Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Going To A Go-Go

Though it’s title track ignited a nationwide fad for go-go music, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' Going to a Go-Go LP certainly wasn't just a cash-in effort. It's one of the best records the group put out, and the first six songs make for the best side of any original Motown LP of the '60s (granted, all but one are also available on dozens of Miracles compilations). The four biggest hits were among the best in a set of Miracles archetypes: the throwback to the aching '50s doo wop ballad ("Ooo Baby, Baby"), the flashy up-tempo dance song ("Going to a Go-Go"), the dancing-with-tears-in-my-eyes jerker ("The Tracks of My Tears"), and the mid-tempo orchestral epic ("My Girl Has Gone"). "Choosey Beggar" is one of the sweetest of all Robinson's lead vocals, with stunning background work by the rest of the Miracles. Even the album tracks shine, with "All That's Good" and "Let Me Have Some" working as excellent additions to the program.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/going-to-a-go-go-mw0000872358#review

Plurabelle - Our Fires

It's all about the ominous vibes with Plurabelle's Our Fires, a track imbued with such an oppressive aural quality that it's kind of impressive. Couple that with the 2 tone music video by Mattis Dovier, who seems to be taking a few queues from Maruo Suehiro's muzan-e (A more violent ukiyo-e) stylings and low-fi PC graphics and you've got yourself one hell of a horror music video. The track is taken from Phantom Pyramid LP, set to release on June 16th via Stellar Kinematics.
Adolescence, embodied by the mutation into a monstrous beast, is a tribute to B-movies, drawing references from John Carpenter's or illustrator Charles Burns' universes. Symbolism in the transition into adulthood is seen as a rite of passage, requiring the death of a human being and the birth of another. The haunting mystical song immerses us inexorably into the intricacies of this transformation you can't avoid, whatever you do.  From: https://awesomerobo.blogspot.com/2014/07/plurabelle-our-fires.html

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass

The second music video for "This Too Shall Pass" was co-directed by Damian Kulash and James Frost. Similar to the band's video for "Here It Goes Again", the "This Too Shall Pass" video features a four-minute, apparent one shot sequence of the song being played in time to the actions of a giant Rube Goldberg machine built in a two-story warehouse from over 700 household objects, traversing an estimated half-mile course. As the song and machine operate, the members of the band are seen singing alongside the machine, with the members being shot at by paint guns at the song's finale. Parts of the machine are synchronized in time with the music; in one instance, glasses of water are used to repeat part of the song's melody in the fashion of a glass harp. One part of the machine shows the "Here It Goes Again" video on a television before it is smashed by the machine. The MAKE magazine 1993 Ford Escort racecar, used for the 24 Hours of LeMons, appears in the video along with a miniature LEGO version of the car. Alongside the LEGO car, several LEGO mini-figurines are displayed as a reference to the marching band video.
The floor plan for the Rube Goldberg machine used in the video covered two floors of a warehouse and had several distinct stations that worked in time with the music. The video's inspiration was from the band, who wanted "a giant machine that we dance with", a long-term aspiration of the band and inspired by other Rube Goldberg machines shown in videos on YouTube, including the interstitials used on the Japanese children's show PythagoraSwitch. While they considered the idea of the machine for each song on Of the Colour, they opted to use "This Too Shall Pass" to make the end result "majestic and epic", even though it already duplicated the previous marching band video. They sought help through online science message boards, eventually coming in contact with Syyn Labs. From a pool of talent at a Syyn Labs-hosted "Mindshare LA" gathering, about 55 to 60 people from Syyn Labs, the California Institute of Technology (including some who work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and participated in the Mars Exploration Rover program, hence the model rover seen in the video) and MIT Media Lab helped to design and construct the machine. Damian Kulash's father (Damian Kulash Sr.) also participated in the machine's construction.
The team had to work on a limited budget, using recycled trash for many of the props in the device; after filming, the total estimated cost was approximately $90,000. The team avoided the use of "magic" — automated devices like computers or motors — and instead focused on purely physical devices. The total time to create the video from conceptualization was about six months, with two months of planning and four months for design and filming. The warehouse where filming took place was in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, and was secured by Syyn Labs in November 2009. The final construction within the warehouse took over a month and a half during January and February 2010. The band members helped in the last two weeks of construction, having spent the previous four months on tour.
Once the machine was completed, the filming, using a single Steadicam, took two days to complete on February 11 and 12, with an estimated 60 takes for the machine to properly function. The first day of filming included 47 takes, none of which successfully completed the entire machine and necessitated a second day of filming. Many of the takes ended only 30 seconds into the process, at the start of the song's chorus, where a tire would fail to roll properly into the next section of the machine. Syyn Labs had a group of 30 people to help reset the machine after each failed take, a process that took upwards of an hour depending on how far the machine ran. There were no significant injuries during filming; Tim Nordwind once was hit hard with paint at the end, while the Steadicam operator nearly got hit with one of the barrels at the end of the mechanism in the shot used for the final video. His reaction may be seen in the released version of the video.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Too_Shall_Pass_(OK_Go_song)#cite_note-wired_video-8

