Quote:
Originally Posted by holden
Okay, so: I liked Edgeland for its earnestness and melodies. I disliked Someday World for its half- baked retro. Really wanted to like High Life, but...
Who here is a musician or producer? If yes, you probably realize pretty quickly what Karl and BE are up to. Pure jamming. Listen, I'm a bad guitarist, I'll admit, but I've always had this suspicion about Karl that he is interested in textures and hooks but not really very technically astute. While UW tunes may not require much more, really listen to his guitar motifs... Simple chord strums or several note solos that, in the live recordings, often include some bum notes. Now that's fine...Karl's a talented musician and it must be demanding to improvize especially given the minimal role of guitars in most UW tracks.
However, getting back to High Life, the "experimental" nature and rhythmic base is pretty weak. IMHO. A few licks by any guitarist would have given Eno
enough material to loop and cut up as he has done here. A few ideas are interesting, but get looped for many minutes. Counterpoint is fine but I get the sense as a very novice producer that this was generated from a single live jam. A s I said about Someday World, not every track needs to be released. A shame because I hoped they'd have some quality control after all this time. Listening to High Life, I oscillate between being annoyed with the repetition and numbed by it. Either way, it could be so much more. Thoughts?
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Neither a musician or producer and I play no instruments at all but even I get that feeling sometimes that Karl can but hates to play "technically right". I mean I think he can play whatever he wants to but it takes a great exertion for him to go all the way so to speak (...tempting fate now?
)
However, I love those new distorted guitar sounds that they made on the last albums.