Album Review: The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady [1963] #27

Charles Mingus is the third of the three biggest mainstream jazz composers, next to the already reviewed Miles Davis and John Coltrane and his 1963 release The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady comes in as one of the 30 highest ranked jazz records on this list.

The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady is Mingus' most well known work and even if it isn't my personal favorite of his releases, I do believe that its place definitely is warranted on this list. This is an album that seperates itself heavily from the other jazz records on this list both in atmosphere and sound. You have tracks like Group Dancers with its repeated flute melody that sounds like the mythical tones from Pan's flute as the devil's are dancing around the burning bonfire coupled with some lonesome, Kind Of Blue-esque plinks from a piano that gives of an eerie and almost ugly atmosphere.

It is an often sounding ugly record. The brass and playing isn't as clear and orthodox as it was on Coltrane's A Love Supreme which in turn gives The Black Saint its unique sound. It often times sounds almost abrasive and "in-your-face" with its obnoxious and raw melodies which might be a turn off to some but to me signals a notion of uniqueness and originality.

 

It's a unique record for sure, but it's one that definitely needs some time for a pair of ears that aren't well acquainted with jazz. I've found that Mingus' compositions overall do take a bit of time to digest even if they aren't as inacessible as something like Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch would be or even the later Ornette Coleman compositions. I remember my first experience with The Black Saint being a positive one even if it was a record I didn't fully grasp at the time. Its groove might be the most obvious notion to comprehend but to really grasp the idea of the musicanship at play on this record might take a bit longer than it would on Kind Of Blue or even A Love Supreme.

As to its place on this chart: it's definitely a warranted one and it's still one of the more accessible ones on here with records like Bitches Brew being a bit harder to digest than the quite short The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady.

While it is a solid jazz record, I do believe that Mingus has released better albums, one of which we will get to as I advance down the drain of this list (namely Mingus Ah Um) but The Black Saint still stands the test of time as a unique piece of jazz that combines the more orthodox and natural elements and ideas of the time with a musical sound that you can't really find anywhere in its contemporaries. I also believe that the atmosphere that it revels in is one unparallalled among jazz of the 60's and its most admirable feat as it combines the beautiful with the dissonant and ugly with the instrumentals painting vivid pictures that words couldn't have accomplished.

These are all quite positive opinions which makes may make my low score seem kind of odd. While I do believe that the record deserves its praise I don't find myself enjoying it as much as I had hoped. As I've stated, I do appreciate the atmosphere a lot but I believe that it derails and loses to much momentum halfway through, as Group Dancers is coming to and end. The eighteen minute Trio And Group Dancers works as a combination of the previously heard tracks but it doesn't accomplish something that the previous tracks hadn't already perfected, sounding mainly like a summary of what we've already heard and experienced where the different elements and ideas of the three tracks clash in a way that doesn't fit them. This is what detracts the most from my experience with the album and while it only is one of the tracks on the album and also being the last one (one I can skip if I so desire), it does make up about half of the record which is something you can't ignore when reviewing the album as a whole. 

It's an enjoyable record for sure and it deserves its legacy but as an album I don't find it all that enjoyable.

Charles Mingus

The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady [1963]

6/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Paranoid [1970] #13

Haven't had time to write for a while, been gone at a festival for a week and the days prior to that I was quite sick and didn't really like anything that I wrote up for my blog. I came home yesterday though and was hoping to pick up the pace during the rest of the month as I'm getting closer to my return to uni for fall.

Black Sabbath is often credited as the forefather of doom metal and several other off springs of the genre that all started with rock & roll evolving into heavy metal which in turn evolved into the harsher kinds of metal that were to come fifteen years after Sabbath's most dominating era.



Paranoid came out in 71, the same year as Sabbath also released Master Of Reality, two of their most well received records of their careers. These two records were, even if only slightly, a departure from the sound of their self-titled debut which mainly followed in the tracks of rock & roll contemporaries of the era, heavily reminiscent of bands like Led Zeppelin. On Paranoid it gets even more apparent of where the doom metal influences and ideas started. While a track like the opener War Pigs still does feature heavy uses of guitar solo's, less repetitiveness than modern doom aswell as vocals that are more in line with straightforward rock music of the 70's, it does have a slower pace to it than Sabbath's contemporaries aswell as a much thicker and repetitive sound to it than what was common at the time. Metal would come a long way in the forty years that have passed since 1970 but you have to give credit where credit is due and Sabbath's Paranoid were one of the big founders of the sound and ideas that were to come.

If we're to leave the influence that the album has had on heavy metal and move onto the more obvious qualities of the record, you have to talk about how consistent and varied the record is. While it doesn't differentiate itself too much from bands like Led Zeppelin, staying true to rock & roll's blues roots while offering a heavier vibe it does venture into some unique ideas such as the low-key, percussion driven Planet Caravan, where Osbourne's voice hides behind several filters, giving of an alien vibe and a shorter break from the album.

Planet Caravan is a daring addition that unfortunately doesn't contribute a whole lot to the album but still stands as a well done track that doesn't detract too much from the flow or cohesiveness of the album. It also doesn't hurt that it sits between two of Black Sabbath's most well known and well liked tracks of their career, the first one being the energetic Paranoid and the second one being "baby's first guitar intro"-also known as Iron Man.

It's an album full of quality songs, several being Sabbath's most well known in mainstream media and popular culture, with tracks like Funeral Doom and Fairies Wear Boots often being referenced in different kinds of media.

