Moby - Go: The Very Best of Moby (Bonus Remix album)

First off, sorry for the long delay between my own reviews, although Lord of Entropy has kept the place going with some excellent and intriguing looks at black metal. As an explanation, an old friend of mine was in town for a week, and I haven't been around online a tremendous amount, nor really had the time to sit down and write out a review. That said, the frequency should be back to normal now.

Moby - Go (Bonus Remix album)

In 2006, the noted electronica artist Moby (best known for his supermassively popular 1999 album Play) released a career best of, spanning everything from his early work with club music right through his (then) most recent effort Hotel. Seeing as that was just a best of with an extra song tacked on, I'm not going to bother with that for now and move right to what for me was the real reason to get the compilation. The thing about this album is that Moby either was asked by or asked many of his contemporaries in the electronica scene to remix some of his songs, which he added to the best of as a sort of bonus. Naturally, since they got to pick what songs to remix, the songs all come from Moby's work since Play, but then again his earlier work was far more club oriented anyways. I should also just point out quickly that I am reviewing the US bonus disc, as I haven't heard the international one yet. I guess Canada is counted as US these days for album releases?

The album kicks off what I found to be something of an odd choice, Play's one club heavy song "Bodyrock." The reason why I find this odd is that the song was alike to Moby's early work and really didn't need any tweaking to make it a good club track, and it's the only song on this remix album I could really say that about. The end result is alright, it's not my favourite on the album but I'll give the remixer credit for making an interesting and totally new version of the song.

As we move into the next track, my curiosity with the album is justified, as the song is a remixof the last track from 2002's 18, the gospel influenced ambient track "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" This is not a club track originally, and at least for the middle and end of the song the remixer does an excellent job of making it danceable, but the minute and a half intro of dramatic somber piano (added in) really detracts from the song. As a curiosity it's worthwhile, but I can't say I really like the track.

"Natural Blues" was one of my favourite tracks from Play, as it combined an excellent blues beat and vocals to a dance backdrop, but the remix really took the entire melody out of this song. Basically it's a rave track, with little melody and a repetitive bass line augmented by little keyboards. I think this could have made a great dance track if it had kept the original melody at least a little.

"South Side" is really very similar to the last track, in that the melody was all stripped out and made into a somewhat featureless electronica track.

"We Are All Made of Stars" is a more intriguing song, and it perked my interest back up somewhat. It still strips the song of all its original melody, but the end result is far more interesting than the last few songs. When I first listened through the album, this was enough to keep me going. Basically, it's a drum and bass track with keyboards and a little bit of distorted vocal noise in the background. Interesting, and very different from the original, but again it's not particularly impressive.

The next track I was really excited about, for two reasons. First, "Extreme Ways" is actually the song that made me go and look up Moby, and discover he had been the artist behind so many songs I'd heard and liked, and second because it as remixed by one of my favourite trance DJs, Dutch electronica superstar Tiësto. And I will definitely give it credit, this is my favourite track on the album so far. It is very much in the style of one of Tiësto's more sedate numbers, lacking the deeper sound of his more club oriented tracks, but it is interesting right through, and it keeps enough of the original melodies to keep it recognisable. My only complaint is with the vocals, despite keeping the majority of them Tiësto has tweaked them somewhat and they come through flat and a little boring. Aside from that this was a successful remix, and gave me hope for the rest of the album.

"Jam For the Ladies" is another track I really liked in the original, but by this point I was generally not hopeful of anything particularly stunning. Luckily this track surpassed everything else so far on the album. Basically the remixer sped up the BPM and vocals and added in heavier amounts of keyboards to the mix. This one got me moving around a bit as I heard it, which was again a first on this album. My biggest complaint is once more with the vocals, as they have been sped up to the point of sounding almost silly, but it's still a good track.

And now we get into the best two songs on the album, both from Moby's then most recent effort Hotel. First up is the '80s style "Lift Me Up" which becomes a pleasant little electronic song. It's not especially complicated or interesting, but it's a nice listen, and is a frequent play for me. The real winner, however, is it's follow up track "Raining Again." The initial intro to the song is similar to the original, and keeps basically the same melody and vocals, and overall the song sticks to the original, but where it really wins for me is in the addition of heavy club beats and less prominent vocals. This is what I had hoped for and expected when I picked up the album, so I was very pleased when this came on.

The next track, "Dream About Me," is largely forgettable, again just a pleasant little track good for background noise, but album closer "Slipping Away" is a little bit more interesting, if just because of how much more danceable it is than the original, but honestly I just don't have much to say about it.

Overall the album didn't really blow me away, it had a few real gems on it but for the most part I really prefer the originals. Now, this is to be expected on an album composed entirely of remixes by different artists, but I guess somehow I had expected a little bit more. If you're a fan of Moby it's worth hearing, if just for the curiosity factor, but I think ultimately this is more aimed at the hardcore fan than the casual listener, and due to Play's unbelievable success and broad appeal, I suspect the majority of Moby listeners are casual fans.

