Greatest Albums of All Time (Rock & Jazz)

[AfterHours]

[TiggaTrigga]

Hey, Afterhours:

How would you describe Lullaby Land? What do you think it was going for? I can only describe it as collage, but that's it. What do you think Vampire Rodents were trying to say or express with this album?

[AfterHours]

It's basically a parade/circus/merry-go-round/psychotic stream-of-consciousness of chaotic, grotesque horror and cartoonish theater -- both nightmarish and blackly comic. I am too invested in Classical right now to revisit the album and go into great detail, but here is what Scaruffi says, and if there is anything in his review that you'd like clarified, let me know and I might be able to help.

To write my own right now would take revisiting it + a few hours to write up my own analysis, which I'm just too busy to set aside time to do right now.

NOTE: I applied google translate so the translation isn't perfect:

Lullaby Land - The Vampire Rodents (1993)

Equally impressive and even mature, Lullaby Land (Re-Constriction, 1993) abandons Gothic poses and wild impetus. Their wild collage art reaches a drenched peak here.
Sound editing is performed at a disco rhythm that can go from funk to house; But also has its own inner rhythm, the most dragging, and the rhythm with which the pieces, the frames, the cells that compose it, are followed. The composition work is complemented by a "mixed" mix of parallel phases, rarely relying only on the foreground "gag", but almost always accompanies an appropriate counterpoint (sampling and electronics) kit. In this third disc, the results, these songs where literally everything happens, They remind Absolutely Free's Frank Zappa or the First Suites Residents.
Trilobite tries to combine a sort of "total" house: a paleo-tribal percussion acts as a carpet for a sequence of intermittent varieties of rapid succession (a classical cello, a melancholy violin, a bebop saxophone, a hysterical piano, and So on), in an ever-growing crescendo, a triumph of sampling until it no longer distinguishes the sound source, until it completely loses the sense of orientation.
The metamorphosis of harmony is the rule, not the exception. Catacomb opens with a duet of violins, which immediately leaves room for an industrial clangor, Who in turn changes in a duet of cello and electronic hisses; Meanwhile, a Brechtian actor proceeds, a funerary violin proceeds, the storm-storm beat-box, leaked beetle lurking lurking.
Dogchild is a rallying of tasty reminiscences of roaring years, always strenuous by having been deconstructed by sampling and then re-assembled at random with the inevitable minisinphony for bells, pneumatic presses and hammers and an inextricable tangle of fanfare.
It is not difficult to guess what inspired Bosch Erotique's grotesque , in the presence of this orgy of nitrites, laughter, mourning, swirling, medieval songs, dance footsteps; Of the multitude of voices and voices that continue to rise from the hellish bolgia; But at the same time the musicians comically scratch the string strings and a circus motif in the breathless breaths even a suspicion of Stravinsky.
At the dance of the warfare that feeds Exuviate overlapping industrial noises, as well as languid classics of violoncello and violin; So after a few seconds the song has changed completely with a singing, laughing and crying, deformed in reverbs, overpowering electronics, orchestral rhymes in the background, a conventional rhythm of drum machine; And as for the enchantment the song ends on the same pow-wow cadres with which it started.
The "cantilene land" of which the title track is sung in disturbing scenarios, such as in a Freudian nightmare, Like a film projected at double speed, distorted, like a heroin overdose.
The instrumental Akrotiri is conceived as a ceremonial dance of some exotic country, but once again it is all wrapped in a sampling nebula that rotates at a high speed, now piercing a Greek guitar and now an Egyptian flute, now an organ Gothic and now a dodecaphonic violin. Toten Faschist is an extremely degraded heavymetal, which preserves only the sense of destruction, and immerses it in the magma of avant-garde music, mixing the guitar's signature with a saxophone. Crib Death's rhythm was initially given by electric shocks, While his melody is a cello phrase mixed with a cosmic gravitational wave; A change of rhythm projects the listener in the midst of a heavymetal riff sounding.