Black Sabbath's Paranoid is an enjoyable album that fans of 70's rock music will find just as enjoyable as bands like Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones despite heaving the tag of heavy metal on them which most likely only lies on them for their influence of the genre and metal as a whole. It's an album packed with great songs that all can be enjoyed outisde of the album's context which most likely is why it's become such a popular record throughout the years. It's one of the few heavy metal records that I personally find has aged quite well, whereas bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, two of the other big names when it comes to mainstream heavy metal, often times can sound cheesy and almost too glam-influenced to listeners that come across them today. Sabbath however still holds up and as far as I know, still puts on a great show when you put them on stage, despite having gotten quite worn out during the years that have been since 1970.

Black Sabbath

Paranoid [1970]

7/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Film Review: C'est Arrivé Près De Chez Vouz (Man Bites Dog) [1992]

Man Bites Dog is a black comedy/mockumentary that has us, the viewers, following the story of the murderer Benoit as a film crew follows him throughout his days, recording his everyday life.

Now I call Benoit a murderer but it doesn't quite describe his actions. He's more of a criminal who murders. He's not the kind of person you'd have an episode of CSI dedicated to but the kind of man who enjoys beating up post men, doing home invasions and shooting people in the head. The film depicts normal days for him and we follow as the film crew gets more and more personally invested in his daily life, helping him carry bodies, tossing them into the river with him and at an occasion, even becoming targets of a couple of stray bullets.



Benoit himself is an incredibly charismatic main character, despite his revolting personality. Be it during the moments when he vividly describes how to best weigh down a corpse so that it will sink to the bottom of the river or when he's describing the facade of a building he doesn't like, his performance is enchanting. The movie draws you into this place that starts of at an easy feet as comical moments blend into the horrifying acts that Benoit commits. There's a scene where he just has murdered the husband of a family and he asks the person with the boom microphone to move it closer so that they can capture the sound of Benoit snapping the dead man's neck and the ridiculousness and the mundane fashion of how its done leaves a comical value to the scene as viewers ponder the question "Is this funny or disgusting?".

This is a question that lies in the back of your head throughout the entire film. You're almost laughing at the ridiculousness of several of the scenes but you're also equally parts revolted. Even when Patrick, the sound-guy, gets hit and killed by a stray bullet and the director Remy talks, with tears in his eyes, about how this film is going to be made for Patrick, for Patrick's wife and the child that Patrick's wife has been carrying, even then we're not quite sure whether it is actually a horrible film or a comical mockumentary.

The film crew gets more and more close with Benoit, despite them constantly being reminded of how awful his actions are and despite them constantly having second thoughts about the things they are shooting. The more they let their guard down, the more they get drawn into the criminal and psychopathic life styles that Benoit lives. There's a scene where Remy, the director, carries a body for Benoit, another one where the film crew helps him escape jail, and maybe the most atrocious one, where the film crew joins in on the gang rape of a woman.

I interpret this film as a film that indirectly breaks the fourth wall and indirectly speaks to the viewer. You're put into the shows of the voyeur, the spot of the film crew recording Benoit's horrifying actions and every time you smile or laugh at the ridiculous nature of a murder, be it Benoit shocking an older woman into a heart attack so he won't waste a bullet or as the gang takes a taxi with Benoit's gun to the head of the driver, you find yourself becoming an accomplice, and not far from as horrible as you see the film crew slowly becoming from their time with the man.

I see this film on many of those "films you will once watch once"-lists and I don't think the content of the film is enough to qualify it for such a stamp. The film in itself is in fact quite good, Benoit's acting is splendid and adds a ton of character to his role aswell as the emotion packed into a lot of scenes (I'm not talking about the most gruesome ones) being impressive aswell. What I do think makes this film being placed in such a spot is because of how the film treats its viewers, subjecting them to the horrible comical violence just to finally hit them with some violence without the comedy which makes you quickly come to your senses and think "have I been laughing at this?".

Pigeon, winged cloak of grey
In the city's hellish maw
One glance, and you fly away

It's hard to find a moral of this story. It's a gruesome film that depicts repulsive actions in a comedic way, which is what I think gives it that edge over similar films depicting extreme violence. Comparing many of the brutal scenes of Man Bites Dog to the ones in for instance A Clockwork Orange, Man Bites Dog quickly gains the upper hand because of how funny they're made be, how attractive they are compared to something that's just vile. It's a film that's fully aware of what it is doing and it isn't until we're finally faced with scenes that have lost their comedy, scenes that aren't absurd anymore and just downright horrible that we, the viewers, the voyeurs of the crimes, come to realize how awful it actually is.

Man Bites Dog
dir. Benoit Poelvoorde, André Bonzel, Rémy Belvaux
6.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) [1993] #40

Basically Method Man is like, roll that shit, light that shit, smoke it
And then Baby U, he a psychopathic, he a psycopathic killer
And then we got the Ol' Dirty Bastard, 'cus they ain't no father to his style
Ghostface Killah, you know what I'm sayin', he on some "now you see me now you don't"
And then the RZA, he the sharpest motherfucker in the whole clan
And the GZA, the G is the genius, he's the backbone of this whole shit

No top list will ever be perfect and different people will always have different personal opinions on what should be and what shouldn't be on it. RateYourMusic's top 100 is no exception. Being an amalgamation of different users ratings, I'd even go as far as to say that I doubt that there's any single person out there who could chalk their top 100 down into these few 100 records.

Don't get me wrong, they all definitely deserve the recognition (oh well, some less than others I guess), but there's a lack of variation and a close-minded view that's focused mainly on alternative forms of rock music, with Brittish progressive rock being the most dominant force and different kinds of alternative forms of rock music falling in behind. The most recent addition in terms of release date is Radiohead's 2007 release, In Rainbows, with records from this ongoing decade not coming in until somewhere along the 100-200 range.

