More upbeat with the busy drums channeled left & right while the bass keeps up a repetitive ostinato. Solo saxophone: a rather mournful soliloquy with the reverberation suggesting something like a church space.
Previte is mainly using brushes so the drums are also unobtrusive. The bass has lovely, erm, bass extension but is unwilling or unable to steal focus from the saxophone. You don't hear clatter from her keys, which I would expect if this was close mic’d. troubled but by no means aggressive or avant garde. The piece is cheerful and song-like with a massive saxophone sound none of the three instruments seems to be “located” particularly in space, and the acoustic has little short reverberation so it's like hearing them on a large, empty stage. The sides (it makes no sense to term them rears for this sort of recording) and subwoofer channel fire all the time on this album. The Blu-Ray menu is the sort of lazy, utilitarian sort of thing you get on classical blu-rays and the packaging is a cheap, two fold digipack. In any case, if you haven't guessed from the instrumentation, this is an acoustic Jazz album through & through and all but one piece is a Bloom original.
If I were a professional reviewer I'd just give it 10/10 and shout that everyone else should listen to this album!īobby Previte (Drums)Of those three I only own an album (more or less accidentally) by Previte. but there are albums by her that I prefer and she is only a comparatively marginal taste for me. I have mixed feelings about this one because I quite often feel that Björk surpasses my limitations as a listener. (Sure there are the usual channeling effects but they generally occur as passages a few seconds long in a soundworld that is full-on and not always enjoyable.) By contrast, musically the album is quite strong with some excellent work on the ballads. It's rather like being immersed in an uncomfortably hot bath at times with sound sloshing around in an encompassing, undefined way. I admire Björk more than I enjoy her and this is certainly an admirable album but, despite the impressive sonics, the surround mix is not entirely convincing for the most part because there's very little sense of a real acoustic. One of the better tracks for channeling effects. A goose-stepping march for hyperactive toddlers, maybe?
Probably the most recognisable track from the album due to its scrambled, glitchy invocation of the spirit of Wendy James.
Kora and manual percussion coupled with electronic percussion for a more upbeat and cheerful feel. Some of Björk's most intimate and focused vocals.
A third brass section plays a gentle, respiratory figure through the verse and then something more harmonically adventurous over the second section. As the song progresses the samples become more obviously manipulated and artifacted. The samples are (deliberately I assume) unpleasantly saturated between verses, which is an interesting effect. Pípá and tuned percussion: I like it when she uses these sort of timbres, especially on this sort of brittle lovesong. Doesn't really land for me until we get the multi-tracked Björks. Boldly experimental with a Hip-Hop immediacy to the samples. This is a good example of Björk's unusual attitude to vocal melody, with the voices seeming hardly to relate to the ostensible chord structure until quite late in the song when they lock in and the drums double-time. I like Anohni's voice (the album credits inadvertently dead-name her!) and it blends well with Björk's on a song again made sonically enticing by an (all-male) brass section. The repeated trumpet figure near the end is telling. When the additional Björk's come in left and right they have real impact not always felt on recordings such as The Pineapple Thief where vocals are constantly being channeled like that. The brass arrangement (featuring, one assumes, additional ship horns in addition to an all-female brass section) is a real sonic treat. All channels firing but no coherent soundstage or natural acoustic. Lots of homemade percussion but also “phat” synth tones. I was quite impressed by Björk's Volta when it came out but I never listen to it and I realise why as soon as I start peeling that sticker off the packaging: the darned thing's too difficult to open! So, anyway, it must be a decade since I've heard this one so it's very much going to be like hearing it for the first time.