Behavior was a retreat from the deep dance textures of Introspective, as it picked up on the carefully constructed pop of Actually. In fact, Behavior functions as the Pet Shop Boys' bid for mainstream credibility, as much of the album relies more on popcraft than rhythmic variations. Although its a subtle maneuver, it would have been rather disastrous if the results weren't so captivating. Tennant takes this approach seriously, singing the lyrics instead of speaking them. That doesn't necessarily give the album added emotional baggage - all of the distance and detachment in the duo's music is not a hindrance, it's part of the concept - but it does result in an ambitious and breathtaking pop album, which manages to include everything from the spiteful "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?" to the wistful "Being Boring."
The edition with bonus track "Play Dead".
Freed from the Sugarcubes' confines, Björk takes her voice and creativity to new heights on Debut, her first work after the group's breakup. With producer Nellee Hooper's help, she moves in an elegantly playful, dance-inspired direction, crafting highly individual, emotional electronic pop songs like the shivery, idealistic "One Day" and the bittersweet "Violently Happy." Despite the album's swift stylistic shifts, each of Debut's tracks are distinctively Björk. "Human Behaviour"'s dramatic percussion provides a perfect showcase for her wide-ranging voice; "Aeroplane" casts her as a yearning lover against a lush, exotica-inspired backdrop; and the spare, poignant "Anchor Song" uses just her voice and a brass section to capture the loneliness of the sea…
Covering a vast terrain with delicacy and poise this new release unveils a spectral showcase for all manner of deep abstraction. The first side positions itself somewhere between stoned komische synth and more nuanced electroacoustic tactics, all weighted by a melancholic undertow. The second side builds on the tension of the former as an undulating drone teases all variety of matter to rise and fall amongst the foreign space it inhabits.
Peter Perrett - former frontman of The Only Ones - releases his debut solo album How The West Was Won on June 30th through Domino. Perrett, whose incisive songcraft and sardonic drawl made him one of the most distinctive voices of the Seventies hasn’t released any music for 20 years. Bearing in mind his most famous song began “I always flirt with death” (‘Another Girl, Another Planet’), this is one comeback that nobody saw coming.
After this preamble or subtle captatio benevolentiae, I will tell you that in 1992, at the age of ten, I gave my first public recital in the beautiful monastery of Santa Maria del Puig, founded no less than in 1240 near Valencia and where my parents had married in 1980. I could not have imagined that only seven years later I would go to live and study in New York and that Haydn would accompany me on that difficult journey as a fragile but permanent connection to my childhood… And in that 1992 recital, the main score of the evening was a Haydn Sonata, one of the ones I include on this CD: the Sonata in D Major Hob. XVI/14, which is so full of tenderness and of a serene bucolic-pastoral luminosity. It is an inner idyll of simple but sublime grandeur. And so began the red thread that represents Haydn in my life, a kind of locus amoenus (a pleasant place) where I have so often found, and continue to find, solace, consolation and shelter. In my childhood, everyone loved Mozart and Beethoven. Haydn was the ugly duckling. I always felt I was an ugly duckling and maybe that is also why I loved him so much from the beginning…
Young Team, Mogwai's first full-length album fulfills the promise of their early singles and EPs, offering a complex, intertwining set of crawling instrumentals, shimmering soundscapes, and shards of noise. Picking up where Ten Rapid left off, Mogwai use the sheer length of an album to their advantage, recording a series of songs that meld together – it's easy to forget where one song begins and the other ends. The record itself takes its time to begin, as the sound of chiming processed guitars and murmured sampled vocals floats to the surface. Throughout the album, the sound of the band keeps shifting, and it's not just through explosions of noise – Mogwai isn't merely jamming, they have a planned vision, subtly texturing their music with small, telling details. When the epic "Mogwai Fears Satan" draws the album to a close, it becomes clear that the band has expanded the horizons of post-rock, creating a record of sonic invention and emotional force that sounds unlike anything their guitar-based contemporaries have created.