So why am I talking about this during the review of The Wu-Tang Clan's most famous release? Well, because this is, at spot number 40, the highest ranked hip-hop record of this chart, and one of six that are on here. It's a shame seeing hip-hop fall into irrelevancy on this chart, despite being a mainstay alongside pop music in today's mainstream, having grown incredibly fast despite being a quite recent genre of music (if we see its time of inception as the 70's which I choose to do).



It's hard to find a hip-hop record from the so called "Golden Era" of the 90's that has the same iconic status as Wu-Tang's Enter The Wu-Tang. A case could be made for A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory or Nas' Illmatic but do they really reach the magnitude of Enter The Wu-Tang, the debut from the 10-man collective from New York?

The album starts of with the sampling of the kind of Japanese-centered samurai movies that came to be sampled throughout different iterations of the groups career, becoming something of a trademark and something that would be affiliated with the groups even when referenced through other kinds of media (I'm thinking of the scene in Kill Bill 2 when Uma Thurman watches the film that's sampled on Liquid Swords, a Wu-Tang sideproject).

Simple, repetitive boom-bap beats where the key to the groups instrumentals. It's something that they pull of flawlessly on some parts of the record and it's something that doesn't quite click with the different flows of the members of the group at other times. The opening track Bring Da Ruckus is centered around snapping fingers as a snare over an otherwise almost sterile beat and is probably the best example of when it doesn't work as well as intended. The snap-snare is something that returns on different tracks throughout the album, with different kinds of success at different times.

Beat-wise I find this album often times lacking. It doesn't achieve a lot with its instrumentals like its contemporaries (Illmatic, Ready To Die, Liquid Swords), and its strengths mostly lie in the talents of the rappers and in how influential the record came to be seeing to atmosphere, themes, rapping styles, even looking at the different skits and samples of the record.

However there are a couple of beats that still today sound just as unique and well done as they did back in 1993 when this was released. Beats like the almost Memphis-sounding Can It Be All So Simple with its smooth, laidback feel and the sampled female vocals stands out an incredible amount from the otherwise minimalistic, darker and more aggressive beats on the record. Outside of that one you have the iconic C.R.E.A.M. with the ghetto-sounding glossy piano, feeling heavily 2Pac and West Coast influenced, aswell as the low-key Shame On A Nigga or even Tearz.

Despite the fact that most beats aren't very strong on their own two feet, they still stand as influential and possibly quite original at the time. It's a style that has been replicated through the years which would come to leave the original ones sounding a bit worn and out of style which while unfortunately detracts from my enjoyment of them, doesn't detract from the credit that the group should get for them.


Enter The Wu-Tang and The Wu-Tang Clan's legacy is still an expanding story. While Enter The Wu-Tang might be the groups most well known work as the Wu-Tang Clan, most of their relevancy today comes from different kinds of side projects and solo efforts that would be made during the time after. Records like Liquid Swords, Only Built 4 The Cuban Linx, Supreme Clientele and Return To The 36 Chambers would come to be praised to an almost equally high level during the years to come.

The story of the Wu is still being written today as most of the members are still alive today, bar Ol' Dirty Bastard who passed away over a decade ago. While there haven't been a record that's quite been on par with their best works during these past few years, you'd still best believe that there might be a masterpiece left in a member or two, as most people are aware: Wu-Tang Ain't Nothing To Fuck With.

Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Wu-Tang Clan

7.5/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: The Bends [1995] #43

Going away for a festival in a week so the updates to my blog will become less frequent sometime soon.

The Bends is one of Radiohead's first albums, and one of their most straightforward. It's the followup to the debut, Pablo Honey, a record which isn't very favored amongst the bigger fans of the band and The Bends is their first real success, which however would be followed up by OK Computer, the number one album on this chart.

My personal issue with The Bends is that the record comes of as incredibly cheesy and forced. It is 90's alt-rock, a genre that I have a lot of issues with personally, which is my similar issue with The Bends. It all feels built upon reaching a climactic chorus, where the vocalist can belch out some "touching" poetry over cools riffs and monotone drums. The Bends is a huge culprit in homogenity; it doesn't try to move away from the formula that's apparent on almost all of the tracks on the album, bar a few exceptions, the album's strongest suites.



While there is a charm to tracks like High And Dry or Fake Plastic Trees, they mainly come of as generic run of the mill examples of similar songs from the bands contemporaries. The only really admirable thing about them is Yorke's falsetto which shines a different light on the kind of songs that you can find on any radio station that plays brittish rock from the 90's.

I guess it just doesn't feel classy or eloquent. It doesn't feel like there went any effort into standing out and making something unique with this record, something I think Radiohead tried a lot harder to achieve for the years to come after The Bends. But the fact still stands that this is a record that I don't like a lot. One of the one's I consider the weakest of the bunch on this list.

The Bends
Radiohead
3.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: A Love Supreme [1965] #17

If your first album experience with jazz was through Davis' Kind Of Blue, then it's not surprising if the album you'd choose to move on towards would be either John Coltrane's A Love Supreme or Charles Mingus' The Black Saint And Sinner Lady. While Kind Of Blue is an inoffensive take on smooth jazz at its core, Coltrane's A Love Supreme attempts to be a bit more daring, while still keeping the influences from smooth and cool jazz tucked somewhere in the back.

The album is divided into four suites, Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Pslam. The opening suite of Acknowledgement is a timid piece of smooth jazz, with a laidback piano leading the track on its course accompanied by some more hectic drums than what one might be comfortable around if one's only experience in jazz had been Kind Of Blue. Coltrane's saxophone play is of course the main focus of this song aswell as the others on the album, but its a more improvised style than what we saw from him on Kind Of Blue, aswell as more free form than Davis' on the same record. This is where the record gets a bit more daring. It's a more hectic record, the tempo is higher, the songs are longer, the repetitive melodies are lost for suites that more resemble a band jamming out in the studio.

