A sensuous and ambitious compilation of house
music, dance tracks, world beat and cross-over
collaborations drawn from the most cutting-edge
contemporary DJs, rock bands and solo artists.
What's the attention
span of a three to 10-year-old? The 29 artists
represented on this wonderful new collection of
kid's songs have each contributed one full minute
of music, which is what the producers figured must
be just about right.
With a voice as rich
as a rare honey and as evocative as a warm summer
breeze, this Portuguese chanteuse is in possession
of one of the most enchanting voices in
music.
What Is It Like To Be A Bat? by Kitty
Brazelton and Dafna Naphtali bridges the multi-gaps
between smart, weird, and passionate while throwing
in invigorating doses of funny.
The Singer Songwriter Collection, part of
Rounder's exhaustive Heritage series, presents 17
cuts representing many of the most important "folk"
singers of our time.
Although contemporary adaptations of classics
don't always work, this Count of Monte
Cristo is vibrant, vital and smart. It's a
more-than-worthwhile addition to the growing DVD
collection.
The Laramie Project was the opening night
feature presentation at the 2002 Sundance Film
Festival, and it was broadcast on HBO soon after.
The newly-released DVD includes the film in
widescreen format, two featurettes, a director
commentary track and a making-of documentary.
Public Face, Private Face seems to play
like a piece of Blue Nile-nic Nigel Thomas' own
heart, with all aspects of his musical career
represented together, side-by-side.
Blue Coupe contributing editor Sienna
Powers looks at independently produced albums from
Sarah Fimm, Where Echoes End, outloud dreamer and
Randomvariate.
Biography is right: 74 tracks on four CDs that
span something like 50 years of the history of
music. Not just jazz music or blues music or film
music or pop music or rap music. Music. Period.
Rabih Abou-Khalil is a perverse musician. He has
taken the oud, a traditional Arabian lute, and
crafted with its help a body of music for which it
was never intended.
Veda Hille's albums have stopped being
collections of songs. They are now suites of opaque
and impenetrable tone poems exploring the theme
du jour (this time something to do with
birds and northern Canada).
Low's sense of the divine alone separates them
from the spiritually bankrupt and musically
homogenized pre-fab freakshow of post-corporate
pop-anti-culture.
All 13 tracks of Whoa, Nelly! invite
further and deeper listening. They also invite
speculation: Furtado has seemingly covered it all
on album one. Where on earth can she go from
here?
In a climate where a myriad of performers are
looking to add more -- more instrumentation, more
overdubs and slicker production -- it's refreshing
to hear an approach that gives the lobes a welcome
break.
Prerelease hype and hoopla aside, The Beatles
Anthology is a startlingly magnificent book.
Encyclopedic in its weight and dimensions, it's the
sort of coffee table book heavy enough to put a
bend in lightly-built coffee tables.
Havana Midnight is infused with a
relaxed and unpretentious mood. The album works its
way through its nine songs as peacefully as the
reflection of a Cuban moon slipping across the
water.
Joe Jackson, whose last several albums have
suffered a severe case of studioitis, has, with the
live release Summer in the City, made his
music scream again.
When someone as obscenely successful as William
Orbit announces that his next project will be a
genre-busting remix of famed classical perennials,
it's only human to secretly hope he's hoisted by
the pricey petards of his possibly blind
ambition.
