There were intermittent soundtrack and score contributions of varying magnitudes, as well as a couple other low-key projects, but The Drift is Scott Walker's proper follow-up to 1995's Tilt, an album that also happened to trail its predecessor by 11 years. If 1984's Climate of Hunter put the MOR in morose, Tilt avoided the road completely and went straight toward the fractured, fraught images inside Walker's nightmares. It was entirely removed from anything that could've been classified as contemporary. The Drift isn't an equally severe leap from Tilt, but it is darker, less arranged, alternately more and less dense, and ultimately more frightening. Maybe it'll make your body temperature drop a few degrees. Working with what Walker has referred to as "blocks of sound," only a few of the album's 68 minutes have any connection to rock music, and many of those minutes are part of a harrowing 9/11 song that also obliquely references "Jailhouse Rock" as Elvis Presley cries out ("I'm the only one left alive!") to his stillborn twin brother. The songs swing from hovering drones to crushing jolts.
T-Bone Walker is one of the greatest blues singers of all time. He's not a shouter, he's a singer and he's steeped in the blues tradition. Walker went throught what has become the classic pattern of apprenticeship of the blues singer. He's also a guitar player of considerable ability, with a really compelling rhythm and an intensity that is almost frightening. But it is as a blues singer that T-Bone will be remembered. Featuring 50 classic tracks from his Imperial years, this 2CD set captures T-Bone Walker at his very best. Highlights include 'Travelin' Blues', 'I Miss You Baby', 'I Got The Blues Again' and many more.
The Appointment was a 1969 drama starring Omar Sharif as a lonely Italian attorney who romances and weds a beautiful model (Anouk Aimee)—all the while suspecting that she is a highly priced prostitute. Although directed by Sidney Lumet, The Appointment was a troubled production that led to its receiving three fully recorded scores by four composers. FSM's premiere release of the original soundtrack features selections from each—making for a rare and fascinating look at three different approaches for a single film.
One of the most enigmatic figures in rock history, Scott Walker was known as Scotty Engel when he cut obscure flop records in the late '50s and early '60s in the teen idol vein. He then hooked up with John Maus and Gary Leeds to form the Walker Brothers. They weren't named Walker, they weren't brothers, and they weren't English, but they nevertheless became a part of the British Invasion after moving to the U.K. in 1965. They enjoyed a couple of years of massive success there (and a couple of hits in the U.S.) in a Righteous Brothers vein. As their full-throated lead singer and principal songwriter, Walker was the dominant artistic force in the group, who split in 1967. While remaining virtually unknown in his homeland, Walker launched a hugely successful solo career in Britain with a unique blend of orchestrated, almost MOR arrangements with idiosyncratic and morose lyrics. At the height of psychedelia, Walker openly looked to crooners like Sinatra, Jack Jones, and Tony Bennett for inspiration, and to Jacques Brel for much of his material. None of those balladeers, however, would have sung about the oddball subjects – prostitutes, transvestites, suicidal brooders, plagues, and Joseph Stalin – that populated Walker's songs.
The granddaddy of electric blues, and by default, rock & roll - he was Chuck Berry's biggest inspiration - pumped out this underrated gem of an album in 1968. Don't expect a 'Electric Mud'-type thang here, with T-Bone restyling and psychedelizing his best known hits. Rather, it's a pretty solid old-school Chicago Blues platter with a few incredibly stompin' bits of funk.
"Goin' to Funky Town" actually is a traditional-styled blues instrumental, riding a throbbing, slow, lowdown groove for T-Bone to trickle his delicious guitar licks over. Also features a juke joint piano way up front.
With "Party Girl", Walker treads the realm of funk…