From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V16 #669 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Sunday, January 27 2013 Volume 16 : Number 669 To unsubscribe: e-mail ecto-digest-request@smoe.org and put the word unsubscribe in the message body. Today's Subjects: ----------------- Anneke van Giersbergen [Karen Hester ] Disclosure - The Gathering [Karen Hester ] Hundred Waters [valrichardson@igc.org] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:40:01 -0500 From: Karen Hester Subject: Anneke van Giersbergen Everything is Changing - Anneke van Giersbergen One of my 2012 obsessions - an excellent melodic pop/hard-rock/not-quite-metal album. Dutch Anneke used to sing in The Gathering, who were gothic metal, then alternative trip-rock-experiemental-whatever, and the melodies became more obscure. She left to make two patchy albums of more conventional music. And now, the third, and most conventional of all. The ballads "Circles" and the title track are lovely, but they aren't the point. Rocking is the point. Very catchy rocking with as many hooks as the best pop songs. The passionate and beautiful "My Boy" manages to be a caring song about her young son at the same time as inducing head-banging. It rocks. "Take Me Home" manages to be amazingly sexy despite the lyrics "Dude I like/ I hope we can get together someday." And it rocks. Every song is catchy and emotional and rocking, and several have simplistic or Hallmark lyrics, but did I mention they rock? I went mad giving stars to these songs in iTunes - 5 stars on most of your bellies, Sneetches! I shall take away their stars just so I can give them again. Naff video to "Take Me Home" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu0ZWRKgi_E ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2013 18:17:47 -0500 From: Karen Hester Subject: Disclosure - The Gathering Disclosure - The Gathering So I think The Gathering were gothic metal, then Euro-metal-with-female-singer (which seems to be a musical genre), then infected by trip-hop and dreads, then characterized by slow atmospheric songs with interesting textures and sounds, (i.e. boring melodically), and Anneke with her pretty and unique voice left and a pleasant singer joined, and many years later here is an album I like. (I probably like many of the others, but when you come late to a band that has 10 or so albums and several different singers, it's hard to get your head around things.) The single is the 11 minute "Heroes for Ghosts" which is atmospheric and epic but also has a strong structure, so - songs! The tension builds around the 7 minute mark and yet the song before that was concerned with its own business, it wasn't just laying groundwork. Mature songwriting. I particularly love Silje's heartbroken singing on "Gemini I." Urgent "Meltdown" has a male vocalist (keyboardist Frank?) with Silje, and the noise aspect is more electronics and drums than their old guitars. The 'other' epic "I Can See Four Miles" (sic) ends with wonderful noisy guitar work. There are strings and brass and theremin on various tracks - they haven't dropped the soundscape side, despite adding more melody and structure. So Anneke left to put out her own straight-forward melodies, and The Gathering have continued their complex path and rediscovered melody, but not in its 3-minute form. Now if only they could use a few more loud guitars... I don't know if the video adds much, though the constant-movement-through-Northern-landscape works, - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m-zhD8Qh9w&list=UUs9gn5TTs46sAEKBC5bJ5rg&index=3 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2013 21:12:47 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: valrichardson@igc.org Subject: Hundred Waters Greetings, I've been enjoying the new album from the Florida-based group Hundred Waters (self-titled). They are touring the northeast in the next few days with a concerts in Charlottesville tomorrow night, Brooklyn on Tuesday night (Williamsburg Music Hall), the Space in Hamden, Connecticut, on Wednesday, and, Wilmington, Delaware on Friday. Here's a description from the Guardian who had them as the Band of the Day this past September. There is a comparison to Bjork, which was my first thought listening to them, albeit a more melodic and less eccentric Bjork. - --Valerie Hundred Waters are a US band whose debut album nods to English folk while using electronic music production techniques. Without remotely trying to tick boxes or appease diametrically opposed demographics, this Floridian five-piece have made a record that could appeal to fans of both Four Tet and Fairport Convention, Espers and Grimes. They are fronted by Nicole Miglis, who calls herself a "melody maker [and] word weaver" and has something about her of the mystical British folk-girl, as well as, in her voice, some of the hiccupy kookiness of a BjC6rk. Miglis is a classically trained pianist and vocalist, but the other players are no slouches, either in the performing or the programming departments b they switch between instruments and gadgets with aplomb and are clearly as adept at handling things with strings as they are things with cables and wires. There is an intricacy to the musicianship, of whatever form, that could tantalise prog-rock lifers, and the production has a pristine precision that will make sense through the inventions of Messrs Sennheiser and Bose. ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V16 #669 ***************************