It might seem chaotic at first glance, something that I personally have found as an issue with jazz that reaches higher forms of free improvisation. It feels unstructured which is something that might be hard to appreciate when coming from a background of pop and rock music, where songs are finely sorted into verses, chorus, bridges and so forth. It's a lot harder to keep track of what's going on in a lot of the more wild parts of the swamps of jazz and approaching the genre has to be done from a completely different outlook than one would normally go about around pop music.



Acknowledgement ends with the only vocals on the record. A repeated mantra of "a love supreme" echoes in the background as Coltrane quiets down and the first suite reaches a resting point. Acknowledgement is probably the most easily approachable part of the album for someone who's not a fan of the free form at play on the album. Its not all that abrasive and it keeps in tune with the simple atmosphere that you'd find on a record like Kind Of Blue or on a lot of vocal jazz records, be it by Monica Zetterlund or Nina Simone. This is what makes A Love Supreme another great stepping stone into the myriad of different iterations of jazz that one might find if one would be so inclined which is most likely also why its become such a praised record in the genre. It encompasses a ton of different styles and is a beginner friendly album for untrained ears.

The second suite, Resolution, starts of in a similar vein as its predecessor, with Coltrane coming out with a repeated groove to pave way for the rest of the track. It settles into a similar feel of Acknowledgement with the same hectic drums and continued free form playing from Coltrane. I'd argue this is another step down the rabbit hole and where things start to get a bit more abrasive. There's even more focus on Coltrane's solo effort and saxophone solo's jump out in the midst of all from seemingly nowhere.

Pursuance, the third suite, is where things truly reach avant-garde territory (atleast for jazz in 65). This time around even the tempo of the piano is raised, and the drumming reaches a whole new level. Coltrane deliver rapid note after rapid note leaving the track in an utter choas that might be quite impenetrable for someone who's not yet familiar with the style. It's a continuation of the ideas that Ornette Coleman begun on The Shape Of Jazz To Come six years prior and its the idea of spiritual jazz that Coltrane's contemporaries (Sanders, Ayler, Coleman and Dolphy) were the masters of at the time.

Pursuance opens with a bang, ends with a bang, and during the other ten minutes, there's plenty of bangs aswell. However it closes of and enters the last suite which is Pslam, an ill fitting closing track that tries to stray as far as possible from the free form play at hand of Pursuance. It goes into a more comfortable groove that doesn't crave the listeners attention as much as the other tracks had. I find it ill fitting because I would have loved to see even more progression in Coltrane's saxophone play, reaching even higher levels of absurdity.

When talking about the more avant-garde ideas at play on Coltrane's A Love Supreme, it is important to take into notice its place in the timeline of jazz muisc. Now I'm not very well educated on how jazz evolved throughout time, but I do know that Coltrane actually was a bit late on the ball with the free form jazz that plays a huge part on this record. Looking back in time we can see the already mentioned The Shape Of Jazz To Come playing a huge part in the development of this sound back in 59, aswell as Coleman's (the man behind The Shape Of Jazz To Come) continuation of the sound on the record Free Jazz from 61. The idea was already devoloped on a higher level when Coltrane released A Love Supreme but I believe that it shouldn't detract from the merits of this record which actually lies somewhere else: in its blend of accessibility, atmosphere and more daring jazz music that what was in the mainstream at time.

Coltrane would go on to move even further into the ideas of free jazz as time went by, Ascension being his most well known of the spiritual jazz records he released which was due for release only the year after A Love Supreme.

I do believe this is one of the most difficult records on this list which mostly contains quite simple albums that should be easy to appreciate after only a listen or two. However A Love Supreme and the other experimental jazz records on this list (which I'll get to in a couple of days since I'm on a jazz roll here) are not only difficult because of their take on more experimental music from the genre, but also because jazz music is such a different genre from pop and rock that newcomers to the music might find it hard to enjoy something as simple as Kind Of Blue if one isn't already acquainted with instrumental pieces, be it jazz or classical.

A Love Supreme
John Coltrane
8.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars [1972] #16

David Bowie's two most praised and well known records are two that can be attributed to different eras of Bowie's music. The first one being Ziggy Stardust, from his more glam rock oriented period and the second one being Low, from his more experimental, prog influenced era.

Now I personally have never been a huge fan of Bowie's music, I see the influence and I see the appeal of some of his hits, such as Heroes, Suffragette City and Starman but I really don't get much out of his albums, be it his cheesy glam rock era or his more experimental but equally uninteresting late 70's era.

This review however will focus on the album that is Ziggy Stardust, we'll later get to other releases such as Low and Hunky Dory which are also on this list.



There isn't a lack of hit songs on this album, songs like Suffragette City, Starman, the title track and several others are often remembered as some of Bowie's finest single tracks, a claim which they are well worth being known as. Despite this, my personal issue with this album lies in similar grounds to many of The Beatles' albums, there are undoubtedly many good songs on them but they never feel like much more than a singles collection at best.

Melody is what shines on most of the songs on Ziggy Stardust. Bowie's vocals aren't too interesting, his voice is honestly not that great, and his cryptic lyrics add little to the mythos that he attempts to create with this record. Instrumentally we see a mix of glam-rock meeting old fashioned rock'n'roll, a combination which I personally don't think Bowie ever pulled off in a successful fashion despite many attempts and despite the fact that most people seem to enjoy those parts of Bowie's music. I find that tracks like Ziggy Stardust mainly feel cheesy and over the top, an effect that most glam-influenced music from a similar era has on me unfortunately.

Despite the fact that I find many of the songs on here flawed, I still enjoy them to a certain degree. Ziggy Stardust is not an album I often revisit even if it is my favorite in Bowie's discography. There's a time and place for the hit songs from this record but it's not a mood that I often find myself in.

