullshit, dear readers, as I’ll bet I’ve got more recordings of Post Music, Free Jazz, and so on, than most anyone. I can discern the difference between good free jamming freak-outs and wank, and I’m not afraid to call’em like I see’em and, sorry, but in my opinion, “Hemicyclic Anthelion”, with the exception of a couple of short segments, is a waste of time. On the positive side, “Grisaille” is a great track, featuring an excellent acid lead guitar by Kurihara, and the martial-prog of “Water Door Yellow Gate” also has its appeal. That being stated, I'm sorry, but 15 minutes of excellent material (which I can still put on my hard drive for future enjoyment, anyway!) can’t overcome 45 minutes of mediocrity and justify adding this album to my collection.

There's still another 342 days left in this year, but I suspect that, "In Stormy Nights" will be my biggest disappointment of the year (which, I should note, is not the same thing as predicting that it will be the worst release that I purchase and review this year). Let the games (and flames) begin!


Running Count For The Year

Adds 13/87%

Did Not Add 2/13%

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