6/10

Turmion kätilöt - Minä määrään

Turmion kätilöt - Minä määrään
I expect this is a name that is familiar to most readers of this blog, but for those who aren't familiar with Turmion kätilöt (hereafter referred to as Tk for simplicity's sake) here's some basic information (for those familiar with the band, I'll provide a line break where the intro ends)
Tk are from Finland (their name translates to something like Midwives of Perdition, which gives you an idea of their basic concept) and they are one of those bands which I love, that sing (almost) exclusively in their own language. To date Tk have released two full length albums (2004's Hoitovirhe and 2006's Pirun nyrkki) and one EP (2005's Niuva 20) all of which were, in my opinion, excellent. The thing about Tk is that their albums are pretty drawn between really, really good songs and fairly mediocre ones. Case in point is Hoitovirhe, which has about 6 (7 if you count the minute long instrumental intro to Kärsi) incredible tracks and 5 mediocre ones.
The band plays a style of heavy metal that is extremely influenced by dance music, which of course is a fairly well known genre in North American heavy metal as well. The thing about Tk is that their music has elements of much heavier subgenres of heavy metal than generally surface in industrial metal. I read the term "blackened death metal" somewhere last year, and the first part of it stuck with me for just this band. There are elements of death and black metal in the band's sound, especially after their first album, both in the instruments (note especially the verses of the title track to Pirun nyrkki) and lead vocalist MC Raaka Pee has a very growled vocal style reminiscent of these extreme metal genres.
The "band" as such currently only really exists in the touring format, with Raaka Pee providing vocals, mixing and keyboards and DJ Vastapallo providing the rest of the instrumentation. Lyrically the band could be compared to earlier Rammstein lyrics, as much of them deal with violence and sex, which of course is the other element of the band, namely the live element. When performing live, the band members put on a show that is really in the vein of old school shock rock, with the band in S&M outfits or full body latex suits, or..you get the image...
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So why all this info? Because to appreciate the new single (which is all this is; two songs) one needs to know what the band is about.
I have to be honest, my first impression of the two new songs was not overly favourable. They were decent, but I figured they fit into the category of "4 or 5 songs that aren't that great." The thing is, my initial impression of Tk was overwhelmingly negative, to the point that I actually deleted the MP3s off my computer twice before I finally got into them on a trip to Toronto last year. The thing with this band is, once I got past my initial neutrality, they have become one of my all time favourite bands, so I kept playing the tracks.
It's pretty obvious from the first moments of Minä määrään that the band are continuing on the much heavier, extreme metal influenced style they started to adopt on Niuva 20, which I applaud. The problem with me lies more in the vocals, in that I'm about 90% certain Spellgoth (the second, live vocalist) has actually been singing in the studio. While I have nothing against the guy, frankly I findhis voice a little irritating at times, something in the slightly higher register of his growled vocals just don't work as well with the music. And if that is Raaka Pee, then he's using a different vocal style which I don't like so much. Thing is, I got used to it after a while, and I'm becoming increasingly okay with it. Especially since the vocals which I'm speaking of seem much less prevalent now than they did at first listen. Overall I'd say this is one the good tracks, like Pirun nyrkk's Eläköön!, but not one of the great tracks, like that same album's title track, or Hoitovirhe's Rautaketju.
I was really excited by the second track, because I leaned about a week ago that it was actually a cover of an old Finnish pop song. The reason why I was so excited is that, listening to his late '80s styled song, I could just imagine the guitars and electronics of the Tk version...and yet two things struck me when I first started listening to Shuttle to Venus. First, it's not the original Finnish song, since this one is in English. My guess is Tk are covering some English language release, which was a bad move because Raaka Pee has a very heavy accent, making it hard to tell at times whether the lyrics are actually in English. Second, somehow my expectations were leading me to expect something a little different. It's grown on me as well, but the heaviness of the accent on this track irritates me, it makes me wish the band had decided to bring in another vocalist, like on their only other non-Finnish language track, the cover of Deep Purple's Stormbringer from the Niuva 20 EP. Again, it's a decent track, but not one of the excellent ones.
I suppose the final question really has to be, does this single make me more or less excited about the new full length, USCH!, being released next month. And I suppose that's a divided question. On the one hand, I'm not blown away by the new songs. I think they're good, but they aren't the ones that make me think "Fuck these guys are good!" when I'm listening. On the other hand, Tk are my favourite industrial metal band, and they are (right now, anyways) also my premier head banging band, so the prospect of a new album still makes me drool and get all excited. I would say that in one very important way the single did increase my excitement level, in that I do think the band have better stuff still waiting, unheard, from the new album (for the most part, the singles aren't my favourite songs from Tk albums) and even if these are as good as it gets, they're still above the average. Much as I hate to be one of those reviewers, if it weren't for their earlier work I would have been fairly blown away by the new songs.
7.5/10