mild shoegazing, hippy shit and a bit of modern classical music...

Slowdive - Catch The Breeze
Slowdive are another one of those bands, like My Bloody Valentine or The Cranes that during the nineties I missed due to being too narrow minded and too wrapped up in my metal. Thankfully now I'm older and wiser I'm able to appreciate this sort of music. Anyway, Slowdive were known at the time for being at the forefront of the shoegazing scene - basically think standard indie music, but drenched in reverb and compression - it was all about the drone really and creating music that was dreamlike and almost ambient at times but with a traditional rock setup. This collection has tracks from all three of there albums and a few EPs so gives a fair impression of the bands career. I'm a bit fonder of the earlier stuff so here's a tracks from the first disc.

MP3: Albatross

Angels of Light & Akron/Family - Akron/Family & Angels of Light
A slightly strange split EP in that one of the bands appears on all the tracks, in this case it's Akron/Family who also act as Michael Gira's Angels of Light nowadays. So, let's concentrate on them. The songs here are obviously recorded in a fairly live environment, so unlike there previous album they have a much rockier feel, it's a mad collection of songs full of freedom and joy, not giving a care in the world to current trends and fashions. When backing Mr Gira they take a more measured approach, there's an almost respectful air to proceedings. The Angels of Light songs on the disc aren't far removed from the previous 'Other People' album, a couple of cover versions are thrown in, one of Bob Dylan's I pity the poor immigrant and an old Swans song Mother/Father, although that one doesn't really add anything to the original. A good album, although I think that Akron/Family steal the show here, so here's one of there tunes.

MP3: Raising The Sparks

DJ Olive Vs JP Dessy - Scories
A difficult one for you here, a collaboration between DJ Olive (whose CD's I've always found annoyingly difficult to find - he was in a band called 'We' who released a fantastic album called 'the square root of negative one'), cellist JP Dessy and the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. A very minimal and almost ambient example of modern composition, some of it works very well (first track especially IMHO), some of the other shorter tracks where there is obviously some improvistation going on between DJ Olive and one of the more traditional musicians I'm not sure about. Still, it's different.

MP3: Walking Slowly