In the electronic glow worm , a shaky chorus reverberates back even to the Merseybeat, except in the usual polytophythmic rhythm tribalism, in the heavy heavy guitars of the guitar and so on. The Gargoyles panzer's swinging precipitates in dead-bellied bells, agonizing screams, lifeless guitars. Grace is thinking of a ballet of robots, between the metal polymorphism and the dementia / mechanical dementia.
In the pile there is also a Dervish , Pierced by dissonances of all sorts, in particular of forgotten piano and cello, scattered here and the buzzing of saxophone and violin by wasps; An electronic conducted by the sitar, Raga Rodentia; A short Dadaist piece ( Cartouche ) ; A short orchestral piece ( Awaken ); And robotic, chaotic and cacophonic pieces like Scavenger .
The vocalizations of the various singers who alternate with the microphone are often quite independent of the instrumental score, and thus acquire the value of acting exercises.
Vampire Rodents is a never-ending music that never ceases to change skin, never acquiring a definite personality; Yet each song is perfectly accomplished, it develops with its grace and elegance, and ends in the same instant as the musicians have exhausted their gags.
In addition to the sampling archive, the constant metamorphosis of the rhythms is fundamental: rarely the same rhythm (as frequency and timbre) is used for more than a few seconds. Even the rhythm, that is, changes constantly, just like everything else. There is really nothing to ensure cohesion, unity, continuity. The percussion that is used extends along an endless spectrum of stamps. It is not negligible on their method of composition encyclopedic knowledge that Rathausen has of avant-garde music. The same time the musicians have exhausted their gags. In addition to the sampling archive, the constant metamorphosis of the rhythms is fundamental: rarely the same rhythm (as frequency and timbre) is used for more than a few seconds. Even the rhythm, that is, changes constantly, just like everything else. There is really nothing to ensure cohesion, unity, continuity. The percussion that is used extends along an endless spectrum of stamps. It is not negligible on their method of composition encyclopedic knowledge that Rathausen has of avant-garde music. The same time the musicians have exhausted their gags. In addition to the sampling archive, the constant metamorphosis of the rhythms is fundamental: rarely the same rhythm (as frequency and timbre) is used for more than a few seconds. Even the rhythm, that is, changes constantly, just like everything else. There is really nothing to ensure cohesion, unity, continuity. The percussion that is used extends along an endless spectrum of stamps. It is not negligible on their method of composition encyclopedic knowledge that Rathausen has of avant-garde music. Rarely the same rhythm (as frequency and timbre) is used for more than a few seconds. Even the rhythm, that is, changes constantly, just like everything else. There is really nothing to ensure cohesion, unity, continuity. The percussion that is used extends along an endless spectrum of stamps. It is not negligible on their method of composition encyclopedic knowledge that Rathausen has of avant-garde music. Rarely the same rhythm (as frequency and timbre) is used for more than a few seconds. Even the rhythm, that is, changes constantly, just like everything else. There is really nothing to ensure cohesion, unity, continuity. The percussion that is used extends along an endless spectrum of stamps. It is not negligible on their method of composition encyclopedic knowledge that Rathausen has of avant-garde music.

--Piero Scaruffi
_________________
Best Classical
Best Films
Best Paintings

[AfterHours]

@ TiggaTrigga

Re: Lullaby Land

Films, especially those that employ relentless montage and Expressionist, grotesque, theatrical effects, would likely assist one's assimilation of the work:

ESPECIALLY ... Faust - Murnau

To a somewhat lesser degree, but still quite relevant:

Conspirators of Pleasure - Svankmajer
Battleship Potemkin - Eisenstein
The Kingdom - Von Trier
Underground - Kusturica
Brazil - Gilliam
Mr Arkadin - Welles
Natural Born Killers - Stone
Metropolis - Lang
The Wild Bunch - Peckinpah
_________________
Best Classical
Best Films
Best Paintings

[Facetious]

How about doing a thorough analysis of Faust (the album) with references to all of the different musical sections and their significance as part of the whole?

[AfterHours]

[boyd94]

[AfterHours]

[Facetious]

[AfterHours]