>The formal perfection of their melodies reached the sublime

>>74033264
Sometimes I think he isn't actually writing any of this shit and his Italian translators are just fucking with him.

THE

>>74033264
same

File: 19692553_2289546187937733_1792151700_n.png (235KB, 480x451px) Image search: [Google]

235KB, 480x451px

The work is so innovative and complex as to be nearly indecipherable. The rhythm section sounds so polyrhythmic that all rhythm is lost. The singing , vaguely interested in music, travels within alien universes. The guitar acts as atonal contracanto. The counterpoint of the ensemble is something halfway between the orchestral chaos of Charles Ives and the audacity of John Cage. The chaotic but rational improvisation is reminiscent of the frenetic geometry of Ornette Coleman, who in turn was influenced by Van Vliet. The heterogeneous meter that Van Vliet produces are to melody what the free poetry of the 1900's are to rhyme. But free-jazz and avant garde music are only alibis, pretexts to freely vent the leader's anarchical compulsions. The album is by all accounts an anthology of chaos in all its musical forms. For as deeply varied as they are from one another, these twenty-eight cuts are many versions of the same scene of devastation. Trout Mask Replica is above all a collage of abstract paintings, each different from the other in color, intensity and contrast, yet they're all homogeneous in their "abstraction".

wtf I love Trout Mask Replica now

>>74035779
The overall meaning of the pandemonium in Trout Mask Replica is not only playfulness, or the negation of a meaning. The allegorical messages of Van Vliet's masterpiece are multiple, hidden by layers of abstractions that allow a cosmic-metaphysical interpretation, despite the author's pretense of illiteracy. These interpretations redirect the listener toward a form of apology for madness, to the primordial stages, and to chaos, counterposed against the monolithic order of technocratic society.
Beefheart uses the Delta blues as a pretext, but dismembers its structure, rhythm, harmony, tonality and melody, and then reassembles the pieces randomly, injecting it with free-jazz and casual improvisation. Beefheart is the first musician to perform an avant garde operation of such capacity without the least intellectual pomposity.

honestly scaruffi is full of shit

>>74033264
As an Italian i think the translator did a bad job.
the original says

>Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever che esce a febbraio (il primo a non raggiungere la cima delle classifiche e uno dei loro massimi capolavori),

it should be

>Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever, released in february (the first single not to reach the top of the charts and one of THEIR masterpieces).

he basically said that those two tracks are some of THEIR masterpieces, some of their best tracks.

File: christgau1med.jpg (18KB, 400x266px) Image search: [Google]

18KB, 400x266px

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [Capitol, 1967]

A dozen good songs and true. Perhaps they're too precisely performed, but I'm not going to complain. A

>>74036937
a children would have made a more articulated review

>>74037009

No one takes his reviews seriously. Just treat them as little jokes, and you'll enjoy him a lot more.

>>74033264
Ahh the boilerplate fedora "Strawberry Fields Forever is the best Beatles track" opinion

>>74037158
oh well, at least scaruffi talks about the music

Rather than an album of psychedelic music (compared to which it actually sounds retro), Sgt. Pepper was the Beatles' answer to the sophistication of Pet Sounds, the masterpiece by their rivals, the Beach Boys, released a year and three months before. The Beatles had always been obsessed by the Beach Boys. They had copied their multi-part harmonies, their melodic style and their carefree attitude. Throughout their entire career, from 1963 to 1968, the Beatles actually followed the Beach Boys within a year or two, including the formation of Apple Records, which came almost exactly one year after the birth of Brother Records. Pet Sounds had caused an uproar because it delivered the simple melodies of surf music through the artistic sophistication of the studio. So, following the example of Pet Sounds, the Beatles recorded, from February to May 1967, Sgt. Pepper, disregarding two important factors: first that Pet Sounds had been arranged, mixed and produced by Brian Wilson and not by an external producer like George Martin, and second that, as always, they were late. They began assembling Sgt. Pepper a year after Pet Sounds had hit the charts, and after dozens of records had already been influenced by it.

>>74037193
So did Christgau...
http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-aow/column2.php

File: Danny questions your actions.jpg (108KB, 497x594px) Image search: [Google]

108KB, 497x594px

>>74037009
>a children

>>74039013