Toyah "Desire" (1987)

Desire

release date: Jun. 1, 1987

format: digital (11 x File, FLAC)

[album rate: 3 / 5] [2,88]

producer: Mike Hedges

label: E.G. Records - nationality: England, UK

Track highlights: 1. "Echo Beach" - 2. "Moonlight Dancing" - 3. "Revive the World" - 8. "Deadly as a Woman" - 11. "Desire"

2nd solo album by Toyah following two years after Minx (Jul. 1985) and now with new wave and post-punk producer Mike Hedges. The album consists of songs by Wilcox and former members of the band Toyah - two songs co-composed by Simon Darlow, one with Adrian Lee and one with long-time associate Joel Bogen. Apart from these, Toyah wrote two songs with Nick Graham, one with Bruce Wooley, and the title track with husband Robert Fripp. The album also features two covers: track #1 originally a 1980 song by Martha and the Muffins, and track #6 originally a '77 single by Donna Summer.

Desire appears as an attempt to regain some of the aura but also the sound from the heydays with the band Toyah instead of being a natural follow-up to the poppier Minx. In that way the new album sounds more as something stemming from the early 80s with a stronger new wave appeal. "Echo Beach" preceded the album as a minor single hit reaching number #54 on the singles chart. The second single was "Moonlight Dancing", which doesn't reflect any chart entries, and despite I find it the best song here, it might have fitted better on the band's 1982 album The Changeling - and fact is, the song was co-written by two other band members and also contains the lyrics from the song "Dawn Chorus" from that very album.

The album didn't perform too well and basically didn't enter the albums chart, and it mostly sounds as a bit of a dated release when thinking 1987, and Toyah issues this album that sounds more like 1983-ish. Some of the songs are filled with keyboards and a drum sound that makes me think 'early Nena' or 'Toyah 1980s', and I wonder if some of the tracks are outtakes or alternative versions of older songs, because that's mostly what the sound yells. A few songs take up a tone from Love Is the Law (1983) or Minx but the overall sensation goes back to another time - also underlined in the lyrics. It's the pale imitation of a well-documented period and therefore not recommended.

Anna von Hausswolff "All Thoughts Fly" (2020)

All Thoughts Fly

udgivet: Sep. 25, 2020

format: digital (7 x File, FLAC)

[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,85]

producer: Anna von Hausswolff, Filip Leyman

label: Southern Lord - nationality: Sweden

Track highlights: 1. "Theatre of Nature" - 2. "Dolore di Orsini" - 3. "Sacro Bosco" (officiel video) - 6. "All Thoughts Fly" - 7. "Outside the Gate (for Bruna)"

5th studio album by Swedish organist Anna von Hausswolff, who has now switched to the admirable label Southern Lord. The album follows 2½ years after Dead Magic (Mar. 2018) and it includes seven instrumentals, which have been created in a combination of live recordings and post-production with the addition of electronic instruments. The live element is Anna von Hausswollf on a large (German) baroque organ in Örgryte Nya Kyrka, Gothenburg, and the entire work is based on sensory impressions that von Hausswolff experienced in releation to her visit at the Parco dei Mostri, also named Sacro Bosco (and Villa delle Meraviglie), the remarkable 16th-century Baroque park in Bomarzo, Lazio, Italy, from which the front cover photo was taken with von Hausswolff in the mouth of the meter-high head L'Orco.

It's not an album where you find von Hausswolff looking for new paths - not that she needs to - her music is most original, kept in her well-known experimental, neoclassical darkwave. The simple post-production leaves the music quite bare, where you get a clear sense of the pompous power of the organ. These are progressive compositions that slowly indicate a beauty side by side with a darkness that both evokes a sensation of security but which also may be perceived as gloomy - completely in line with the history of the Baroque garden.

All Thoughts Fly is an almost peerless work and nothing less than Anna von Hauswolff's best to date.

Highly recommended.

[ allmusic.com, SputnikMusic 4,5 / 5, New Noise 5 / 5, 👍Pitchfork 7,7 / 10 stars ]

Robert Forster "Inferno" (2019)

Inferno

release date: Mar. 1, 2019

format: vinyl (tr429lp) / digital

[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,66]

producer: Victor Van Vugt

label: Tapete Records - nationality: Australia

Track highlights: 1. "Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgement" - 3. "Inferno (Brisbane in Summer)" - 5. "Life Has Turned a Page" (live) - 6. "Remain" - 7. "I’ll Look After You" - 9. "One Bird in the Sky"

7th solo album by Robert Forster following Songs to Play (Sep. 2015) is Forster's second album on German label Tapete. It offers nine new compositions, all of which except track #1 with lyrics by William Butler Yeats, are credited Forster himself, and the album was produced by Australian Victor Van Vugt, who previously, among other things, produced for names such as PJ Harvey, Beth Orton, Nick Cave, but he was also sound engineer on Forster's debut Danger in the Past (1990) - just as he is credited on a large number of Australian releases in the 80s and 90s before he chose to settle in New York and here he established himself as producer in mainly the singer / songwriter category. As with the predecessor and Forster's debut, wife Karin Baümler participates on this. Forster has a certain thing for belonging to a band rather than standing on his own, so the album is actually credited the band 'The Magic Five' consisting of Earl Havin on drums and bongos, Michael Mühlhaus on piano and keyboards, Karin Baümler on violin, glockenspiel and backing vocals, Forster himself as vocalist and on acoustic and electric guitar, and with Scott Bromiley on bass, electric & acoustic guitar, synthesizer, organ and backing vocals. The latter also featured on the 2015 album (which he co-produced with Luke McDonald and Forster).

