"Rock Bottom" - Robert Wyatt [Full Album & Review]

Review by Jim Powers
Source: http://www.allmusic.com/album/rock-bottom-mw0000654426

Release Date: 1974
Duration: 39:29
Genre: Experimental Pop/Rock
Styles: Art Rock, Experimental, Experimental Rock
Recommendation by: Nate Aldrich

 JaeOhEsH- "Distinguishable absences of vocals in portions of tracks. Articulate presences of vocals are matched with rambling womps and whimpers to accompany a very pleasant instrumentation that moves through time for alternating durations!"
 
Powers- Rock Bottom, recorded with a star-studded cast of Canterbury musicians, has been deservedly acclaimed as one of the finest art rock albums. Several forces surrounding Wyatt’s life helped shape its outcome. First, it was recorded after the former Soft Machine drummer and singer fell out of a five-story window and broke his spine. Legend had it that the album was a chronicle of his stay in the hospital. Wyatt dispels this notion in the liner notes of the 1997 Thirsty Ear reissue of the album, as well as the book Wrong Movements: A Robert Wyatt History. Much of the material was composed prior to his accident in anticipation of rehearsals of a new lineup of Matching Mole. The writing was completed in the hospital, where Wyatt realized that he would now need to sing more, since he could no longer be solely the drummer. Many of Rock Bottom’s songs are very personal and introspective love songs, since he would soon marry Alfreda Benge. Benge suggested to Wyatt that his music was too cluttered and needed more open spaces. Therefore, Robert Wyatt not only ploughed new ground in songwriting territory, but he presented the songs differently, taking time to allow songs like "Sea Song" and "Alifib" to develop slowly. Previous attempts at love songs, like "O Caroline," while earnest and wistful, were very literal and lyrically clumsy. Rock Bottom was Robert Wyatt’s most focused and relaxed album up to its time of release. In 1974, it won the French Grand Prix Charles Cros Record of the Year Award. It is also considered an essential record in any comprehensive collection of psychedelic or progressive rock. Concurrently released was the first of his two singles to reach the British Top 40, "I'm a Believer."

 

"Plastic Ono Band" - Yoko Ono [Full Album & Review]

Review by James Chrispell
Source: http://www.allmusic.com/album/yoko-ono-plastic-ono-band-mw0000026229
Release Date: December 11, 1970
Duration: 01:05:16
Genre: Experimental Pop/Rock
Styles: Experimental, Experimental Rock, Album Rock
Recommendation by: Nate Aldrich

 JaeOhEsH- “Gargling nothingness finds its home in this album with traditional rock and untraditional harsh instrumentations. A pleasant demonic possession takes place vocally amongst the moving shade of orgasming intense sound waves.”

Chrispell- “Recorded concurrently with John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band album, Yoko’s features the same musicians, namely John, Ringo Starr, and Klaus Voormann along with the Ornate Coleman Quarteton one cut. Unlike John’s record, however, Yoko’s is much more a "jam"-sounding record. And while there are definite songs, lyrics are mainly vocal improvisations. Still, if avant-garde is your cup of tea, then check this one out. It's good, if only to hear John Lennon really get the guitar cranking on the opening cut, "Why." The 1997 CD reissue adds three bonus cuts: a previously unreleased version of "Open Your Box" (which would be used as the flip side to John Lennon’s "Power to the People" single), the previously unreleased, 16-minute improv piece "The South Wind," and a previously unreleased 44-second snippet of "Something More Abstract."
 

"Winter Songs" - Art Bears [Full Album & Review]

Review by Stewart Mason
Source: http://www.allmusic.com/album/winter-songs-the-world-as-it-is-today-mw0000199964

Release Date: 1987
Duration: 01:09:48
Genre: Experimental Rock
Styles: Avant-Prog, Post-Punk
Recommendation by: Nate Aldrich

JaeOhEsH- “Winter Songs strongly resembles audio scenery that one would find waiting to enter a Scary Halloween Carnival. Or in comparison the journey back home after said event. Wonderfully volatile!"

Mason- “The second and third albums by the Art Bears, 1979's Winter Songs and 1981's The World As It Is Today, were originally released on the Residents’ Ralph Records before Chris Cutler reissued them on a single CD in 1997 on his own Recommended imprint. Winter Songs is the odd man out of the group's three albums, a set of brief songs based on themes taken from the engravings at Amiens Cathedral. A solemn but not at all humorless record, this is actually the Art Bears most accessible release. Unlike the group's first album, there are no outside players on Winter Songs (or for that matter, The World As It Is Today, and the relative sparseness of Cutlers drums and Fred Frith stunning guitar and violin work sets Dagmar Krause’s vocals into stark relief. The closing "Three Wheels" is a triumph of tape loops and dreamy, Satie-like piano under Krause’s overdubbed harmonies, sounding rather like a far more daring and discordant version of what Kate Bush would be doing in the next decade. The album's pinnacle, however, is the clattering "Rats and Monkeys," three manic minutes of Krause caterwauling vocals; Frith's most out-there, free-noise guitar runs; and Cutler playing as if he has six arms, each clutching a Louisville Slugger. It's the prog rock track to play for punk fans who think the style was nothing but Jon Anderson twittering about elves. 1981's The World As It Is Today returns to the explicitly political themes of the trio's days as part of Henry Cow, with that group's dry, academic qualities largely supplanted by a more urgent, insistent feel both musically and lyrically. The lyrics are despairing but defiant, looking at the world as it was in 1981, the dawn of the Reagan/Thatcher era, with a bleak sense of humor and a biting anger, most notably on the howling "Song of the Martyrs," which features the most pop-song-like chorus of the group's entire career. Simultaneously musically complex and sonically stripped down, The World As It Is Today can be a difficult record to penetrate, but it's most rewarding for those who make the attempt”
 

"Penguin Cafe Orchestra" - Penguin Cafe Orchestra [Full Album & Review]

Review by Ted Mills, Josh Couturier (JaeOhEsH)
Source: http://www.allmusic.com/album/penguin-cafe-orchestra-mw0000191379
Release Date: 1981
Duration: 48:25
Genre: New Age, Jazz
Styles: Neo-Classical, Avant-Pop
Recording Date: 1977-1980
Recommended by: Nate Aldrich

JaeOhEsH- I can see this classified as avant-pop, in the sense of its rhythmic randomness, and multiple organizations of familiar and unfamiliar orchestra components. No dedicated structure or choice of instrumentation really paves the way for this ambient, chamber jazz album to ring through the speakers!

Mills- The sophomore album from Simon Jeffes’ homegrown band took over three years to record, but the signs are here that it was a labor of love. While drawing compositional and textural inspiration from both English folk and chamber music, it manages to sound like neither and a wondrous hybrid of both. "Walk Don't Run," a cover of the Ventures’ classic, turns from a surf tune into a merry jig of sorts, with the violins and cellos playing the melody backed by drums, bongos, and shakers. "Telephone and Rubber Band" turns a busy signal into something full of beauty and joy. Unfailingly romantic, sunny music and an album that set the tone of all further PCO releases.