All Over The World - Wailing Souls

Advantages: soulful
Disadvantages: sound quality

...For those tired of today's mainstream music scene, which seems to combine the worst of both worlds with its mix of the pointlessly offensive and the blandly sanitized, James Brown's Sex Machine is a rousing shot of pure energy, a reminder that music can have the ability to move its listeners in more ways than one. Sex Machine is a supreme distillation of decades worth of black music, compressing rock, soul, and R&B into a lean, frighteningly efficient sound that's had hips shaking since its release. Regardless of your age, race, or any other irrelevant superficial characteristic, this hour-plus-long live recording's raw, sweaty power effortlessly comes accross in every dizzyingly nimble horn inflection, every razor-sharp guitar line, and every intricate polyrhythm. And of course, towering over it all is the singular presence of James... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: None whatsoever
Disadvantages: Too many to list, but here's a few: angsty crap, bunch of eejits, incredibly unoriginal.

...Matt Belamy has always been a bit of a weirdo. From an early age he communed with the dead, picking voices out of the air with a ouija board. This connection with the dead obviously set him apart from his peers. But not from drummer Dom, who, according to a vicious rumour, “saw a ghost when he was eight and pooed his pants” (ta Select magazine). When not soiling their underwear, Muse play rock music. And extremely angsty rock music at that. Matt says: “We are very real. As are our worries and despairs”. While a world-weary approach works very well for Mr Thomas Yorke Esq. et all at Radiohead, who use it to make beautiful, original music, it makes Muse look like a bunch of twats. When they play live, Matt is bent double over his guitar, as if suffering from massive internal contractions, caused by being... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Daring, intriguing and soothing.
Disadvantages: Overlong, repetitive and confused.

...Whatever your preferred phase, if you even have one, David Bowie's mainstream career is pretty fascinating, and for fans who were around at the time (I guess), nicely consistent. Releasing an album every year but two from his optimistic, folky debut to the electronic minimalism of his Berlin detox, Bowie's discography chronicles the rise and rise and permanent fame of the singing star and the evolution of his music as he travelled the world and absorbed its various flavours and drugs. 1976's 'Station to Station' is one of the more transitional albums, like 'Diamond Dogs' two years earlier, and represents the culmination of his American-inspired 'plastic soul' direction, while also introducing electronic elements he had detected from Europe. Its customary huge success was likely a result of the skinny man's enormous profile and selling... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful