From Irene McC Sent Tue, Oct 14th 1997, 10:47
From Irene McC Sent Tue, Oct 14th 1997, 10:47
I was paging through a South African publication "MultiMedia" mag. of Sept. 97 - the usual dry technical commentary - and read an article playing off Arcam CD players against Marantz and the test material caught my eye: " ... This wasn't to say the Arcam was uncouth - it wasn't. It just had a bubblier, more lively presentation, as The Black Dog "Bytes" went to prove. With this sparse but rhythmically complex piece of music, the Marantz majored on information retrieval. The texture of the different samples was reproduced more accurately and there was a greater sense of air and space to the acoustics" ... All together : aaaah! An enlightened reviewer :-) Finally Bjork has made it to the bottom end of Africa and after all the hullaballoo I *had* to grab one of only 3 import copies in the shop - the rest will be pressed locally. Promise : I wasn't going to jump into this debate, so I'll only say this once. It doesn't bite me on the ankle, grab me and shake me _at all_. I can see the beauty in the melodic areas and it is superbly produced, but personally speaking, if you'd remove that voice and replace it with an instrument - *any* instrument - things would improve radically. Tully disagrees and maintains that her unique voice's swooping in and out makes all the difference and lifts it to greater heights... so please don't flame me on this, it's just my opinion. On 13 Oct 97, xxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx wrote: (Caroline / Astralwerks) > We've got several tracks for a u-Ziq EP which we will be placing > smaples of on the website. then we will be inviting visitors to vote > on the tracks What a brilliant idea - giving the buying public an advance taste and an actual vote on the final material. sMaples, and all >grin<. I've just borrowed something wonderful : African Head Charge's "In Pursuit of Shashamane Land" (prod. by Adrian Sherwood) 1993, on On-U Sound. Amaaaaaaazing doesn't come close to summing it up. There's recently been talk here of Mark Stewart, Tack>>Head etc : this is from the same stable and even though I've heard early material by them (Off the Beaten Track), this is really brilliant and makes the current D'nB almost pale by comparison. (Okay, so there are about 4 lame tracks on the 60 min. line-up - soft reggae-y vocal ones, skip 'em.) I * np : Bjork... trying to see the point of everybody's raving about it. "Incomplete without surface noise" - Autechre