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Entries categorized as “Album Reviews” 34 results
Brad Morgan writes“Toy:” David Bowie and the Internet Age
by Bradley Morgan
Bowie’s lost album finally arrives 20 years later
“I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable,” David Bowie told Jeremy Paxman of BBC Newsnight during an interview in 1999. “I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.”
Bowie’s comments on the potentially chaotic intersection between the advent of the information superhighway and its relationship with and impact on society seem incredibly prescient, especially in hindsight with modern writers and critics often drawing parallels between Bowie’s future proclamations with critiques on modern ills such as the role social media has played within grander schemes to disrupt cultural and social institutions.
It’s a great quote from an excellent interview from the always eloquent Bowie, though only tending to resurface when navel-gazing about the past as we share it on our feeds collectively wondering where it all went wrong.
However, further into the interview and often excluded from clickbait articles, Bowie shares an idealistic fascination for what emerging technologies can do in the spirit of human connection. “From where I am, by virtue of the fact that I am a pop singer and writer, I embrace the idea there’s a new demystification process going on between the artist and the audience.”
Brad Morgan writesClean Cut Kid: An Appreciation of Bob Dylan’s Midlife Crisis
by Bradley Morgan
The times they had a-changed when Bob Dylan had entered the MTV era.
Approaching 40, the legendary singer-songwriter’s mark on music and popular culture was already defined and well-documented. Since his early days shuffling between coffee houses and nightclubs around Greenwich Village during the waning days of the American folk music revival during the early 1960s, Dylan had, in the words of his former lover Joan Baez, burst on the scene already a legend.
He very quickly gained prominence providing an integral voice during the Civil Rights movement before almost as swiftly tuning out and plugging in, shocking audiences with an electrically masterful run of generation-defining albums until rampant amphetamine use evaporated his thin, wild mercury sound and he sought peace through marriage and domesticity before losing it all and finding Jesus.
The chameleon-like Dylan had already lived several lifetimes during his two-decade long career so far, and the promise of economic grandiosity and technological innovation within Reagan’s America during the dawn of the 1980s would prove to be an interesting backdrop for the man previously dubbed the voice of his generation to find himself once again.
Nikki Stout writesAlbum Review: Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ ‘Carnage’
Anyone at all familiar with Nick Cave’s recent work knows that “haunting” may be an overused yet apt descriptor for his songs of sorrow and stoic goth Christianity, and Carnage is no exception.
This eight track album released by Cave and frequent collaborator Warren Ellis gracefully ribbons through the times of sorrow, hope, grief, and finally the whisper of relief as a meditation on, well, the overall state of things as 2021 settles into itself.
Carnage is decidedly gentle, but not mellow. It is delicate in the way most tension is delicate. Simultaneously industrial and orchestral, Carnage offers pitch phasing as a sort of breeze blowing through its tracks, like a shift in the wind which comes seemingly out of nowhere. This tonal breeze beautifully compliments the choral singers present on the majority of tracks, bringing with them a gift of levity and offering of community.
DJ Mick writesCritical Rotation: “The King of Sudanese Jazz” by Sharhabil Ahmed
Twice a month, CHIRP DJ and Features Co-Director Mick takes a deep dive into two albums currently in rotation on CHIRP's charts that he thinks are worth some special attention. If you haven't given these albums a listen in their entirety, let Mick make the case for why you should!
Sharhabil Ahmed
The King of Sudanese Jazz
Habibi Funk
Sharhabil Ahmed is once again holding court in his kingdom long lost to the age.
His palace has now risen like Atlantis from the briny broth of the sea or the City of Babylon from the sands of time, thanks to the relentless crate excavation efforts of Jannis Stürtz and his north-Africa allied, Berlin-based, Habibi Funk label.
Standing as the first and only proper collection of Ahmed's works to be released for mass enjoyment in the 21st Century, The King Of Sudanese Jazz is both a historical document and thoroughly tanalizing rock 'n roll record. Now in his 80s, Ahmed was, is, and will be for as long as the time permits, a man of taste and vision.
DJ Mick writesCritical Rotation: “Chicago Waves” by Carlos Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson
Twice a month, CHIRP DJ and Features Co-Director Mick takes a deep dive into two albums currently in rotation on CHIRP's charts that he thinks are worth some special attention. If you haven't given these albums a listen in their entirety, let Mick make the case for why you should!
Carlos Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson
Chicago Waves
International Anthem
Chicago Waves is likely the most Athenian collection of improvised jazz to be released this year.
Springing fully formed from the hands, mouths, and minds of collaborators Carlos Niño and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Chicago Waves was debuted as an impromptu performed during the release show of Jeremy Cunnigham’s stupendous The Weather Up There, where the duo had been invited as special guest performers.
There was no precursor to the performance and no indication of its content. It merely emerged as you hear it on captured on the album, now released by Chicago’s best new jazz imprint, International Anthem.