Kiss

This album has everything a KISS album should have:hard rock anthems, fast-fingured guitar solos, explosive lyrics, heart-felt power balads and the fun spirit of KISS. If I were to recommend a KISS album to anyone it would be this one simply because its just a really fun album that has something for metal fans as well as ballad loving folks…

KISS is the debut album by American band KISS. When it was released on February 18, 1974, KISS had been a band for a little over a year. Much of the material on the album was written by Gene Simmons and/or Paul Stanley, as members of their pre-KISS band, Wicked Lester. Simmons estimated that the entire process of recording and mixing took three weeks, while co-producer Richie Wise has stated it took just thirteen days.

Although Kiss' self-titled debut performed respectably on the charts, it was not the blockbuster they had hoped for. With the album fading on the charts in the summer of 1974, Kiss was summoned back into the studio to work on a follow-up. Producers Richie Wise and Kenny Kerner were onboard again, and even though the sonics are muddier (and more filler is present in the compositions), Hotter Than Hell is another quintessential Kiss release…

Simultaneously more accessible and ambitious than any of the Cure's previous albums, the double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me finds Robert Smith expanding his pop vocabulary by tentatively adding bigger guitars, the occasional horn section, lite-funk rhythms, and string sections. It's eclectic, to be sure, but it's also a mess, bouncing from idea to idea and refusing to develop some of the most intriguing detours. Even if Kiss Me doesn't quite gel, its best moments – including the deceptively bouncy "Why Can't I Be You?" and the stately "Just Like Heaven" – are remarkable and help make the album one of the group's very best.

Although several other hard rock acts have seen their hits repackaged more times than Kiss (namely the Who, Motörhead, Black Sabbath, etc.), the masked quartet certainly isn't far behind, as 2002 saw the group's latest in a long line of collections, The Very Best of Kiss. Despite recycling many of the same selections over and over on these sets (1978's Double Platinum, 1988's Smashes, Thrashes & Hits, 1997's Greatest Kiss, etc.), fans will flock to the stores to buy any piece of Kiss merchandise to complete their collections, hence the arrival of another of hits.

John Cale - Eat/Kiss: Music for the Films of Andy Warholol (1997) {Rykodisc HNCD 1407}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 363 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 160 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 50 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1997 Hannibal Records / Rykodisc | HNCD 1407
Modern Classical / Minimal / Experimental / Avant-Garde / Stage & Screen

John Cale's soundtracks for two of Andy Warhol's experimental films of the early 1960s, premiered in 1994 and recorded live at a concert at Lille, France in 1995, are multi-part free-form works on which his keyboards are accompanied by fellow ex-Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker, pedal steel guitarist B.J. Cole, and a string quartet. The abstract nature of the films allows Cale free rein to create impressionistic soundscapes occasionally reminiscent of the ambient work of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. Cale fans should note that though some of the music is melodic, there is none of the pop or rock found on many of his albums, but then most Cale fans probably are adventurous enough to give this a try.