How To Destroy Angels - The Space in Between

This is the album and video version of ‘The Space In Between’. After opening with a looped drumbeat, ambient and delayed guitars enter, followed by a deep synth strings bassline and  Mariqueen Maandig's softly-sung verse. The chorus features more guitars layered on top of the differing bassline and harmonized vocals, followed by a second verse characterized by echoing Swarmatron manipulations. Even more guitars enter for the final chorus, which builds its harmonies as it repeats twice, matching the building layers of guitars. The entirety of the song cuts off suddenly at the end of the second chorus repetition.
The video, directed by Rupert Sanders (who is primarily known for creating video game advertisements) is set in a hotel room, and opens to the corridor outside. It cuts to a shot of an ajar door, and of an over-running sink, to show that something surprised the room. Once the vocals come in, we are given a shot of a recently-murdered (albeit singing) Bride (Maandig) sitting against a bed, surrounded with blood. Following close up shots show that a struggle had occurred, and show a long-burning candle near a stack of papers and a shot of another, unmoving, dead body; that of the Groom (Reznor) in a pool of his own blood.  We are then shown a woman (Molly McDowell) speaking on the phone, and a man (Atticus Ross) watching motorbike racing on the hotel's television. The pair are totally oblivious to the scene beside them despite the carnage. The video shows the weapons beside both the Bride and the Groom (a glass and knife respectively), to convey to the viewer that they killed each other. The video cuts to show that the candle has ignited the stack of papers, and gives us the close up of the murdered man's face.
The remainder of the video shows the spread of the fire engulfing the corpses and their half of the room, and the apparent nonchalance of the supposed murderers. The video also reveals that there is apparently another man in the bathroom, but only his feet and hands are ever seen. The video cuts out abruptly as the Bride and Groom are totally consumed by the fire.  Director Rupert Sanders has said that this video is a metaphor for how neglect can allow love to die, symbolised by the self destruction of the married couple, totally ignored by the pair opposite. The video can also be seen as a partial rebuke towards much of the negative response that Maandig and Reznor received after their engagement was made public, a reminder that everyone is human and that everyone can be hurt.  From: https://www.nin.wiki/The_Space_In_Between

Motus Tenebrae - Deathrising

While this may be my first experience of Italian doomsters Motus Tenebrae, they’ve been together since 2001, a miserabilist five piece that have released an impressive four full length albums prior to this slab of grief. Look, before we get down to the review proper, there’s something we have to talk about. This may save you some time. Your enjoyment of this album is going to be directly proportionate to the extent to which you enjoy Paradise Lost. While it is true to say that there are a plethora of different influences to be heard on this album, anyone with even a passing knowledge of the more downbeat corners of our beloved heavy metal will prick up their ears on hearing the music, perhaps with a slightly upturned Spock-ian eyebrow raise. You see, it’s entirely fair to say that “Deathrising” passes more than a fleeting resemblance to the sonic mastery of Paradise Lost circa “In Requiem”. It wouldn’t be fair to say that they are an exact copy, though certainly to my ears, there are enough parallels to make this more than accidental. Take, for instance, the vocal phrasing of vocalist Luis McFadden on (admittedly excellent) track “Black Sun”. Having been a fan of Nick Holmes for his entire career, the singing is almost an exact simulacra of his pipes. Given that I’ll listen to pretty much anyone with the slightest audio resemblance to Ozzy Osbourne-era Sabbath, I can’t claim that this gave me any cause for concern.
Elsewhere, this is thoroughly meaty, full-fat excursion into the depths of misery. Listening to the album in a single, concentrated sitting with no distractions it’s possible to hear a refinement of the modern, polished be-doomed metal. In particular, the bottom-end grunt of Andreas Das-Cox (bass) and the drums of Andrea Falaschi (drums) underpin the tracks really effectively. On third track, and all-round-stormer “For a Change”, it’s great to hear the band loosen up a little and up the tempo.
Title-track “Death Rising” exemplifies the album’s approach. It begins with a gnarled, appropriately grim guitar tone, before opening up with delicate, minor-key melodies and guitar touches, and an almost-dream like wash of keyboard news. Long-time readers may recall that in general I approach the presence of keyboards in my heavy metal like I approach the presence of Jeremy Clarkson on my tellybox; I know that they appear to be popular, but I just find them irritating. Harvey Cova manages to do a cracking job on the keyboards here, mostly, I think, by being sympathetic to the rest of the music and not drowning everything else out. It’s a mark of the musician that he has been relatively subtle throughout the album in how the keyboard has been deployed.
The production has that modern punch and sheen that we have come to take for granted, though pleasingly, the guitars have had their grit and attack well preserved. Through a decent pair of headphones the whole thing sounds like it has been given a really expensive production, easily sitting shoulder to shoulder with anything produced by the “big name” producers, though as a minor gripe, I would have liked to have heard the guitar melodies pushed slightly louder in the mix, as occasionally I felt they were drowned out by the bottom end. There’s a lot to enjoy here, and while the Paradise Lost comparisons are too close for comfort at times, they wouldn’t be the first, nor indeed the last band to do a decent job of producing something that they can claim as their own while using that mighty outfit’s blueprint – it certainly hasn’t done any harm for Gothic-era boredom-inducers Katatonia, for instance.  All in, I found myself agreeing that “Deathrising” had done enough to satisfy the “would listen again” test by some margin. An accomplished, if not entirely original, treat.  From: https://avenoctum.com/2016/01/19/motus-tenebrae-deathrising-my-kingdom/

