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The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 41

Publication:
The Guardiani
Location:
London, Greater London, England
Issue Date:
Page:
41
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

The Guardian Friday October 13 1995 14 I Music CD of the week: the essential Velvet Underground You Make Me Believe and Remembering The First Time, say. are distinguishable from each other only by the former's choo-choo train sax motif and the lattcr's oscillating keyboard note. You can, however, easily pick out the hymnlike, lighters-aloft We're In This Together and Hillside Avenue that's the one where Hucknall whips out a Jamaican accent over a lightly percolating, roots-reggae rhythm. Hilarious. His voice is in its usual excellent, fluid form, if a little grating on the high notes.

The usual L-words apply: luxurious, lustrous, languid and lounge music. (CS) Menswear Nuisance (Laurel) 13.99 Indispensable Excellent Good Mediocre Appalling PM Dawn Jesus Wept (Gee Street) 12.99 THESE Camden Town fashion victims were famous (for hanging out in the same pub as Blur, primarily) long before they BEST known for the hit Set Adrift On Memory Bliss, with its sampled Spandau Ballet centre, this New Jersey hip- ever released a record. But their debut album indicates at least a measure talent to go with their irri-tatingly dapper trousers. Their guitar-centred, sixties-ish sound owes much to: the Who (I'll Manage Somehow, a take-no-prisoners stomp); a Peter And Gordon-type duo (the prettily orchestral Being Brave); and the Beatles (the ebullient Stardust). The cheap 'n' cheerful ambiance belies the thoughtful lyrical content.

(CS) Sonic Youth Washing Machine (Geffcn) 13.99 hop duo return with an intriguing third album. Its airbrushed-soul patina is underpinned by forays into folk, Pr ince-ly pop and trip-hop, all engineered to sound as voluptuous as possible. An exemplary cross-section is the heavily-ibliaged soul of Miles From Anything, the steel-drum shuffle of Forever Damaged and A Lifetime, with its Joni Mitchell-ish acoustic guitar. A lovely and articulate exposition of styles; just steer clear of the quasi-spiritual lyrics. "How much sugar do you take in your my foot.

(CS) Peel Slowly And See (Polydor) (five CD set) 49.99 sciously comments John Cale, although Lou Reed still doesn't reckon it captured the band's "power cubed" live sound and the troubled intimacies of the third album are at the opposite end, this collection tints in a number of hitherto unseen shades. Compare, for example, the various specimens of the live Velvet Underground on parade here. Via studio electrickery, a 30-minute performance of Melody Laughter from 1966 has been boiled down to 10. "We couldn't dedicate 30 minutes to it," Bill Levenson explained, "so we painstakingly put it up on bsVHbbsVHB Dubstar Disgraceful (Food) 14.99 A WHOLE lot more accessible than last year's self-indulgent, near unlisten-able Experimental Jet Set, Washing DUBSTAR have about as much to do with dub as their label-mates. Blur.

This is float-away pop with a synthetic core, Machine is no less uncompromising. The Godparents of grunge might have added a few melodious pop surprises to the mix, but their well-structured pandemonium shuddering, swirling, screeching implosions still makes for powerful, albeit exhausting, listening. Intelligent, postmodern commentary, combined with the Yoof 's ubiquitous noise terrorism continues to entice harmony out of lyricism and tangential instrumentals that will keep fans genuflecting at their collective feet. "The guitar guy played real good feedback and super sounding riffs," sings Thurston Moore on Skip Tracer. Quite.

JC) The material here is shot through with a clear sense of purpose, and a determination to keep pushing forwards. like the Pet Shop Boys with an aloof girl singer. What sharp edges there are "You hope I'll forget as you ply me with drinks" are smoothed away by Steve Hillier's opulent programming(which doesn't try to emulate guitars or horns; the consequent man-made sound is part of Dubstar's allure). Sarah Blackwood's upper-crust accent, offsets the fantastically rich, Eurovi-sionesque melodies. Listening to the LP straight could induce a coma, but it's worth the risk.

(CS) towards Lou Reed's Imminent solo career. Oh Gin is an early version of what would evolve into Oh Jim, from Berlin. Satellite Of Love later found its natural home on Transformer, while Ocean spotlights a brief, brilliant return to the Velvet Underground fold by John Cale. His contributions on organ and viola are the primary ingredients in a gloriously lilting and atmospheric performance of a song performed by Reed solo and the band collectively elsewhere, but never like this. Some of the most amazing material is the oldest, in the form of a primitive demo tape unearthed by Cale at his New York apartment when the boxed set was already taking shape.

This has been packed on to the first disc, and features only one Lewis Reed (this was in July 1965), Cale and guitarist Sterling Morrison, making several attempts at early Velvets standards like Heroin, I'm Waiting For The Man, All Tomorrow's Parties and Venus In Furs. All of them contain recognisable elements of the better-known versions, yet all are entirely different. Venus In Furs is slow and stately like a madrigal, sung with ecclesiastical reverence by Cale. Waiting For The Man is folky jugband music, while All Tomorrow's Parties is countryfolk, complete with jingling guitar and cowpoke vocal harmonies. Heroin is skeletal and acoustic, but its distinctive surge-and-relax dynamics are already In place.

The sheer size of this set makes It a daunting purchase, but it amounts to a cornerstone of the rock 'n' roll canon. With bitter Irony, Sterling Morrison died just on the brink of its release. He would surely have been proud of it. Adam Sweeting STUMBLING around among the repackages, rip-offs and remasters which clutter the release schedules, occasionally you trip over a chunk of pure, blinding history. This monumental reassessment of the complete works of the Velvet Underground, including buckets of unheard and unre-leased material, has been assembled with love and bloody-minded thoroughness by PolyGram reissues maestro Bill Levenson, whose previous achievements include Eric Clapton's Crossroads set and the Allman Brothers' retrospective, Dreams.

The five discs have been mastered with fanatical attention to detail by Bob Ludwig, and while you listen to them, you can browse through David Fricke's illuminating background essay and boggle at the lavish selection of photos and period memorabilia in the accompanying book. Brian Eno gets credit for the possibly apocryphal remark that while the original Velvets albums were never bestsellers, everybody who bought them went out and formed a band, and the comment Is a shrewd testament to the absence of waste and the sense of essence that permeates the Velvets' work. The most striking feature of the material gathered here from skeletal demos to shrieking live performances to the comparative pop polish of the Loaded album from 1970 Is that all of it Is shot through with a clear sense of purpose, and a determination to keep pushing forwards. If the oar-splitting sonic barrages of the second album, Shara Nelson Friendly fire (Cooltempo) 12.99 Simply Red Life(eastwest) 13.99 ANYONE who heard Massive Attack's first album or remembers the beautiful, bittersweet, chart-topping single, AFTER the nine million-selling Stars, Simply Red boldly go where they've gone before. Mick Hucknall and the computer and reduced it bar by bar." The result Is a sort of carefully-shaped cacophony broken up into recognisable segments, from free-form soaring to clattering rave-up.

In contrast, there are crudely-recorded (and played) items from New York's Max's Kansas City, bearing no resemblance to the vibrant ensemble playing on Guess I'm Falling In Love from the Gymnasium in New York. Other tracks look both backwards and forwards. Demos of songs from the White Light period have a kind of ragged nonchalance absent from the ensuing album, while previously unreleased out-takes from Loaded are vivid signposts Unfinished Sympathy, will recognise the voice of Shara Nelson. Her-voice is a rare thing: expressive, soulful and different, a galaxy away from all her Aretha-by-numbers contemporaries. Curiously, Friendly Fire sounds more like early Massive Attack than Massive did last time out.

In the subtle yet spicy rhythms, there is also a hint of Soul II Soul and the quality of crew (which, this time, includes guest rhythm section Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare) have repeated Stars' souljazz-lite formula with a few adaptations, such as the addition of a house beat on the current number-one single, Fairground. A good half of the 10 numbers arc virtual copies of each other White LightWhite Heat (Janu ary 1968), represent one of the band's polarities ft was "con.

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Years Available:
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