|
|
|
Radio Retaliation
:Album Description:Internationally acclaimed artists Thievery Corporation release their 5th studio album entitled Radio Retaliation on ESL Music. With Radio Retaliation Thievery Corporation raise the bar with a new cast of musical collaborators including; Nigeria's afro-beat heir Femi Kuti, Brazilian star vocalist and guitarist Seu Jorge, Indian sitar virtuoso Anushka Shankar, Slovakian chanteuse and violinist Jana Andevska, and Washington DC's own go-go originator Chuck Brown. Also returning are long time co-conspirators Sleepy Wonder, LouLou, Notch, Zee, and Verny Varela.
|
|
|
Third
:Amazon.co.uk:Portishead's Third has been a long time coming, the result of a lengthy creative torpor following 1997's dark, distinctly underrated album Portishead. Importantly, though, they've shaken it. While the core trio of Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow, and Adrian Utley remains, this is quite a different band to Portishead's 90s incarnation: gone is the slo-mo turntable scratching and smoky jazz feel, replaced by heavy, brooding rhythms, vintage-sounding electronics, and spindly guitar. Still present, though, is that sense of emotional fracture and deep gloom. 'Silence' opens with a ...
|
|
|
Me and Armini
: :A hugely ambitious pop record with Emiliana's soaring voice center stage, bolstered by a rich gamut of musical styles. From the summery skank of the title track to the surging, breathless single 'Jungle Drum' to the yearning, spine-tingling 'Big Jumps', 'Me And Armini' is a truly sublime album. Torrini sings the song at the end credits for 'The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers', and she wrote two #1 hits for Kylie Minogue. Produced by Dan Carey (Franz Ferdinand, Hot Chip).
|
|
|
Dummy
: :The collaboration of studio whiz Geoff Barrow and singer Beth Gibbons, Dummy was made at the same time as a short film noir called 'To Kill a Dead Man,' and the same approach--gloomy, tormented, and wildly melodramatic--permeates the album. 'Sour Times' (the hit in which Gibbons cries, again and again, 'Nobody loves me, it's true') and the more cryptic 'Glory Box' are the linchpins of the album, defining its sound: dark flashes of old soul and film music, dehumanized electronic bleeps, Gibbons emoting like she's consumed ...
|
|
|
Knowle West Boy
: :Tricky is back with an album named after the Bristol neighborhood where he grew up. It details the travels and travails of his youth, resulting in an eclectic aural history of his diverse upbringing. He reaches into post-punk, Two-Tone, reggae, hip-hop, and pop, twisting them into surreal songscapes. Tricky uses his astonishingly eclectic band and a host of great undiscovered singers to create the most varied and accessible set of his career.
|
|
|
Simple Things
:Album Description:2001 debut full length for dance act described as, 'the British Air', the follow-up to two limited, critically acclaimed EPs. Highlights include the awesome African influenced instrumental passage 'Likufanele', the velvety 'I Have Seen' feat. Mozez & the quiet storm of 'Destiny' feat. Sia. Quango. :Zero 7's ability to conjure beautiful lullabies with all the romance of 1960s French pop (as found on their debut LP, Simple Things) would have made them the toast of soundtrack composers and chill-out connoisseurs the world over. Unfortunately, two ...
|
|
|
Mezzanine
: essential recording:The third full-length release from Massive Attack is a taste of the future of pop music--a future where precisely engineered events can be seamlessly partnered with the subtle complexities of a human voice. Since their first album, Blue Lines, they've been making similar magic happen with any one of several guest vocalists, but nothing like the way it happens on Mezzanine. This time they take the union further, moving it into a darker space in which the individual elements become less discernable. Guest vocalists ...
|
|
|
The Mirror Conspiracy
:Album Description:2000 release for the extremely talented and unsung DJ duo. An amalgamation of reggae dubplates, lounge muzak, breaks, beats and bossanova. 2000 release. Standard jewel case with slipcase. :Washington, D.C.'s Thievery Corporation purvey a very mellow, deliberately international mixture of sounds that might be called 'lounge music'--not in the kitschy sense, but in the sense of a laid-back local bar (much like the one the duo happens to run) with no dance floor. Rob Garza and Eric Hilton are professed admirers of Brazilian music, and ...
|
|
|
Love in the Time of Science
:Album Description:2000 release for the extremely talented and unsung DJ duo. An amalgamation of reggae dubplates, lounge muzak, breaks, beats and bossanova. 2000 release. Standard jewel case with slipcase. :Washington, D.C.'s Thievery Corporation purvey a very mellow, deliberately international mixture of sounds that might be called 'lounge music'--not in the kitschy sense, but in the sense of a laid-back local bar (much like the one the duo happens to run) with no dance floor. Rob Garza and Eric Hilton are professed admirers of Brazilian music, and ...
|
|
|
Portishead
: :The bad news is that there is no 'Sour Times' to equal the first album's greatness. Lead single 'Cowboys' doesn't do the trick, not with its '50s sci-fi dub vibe and the Yma Sumac stylings of Beth Gibbons. The upside is that this bold sophomore release is, even at this late date in trip-hop's evolution, still startling, thanks to the mix of Geoff Barrow's soundscapes and Gibbons's haunting wail. --Jeff Bateman
|
|