Various - The World Is Gone
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Free Music Notes for The World Is Gone
Free Music Review: various is varied
Hit: 2 Stars
I thought I'd try this out based on a recommendation. I think it's very strongly reminiscent of Faithless (but without beats) in mood and execution as well as of the already-cited Massive Attack. Still, even after a few listens, I found myself wishing Various would either employ a few additional keyboard sounds/programs, or that they would not repeat them so often. The odd schizoid jumble of folky stuff (but, in a This Mortal Coil-ish vein) with scratchy urban-noise-riddim electronic atmospheres does work in a surprisingly not-so-jarring way. However, the female vocals tend to stray a bit too much towards overly-sincere Dido and Natalie Merchant for my tastes. The brittle album-closer "FLY" is my favorite track, sounding sort of like if Sandy Denny sang with His Name Is Alive. Free Music Review: almost perfect
Hit: 4 Stars
There is a fairly wide variety of songs on this release, and I felt that they all worked well in their own respective space...with the exception of one song, "Soho". I listen to a lot of ambient, non-lyrical music because I think that bad lyrics ruin most otherwise fantastic songs. This song is a perfect example: "get me a drink, take away all sorrow...take away my reason" and other ridiculously common lines completely distract from the powerful underlying structure of this song. None of the lyrics in any of the rest of the songs are extremely insightful...but they flow and mix with the rest of the music well, and aren't so woefully obvious. This single, exceptionally pathetic song sounds like it was written according to a middle school student's impression of what a world-weary adult would sound like. It really hurts the release, but it's definitely still worth purchasing.Free Music Review: Just what I was looking for
Hit: 5 Stars
I'm a long time Portishead fan and I've been looking for something new to try out. This fit the bill perfectly.Free Music Review: LUCA MAINI's igloomag.com REVIEW ::
Hit: 4 Stars
LUCA MAINI's igloomag.com REVIEW ::
(08.05.06) Another case of possible over-hype. At first, I was very skeptical reading raving reviews about Various Production's first vinyl releases, but they just grew on me a few weeks before the release of this album. Mainly it's wisely produced electronica, with more than an eye to the current underground streams (read: dubstep), sharp breaks, deep bass merged with delicious pop songs. Do not think about mash-up or bastard pop though, the overall result is quite unique, a sheer surprise for those who think that electronic music ran out of ideas twenty years ago. The eclectic mixture that is The World Is Gone is shown within five minutes and two tracks.
"Thunnk" is a brief exercise of distorted dark electronics, while "Circle Of Sorrow" is a purely instrumental folk song, with guitar, strings and female vocals (they don't reveal who they belong to). These extremely different styles begin to hybridize from "Don't Ask", which is basically a dubstep piece very focused on the dub side but with the addition of distant words by the aforementioned mysterious singer. Then comes "Hater," one of the biggest successes of the Various Production label, where the singer is on the forefront but the bass is still shaking underneath the surface; "Soho" is one tune to crank up the volume to, the alcoholic moaning of a male vocalist add some more gloom to the snappy rhythm and the buzzing bass. "Lost" and "Sir" are in the same vein of "Hater", I rate "Sir" especially high for its sexy, seductive voice underlined by a bass that is out of this world, a trick even bettered in "Sweetness," where the vocals almost belong to a blues song, but the bassline is vibrant electro and the atmosphere is poisoned by industrial echoes. At this point, the mellow instrumental "Deadman" is totally bewildering, but by now you should have understood that Various are everything but predictable. Obviously, immediately after this calm and relaxing track there's "Today," the most creepy moment of the entire record, there's a heavy dubstep rhythm that morphs back and forth into a four-to-floor beat, topped by hip-hop scratches, doomsday noises and you'll be amazed of how the singer doesn't sound out of place. To aptly end such a varied work, there's time for the voiceless, menacing title track and for a last melancholic ballad called "Fly".
If all the tracks sounded like "Circle Of Sorrow," I would have never touched this record, but it's also likely that if it had been entirely based on tweaked electronica and dubstep mechanics, it would have never reached such widespread attention, nor XL and the 'indie' audience, but it would have been stuck to the clubbers. But this is not the case, otherwise the duo wouldn't be called Various Production; so, forget the fact that XL is not as underground as you like, surrender to the hype and get The World Is Gone as soon as possible.
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