However there is one track that I find to be phenomenal on this album and that is the closing song Rock 'n' Roll Suicide which always felt like a great closer. It's a well written song that builds up from Bowie's lonely guitar strums into an epic cry into the world as strings and electric guitars come together for a final moment as Bowie shouts positive words while everything slowly fades away into nothingness.

It is possible that Ziggy Stardust is a record that I just won't be able to appreciate for many different reasons. Maybe I'd need to sit down and really dig through the mythos that Bowie created around the record, the alternate persona that he crafted to tell this certain story. But looking at the music as a standalone product, this isn't something I enjoy very much unfortunately.

The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars

David Bowie

4/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Unknown Pleasures [1979] #20

Joy Division grew out of the ashes of the band Warsaw when Ian Curtis joined the band as the singer and also becoming the face of the band. Joy Division were never meant to have a longer career and would go on to be disbanded only a couple of years after first uniting. Their first release was the EP an Ideal For Living which they later followed up with Unknown Pleasures, one of the most notorious punk records in history aswell as yet another incredibly iconic release that we can find on this chart.

Post-punk, the genre mostly affiliated with Joy Division, came to grow as a more experimental take on straightforward punk music, where Brittish bands had a heavy focus on rhytmic and melodic bass lines while keeping the instrumentation punk-ish. Bands like Joy Division and The Cure came to be the ones to break out into the mainstream in England, while more experimental bands like This Heat and The Pop Group became staples among the more alternative crowd. Other bands like Throbbing Gristle took the idea of punk and ran it into industrial ground instead, creating yet another off shoot for punk as a genre and this is merely touching upon what was going on in The United Kingdom during the years between 75 and 80 for post-punk as a genre.

During the band's shortlived era, Ian Curtis was suffering from depression which would ultimately lead to him deciding to take his own life in 1980, the year after Unknown Pleasures was released. As sad as it may be, Curtis' state of mind became one of the biggest factors in Joy Division's and Unknown Pleasures' success and originality, due to the dark, gloomy atmosphere at hand aswell as Curtis' sad, destructive and depressive lyrics which are quite apparent during most of the album. Joy Division didn't have a sliver of happiness in their music, both the name of the band aswell as the cover art for the debut EP, An Ideal For Living were references to nazi-Germany and WWII, which led to a bit of controversy around the band (as it should have since they were still punk at the core).

They became a monumental band, despite their shortlived reign and their legacy still lives on today, be it through Tumblr-posts of good looking people in Unknown Pleasures t-shirts or through the major influence they had on many punk acts to come in the early years of the 80's. Their spot on this chart is not an unwarranted one.


I first came across Joy Division and Unknown Pleasures through a cover of the song Shadowplay on an album with a collection of b-sides by the band The Killers. At the time I had no clue of Joy Division but I did come to enjoy the song despite it being many years until I would finally come across the original. I didn't actually listen to Unknown Pleasures until about a year ago when I redsicovered it.

At the time I didn't care for their music that much, I felt that many of the songs on the album, especially the bigger part of the A-Side, felt quite lacking from the loss of energy and tempo that usually were apparent amongst the punk I was familiar with. I was mainly drawn to songs like Disorder, which had more hectic drumming aswell as more dominant lead guitars, giving way to a stronger sense of melody in the bands music.

What really turned me around on the bands music however, was watching Anton Corbijn's feature film Control about the life and death of the vocalist Ian Curtis, retelling his tragic story, going from an ordinary guy with an interest for punk music to one of the biggest underground stars of his time, only to fall as another martyr in music history, becoming another "what if?" along the lines of Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, Jim Morrison and several more. The film, how correct or incorrect it may be, gave a different perspective of the band and especially Curtis as this tragic figure who saw the world in another light, something I've come to appreciate a lot more in different artists that I usually didn't care for, something that we see quite often in this genre to be honest.

It gave a different light to their music. Hearing New Dawn Fades as Curtis' belches out "A loaded gun won't set you free!" only to faintly whisper the continuing line of "so it seems...". I do believe that it ultimately was me not quite "understanding" the band's music, and not that I couldn't appreciate the musically, but more that I didn't quite understand what Curtis' thought and felt when he wrote Disorder.

While I still don't find Unknown Pleasures to be one of the greatest albums on this list, I do feel that it deserves its place on this list, and clocking in at spot number 20 is fair enough for an undisputed post-punk legend. Unknown Pleasures might not be my personal favorite post-punk record, barely even a favorite in Joy Division's short discography, but it is an influential album with merit to itself.

Unknown Pleasures is a straight forward punk record and a great entry point for the vast amounts of post-punk in the world. If this is a genre you're curious about then this is where you should start. If this is an album you enjoy then you're in luck because there's a ton of phenomenal albums aswell as a ton of variation that came to be out of post-punk. Genres like new-wave, no-wave, industrial and several others grew out of this movement which itself grew out of the first renditions of punk. 

I think it's hard for generations that didn't experience punk at its high point to really understand how monumental the movement was, not only musically but also historically, dominating a huge amount of the 70's and shaping what we know as both the middle and the working class of society. What an experience to be 19 years old in 1979 right?

Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division

7/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: F#A#oo [1997] #65

I decided to hop around the list a bit instead of going straight down the line from one to hundred and with how the weather's been today I decided to revisit an old favorite of mine, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's debut LP, F#A#infinity.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor's music is often classified as post-rock, and when talking about this band I think it's important to open with some information about the genre in itself. Post-rock as a term was coined sometime during the early 90's, or even as far as the late 80's to describe jazz-influenced rock with focus on timbre and progressive melodies. You had bands like Talk Talk, Tortoise and even Slint being lumped in the same genre which doesn't quite make the sound of "first wave post-rock" very apparent, even if jazz-influences and timbre are the main connectors somehow.