Stylistically, Forster never strays far from the traditional singer / songwriter and folk rock scene rooted in the 60s and 70s. His lyrics about human relationships, sadness, happiness, friendships, the past and the present carry these songs, with a predominantly gentle instrumentation treated with melancholic bits and hints of jangle pop.

Thirteen years have passed since Forster lost his songwriting friend and the other founding member of The Go-Betweens, Grant McLennan, but he still fills - both in Forster's music as well as in his lyrics. Strictly musically, McLennan was the one who came up with the fine harmonies, and in his autobiography "Grant & I" Forster explains how they wrote the music for The Go-Betweens, and it's quite clear that McLennan (from Forster's perspective) had a particularly natural gift to write good songs, while Forster himself always had to struggle more with his music, and when he occasionally plays with more catchy harmonies, thoughts easily falls on the importance of his old friend.

Inferno is another series of fine songs from a musician who has clearly always felt, he had been born in the wrong era, but he is a highly original rhyme and soundsmith, who makes his mark with manners without making a huge fuzz about himself. The album may not be his absolute best, but it's far from the ordinary or copy mode, and it contains some of the freshness he launched with his 2015 album and to that he adds a little more depth to his fine lyrics.

Recommended.

[ allmusic.com, The Guardian 4 / 5, 👍Pitchfork 7,7 / 10 stars ]

Kraftwerk "Tour de France Soundtracks" (2003)

Tour de France Soundtracks

release date: Aug. 4, 2003

format: cd

[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,46]

producer: Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider

label: EMI - nationality: Germany

Track highlights: 2. "Tour de France Étape 1" - 3. "Tour de France Étape 2" - 7. "Aéro Dynamik" - 9. "Elektro Kardiogramm" - 12. "Tour de France" (4 / 5) (officiel video)

11th and final studio album by Kraftwerk released a full twelve years after The Mix (1991) - and seventeen [!] years after Electric Cafe (1986), which stands as their most recent album with completely new material. This final outing is also the band's only album with a line-up consisting of Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider together with the two new members of Fritz Hilpert (who in '87 replaced Wolfgang Flür) and Henning Schmitz, who after ' The 91 album replaced Fernando Abrantes (who had only just replaced Karl Bartos). The album is as all the band's albums from '74 and onwards also released in a remastered 2009 version, and for that, it was issued with the shorter title, Tour de France for the simple reason that it had been created to the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the first Tour de France. At the same time, it also happens to be the 20th anniversary of the band's first edition of the title track. The album consists of 12 compositions with a total running time at approx. 56 minutes.

Stylewise, the band here presents a new sound based on basic elements from their previous albums but now with an implementation of techno, for which the band itself is seen as a major inspiration, and which in a way provides the music with a breath of fresh air. Most lyrics are written in collaboration between Ralf Hütter and French songwriter Maxime Schmitt.

The album was generally met by positively reviews and it ended up topping the German albums chart as the band's only. It reached number #7 in Sweden, number #21 in the UK, and a position as number #3 on the US Top Dance/Electronic albums chart, although it didn't chart on the Billboard 200, as the band's only album to date. A total of four tracks were selected for single releases: "Tour de France 2003" (Jul. 2003), which contains four different versions of the title track - none of which appear on the album (which basically is in keeping with the multiple versions of the original "Tour de France" single from '83), "Elektro Kardiogramm" (released as a promo single) in a 'Radio Mix' version, "Aéro Dynamik" released in 2004 as "Aerodynamik" for a single with the track in four different mixes, again, all of which differ from the album version and "Aerodynamik + La Forme Remixes" released 2007. The first single peaked at number #50 on the German singles chart, which was bettered by a number #20 in the UK.

The album stands as Kraftwerk's final with new material, although several releases have followed, e.g. the live album Minimum-Maximum from 2005, the box set Der Katalog (2009), the live box set 3-D Der Katalog (2017) and most recently, the exclusively digital release Remixes (2020). The band has maintained regular live tours up to the present day, despite one of the band's founders, Florian Schneider left the band in 2009 and then later in 2020 died at the age of 73.

The title track has iconic status and fits fantastically as an underlay for cycling, but the album is a slightly odd conglomerate with few other highlights and quite a bit of filler material, but it's nevertheless still worth to know off.

[ allmusic.com, The Guardian, Mojo 4 / 5, Rolling Stone, Q Magazine 3 / 5 stars ]

Ane Brun "Sketches" (2008)

Sketches

release date: Sep. 2008

format: digital (15 x File, FLAC)

[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,54]

producer: Ane Brun

label: Balloon Ranger Recordings - nationality: Norway

Track highlights: 1. "The Treehouse Song (Sketches Version)" - 2. "The Fall (Sketches Version)" - 3. "The Puzzle (Sketches Version)" - 4. "My Star (Sketches Version)" - 6. "Changing of the Seasons (Sketches Version)" - 11. "Gillian (Sketches Version)" - 12. "Don't Leave (Sketches Version)"

Album by Ane Brun is the collection of her demos for her most recent album Changing of the Seasons (Mar. 2008). Some sites file the album as Brun's fifth studio album but since all songs here have all been released previously in full studio arrangements, it should rightfully be regarded as a supplement alongside remix and live albums.

Sketches is a fine collection - especially if you enjoy stripped-down alternate versions. Imo, Brun has one of the finest singing voices in contemporary pop but I still prefer her more fully versions.