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Facetious
Gender: Male
Age: 24
Location: Somewhere you've never been
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- #651
- Posted: 11/18/2021 03:40
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Thoughts on Tootsie?
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AfterHours
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Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #652
- Posted: 11/18/2021 09:33
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| Facetious wrote: | | Thoughts on Tootsie? |
Maybe I'll say more when it's a bit fresher in mind, but it has a frequent fluctuation and "multiplication" of tone, a continual very fine-line precariousness between lightness of comedy, of absurdity and drama or seriousness (of Hoffman playing a particularly unattractive looking woman, of the success he finds while playing a woman that he couldn't find beforehand, of the understanding he develops of women through this act, the metaphor for his acting, of the increasing complications of situations he gets himself in, etc), and all the emotional, character and thematic development and ambiguity that arises from this -- a very deft balancing act between illustrating both humanity and absurdity for its situations, often simultaneously -- is all pretty remarkable.
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homelessking
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- #653
- Posted: 11/18/2021 17:09
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Insights on Dadamah's This Is Not a Dream?
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AfterHours
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Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #654
- Posted: 11/19/2021 00:10
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| homelessking wrote: | | Insights on Dadamah's This Is Not a Dream? |
Finds a pretty special balance that could be called a cross between Royal Trux/The VU (and/or as Scaruffi notes, Pere Ubu and Modern Lovers...) A bit of the swallowed, cavernous, experimental disorientation of Royal Trux's Twin Infinitives (including the archaic effects/electronics, including the voices often buried in cacophony) and lots of doses of The Velvet Underground's psychedelic trance (including the lo-fi, unembellished sound and even resurrecting much of the guitar tones and intonation of Morrison, Reed, the percussion of Tucker...). These are only parameters that show probable sources of inspiration. The work is highly unusual past that (for instance the first track developing into a "call of the wild" over hypnotic strumming, disorientation, cacophony).
I would need to revisit to say much more, but Scaruffi says it all very well here:
"Dadamah's This Is Not A Dream (Majora, 1992 - Kranky, 1993) is one of the most ingenious records to come out of the second generation of New Zealand's indie-rockers, a magic recreation of the Velvet Underground's psychedelic trance, updated to the new wave zeitgeist of the Modern Lovers, sprinkled with effervescent oddities in the surreal vein of Red Krayola and Pere Ubu.
Limbo Swing frantic hypnotic guitar strumming a` la Sterling Morrison, desolate austere wailing a` la Nico, pounding tribal drums a` la Maureen Tucker with the addition of a distorted organ a` la Doors' Ray Manzarek floating a county-fair melody over the manic crescendo and with the variant of vocals that rapidly lose their composure and begin screaming like the most obsessed Siouxsie Sioux. Papa Doc presses on with voodoo tom-toms and distorted organ, while the singers intone a ghostly hymn (the male in a cavernous register reminiscent of British dark-punk, the female an Exene Cervenka of the graveyars). In Brian's Children the guitar/drums thrust is so epileptic that it sounds like a bluegrass bacchanal. Fetid traces of Suicide's depraved and neurotic ceremonies form the lower layer of Nicotine, a miasma of trembling organ shrieks and rumbles amid waves of tribal drums.
The nine-minute litany of Too Hot To Dry, wrapped in loud guitar tones, laid down in a pit of boiling dissonances, propelled by childish drums, evokes specters of Patti Smith and of Jim Morrison, but without the words, without anything to tell, without purpose or message: pure, unadultered agony. The equally long, suspenseful and unnerving High Tensions House is mostly free-form jamming, with a short baritone declamation, in an oppressive landscape of crackling noises, a piece closer to the Swans than to the Doors. The dark maelstrom of Scratch Sun obliterates the melody, caught in a bleak, savage, manic garage-rock frenzy moored to a bass riff by the Who. These longer pieces make a magisterial use of cacophony, which, combined with the utterly demented role of percussions and the relatively primitive playing of the guitars, makes for an emotionally explosive potion.
A requiem-like intensity shrouds High Time, the most gothic track, a duet between the female singer's ethereal vocalizing and the male singer's gloomy recitation.
Prove is a whispered lullaby in the vein of the first Velvet Underground album with a melody that could be from the first Doors album.
Radio Brain is basically an alien version of 13th Floor Elevator's You're Gonna Miss Me.
By spanning the entire corpus of evil rock, from Bo Diddley's beats to new wave's noise, Dadamah gave the entire history of rock music a new twist.
The abstract soundscapes of bassist/singer Kim Pieters and keyboardist Janine Stagg complemented Montgomery's eccentric guitar noises. Peter Stapleton, former drummer for Pin Group, had been jamming in Scorched Earth Policy, a group influenced by free-jazz and the Grateful Dead, and was now in the ferocious Terminals. The foursome was an impressive amalgam of avantgarde and pop lingos. When Montgomery left for America, Pieters and Stapleton continued the Dadamah saga with the Flies Inside The Sun and Rain."
The only other point I might add is that, due to its very lo fi and hyper-realistic "unembellished" sound, it may take multiple attentive listens to really capture it all. Especially if one is not already very acclimated to the genius of The VU and Royal Trux and/or the others in this lineage (Stereolab seems like a reference point as well, or at least a more accessible band that attempted what could be called a more "composed and articulate" rendition of similar references towards The VU; basically less the free jazz inclinations, but add Neu inclinations).
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AfterHours
Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #655
- Posted: 11/19/2021 00:36
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@Facetious
Edit: I did revisit Tootsie today and don't have much to add from last night's reply except what would just be elaborating on those points. That's the gist though, developed throughout pretty much every scene/sequence in a variety of ways.
It did drop slightly for me though, and I downgraded its rating by 0.1.
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TiggaTrigga
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- #656
- Posted: 11/19/2021 22:48
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So what makes Communication Breakdown from Led Zeppelin I the standout song of that album? I always preferred Dazed and Confused?
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AfterHours
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Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #657
- Posted: 11/19/2021 23:15
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| TiggaTrigga wrote: | | So what makes Communication Breakdown from Led Zeppelin I the standout song of that album? I always preferred Dazed and Confused? |
Communication Breakdown is awesome: the frantic launch of the electrified but still "rustic" and "unembellished/hyper-realism" of Page's guitar sound (compare to, for instance, the increased amplification and electrification and crystalline tone of, say, Van Halen or Master of Puppets-era Metallica, or many others he helped to influence, where the guitar really starts sounding more "symphonic") ...the sudden torpedo and epileptic fit of the solo, Plant's manic vocal hysteria, oozing a climactic overwhelm of blues and sexuality ... but I often think of Dazed and Confused as their single greatest song, so I don't really have a foot in that race (Dazed and Confused, Stairway to Heaven, Whole Lotta Love often trade positions for the top spot... When the Levee Breaks possibly as well ... occasionally a track or two from III or Physical Graffiti gets in there as well).
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TiggaTrigga
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- #658
- Posted: 11/20/2021 19:36
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Why do you feel so strongly about Dazed & Confused?
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AfterHours
Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #659
- Posted: 11/20/2021 21:53
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| TiggaTrigga wrote: | | Why do you feel so strongly about Dazed & Confused? |
Perhaps represents an ideal merging and peak of their art: of hysterical, ferocious blues (Plant's vocals are completely immersed, engulfed, at wits end) plus the fusion of psychedelia that marks their art (first, the echoing, psychedelic guitar effects that introduce the song), which erupts into monumental "symphonic" crescendos (that alludes, in a unique harmonic juxtaposition, to the future directions I mentioned before) that takes on a hysterical, monumental and delusional sense of incoming suspense/danger/downfall. Here, Bonham reaches an apex of his percussive ferocity (the sheer force in which he is striking in unison to the climaxes). The bridge/mid-section of the song sidesteps into languished divergences of psychedelic wallowing, in a sort of lysergic and unstable conversation between Plant and the instrumentation, before Page erupts into a contorted, twisting and scalding solo, and then all explodes into an eruption of drum rolls, emphatic percussion, and unrelenting drive while Plant thoroughly loses himself in the mix and, following a ferocious repeat of the chorus and climax, devolves into a slew of orgasmic convulsions.
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TiggaTrigga
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- #660
- Posted: 11/21/2021 18:32
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Do you feel like Rock & Roll from Led Zeppelin is actually good? I always felt it was just an underwhelming boogie kind of song.
...And thoughts on/description of When the Levee Breaks?
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