Now Godspeed You! were the band that came to make the transition from first-wave into the well known and probably most popular form of post-rock, namely the second-wave. This wave was almost completely dominated by Canadian bands from the Montreal-area and mainly from different band members related to Godspeed You! which came to be the connecter amongst bands like Silver Mt Zion, Fly Pan Am and HRSTA. The second-wave came to be mainly from Godspeed's second full length (an album which I'll get to in a later review) but this record, F#A#infinity, was the one that started the transition into the second wave.



For those unaware, this record might seem like an odd one. It's an album built upon three long songs, all with a play time of over 15 minutes, containing drawn out passages, spoken word, and a heavy focus on strings alongside the ordinary drums and guitar. There are no sung vocals and most of this record, aswell as most of Godspeed's other releases sound a bit like a modern day rock band attempting to recreate something classical and orchestral, with 20 minute symphony's containing a huge band lineup and lots of different instruments, even if it is rooted in the modern day guitar, drums and bass.

The Dead Flag Blues opens up the album with the few spoken lines of the record. A man is retelling his encounter with a dystopian, destroyed world, speaking of the destruction of crumbling buildings, the empty burning cars on the driveway as a pair of haunting strings come in to take over the retelling of the story for him. It's one of my favorite uses of spoken word in music and it does a phenomenal job at both capturing the desolate atmosphere of something akin to Cormac McCarthy's The Road or something along the lines of the nuclear wasteland's from the Fallout games. The opening line of "The car's on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel" holds an almost iconic place in modern rock music as its spoken over a pair of heavy drones. About six minutes in, the man leaves us as the sound of a train enters the frame. This is where the song enters its second suite, opting for a more progressive and evolving way, going from a pair of sparse guitar chords into a more fully orchestrated place.

The Dead Flag Blues is an experience, a journey through dark and brooding imagery and haunting spoken word. It's one of the best examples of what Godspeed You! Black Emperor were to be capable of during their career, which is still ongoing.

The second track is the last one on the original vinyl release of the record, where East Hasting closes of a couple minutes earlier than it does on the CD-version that most people are familiar with, as it sets into the locked groove that has given the album its name. F# into A# into a locked groove that repeats it in its entirety. It's an idea that can be read into and interpreted in many different ways, possibly as how the dystopic nightmare of the apocalypse goes on forever, or that of a never ending journey. I personally don't think its supposed to be seen as a metaphor or similar, instead being a gimmicky idea that adds some flair to the record.

Both East Hasting and Providence share a similar buildup, being focused on a shapeshifting track that reaches and reaches until it finally reaches the crescendo that it's built around, reaching a certain climax like many other classical works also intended, which is what leads me to the comparison between the two. Be it through the suddenly hectic strings on East Hastings, the change in pace and tempo as suddenly the world is bursting at its seems, or how the electric guitars come in like galloping horses on Providence, as a burning army alongside the harmonius strings, it is these climaxes that are the main force of Godspeed's music and its also these that have inspired and shaped the genre for almost two decades.

This kind of crescendo-based post rock is what further would lead the genre into the "third-wave" which is mostly monkeying after Godspeed's music while shortening the track lengths down to only really fit in short buildups and strong, lasting crescendos. It's a kind of music that I'm not particularly huge on seeing as it's mostly just the same but for people with no patience. It loses so many of the elements that makes Godspeed's music great and completely wrecks the idea of classical orchestral based rock music.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor's debut LP is a phenomenal work and one of my all time favorites. It's beauty meets chaos in an original and unique way which hadn't really been done in a similar fashion when it was first released in 1997. It was a ground breaking record who's influence is still heard of today even if they were going to shape the mold even more in the three coming years. It's one of the staple albums for post-rock and while it's an unfortunate bit down the list in my opinion, it doesn't really remove any of its impact on modern musical history.

F#A#oo

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

8/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Kind Of Blue [1959] #11

If there's one album on this list that I find absolutely essential and a must hear for almost any human being out here in the world, it's this one. Kind Of Blue is Miles Davis' most well known release (and he, like most jazz musicians, has a ton) and it's also one of the genre's most prolific and revered albums.

When people who aren't acquainted with the genre think of jazz, it's most likely something in this kind of vein, or some rendition of a song like Monica Zetterlund's Sakta Går Vi Genom Stan which they've picked up from some radio channel or tv show. Kind Of Blue is the most essential jazz record of all time and one that I think is a necessity to have experienced for any person even remotely interested in music.



While Kind Of Blue almost resembles the The Godfather or the 2001 of jazz music; a ridiculous pick for one's favorite jazz album, it's one that's almost unanimously hailed as one of the greatest achievements in the genre aswell as in music overall. It's without a doubt the best stepping stone for someone even remotely interested in the genre, being a compilation of songs that rely on atmosphere as much as the incredibly important musicanship that plays a huge part in jazz. It was recorded by some of the biggest names in jazz at the time and containing musicans who still live on today as some of the era's greatest, being Davis himself, playing the trumpet, John Coltrane performing on the saxophone and Bill Evans in a quite modest role on the piano.

Kind Of Blue came to be incredibly influential and while jazz headed into wilder, more experimental territories only a couple of years later, it still became the most important piece of any lounge playlist that wants to have a piece of jazz in it. It's an album that captures the city life atmosphere almost perfectly and it's a record that's paired perfectly with New York penthouse mingle parties, where Freddie Freeloader plays in the background and Blue In Green comes of as the closing signal for the night, while young adults are leaving for a yellow taxi.

