#Avant-pop

[guerrilla-operator]

THE SUGARCUBES

[kdo-three]

Laurie Anderson - O Superman (1981) Laurie Anderson from: "O Superman (for Massenet)" / "Walk the Dog" (EP) "Big Science" (LP)

Re: "for Massenet": In writing the song, Ms Anderson drew from the aria "Ô Souverain, ô juge, ô père" ("O Sovereign, O Judge, O Father") from Jules Massenet's 1885 opera 'Le Cid'.

Avant-Garde / Electronic / Art Pop / Avant-Pop

JukeHostUK (left click = play) (320kbps)

Personnel: Laurie Anderson: Vocals / Vocoder / Electronics Roma Baran: Organ [Farfisa] / Synthesizer [Casio] Perry Hoberman: Flute / Saxophone

Produced by Laurie Anderson / Roma Baran

Recorded: @ The Lobby (Laurie Anderson's home recording studio) in New York City, New York USA 1981

EP Released: on February 1, 1981 One Ten Records

Album Released: on April 19, 1982 Warner Bros. Records

[joanofarc]

shorepoem, martyn bates (1994).

i love to see you carefree and windblown i love to see you sweet, salty in wounds

[traumareductionprayer]

STOMACH BOOK releases

[luuurien]

Kelela - Raven

(Alternative R&B, Breakbeat, Ambient Pop)

In her long-awaited sophomore album, Kelela finds herself effortlessly shifting between sensual dance bliss and ethereal, healing ambient music, Raven a harmonious and fluid album whose unique vantage point on R&B lends Kelela’s breathtaking electronica with an incredible amount of humanity behind it all.

☆☆☆☆☆

By stepping into the shadows, Kelela found herself an incredible new energy. In the years that have passed since her innovative 2017 debut Take Me Apart, Kelela’s minimalist, sensual R&B with unconventional textures and command of both the dancefloor and the bedroom has only become all the more alluring, Kelela careful in her presentation to perfect every element of her music and leave no spot of her world untouched. But with that came both new personal stressors and the terror of the outside world weighing on her: writer’s block and reestablishing personal boundaries in her relationships compounded by the global pandemic and Black Lives Matter uprisings around the United States turning her inward to better understand herself and what she wants from the world, her sophomore album Raven the result of six years of contemplation, reinvention and emotional restoration whose expansive soundscaping achieve the same effect as the heaviest dance music she’s put out to date. Across its more than an hour runtime, Kelela creates an oasis for herself through breathtaking electronica with an incredible amount of humanity behind it all, the album’s pitch black atmospheres lit up by neon synths and breakbeats but calmed by luxurious dancehall and ambient cooldowns, Kelela’s emphasis on fluidity letting her seamlessly slip from song to song with her own needs and growth always at the forefront. It’s cathartic through subtlety rather than explosivity, Raven rewarding deep listening with an endless ocean of Kelela’s R&B magic situated between new styles and an embrace of boundlessness.

With a handful of left-field electronic producers working alongside her, Kelela pushes Raven forward through a perfect balance of downtempo R&B jams and dancefloor bliss, meditation and euphoria both essential for her to leave the strongest impression. The most immediate parts of Raven are the latter kind of tracks: the futuristic breakbeats of Happy Ending and Contact spurred on by ballroom master LSDXOXO; Acemo and FAUZIA come together on the title track as it shifts from hypnotic synth ambiance to a rapturous dance breakdown, freeing and ecstatic as Kelela harnesses herself as her own source of energy and sheds the weight of the past; German ambient dub artist Florian T M Zeisig brings thoughtful tides of energy to the album’s slower sections, Let It Go propelled largely by a bassline and soft keyboard layers and second half highlights Holier, Divorce and Enough for Love some of Kelela’s most brilliant tracks despite how slow stormy they are. Her sound is rooted in electronica staple sounds - ambient, jungle, dub - but Kelela’s divine visions of Raven as an album of protection and rebirth keep the album remarkably refreshing and fantastically luminous. For her, Raven is a renaissance of her own resolve, dance music as both a personal salve and her way to nurture the world and those around her as Closure leans on Rahrah Gabor for an unexpected but electrifying rap verse that brings out a rawer, heavier sexuality Kelela tends to avoid with her hazier lyricism, Gabor riding LSDXOXO and Bambii’s decelerated beat with clever wordplay and loads of charisma (“Uh, what the lick read? / I'm waiting for you to pull up and come lick me / It's been a minute since I let you come and stick me / You know I always leave the situation sticky”). As Kelela works to nourish her own soul, the limitless reach of her music allows her to fill your own body up with her presence and make Raven a marvelous, transformative experience.

