"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”
 

"We're Only In It For The Money" - Frank Zappa [Full Album & Review]

Review by Steve Huey, and JaeOhEsH
Source: http://www.allmusic.com/album/were-only-in-it-for-the-money-mw0000628302
Release Date: September, 1968
Duration: 39:11
Genre: Experimental Pop/Rock
Styles: Experimental Pop/Rock
Recording Date: March 14, 1976 - August 9, 1967
Recommendation by: Nate Aldrich

 JaeOhEsH- This is the best social critique piece I’ve ever heard. Its hilarious and is Avant-Pop at its best. its filled with comedy, super confrontational and provocative language and production!

 Huey- From the beginning, Frank Zappa cultivated a role as voice of the freaks -- imaginative outsiders who didn't fit comfortably into any group. “We’re Only in It for the Money “is the ultimate expression of that sensibility, a satirical masterpiece that simultaneously skewered the hippies and the straights as prisoners of the same narrow-minded, superficial phoniness. Zappa’s barbs were vicious and perceptive, and not just humorously so: his seemingly paranoid vision of authoritarian violence against the counterculture was borne out two years later by the Kent State killings. Like “Freak Out” and “We’re Only in It for the Money” essentially devotes its first half to satire, and its second half to presenting alternatives. Despite some specific references, the first-half suite is still wickedly funny, since its targets remain immediately recognizable. The second half shows where his sympathies lie, with character sketches of Zappa’s real-life freak acquaintances, a carefree utopia in "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance," and the strident, un-ironic protest "Mother People." Regardless of how dark the subject matter, there's a pervasively surreal, whimsical flavor to the music, sort of like Sgt. Pepper as a creepy nightmare. Some of the instruments and most of the vocals have been manipulated to produce odd textures and cartoonish voices; most songs are abbreviated, segue into others through edited snippets of music and dialogue, or are broken into fragments by more snippets, consistently interrupting the album's continuity. Compositionally, though, the music reveals itself as exceptionally strong, and Zappa’s politics and satirical instinct have rarely been so focused and relevant, making “We’re Only in It for the Money”quite probably his greatest achievement.   

"Torture Garden" - Naked City (1990) [Full Album & Review]

Review by Bradley Torreano, Josh Couturier (JaeOhEsH)
Source: http://www.allmusic.com/album/torture-garden-mw0000317512
Release Date: 1990
Duration: 22:27
Genre: Avant-Garde, Jazz, Pop/Rock
Styles: Experimental Rock, Speed/Thrash Metal Recording
Date: 1989-1990
Recommended Listen by: Nate Aldrich

 JaeOhEsH- This work is very rebellious to contemporary structures of “music”. The work sounds volatile and fills the room with rowdy raucousness. Extremely interesting juxtapositions of sound and duration, make this an auditory adventure into a realm that should be experienced!

Torreano- From the violent cover art to the Japanese text inside the album, at first glance one might mistake Torture Garden for a fetishist soundtrack. But jazz madman John Zorn and Boredoms frontman Yamatsuka Eye assembled another group of open-minded musicians to carry on their vision of grindcore and jazz uniting. Distinguished musicians Wayne Horovitz and Bill Frisell help Zorn and Eye take this from a curious side project to a fantastic metal band. Songs blur together but never get boring, no lyrics are actually sung, and few songs last longer than a minute. It also never takes itself seriously, a nice relief from Zorn’s heavy-handed ambient collaborations. This would make a great introduction to the noise/jazz efforts that this group of musicians pioneered in the early '90s