{"id":20093,"date":"2021-01-10T05:30:10","date_gmt":"2021-01-10T10:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20093"},"modified":"2020-11-17T14:32:01","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T19:32:01","slug":"hundred-word-reviews-january-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/10\/hundred-word-reviews-january-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundred-word Reviews: January 2021 #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to 2021. Let\u2019s hope it\u2019s better for the world\u2019s citizens than 2020 was. Some things, at least, never change. And one of those is my commitment to covering music that might otherwise escape readers\u2019 notice. My hundred-world review entries are an attempt to do just that. Here are five new releases you should know about. You\u2019ll recognize some of the names; others, not so much.<\/p>\n

\"\"Rick Wakeman \u2013 The Red Planet<\/i><\/b>
\nWhether you\u2019ve kept up with him or not, cranky ol\u2019 Wakeman has been staying very busy; he has a staggering catalog. And he toured recently as part of Yes featuring Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman. What he hadn\u2019t done in many years was craft an instrumental prog-rock album. So The Red Planet<\/i> is most welcome. Made during the pandemic, it\u2019s a produce of file sharing among the players. But the finished product is cohesive, a treat for fans of his A&M Record-era work. Vintage keyboard and synthesizer sounds abound and surround, and his classic approach to music-making is sharp as ever.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Pretty Things \u2013 Bare As Bone, Bright As Blood<\/i><\/b>
\nPrime contenders for most overlooked band of the \u201860s \u2013 right up there with Moby Grape \u2013 The Pretty Things never earned their due. The band\u2019s catalog is filled with gems: the influential SF Sorrow<\/i>, the ambitious Parachute<\/i>, the pseudonymous Electric Banana material are essential. The passing of Phil May last year spelled the end, but before that happened, May and co-founder Dick Taylor made one more record. Bare as Bone, Bright as Blood<\/i> takes them full circle: it\u2019s just those two, in a semi-acoustic setting, playing blues and bluesy material. No originals, but well-selected covers add up to a fitting farewell.<\/p>\n

\"\"Urlaub in Polen \u2013 All<\/i><\/b>
\nHere\u2019s a musical curveball. All<\/i> opens with \u201cVoid,\u201d an atmospheric work that suggest the influence of Eno and Cluster. But then the album shifts gears into \u201cImpulse Response\u201d all vocoder and motorik<\/i> beat, with a sound and nature much closer to Neu! Then there\u2019s \u201c2 Sec.Delay,\u201d which starts out sounding like early analog Moog experimentation, then late-period Tangerine Dream soundtracky electornica. That bouncing-pinball genre-switching continues throughout the aptly titled All. There are vocal-focused tracks (\u201cT.H.D.T.\u201d), bursts of electronic noise (\u201cRodeo\u201d), shoegaze-y outings (\u201cThe Witcher\u201d) and assorted other excursions. It\u2019s fascinating stuff, though more like a super-hip mixtape than an album.<\/p>\n

\"\"Skyminds \u2013 Shapes & Traces<\/i><\/b>
\nSkyminds is the duo of Michael Henning and Sean Conrad. Shapes & Traces<\/i> doesn\u2019t fit neatly into any one genre box, but a listen reveals hints of electronica, ambient, what we used to call \u201cworld music,\u201d and other styles. The tracks are meditative, contemplative, soothing yet worthy of close listening. Bits of dissonance keep the music from working as aural wallpaper. When they sing, Skyminds sound like a cross between acoustic singer-songwriters and Another Green World<\/i>-era Eno. Expansive tracks like \u201cBeyond the Clearing\u201d are cinematic and alluring. \u201cGuduud\u201d is semi-acoustic shoegaze. Shapes & Traces<\/i> is a musical journey worth taking.<\/p>\n

\"\"Martin Barre \u2013 50 Years of Jethro Tull<\/i><\/b>
\nThe good \u2013 very<\/i> good, in fact \u2013 news: Martin Barre\u2019s latest album builds upon his half-century as Jethro Tull\u2019s guitarist in inventive and fascinating ways. More than two dozen tracks cast the Tull catalog into a more guitar-centric light to best showcase the dazzling fretwork of Barre. Yet the whole thing feels like treading water. Barre released a pair of excellent albums in 2015 and 2018, featuring all original material. But then a double-live set covered lots of Ian Anderson songs. And while 50 Years of Jethro Tull<\/i> tackles some different material, it\u2019s looking decidedly backward instead of toward the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to 2021. Let\u2019s hope it\u2019s better for the world\u2019s citizens than 2020 was. Some things, at least, never change. And one of those is my commitment to covering music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,26,43,49,56,62],"tags":[2570,2542,1843,4380,4381],"class_list":["post-20093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-electronica","category-krautrock","category-new-release","category-prog","category-rawk","tag-martin-barre","tag-pretty-things","tag-rick-wakeman","tag-skyminds","tag-urlaub-in-polen","cat-9-id","cat-26-id","cat-43-id","cat-49-id","cat-56-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20181,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20093\/revisions\/20181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}