It’s an album that moves slowly and methodically, its fifteen songs spread across 62 minutes to make her dance songs deeply layered and the ambient tracks rich and expansive. Washed Away and Far Away open and close the album, hypnotic synth pads and her serpentine vocal improvisation expressing similar but distinct expressions of change, the former Kelela drifting away from the world and the latter the result of her fully immersed in her own mind for the previous hour, all the tension inside her released as the same sounds embody a new and rejuvenated Kelela. Despite much of the album being that sort of ambient electronica, many of the songs can easily be imaged as glorious ballads, Holier’s gentle pads careening around the gentle throb of a bassline that doesn’t ever establish a tempo for the song, instead soft pulses of low end that play against Kelela’s angelic vocals, while the melting delight of Sorbet runs with its fluttering synth arpeggios and reverb-soaked everything as Kelela loses herself in the moment-to-moment slow rush of physical contact (“Waves when we touch, rippling in / Soft on my mouth, sweeter than / I wanna lay out, sun on my face”). The calmness across all of Raven makes it endlessly relistenable, where the transitions between Closure and Contact and Fooley are so seamless you have to go through the entire thing again just to experience it in context another time, where drowning yourself in Kelela’s expansive ambient pieces makes those rushes of club intensity in Happy Ending and Bruises that much more incredible. By working for emotional cohesion as much as she does musical and tonal cohesion, Raven ascends to a level of mastery her debut gave dozens of glimpses of, Kelela entirely in her own element with a control over her sound she refuses to fully restrict, always assured in her ability to go off course for a moment and captivate you nonetheless.

Raven’s seamlessness and innovative take on atmospheric, imaginative R&B lifts it far beyond anywhere people expected Kelela to go, ditching the heaviness and deconstruction of her debut for a weightless and emotionally resonant album where putting herself back together is an act of patience and dedication rather than the jolts of energy Take Me Apart’s stories drew from. It’s a relaxed album whose creator is still fully aware of what she’s cleansing from her mind, every breakbeat groove and rumbling ambient piece so lush and layered to wash those negative feelings out of her. Raven pulls you in like nothing else will this year, Kelela’s quiet return to the world a tranquil and multilayered listen with more magic to discover every time.

[cryptic-corp]

The Residents pose for an 'In Between Dreams' promo photo, 2017

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"CAN'T YOU SEE THAT HOLZER MANE, WHAT'S HER NAME? VIRGINIA PLAIN."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on sleeve art for French and Italian pressings of the "Virginia Plain"/"The Numberer" 7" vinyl single by English glam rock/art rock band ROXY MUSIC, both released on November 8, 1972 under the UK's Island Records.

"Throw me a line, I'm sinking fast, Clutching at straws, can't make it, Havana sound, we're trying, A hard edge, the hipster jiving, oh, Last picture shows down the drive-in,

You're so sheer, you're so chic, Teenage rebel of the week."

-- "Virginia Plain" (1972) by ROXY MUSIC

Source: www.45cat.com/record/wip26144.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

CTM, “Stanza,” Babygirl. Posh Isolation, 2022.

[yourfavealbumisgender]

OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES by SOPHIE is Transgender!

[guerrilla-operator]

LOU REED AND LAURIE ANDERSON

[music-crush]

Louis Cole

Happy Birthday Louis Maxwell Cole!

[kdo-three]

Ultravox - Vienna (1980) Chris Cross / Midge Ure / Warren Cann / Billy Currie from: "Vienna" (LP) "Vienna" / "Passionate Reply" / "Herr X" (12-Inch Single) "Vienna" (Deluxe Edition 40th Anniversary) (2020)

Avant-Pop | Synth-Pop | New Wave

JukeHostUK (left click = play) (320kbps)

YouTube Official Music Video

Personnel: Midge Ure: Lead Vocals / Guitars / Synthesizers Billy Currie: Piano / Synthesizers / Viola / Violin Chris Cross: Bass / Synthesizers / Backing Vocals Warren Cann: Drums / Electronic Percussion / Backing Vocals

Produced by Conny Plank / Ultravox

Recorded: @ RAK Studios in London, England UK February, 1980

Album Released: on July 11, 1980 Chrysalis Records

12-Inch Single Released: on January 9, 1981 Chrysalis Records

[fard-rock-blog]

Sean Ono Lennon | Asterism

Etichetta: Tzadik Tracce: 6 – Durata: 37:10 Genere: Avant-Pop, Nu-Jazz Sito: seanonolennon.com Voto: 9/10 Con un periodo di gestazione parecchio dilatato, iniziato ai tempi del lockdown, Asterism è davvero un disco sorprendente. Sean Ono Lennon lo ha realizzato partendo dal lavoro per una residency performance in programma allo Stone di New York che, nonostante i coinvolgimento di amici di lusso…

[nineteenfiftysix]

Lim Kim - 궁 (ULT) (ULT - Single, 2024)

[o-the-mts]

50 Years, 50 Albums (2006): Ys by Joanna Newsom

I will turn 50 in November of this year, so my project for 2023 will be to listen to and review one album from each year of my life, 1973 to 2022.  The only qualification is that it has to be an album I’ve not reviewed previously.  2006 Top Grossing Albums of 2006: Some Hearts – Carrie Underwood High School Musical – Soundtrack All the Right Reasons – Nickelback Me and My Gang – Rascal…