Walking Timebombs is one of a handful of projects to emerge from the home studio of Houston techno-clatter auteur Scott Ayers in the ‘90s. It's sound is a somewhat soothing departure from Ayers' work with industrial noise purveyors the Pain Teens and leaden guitar-rock trio Truth Decay.
Ostensibly Ayers' "solo" debut, 1997's "The Walking Timebombs" largely replaces the numbingly off-putting grind of those two acts with an organic mix of new-school trip-hop and old-school industrial.
Static Migration (1998). Experimental guitarist and producer Scott Ayers, a.k.a. Walking Time Bombs, teams up with Neurosis on this album…
Burning House is a bombastic sonic summit created by beat-maker extraordinaire Chief Xcel (Blackalicious) and keyboard wiz Hervé Salters (aka General Elektriks). One of the founding members of heralded San Francisco Bay Area Hip-Hop collective Quannum Projects (Blackalicious, DJ Shadow, Latyrx …), Xcel met Salters when the latter moved from his native France (Paris) to S.F in the early 2000s. Quickly realizing that they both shared a common love for all things funky and irreverential, and both agreeing that when it comes to music, anything goes, The Chief would go on to invite Hervé and his vintage keys on numerous tracks and projects, while Salters invited Xcel on his first album as General Elektriks.
The only real problem with One Way Records' anthology on Katrina & the Waves is that it gives too much room to their first Capitol album (which ought to be out as a free-standing CD) and not enough to their later material. Anyone seeking to go further should track down this imported disc. Thanks to EMI's acquisition of the SBK label, for which the band recorded in 1989, and its merger with Virgin Records, for which the Waves recorded in the early '90s in Germany, this collection has a little range and depth, although it's still just a greatest-hits collection – if it were a best-of, it would also have to include some of their Attic Records sides from before their signing to Capitol. In addition to the eight songs off of the first Capitol album, there are four more off of Waves, including "Lovely Lindsey" (the one glaring gap in the One Way release).
Lilly Hiatt felt lost. She’d just returned home from the better part of a year on tour in support of her acclaimed third album, Trinity Lane, and, stripped of the daily rituals and direction of life on the road, she found herself alone with her thoughts for the first time in what felt like ages.
A young couple is brutally killed, and the convicted murderer, Joseph De Rocher, sits on death row. Sister Helen Prejean agrees to be his spiritual adviser. As she meets his family, and the families of his victims, she begins questioning every attitude she has about how human beings treat each other. Based on real-life events, Jake Heggie’s music and Terrence McNally’s libretto explore the nature of friendship and forgiveness in the most profound ways. Hugely acclaimed in major houses internationally, Dead Man Walking is widely acknowledged as one of the most riveting operas of the 21st century. It simply demands to be seen.