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I think I understand what you’re trying to say Aki, and you make a fair point. There is (presumably) a very conscious decision by the artist to present the work in the manner it is released. And as a listener, we have to make an effort to try to understand that, I have done that very thing with TAIO. I’ve asked myself many times why they chose to present N.O.X. the way they did, sandwiched between much more conservative material.
But nevertheless I think it’s a valid criticism to point out when I think the artistic choices are working against the material, which is essentially what I am driving at here. I think some of the recent tracks would work better in a different context, and that’s a bit of a shame IMHO.
As I pointed out, there are albums I wouldn’t touch, even if they are not among my favourite ones. The vast majority of their albums are like that, it’s only really the last two and the 2013-14 era I think would have been better served by a different presentation. Well, I guess It’s a Love Cult only has enough good material for a single album, but that would have been a great album, perhaps I’ll compile that next.
For the record, I am appreciating KOO a little more than I did at first, but I still don’t think it flows nicely as an album. The Thomas era has been fantastic so far, so these are really minor quibbles in the grand picture. The amount of great material the last 3-4 years is staggering.
I doubt that the band are very concerned that a few nerdy fans are having fun rearranging their albums, Aki.
And of course it’s easier in retrospect. But nevertheless I would make a case that their editing decisions in the 90s were better than recently, or so it would appear, Case in point; Timothy version 0 that was never released in favour of the vastly superior end result. Or leaving the When the World Sleeps material in the vaults. Or rearranging and remixing the original Blissard. All of these decisions led to much better results either by leaving out material or remixind and re-sequencing.
I gave my own «Hell» mini LP a spin this morning, and that would have made a great release, mixing the sludgy stoner-y stuff with the etheral, progressive and melodic and finally the brutal, tight and punchy ending, showing off all their sides in one neat suite. My re-imagined Behind the Sun would then make a nice «return to the songs» after the heavy and somewhat pretentious concept albums (Death Defying Unicorn and Hell).
I will have to think about sequencing and such, but a few thoughts on the RG era albums:
Little Lucid Moments
Child of the Future
Heavy Metal Fruit
The Death Defying Unicorn
I would leave these as they are. LLM always felt a little unfulfilling to me, with the suite feeling a bit like three separate songs just strung together, She Left on the Sunship meandering in the second half and so on. In a way, I think this is where their self-editing started to lack a little and some LPs started to feel a touch bloated, but there’s nothing in particular I would axe. These albums are all fine as they are, some more succesful than others.
Still Life With Eggplant
Behind the Sun
The Motorpnakotic Fragments
Some serious editing and re-sequencing is in order here. I agree that the Motorpnakotic Fragments actually work quite well as a way of rounding up the material in a way that the EPs did in the 90s and early 00s. But I miss those EPs as they could be a home to tracks that didn’t quite make the cut for an LP. Either because they didn’t fit thematically or musically, or if it was a cover song, or if it was a weird one (Geb tracks) or if it just wasn’t quite a standout song, I feel that some songs on more recent albums would have been better off on an EP. It might shine in a setting like that, whereas it gets lost on an overly long LP. IMHO, many of the KOO tracks are like that.
In any case, one EP from the 2013-14 era that this particular executive producer and label head would demand, was a Hell pt 1-7 EP (almost more of a mini-album). I think that would make a really cool stand-alone release.
Still Life With Eggplant would never exist. Instead we would have a Behind the Sun album minus Hell pt 4-7 but featuring Barleycorn, The Jig Is Up Mockingbird and Forget It, maybe a few more (need to revisit this material and think about the sequencing). That would make it a fairly light, breezy and melodic album, a nice contrast with the Hell EP. Lead-off single would be Cloudwalker, also released on an EP like in the older days, with Whiskey and Rock and Roll (the fun number), August and Future of Our Nation (the cover songs). Ratcatcher, Dominoes and a few more would never see the light of day until the 20th anniversary reissue boxed set.
En Konsert For Folk Flest
Here Be Monsters
Begynnelser
I would leave these as they are. EKFFF obviously exists on its own terms. HBM…well, nothing can save that turd. Ok, ok….add the title track to make the misery complete, and maybe axe Spin Spin Spin as that is a typical EP track. Begynnelser is a weirdo collection anyway so doesn’t need any editing.
The Tower
The Crucible
These two are perfect as they are. The Tower is a warts-and-all type album (with very few warts), it feels urgent and necessary and drivne all the way through. Nothing should be added or removed. The Crucible is similarly strong, solid as a rock but just missing the last X factor to make it a true standout album. Nevertheless nothing needs to be changed,
The All Is One
Kingdom of Oblivion
The obvious thing here is to release N.O.X. on its own. It deserves and needs full attention and is so different from the rest of the material here. I love it to bits. The next album after that would be Kingdom of Oblivion (or alternate title The Waning. I really need to take a little more time to think about how best to combine the material from TAIO and KOO for the best result. I have decided the title track from KOO needs to be in there. It’s strong enough to deserve a spot on a double album, but in its current incarnation I think it has to carry too much weight, it’s not quite that strong.
Rough track listing suggestion, this needs more work to get the proper flow and I might have to find room for The Hunt and Delusion (The Reign of Humbug) somewhere:
Side A:
The Waning (minus part 2)
Kingdom of Oblivion
The Same Old Rock
Side B:
The Magpie
Lady May
The United Debased (with drastically different production and edited slightly)
Side C:
Dreams of Fancy
At Empire’s End
Side
A Little Light
The Transmutation of Cosmoctopus Lurker
Like Chrome
That leaves some material for an EP, either a stand-alone one (title track The All Is One perhaps?) or as a lead-off single (The Waning?). The Dowser, The Watcher and Dreamkiller would be on this EP. The former as the «Bent alone in his apartment» type track (it’s not quite that, but it serves the same purpose) and the latter two as both a cover song and a stranger kind of track that I don’t think works at all on the album, but might shine on an EP.
Oh, and I don’t hear The Lurker as prog-metal at all. The angular but elliptical patterns with whole tone transposition is straight out of the Robert Fripp school in my opinion. Also a very nice nod to Get Up With It era Miles Davis in the psyched-out mellow section towards the end.
Whatever it is, the sound of this record really puts me off. Whether it’s Scheps, Sten or Sæther’s fault I really dislike it and it’s part of the reason I don’t get any emotional connection with it. The vocal mixing and effects particularly makes it sound very out of the Motorpsycho spirit as I think of it.
The Cosmoctopus thingy rocks pretty hard though, that’s probably my favourite track on an otherwise rather unmemorable album. The main riffs for Kingdom of Oblivion and The United Debased are also decent enough, but not interesting enough to rely so heavily on their grooves. Lady May is also quite nice, but the album just never lifts off and also doesn’t feel cohesive at all so for me this is a pretty big miss, albeit with some quality parts here and there.
That Danish review is actually spot on. This is easily the weakest Motorpsycho album in many, many, many years. There are not enough good ideas here to justify a double album by a long shot. The few decent riffs and ideas are buried in a stilted, messy and tiresome mix (the loudness wars have ended, but no one has notified Andrew Scheps), the vocal mixing especially lends it an unappealing sheen. Some of the stuff is just flat out off-putting in its blandness (chorus of title track – yuck! Could have been just any of 10000000 boring stoner rock bands).
I have held off on commenting until I had given it enough spins, but even getting to that point proved hard. I find myself humming the main riff of a few songs which is sign that there is some quality still, but every time I play it I am reminded why I dislike it. One of the least interesting and memorable Motorpsycho albums ever. Skillful and technically brilliant, but (almost) completely soulless. Everything that Motorpsycho was never about. 3/6 sounds about right.
I am not going to give up on them because of this, of course. I think the Gullvåg trilogy gave us some of the best stuff sonce the 90s (The Tower in its entirety plus NOX especially) but this time they forgot to bring the songs, and the few song sketches are buried in a tiresome, numbing riffathon. The next one might be the best album yet. And a few of the songs might prove better live without that awful production.
Nothing to complain about there! Sounds promising, but as always it is impossible to judge the New album based on that one track. Sounds familiar, but inspired enough. Expectations rising.
It’s all good, and I, for one, completely understand what you are saying. I had the same reaction with Heavy Metal Fruit. When that came out, it seemed like the whole universe went bananas and there was yatzy all the way around, whereas my reaction was…»meh…nice as always, but more form than content».
I do really like The All Is One, but I can’t quite agree with the reviews which say that «this time everything gels» and the title track being the best thing in years and whatnot (it’s not, it’s probably even the weakest track on the album). I’ve learned to just shrug at all the opinions – I know what I like and the world will eventually follow.
Well, although I sort of agree that saying «we suck at repeating ourselves» smells a little of self-mythologizing, I have to disagree that they are not continuing to change or develop. Especially the last three albums have taken them to some new places IMHO. Take a song like Ship of Fools – where did that come from? And N.O.X. really sounds like nothing else they’ve done before.
I think the Kenneth years did show some signs of stagnation – there was a lot of energy in those first few albums, but stylistically not much new came out of those years except maybe The Death Defying Unicorn, and even that was a fairly overt nod to prog conventions.
Honestly, I think the addition of Tomas is a godsend. He has more of an avant garde outlook it seems. Both Bent and Snah are over 50, and it is extremely rare for any artist to truly develop into new areas at that age. Usually it’s more a case of ever refining the «formula» that they have arrived at.
And I forgot to sing my praise for Tomas. It was love at first listen for me when he appeared on The Tower, and his work on Ship of Foolswas remarkable. But what he does on N.O.X. is in a league of its own. Supremely musical, with bone-crushing strength, technical finesse and an impeccable sense of when to go minimal and when to unleash it all. Each Motorpsycho drummer era has its own charms, but Tomas can do it all.
Anyone else getting a heavy mid-period Led Zeppelin vibe from the songs on the «home stretch»? Particularly Dreams of Fancy and Like Chrome, which really remind me of Rain Song and Ten Years Gone, respectively.
I am stil lukewarm about the opening title track. The lyrics especially just strike me as just too obvious and frankly, bland…they read like a column or an essay in Morgenbladet (Norwegian semi-high brow weekly newspaper), and musically I also find it very bland, like a distillation of latter-day Motorpsychisms. Same Old Rock also fails to excite me much, but it’s picking up from The Magpie and on. That track, and for that matter, most of the regular tracks, share a certain spund and vibe very reminiscent of the Behind the Sun/Motorpnakotic Fragments era, which isn’t too surprising given Reine Fiske’s presence. Dreams of Fancy is probably my favourite of the «song» tracks. It has some of that majestic Radiance Freq feel to it, but drags a little once they get into a more typical drive with the drums. Overall, the non-N.O.X. tracks aren’t all that impressive IMHO. They are nice, but more in a Motorpnakotic kind of way – good supplements to the catalogue, and all of them contenders for an album, but not strong enough altogether.
So for me, the success of the album stands and falls on N.O.X. As we all know, it is outstanding, phenomenal, radical and something truly new and unique in the Motorpsycho catalogue. In a way, it’s a return to the radical, extreme experiments of Demon Box or The Wheel, but updated in a way that could only really happen in 2020, even though you can point to hints in previous songs and eras, both from Motorpsycho or other inspirations.
If I were to rate the album overall I’d give it 5 out of 6 and rate is just below The Tower, which I feel was a more consistently inspired album (no real duds on that one, and plenty of new and truly awe-inspiring moments), but N.O.X.might be the single best thing they’ve done since the 90s.
My very immediate impressions:
– the «regular» tracks are nice, but none that stand out as doing something new or particularly strong. May grow though, but nothing that struck me like the best Tower tracks. Dreams of Fancy was probably the one I liked the best.
– N.O.X.: OMFG. At first listen, it seemed a bit predictable as in the overall sound being exactly what I would expect from a 40-minute work featuring those guests, but repeated and attentive (as in headphones on and nothing else happening except a good cup of Ethiopian coffee and some red wine) listening reveals boundless depths. I am speechless, numb, filled with goosebumps, awe and choking up all at once. It might seem like a K9 suite on speed and played by Manuel Gottsching, but that’s only scratching the surface. The stretch from Ascension through Night of Pan is just incomprehensibly great and fucked up in the best way.
To do something like this 30+ years into their career and pushing 50 years is just extraordinary, and with this work I think Motorpsycho just arrived on the throne as GOAT. Can anyone in music history compare with this level of consistent greatness? Miles Davis probably qualifies, but that’s the lnly one I can think of.
As already mentioned, track 2 shares a title with a Roy Harper song from his masterpiece «Stormcock». I had tried briefly to get into this album before via streaming but it never really grabbed me. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a CD copy in a thrift shop. Among piles and piles of crap (how many people received Helmut Lotti CDs for Christmas in the late 90s/early 2000s?), oddly enough this quite esoteric title showed up.
It has been on constant rotation in the car since then. Once again it didn’t grab me at first, but after almost 10 rounds it finally began to sink in and I almost got the shivers. My God, what a fantastic record! Highly, highly recommended.
