The Beatles - Love (CD + Audio DVD)
|
List Price: Our Price: $17.23 You Save: $7.75 (31%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $9.25 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Love (CD + Audio DVD)
Free Music Review: The Beatles.
Hit: 5 Stars
Strip, double over, augment, splice, jumble, slow down, speed up, morph, blend, spike. Make us feel like solicitors of whores, and make us like it. We'll buy anything and everything. George Martin and Son have shown us that there is virtually nothing you could do to this music that would devalue it for us. Its authority is that mystical. Its boundaries are that flimsy. It seems like it can withstand anything.
I guess what they've done is psychadelize what we already know. They've made it all one song, essentially, 80 minutes of nonstop sound. Songs transition into others by way of other songs. Older songs provide the background for newer ones, and vice versa. It works. I thought it was strange they didn't find the analogue between "Because" and "I Want You" and blend the two, but both songs are represented in other ways. Most of the material, naturally, is from the post-Help! era, with the exception of "Help!", "What You're Doing" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand". Oh, and the opening chord of "A Hard Day's Night", which blends gorgeously into Ringo's drum solo from "The End".
A real standout is "Strawberry Fields". It starts with John's early takes, then grows step by step... instruments added, vocals added, until it takes its ultimate shape, and then the final mad procession marches along, and brings with it seamlessly interwoven echoes of "Sgt. Pepper", "Hello Goodbye", "Penny Lane", and "Piggies".
The Indian theme is dealt with accordingly. Ringo's hypnotizing drums from "Tomorrow Never Knows" provide the backbeat for George's "Within You Without You"... and then sends its Sonic Seagulls to merge with "Lucy in the Sky..." Ringo gets his day in the sun, as he begins "Octopus's Garden" against the lush strings of "Good Night." George, too, is well represented, both Indian-wise and otherwise. Indeed, one of the wonders of this project is how all four voices are melded.
Some songs are left alone for us to appreciate them in surround sound for the first time. For the most part, "Eleanor Rigby", "I Am the Walrus", "Something", "Mr. Kite", "Lucy in the Sky", "Here Comes the Sun", "Come Together", "Revolution", "A Day in the Life", "Hey Jude", and "All You Need is Love" are intact, minus a verse here and there. It's a wonderful disc.
As a side-note: I remember everybody referring to Oasis years ago as the second coming of the Beatles. Real perceptive. Now the only time we hear from those clowns is when they have something ugly to say about their quasi-progenitors. The Beatles had ten years, and they gave us a cosmos. Oasis has had ten years, and have graciously given us nothing.
Free Music Review: Brilliant! You don't have it already? Run, don't walk!
Hit: 5 Stars
Brief audio samples don't do this masterpiece justice. A pop symphony that constitutes a thorough reimagining of the most influential and durable rock oeuvre for a new century, yet one that still stays "faithful" to the original spirit. (Prepare for the inevitable purist backlash, much of it from people who think they're somehow upholding Lennon's torch by dissing George Martin.) It really needs to be experienced as a whole, and repeatedly, because some of the changes are very subtle, but nonetheless effective (for ex., the amped-up drum track on this version of Back in the USSR). Of course, for a group that practically invented the concept album with Sgt. Pepper (sorry, Brian Wilson), that sort of holistic approach is very apropos. Tracks that esp. stood out the first few go-rounds for me were Mr Kite, Hey Jude, Lady Madonna (with Hey Bulldog's nasty riff buried in the middle), I Am the Walrus (in real stereo, at last!), Tomorrow Never Knows/Within You (the former now much improving the latter, I think), and the woefully short but powerful remix of the already-menacing Glass Onion. But it's all good, and I'll be savoring it for quite some time. Thanks to the Beatles and their various official legatees for apparently leaving the Martins alone to do what they do best. Now if they'd only get with the rest of the 21st century and get their stuff out on digital formats. (End that long, silly feud of Apple v. Apple already!) Addendum: a week later and several dozen listens later, a few small complaints. The album slows down a lot at a few points, a little too much so for my taste compared to the more exuberant rest of the proceedings. As I thought about it, it seems to me that George's work is represented with too much of his pokier or schmaltzier stuff, a minor point that could have been corrected if they had replaced "Something" (a sweet but ultimately boring song) with, say, his underrated "Savoy Truffle" (but rewired, of course). Perhaps they could have also shortened "Mr. Kite" by a verse before its brilliant "I Want You" power-chord conclusion, and used the saved space to expand "Glass Onion" a bit more (which is my favorite reworking of all, but only about 45 seconds long). Finally, the one song that Giles Martin's rearranging does nothing to either improve or present in an interesting new light is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. The staccato intro works fine, but the main addition is an annoying reed-like warble of vaguely Eastern-sounding origin that repeats over and over in the chorus at the word "diamonds." It's a very grating noise that detracts from an otherwise beautiful track.Free Music Review: George Martin, The Man Behind the Curtain
Hit: 5 Stars
For Christmas I received not one, but two copies of the new Beatles album, "Love" which I had desperately been wanting ever since learning of it. For anyone who doesn't know, Cirque Du Soleil wanted to do a Beatles themed show so George Martin and his son Giles took the original Beatles master tapes, put them in a metaphorical blender and came up with some amazing musical casseroles, some pieced together like Frankenstein's monster, with amazing results. Some songs have the vocals from one song set to the music from a completely different song with various textures from even more songs thrown in, while some other songs are changed very little from the originals but almost everything has at least some small subtle bits from other songs creeping in.