Cranes - I Hope

British group Cranes are known for their haunting, otherworldly sound, distinguished by the curious, childlike vocals of singer Alison Shaw. Though their music resists easy categorization and has evolved over the course of the group's career, their work is well regarded by fans of dream pop, gothic rock, darkwave, and related genres. They formed in the mid-'80s and initially had an abstract, quasi-industrial sound, featuring heavy drum machine beats and harsh, noisy guitars. Their full-length debut, 1991's Wings of Joy, was a more polished refinement of their ethereal style, and their most commercially successful efforts, 1993's Loved and 1994's Forever, contained their most accessible, pop-informed material. Following the relatively straightforward alternative rock of 1997's Population Four, Cranes returned from a brief hiatus with an updated lineup and a slightly more electronic sound for a trio of albums beginning with 2001's Future Songs. The band resumed performing in 2023, and released several reissues and archival collections, including the 2024 box set Collected Works, Vol. 1 (1989-1997).
Cranes were founded by siblings Alison Shaw (vocals, bass, acoustic guitar) and Jim Shaw (guitar, bass, keyboards, drums) in Portsmouth, England in 1985; the two have remained the band's only consistent members. Heavily influenced by the Cure and Nick Cave as well as industrial acts like Foetus and the Young Gods, Cranes released their first demo cassette, mini-album Fuse, on Bite Back! in 1986. Self-Non-Self, another mini-album and the band's first vinyl release, appeared in 1989, at which point the band started gaining attention from famed DJ John Peel. They recorded two sessions for his radio show, and signed to the BMG-affiliated label Dedicated in 1990. By this point, the band's lineup had expanded to include multi-instrumentalist Mark Francombe and guitarist Matt Cope. Two EPs, Inescapable and Espero, were issued during the year, and the group appeared on the cover of Melody Maker. Wings of Joy, Cranes' full-length debut, arrived to positive reviews in 1991, and the group expanded their audience when they opened for the Cure on their world tour in 1992. Forever, the band's 1993 full-length, was their commercial breakthrough, in part due to the U.K. Top 30 success of the heartbreaking single "Jewel," which was given a transformative rework by the Cure's Robert Smith. Third album Loved followed in 1994, featuring another of the group's most memorable songs, "Shining Road," which also made the U.K. singles chart.
La Tragédie d'Oreste et Électre, an experimental work inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mouches, was released in a limited edition of 10,000 copies in 1996, though it was actually recorded during the same time period as Loved, and the two were initially intended to be issued together as a double album. Full-length Population Four, the band's only album with drummer Manu Ros, and EP Collection, Vol. 1 & 2 both appeared in 1997. However, Dedicated folded, and Cranes' lineup at the time disbanded. The Shaw siblings reformed Cranes in 2000, this time featuring guitarist/keyboardist Paul Smith, bassist Ben Baxter, and drummer Jon Callender. They launched their own Dadaphonic label, while issuing their music stateside on Instinct. Future Songs, which sounded thoroughly like Cranes but incorporated ambient and trip-hop influences, appeared in 2001, with the single "Submarine" including remixes by techno producers like Dietrich Schoenemann (Prototype 909) and Jack Dangers (Meat Beat Manifesto).  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/cranes-mn0000128141#biography

Jeff Buckley - Live in Chicago 1995

 Jeff Buckley - Live in Chicago 1995 - Part 1

 Jeff Buckley - Live in Chicago 1995 - Part 2

 

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jeff Buckley's untimely death gives this 108-minute live performance inevitable poignancy and power as a rare, complete document of his passionate writing and playing style. At the time of Buckley's ascendance in the mid-'90s, both his high-flying vocal attack and his edgy poetic sense struck older listeners as genetic markers from his father, folk-rock legend Tim Buckley. Yet Buckley pursued a much more electric, rock-ribbed style, nodding toward behemoths like Pearl Jam and even Led Zeppelin. This 1995 concert is a single, complete show from the tour that yielded the posthumous Mystery White Boy live album. It likewise impresses, both for Buckley's own songs and the bold cover choices included, here including songs associated with Nina Simone and the MC5 (a range that explains the emotional epics that Buckley favors). Visually, the unadorned lighting scheme casts an often harsh light on the pale, dark-haired frontman, but a generally solid performance is sonically captured with satisfying detail, and the 5.1 surround sound mix gives the DVD version an appropriate club ambience.  From: https://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Buckley-Live-Chicago/dp/0738900672