The record is mostly focused around Bill Evans' modest, intimate piano play, as Davis and Coltrane's brass comes in on top of James Cobb's sparse, downplayed drumming, where monotonous ride's and hi-hat's carry the groove behind the brass that controls the direction. Most of the songs on Kind Of Blue work in a similar fashion, with All Blues being the wildest the band ever gets to, and the least repetitive of the bunch, where Freddie Freeloader and So What both are centered around a simple reccuring melody, All Blues sees the brass head into more daring territory as Davis' is allowed to do his thing completely. All Blues is unfortunately the in my opinion weakest moment of the album, mainly for how it doesn't quite fit with Evans' and Cobb's playing, where they both are tucked away in the back of the mix while Davis' takes the front, which creates a clash that isn't as pleasing as when they're all on the same page, working towards the same goal.

Another issue I have with the album is that it's a bit too homogenous. While what it attempts is incredibly well executed, I don't find that I'm incredibly eager to hear it all over again unless I'm really in the mood for some down played jazz, and most of the time I'd probably just listen to Bill Evans' solo albums. Just like Led Zeppelin's IV, it's easy to appreciate it for doing something incredibly well, it's another thing entirely to love the music for that thing and that thing only.

What I do think is the strongest suite of Kind Of Blue however is the atmosphere it resides in. It feels like the big city nightlife and while there are a ton of albums out there that attempt a similar atmosphere, there really isn't one that does it just as well as Kind Of Blue does and it's what makes me enjoy the record so much and also what makes me hold it so dearly.

Maybe my review isn't the selling point you need to hear this record but if you ever get the chance, then do yourself a favor and go for a bike ride or just even a walk through town, watch the night life, the people, their behavior all while listening to Kind Of Blue, from So What until Flamenco Sketches. I hope it's an experience you'd cherish as much as I would.

Kind Of Blue

Miles Davis

8/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Led Zeppelin IV [1971] #10

I'll try to write a shorter review since I kind of need to head to bed and get some sleep before I get up for another day of work.

Led Zeppelin IV is the most well known record by the legendary brittish rock band. It features many of their most well known songs like Stairway To Heaven, When The Levee Breaks and Black Dog and might be the quintessential rock'n roll record.

Now this kind of subgenre to rock music isn't my favorite and one I mostly attribute to cliché, gimmicky bands like Guns 'N Roses and Kiss; rock bands featuring cool guitar solo's and banshee-esque vocals, wailing screams and lots of "Yeah baby!". While Led Zeppelin does conform to a similar kind of stereotype, it's their flirt with blues that makes their kind of music stand out. Tracks like Black Dog and When The Levee Breaks rely on repetitive guitar riffs a la Jimmy Paige next to the thundering drums of Jon Bonham all accompanied with Robert Plant's shireking vocals, kind of similar to The Black Keys just not very similar at all and also better in almost every way.

While there's no doubt that Led Zeppelin were terrific musicians who executed their style of rock music incredibly well, I do feel that their music can feel kind of shallow at times. While I keep coming back to a track like When The Levee Breaks, I do find that there's little more to it than just a fine song which kind of hampers the replayability of the band for someone who wants more engaging and thought provoking music (oh God, am I really this pretentious?)

Led Zeppelin IV is a quality record and one of the greats amongst rock music, atleast from the 70's. It's more straightforward than something like Pink Floyd ever was and I think that definitely works to its favor. This was my first brush with the band's music outside of a few key singles that have been hard to avoid and it's one that I'm not disappointed in even if I wish it had taken me a bit more by storm.

Led Zeppelin IV
Led Zeppelin
6/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Abbey Road [1969] #7

Moving down the top 10 and we reach the highest rated Beatles record on this chart. Not too surprising, it's of course Abbey Road, yet another iconic record on the top 10, with an album cover that's cemented itself in pop culture history alongside The Velvet Underground & Nico and The Dark Side Of The Moon.

I personally hold this record on par with Revolver, two of their in my opinion strongest records (neither being The Beatles' best work though) similarily built on simple pop songs with catchy melodies and a bunch of studio magic that makes them unique for their time and honestly quite innovative. Songs like Come Together and Something attempt to break the mold that the band previously had set for their kind of pop rock and they do a fine job at creating something unorthodox compared to their contemporaries.

Now a lot of credit that this record has taken should be given to their producer George Martin who had been the man turning the levers and the wheels for the band since the beginning of their career. Martin is often considered "the fifth Beatle" and rightfully so, Martin wasn't just any producer, he was the perfect fit for the band and the force that often drove them that extra mile, making tracks like Taxman and I'm Only Sleeping stand out from the previously worn mold of pop music.



This is in my opinion the time when Martin's work truly shone and most of the success of Abbey Road is definitely to be credited to George Martin, becoming one of the staple records cemented in pop culture history that still to this day is a known classic amongst young and old.

Unforunately Abbey Road suffers from a weak b-side. While the first half of the album is packed full with memorable songs like Come Together, Octopus' Garden, Something and Here Comes The Sun, the second half lacks the same momentum, energy and pillars of hit singles to lean on. It doesn't quite match the potential that the record had, containing a bunch of the bands' greatest singles and an unfortunate amount of songs that I personally don't think make the cut.

Abbey Road signaled the end of The Beatles' carreer, being the penultimate record coming in the year before Let It Be came and with it, the chapter that was The Beatles ended, This is also an contributing factor to the legacy of Abbey Road, an album which felt like a culmination of everything the band had worked for all coming together (heh) under the same roof. Let It Be might be The Beatles' encore, but Abbey Road was the finisher you'd been waiting to hear.

Abbey Road

The Beatles

7/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Film Review: Un Homme Qui Dort [1974]

Indifference has neither beginning nor end: it is an immutable state, an unshakeable inertia.