I definitely think the die hard Beatles fans (like myself) will reap the deepest rewards from this collection but even more casual Beatles fans can't miss the more extreme remixes and sound collages which, in my opinion, are by far the best and most amazing. This album continues to elicit goose bumps from me even several after listenings. I'm just about as big a Beatles fan as there is but I have yet to be able to trace each bit of each song back to its origin. The end of "Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite" mixed with "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" sounds to me like a pristine aural representation of Hell, and I mean that in a wonderful, pure genius way. Listening to this album is like being caught in some strange wormhole where the entire Beatles catalog exists as one living, breathing entity; time and space ripple and fold back on themselves as sounds and images fade and meld into each other and through you.
I've evangelized for years about the genius of George Martin and how I think his role as producer had as much effect on the end result of Beatle records as the 4 Beatles themselves had in writing and playing them and I think this album puts his talents on display more than ever. Just listen to "Anthology" and you can hear a demo of a good song end up as a true masterpiece due in no small part to Martin's input.
The album is also available in two formats, standard CD, and this double CD+DVD version which includes the whole album (with some slightly longer versions of some songs) in 5.1 surround sound which I definitely think is the only real choice. This is an absolute must hear. Absolutely one of the most creative and amazing things I've heard in a long time.
Free Music Review: Masters remixed by the masters
Hit: 5 Stars
This album is a true masterwork. Produced over many months by veteran producer George Martin and his son Giles, this album - especially in the 5.1 DVD-Audio format - reveals both the sheer quality of recording and performance of the original multitrack recordings, and the enormous possibilities of the modern digital recording studio in the hands of true masters of the craft.
Many of the original multitrack masters had a multitude of instruments crammed on to just a few tracks: disentangling them to permit the remixes present on this disc must have taken weeks on its own. Yet here you will find elements from the original songs presented more clearly than ever before, alongside elements lifted from other songs and spun in forwards, backwards and sideways. You'll hear things clearly you could never quite hear before, and some things you simply never knew existed.
Tracks from the early days feature quite traditional mixes while later, more psychedelic offerings are brim full of interesting little features that repay multiple listening, especially in surround. The audio quality is, quite simply, stunning: the DVD-Audio surround content is at 24-bit, 96kHz, which means, essentially, that you're hearing the masters as they were heard by the Martins at Abbey Road when they played them back - no other audio system can offer this. Even the CD is excellent, with none of the over-compression so prevalent on modern recordings.
There is only one new piece of recording here - a poignant new string arrangement for "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" recorded at Air - every other sound you hear is from the original mulitracks. The 26-track album is a more or less continuous segue of songs, some including transitions that contain elements from several different numbers, with a natural flow, development and conclusion.
Yes, it's the soundtrack to a show; yes, you have literally heard it all (almost) before; but in another way no, you have never heard this before - and you should take a listen. Congratulations to everyone concerned.
Be sure to buy the DVD version if you have a halfway-decent surround system (especially a DVD-Audio player, though any DVD player will play this disc in surround or stereo), though the CD sounds fine - and leave your preconceptions at the door.
Free Music Review: No matter how you cut it, they are still the greatest band ever
Hit: 5 Stars
The Fifth Beatle, George Martin, makes his case, with help from son Giles, that what is at the core, in even the smallest detail, is sheer genius. Most of the tracks work brilliantly, and you get a very clear sense of what George thought of the strengths of each of the other four by which tunes he leaves intact. For the anagram nature of the rest of it, this is the kind of project the Five of them would have done had they all survived into the 21st Century for no other reason than it is fun. And Apple was right not to let some yahoo geek screw around with the canon. This could only be done right by the master himself. At 80, it is unlikely he'll do another. More importantly, another need not be done. I'd much prefer, based on how terrific the remastering is on the core tapes, that the entire catalogue get the proper treatment, ideally from Giles. In addition, now that McCartney has the masters back of the Rooftop Concert, it would be great to release that and the Glyn Johns version of Let it Be (which is basically a mix of McCartney's first solo record and the Naked tracks). Early concerts from The Hollywood Bowl, Shea Stadium, Candlestick Park, all could do with a clean up and release. And that is what seems most hopeful about how well this turned out.
Again, give credit to the two Georges: it was Harrison who thought it would be great to work with Cirque du Soleil. It was Martin who realized the initiative. Martin had a special place in his heart for George (don't we all?). He said often that post HELP, the writing credits should have been Lennon-Harrison, as McCartney had essentially jettisoned his efforts from Lennon and Lennon progressively lost interest in completing his own work. Be that as it may, that Martin could listen to the tracks and know exactly where the imaginations of his former colleagues would take them is a testament to the love and professional devotion he carried in his heart for the band that is still the greatest ever. Nobody, and this CD proves the point one more time, has ever been this good. And just wait til you hear it in DVD Audio!