Record of the week!
Now listening to a slightly-odd album called 'Illinoise' by an artist I hadn't previously heard of at all, a chap called 'Sufjan Stevens' (no I don't know how to pronounce his name properly, nor do I really care...).Mostly, it's a result of wanting to buy something new, fairly original and cool from iTunes which I've (about two years after the rest of the world) finally got around to installing here and at work and to see how easy it actually is to get protected AAC onto my iRiver MP3 player! (I'll tell more tommorrow if my little plan works...)
I can't claim to have "discovered it" - as it did make its way onto the iTunes Music Store front page in a tiny box, enough to catch my eye and give it a preview. But, anyway! Enough about things you already know about - and onto things you don't know. A brief google reveals a few things about this album and it's author:
It's the fourth album by Sufjan, but only the second in an anticipated series of fifty. He intends to try and produce an album about each state of the US! The first was about his home-state of Michigan. He doesn't expect to finish all fifty, but a man can dream can't he!?!
The style is very hard to describe. Musically, the closest band I can think of in style is 'The Polyphonic Spree', in the use of orchestral, choral and brass tones and wide expansive arrangements and in slightly absent minded rambling through passages of music.
However, it thankfully lacks what I always feel is the flowery and bombastic nature of "The Spree", and replaces it with a careful crafting of each song in its own right and as part of the prog-rock style album flow. Thick, layered harmonies and odd-time signatures are de-rigur, and Sufjan's voice as the holding commentry is smooth and non-intrusive.
It also appears from interviews that he's a Christian, which to be fair came as a surprise to me - as it's very much the antithesis of almost everything "CCM".... and some of the songs (eg. "Casimir Pulaski Day") have some lovely exposition of the occasional struggles that those of us of a more 'rational' persuasion have with things like Faith, Hope and Love which are essentially 'irrational' things that we just know!!
Only annoying thing about all this is that, after purchasing it for £7.99 on iTunes - I find that Amazon UK have it for £8.99 or Amazon US for $12.99 - which is a shame because it looks like the sleeve notes might have been quite interesting.
[Final Thought: Hows about someone sets up an online business adjunct to iTunes/Napster/MyCokemusic/etc... selling just the sleeve notes for music purchased online? Surely there's a market - they'd have at least one customer here!]
Time for bed.
richie
posted by RichB @ Tuesday, August 09, 2005
1 Comments:
Sleeve notes online. That's a thought. I downloaded the soundtrack for a video game recently for free and they had sleeve notes for download too...twas nice. Sounds like quite a rarity, that Illinoise. Good pick, Mr. B.
Post a Comment
<< Home