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Name: Philip
Home Page: http://www.rebelsincontrol.com
Member Since: Jun 04, 2004
Rank: 16366
Average Vote Received: Correct (4.06, 838 votes)
  last 10 days: Correct (4.03, 63 votes)
Rated 1355 releases, average: 4.50
Location: Parlophone Records PCSD 104, B5
Profile: Elgaland-Vargaland Minister of Nothing
How Do: Your pistol and your bible and your sleeping pills go?
Are You: Still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?


Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (2 ratings)

onelittle's groups (25)

 Reviews:

Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing - 16-Sep-06 07:14 AM
In 1981 Marvin Gaye's biographer David Ritz visited his subject, hiding from a capsizing career and fighting drug addiction, in Ostend exile. Spying a cache of S porn in the singers' flat, the writer suggested the Gaye should be seeking 'sexual healing' rather than what he felt to be aggressive stimulus. So, Gaye asked Ritz to script lyrics for a hit (one which later ended in writs, Ritz uncredited).

As a "healing" act, the songs lyric fails close scrutiny beautifully. First, the banal rhyming (oven/lovin', longer/stronger, feeling/healing, tonight/right, morning/stormin'). Then, their message: less about mutual respect through loving than 'my emotional stability is leaving me' so come round here and give us a fuck cos that will make me feel better 'bout myself.

However, the song, backed by the smooth chatter of a TR-808 rhythm track, is so seductively performed with a peerless vocal, that its faults can be glossed over. Just give thanks that the single edit fades right before the moment where Gaye can be (mis?)heard rhyming "procrastinate" with "it's not good to masturbate"…

Pet Shop Boys - Left To My Own Devices - 24-Mar-06 03:55 AM
Size matters…

Pet Shop Boys wanted big. Trevor Horn, a man with a reputation for taking his time, had a big idea; to program the electronics quickly, and then hire an orchestra to play along to the sequencers, live. This big idea would mean that the big sound could be recorded in only a few days. Of course, the track took six months to complete.

Horn rented arranger Richard Niles to orchestrate the track. Niles knew all about big.

How big should the string section be?, queried Horn.
Oh, 20 strings should suffice for this orchestra, came the reply.
Horn retorted; doesn't 40 strings sound better?
No, answered Niles, 20 is good for this size of orchestra.
But, insisted Horn, doesn't it sound better to say "I have 40 strings in the studio", than only 20 strings?

Niles's flamboyant arrangement is heavily evident in both mixes on this CD. The seven inch mix is edited from the eight minute Introspective version. Although shorter, the sound is bigger than the album version, with bonus Bruce Woolley backing vocals and guitar by Stephen Lipson.

Horn's twelve incher stretches the whole out over 11 and a half minutes, and is an object lesson in how to make a hell of a lot go a hell of a lot further. The three minute intro is quite sublime; ricocheting beats, looping strings, swooping sequencers, with horns heralding the bassline. Somewhere around seven and a half minutes in, there's a 40 second breakdown that seemingly encompasses a jet, a tractor engine, an army of snare drums and a racing car. Genius.

Left To My Own Devices includes the memorable line: "Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat". Horn had a big desire; to record Claude Debussy to a disco beat (something he eventually achieved with the Art Of Noise's 1999 album). So, the Pet Shop Boys decided to play along and record an acid house interlude for the track, based around Debussy-esque chords. A 40 minute jam was recorded live, with Neil, Chris and Trevor on keyboards and Lipson playing the mix desk. This experiment was not used on the a-side but, after editing and vocalizing, became The Sound Of The Atom Splitting instead. One of the oddest in the PSB catalogue, the track is very divisive.

Dinosaur L - 24→24 Music - 17-Jan-06 04:35 AM
The title is a nod to the improvised nature of the recordings - Arthur Russell arranged the tracks so the rhythm would change every 24 bars.

Electronic - Getting Away With It... - 16-Dec-05 05:41 AM
7 reasons why Getting Away With It… is perfect pop.

Reason #1: it's all about the ellipsis in the title…

Reason #2: the song opens on such a dream of a bassline fidgeting under a swathe of strings. Barney sings "I've been walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose", and lisps the ess in the laziest of shrugs.

Reason #3: forty-five seconds in, a spectre of Neil Tennants loom over the chorus. Tennant, in the Dusty-est of traditions, is multitracked approx eighty-nine times - atonally. This is pop genius.

Reason #4: "However I look it's clear to see, I love you more than you love me"

Reason #5: verse two; Johnny Marr cuts Chic-ly at his guitar and the cellos chop as Barney sniffs "I hate that mirror, it makes me feel so worthless". As the bassline slouches, Marr's mogadon flamenco dodges the poison arrows of Dudley's strings; it's heavenly.

Reason #6: the singles' artwork (a somewhat lazy reappropriaton of stock photography) was the start of Saville's descent into the Mac trap. But! Not only is the barcode the most perfectly positioned barcode ever, the hidden verso of the inlay is printed blood red. You might not understand how important this is - trust me, it is.

Reason #7: it's only 4:21 seconds long. It's only a pop song. But somehow this song has lived in my life for over 16 years. When I'm happy, it sings my happiness back at me. When I am blue, it cries too. It can sound slightly concerned. It often sounds like it doesn't have a care in its world. It has a swagger. It's such a perfect sigh of a song.

Section 25 - From The Hip - In The Flesh: Live In America 1985 - 22-Oct-05 02:26 PM
1982: the Factory backlash is in full effect. UK music weeklies gleefully shred to pieces most of the label's output. Section 25 are deemed dour Joy Division copyists, regardless of the merits of their work. Section 25 take a decision; to reinvent themselves, to follow their love of Kraftwerk and electro, to lighten up a little.

Fast forward to the first months of 1985: Section 25 are touring America coast to coast. They are trying to find a deal for From The Hip, an album of pin-sharp electro tracks, utterly ignored by the British media. For live performance, the group rely heavily on sequencing and on a sound they had stumbled upon two years previous whilst learning their new TB303; a harsh piercing "squiggle" that would later typify acid house.

This CD is a document of that US tour. This group of supposed JD-copyists from Blackpool, written off in their own country, toured a proto-version of acid chanced upon by mistake two years prior, through Detroit, Chicago and New York. Program For Light and Looking From A Hilltop astound. Squalls of feedback and pounding drums vie for air with punishing sequenced rhythms and keys. The (ab)use of the TB303, and in a live band context, is eye opening.

No US deal was forthcoming. The group dissolved, three members leaving unable to live of the meagre earnings. Section 25 recorded one final album as a duo under impossible financial circumstances, then faded away.

Maybe if they had been signed in the US… Maybe if they had released their first TB303 experiments in 1983… Maybe if they had taken this live sound to the studio… Maybe if Factory had given them just a little support… then maybe history would be just a little different.

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