Un Homme Qui Dort (translates to A Man Who Sleeps) is a French art-house film directed by two men named Bernard Queysanne and Georges Perec. The film follows a student who seems to be suffering from depression and a strong apathy which seems to be the result of his alienation from society. The film is narrated through a female voice, most likely the characthers conscience, who acts as a guide and as the vividly explaining poetic prose of the film. The voice is constantly there, colorizing the experience and interpretations of the emotions that the character is feeling all throughout the film which leaves the viewer with a lot to take in.

I saw this movie described as "the film-equivalent to drone" which is what initally piqued my interest for Un Homme Qui Dort, and while I understand the comparison to a certain extent, both being slow, drawn out and uneventful, relying on atmosphere and outside elements to create a certain state of trance for the viewer, I find that the focus of this film isn't supposed to be as inactive as something like Coil's Time Machines can be.

Un Homme Qui Dort is instead quite vivid and eventful, with the constant narration being what really makes the movie and the interpretations of it interesting. It's a film that's occassionally beautiful but that visually doesn't add that much to the experience. It often works better with only the appearance of the narration, almost as an audio book, and I can't help but believe that it's a narration that would have worked much better as a novel, seeing to how that make the story flow better and allow for more time to interpret and take in what's being constantly spewed out.

The film often reminded me of Jean Paul Sartre's La Nauséa for its slow tempo, the cynicism and alienation of the main characther and the almost nihilistic view of the world that becomes more apparent the closer we get to the end of the film. It's a character that almost feels Dostoevskian for its spite against humans, its perceived superiority to a majority of the living world, a character that I feel has been done to death and who's edgy nihilism makes it hard to actually take the character seriously.
This is most likely my main issue with the film, aswell as how I don't think that film is a good way to interpret the story being told. The narrator is a fine idea and without a doubt executed very well but I don't find that viewing the character's card games played in solitude or his different ramblings around the streets of Paris add a lot to the depth of the film and mainly exist as a layer that just has to be there.

It doesn't evolve on the visual aspect until close to the end when we see more from the character's own point of view which is drenched in a bright light that distorts the faces of the people on the streets as the character dives through a huge crowd of people, their eyes faced in a sort of disgust towards himself as the narrator explicitly describes the monster's that people are.

Maybe this was just a bit too deep for me but it's yet again the same issue that I had with La Nauséa when I read it, I find it hard to relate to the character at hand for his nihilistic view of life and the cynicism that drowns out a majority of the story, swallowing everything and taking it to the level of the mind of a 13-year old who's just discovered Nietzche.

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: In The Court Of The Crimson King [1969] #5

Oh boy! More anglo prog!

As I stated in my review for Wish You Were Here, I'm not a huge fan of most of the brittish progressive rock that I've heard throughout my life. They do stand out as the more interesting part of rock music from the 70's and 80's but most of the time I find them a bit too theatric, and I guess cheesy, for my own tastes.

There's definitely a couple of expections, and even if they are few, this album is one of those that I'd count amongst the ranks of brittish prog rock that makes me actually interested in the genre and curious for more.



I believe that for the most part of this record, King Crimson completely pulled of the aspect of theatrics in the genre aswell as combining it with a certain cohesiveness and almost narrative feel to the record that ties it all together in a nice little package and making up one of the best full albums that progressive rock has to offer, atleast seeing to the whole package containing album art, record pressing and more. It's a beast of a debut which quickly came to solidify King Crimson's role as one of the legends of the genre and is most likely the most notorious of the earliest conceptions of progressive rock.

The album kicks of with 21'st Century Schizoid Man, a classic in the genre and today also quite well known for being sampled by Kanye West on the album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, considered by many critics to be one of the greatest contender's for a modern classic. 21'st Century Schizoid Man is instrumentally not too far away from the first suite of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, borrowing influences from jazz (an idea that most likely originated with Soft Machine a couple years prior) with a bombastic trumpet solo sitting in the middle of the track, working as a segue between the grandiose interlude and the free ranging solo's that make up the closing part of the album.

21'st Century Schizoid Man opens the album on a high note, through robotic heavily filtered vocals over the clashing instruments, creating an almost futuristic feel to the music, as something foreign and almost science fiction-esque sets the atmosphere. It's an atmosphere that's hard to put words to but it's a feeling that stays throughout the record, holding a similar form all throughout Epitath, Moonchild and I Talk To The Wind.

Now the album unfortunately loses a bit of steam after the grandiose power house that is the opening track, slowing down it's pace on I Talk To The Wind and not quite finding its footing until the album reaches the closing point. I Talk To The Wind aswell as Moonchild both feel quite out of place on the record, slowing down the tempo and drawing the focus away from the already proven strong points of King Crimson. It's an issue of cohesiveness which I think hampers the record that could truly have benefited a bit more from a more homogenous focus and more constant flow of songs. While I Talk To The Wind atleast stands as a strong track on its own, the track Moonchild does not and only drags the quality of the record down even further.

The band tries to tie it all back together with the title track closing it off. The Court Of The Crimson King takes you back into a song that seems awfully similar to 21'st Century Schizoid Man both instrumentally and seeing to the atmosphere it's play. It's a nice trick that I wish had more of an effect but it kind of feels trite and unnecessary when the mid-section doesn't really add anything to the theme started on the opener.

In The Court Of The Crimson King often feels like it could have been so much more, had a narrative and concept found more of a grip in Fripp's vocals and the middle section of the album. It is a debut afterall and taking that into account, it still stands as a prog rock legend with the screaming red man remaining almost as much of an icon as the prism that graces The Dark Side Of The Moon.

Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on this record but revisiting it has only let me down and left me with an even stronger bitter sweet taste regarding this record. Maybe it's one that just has lost its charm.

In The Court Of The Crimson King
King Crimson
6.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev