The Flaming Lips With Lightning Bolt- The Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips- The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt

Rating: 12

"I man the controls"

Best Song: I'm Working At Nasa On Acid

Worst Song: Nasa's Final Acid Bath

Track List:

Side One: The Flaming Lips With Lightning Bolt

1. I'm Working At Nasa on Acid

2. I Wanna Get High, But I Don't Want Brain Damage

Side 2: Lightning Bolt With The Flaming Lips

3. Nasa's Final Acid Bath

4. I Wanna Get Damaged, But I Won't Say Hi

     ...Noise! Beautiful, Terrible Noise! Really though, this is the best thing they've done in 2011 so far in the reviews! I don't have time, so I'm gonna make this quick. All of the songs are good, and "Nasa's Final Acid Bath," is the worst. "I'm working at NASA on acid" is a space-noise-rock masterpiece. Thats all you need to know. Go download it now.

Gummy Song Skull- The Flaming Lips

Rating: 12

"They've Switched on The Time Machine"

Best Song: In Our Bodies, Out of Our Heads

Worst Song: Hilary's Time Machine Machine

Track Listing:

1. Drug Chart

2. In Our Bodies, Out Of Our Heads

3. Walk With Me

4. Hilary's Time Machine Machine

     Wow, now this is much better. This is the April Flaming Lips music, and it's really quite good! The first three songs are great, and the fourth one is... ok, but overall it's really good! The album has this really cool drugged out feel, and the feel makes sense, as the first and second songs both make drug references in title and lyric. It's also the first Flaming Lips EP to packaged in a strange form. This one comes in, as the title suggests, in a giant 7 pound gummy skull. Inside the gummy skull is a gummy brain, and in the brain is a USB containing the music. They're quite pricey, and not sold anymore, so there is basically no way to get the music, but download it online.
     Let's get into a track by track review. The EP begins with the spacey, reverb heavy "Drug Chart." The drums in this song are incredible, and Wayne's voice is quite cool in it. The lyrics, while not really decipherable, are quite good, but dark. It's not the slightest bit overlong because of the hypnotic drums, and overall, it's the perfect opener for this EP.
    The next song is the fantastic, "In Our Bodies, Out of Our Heads,". It's pretty much Miles Davis fusion as interpreted by the Flaming Lips. If you didn't know, I quite like Miles Davis. Anyway, the song is mostly instrumental, with the title of the song being the only lyric popping up at the end of the song. The wah solo is definitely the highlight of the song though.
     Next comes "Walk With Me," which is the first part in the 15 minute suite that closes the album. Clocking in at 6 minutes, it borders on being overlong, but subtle changes keep it interesting enough. Besides, the singing is awesome, and the drum machine, while not as good as the drums in the last two songs, is a good fit for this song.
     The second and final part of the suite is called "Hilary's Time Machine Machine." Clocking in at 9 minutes, this song unfortunately falls under the category of over long in the vein of "Alan's Theremin," I like "Hilary's" a good deal better than "Alan's" though. All the song really is though is a sped up Fetus's heartbeat in the right channel, an acoustic strumming in the left channel, occasional keyboards, and some mumbling in the center of the channels. It is literally the same idea for 9 minutes, but it's so much softer, and less annoying than "Alan's" so I do like it. It's not the ideal way to end the album, but they could do much worse.
     Overall, this is the best EP they've done in the 2011 catalog so far. Go download it today, as it's really worth it.    

Starless And Bible Black- King Crimson

King Crimson- Starless and Bible Black (1973)

Rating: 12

"The Worthy Captain and His Squad of Troopers, Standing Fast"

Best Song: Fracture

Worst Song: Trio

     This has to be one of the most underrated albums I have ever reviewed. On every site I look at for reviews, it got 7/16, 4/10, 4/10, and 7/10. It's a really good album! Most people tend to talk about the fact that 5/8 songs are live, and that 4/5 of those are improvisations. But the King Crimson improvs are some of the best music they ever did. All of the improvisations (except for one) are great and it's really hard to believe they actually improvised on it. But let's do a track by track analysis.

     The album kicks off with a song called "The Great Deciever", which is a great song driven by an awesome electric violin line and an awesome bassline! The lyrics are funny, and the singing is top notch. The next song, "Lament," is not as good, but has two cool sections. The first one is quiet, but the second part is regular rockin' Crimson, lead by a cool bassline. The next song is the instrumental improv, "We'll Let You Know," which is the best improvisation on the album. Once again, the bass is amazing. And when the drum comes in... wow.

     The 4th song is called "The Night Watch," and it's pretty good, just a bit soft. The next song, "Trio," is waayyy too soft. It's frankly just a boring song. Then side one closes out with "The Mincer", which is really creepy, but is made even creepier by the random cutout. Then side 2 opens up with the final improvisation of the album, which is the title track. While it's not my favorite, its still pretty good!

      All of these songs however, do not compare to "Fracture," This is easily in my top 5 Crimson songs, and one of the greatest Heavy prog songs ever. It's 11 minutes, but not overlong in the slightest! The main guitar part is awesome, made awesome by the octave power of the guitar-bass playing the same thing. The violin's pretty great too! But wow, that bass. That amazing bass. John Wetton was a heck of a bass player.

     Overall, this album is vastly underrated, and if you don't have it, go pick it up as soon as possible!

Pink Floyd- The Piper At The Gates of Dawn

The Piper At The Gates of Dawn (1967)- Pink Floyd #1
Rating: 12
Best Song: Interstellar Overdrive
Worst Song: Scarecrow

     ...And so begins the saga of my favorite band of all time: Pink Floyd. I used to be a Dark-Side through Wall fan, so most of Pink Floyd's albums were ones I didn't like. I loved the "Prog" sound of the most famous albums, so when I picked this up on my birthday 6 months ago, I hated it. I also love The Beatles, and yes, Sgt. Pepper was an album during the psychedelia period, but not many songs on it were really "Psychadelic." This one, however is psychadelic at it's max potential. However, it really grew on me.
     The lyrical content of this album is different from the rest of the discography because of one man: Syd Barrett. Syd was the lead of Pink Floyd from the time they formed in 1965, until the time when he went insane in 1968 and was replaced by the then session guitarist David Gilmour. He was kicked because of drug problems and mental issues.
     You can almost feel him falling apart in these songs. The lyrics are kiddish, but have a Barrett twist to them. The guitar playing is very good, but very loose. The standout songs are: "Astronomy Domine", known as one of the first space rock songs, "Interstellar Overdrive" one if the first prog instrumentals of all time, and "Bike", a demented almost nursery rhyme.
     Some of the songs however, like "The Gnome" and "Scarecrow", are not very good, and seem to be thrown together by Syd. Roger Waters, the future lead of Floyd wrote a song, "Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk". It's so dumb, but I kind of like it. Overall, it's one of the most solid debut albums I have heard. Sadly, Syd Barrett was kicked out right after this album, and only had one more song to contribute to Floyd, which appeared on the next album, which already showed a stylistic change...

Brian Eno- Another Green World

Another Green World (1975)- Brian Eno 3

Rating: 12

"In The Blue, August Moon"

Best Song: St. Elmo's Fire

Worst Song: Little Fishes

Feb 2013 Update: Wow This Grew on Me. Read my review of it when I gave it a 7.5, but now I really enjoy most of it

     Ok, let's start with a moderately obscure album. This is an album by former Roxy Music band member Brian Eno. Him and Roxy band leader Bryan Ferry made a more experimental version of Glam Rock in the first two Roxy albums. Brian Eno left in 1973 to pursue a solo career, and he went on to become a producer for popular bands such as U2, The Talking Heads, David Bowie, and Devo.
     His first two albums, Here Come The Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) were released in 1973 and 1974 to moderate critical acclaim. At some point, I'll review those, but first I'll have to pick those ones up and give them a few more listens. Anyway, Warm Jets was more of a Glam Rock music album then what he would become in the 80s. Tiger Mountain showed signs of a coming change, but it was still a ways off until he finally became and pioneered a new Genre: Ambient.
     Enough about Brian's history, let's get on to the album! This albums is a combination of almost soft rock and ambient, but he had still not completed his full ambient "transformation" so the ambient isn't in full force (Except for a few songs, and I'll get to that later)
     The album opens up with a song called "Sky Saw" which is a combination of some softer glam rock and his strange, but signature synths. Then "Over Fire Island" is almost the same idea, just a bit more boring. The third song, however is one of the best songs he would record and probably the greatest combination of Ambient/Soft Rock he'd ever record. The next two songs, "In Dark Trees" and "The Big Ship" are part of what I call "The Ambient Duo" as these songs are very ambient and mood setting. The tree one gives you feelings of paranoia and somebody watching you, while "The Big Ship" feels like a ship slowly coming over the horizon line and landing in a dock.
     "I'll Come Running" is a nice song, but not a standout, and the title track is a relative throwaway that kind of sums up the album in 1:30. The second half of the album is not great, but still okay, as most of the tracks here are ambient and the ones that are not are moderately boring. While nothing is particularly "bad", only "St. Elmo's Fire" stands out among the 14 songs. Still, it's a nice listen, and if you want to start listening to ambient, the ambients on here are a good starting point.