Album review: Bixiga 70 – Quebra-Cabeça
Quebra-Cabeça is challenging music that requires, and rewards, close listening and careful attention. While it may seem intimidating and relentless, multiple listens open up a…
Category: Harrison’s Album Reviews
Album review: Frank Zappa – We’re Only in It for the Money
A technical landmark and a vicious piece of satire, but not an easy listen. Genre: Psychedelic rock/free jazz/doo-wop/avant-garde Country: United States Release date: March 4,…
Album review: Manilla Road – Crystal Logic
A lot of white people, when they become acquainted with non-white music, remark on how “happy” or “carefree” it is. But I prefer to flip…
Album Review: Jupiter and Okwess – Kin Sonic
For all its poverty and deprivation, the Congo, as a land whose people are largely considered worthless to the global market, offers the musicians who…
Album review: Dream Theater – Images and Words
A taxidermy of dead music so well-done you’ll almost forget it’s dead. Genre: Neo-progressive rock/metal Country: United States Release date: July 7, 1992 (reissued 2013)…
Album review: Gryphon – Red Queen to Gryphon Three
Intriguing, beguiling, often beautiful—but is beautiful good enough? Genre: Progressive rock/contemporary classical Country: United Kingdom Release date: December 1974 Label: Bell Records Format: 12” vinyl…
Album review: King Crimson – Red
Despite the usual narratives about “raw” music, it is in fact the very technical proficiency that King Crimson bring to their instruments that gives Red…
Album review: Ludwig van Beethoven/Bruno Walter – Symphony No. 6
The Sixth Symphony may never escape the shadow of the Third, Fifth, and Ninth, but is still a taboo-breaking, musically innovative landmark that helped bury…
Album review: It’s a Beautiful Day – s/t
Producers are parasites. Not electronic music “producers”–for the most part, those are musicians, giving themselves a more authoritative-sounding title (though the lack of self-worth in…
Album review: Antal Dorati/Igor Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring
The marriage of Apollo and Dionysus is a happy one indeed. Genre: Classical (late Romantic/early Modernist) Country: United States Release date: 1960 (reissued on vinyl…