虾米收藏的专辑

评语：This is a powerful recording of Middle Eastern music. Kudsi plays nay with Mahmoud Tabrizi Zadeh adding the scintillating sounds of the santur (a type of hammer dulcimer) and the sensual melodies of the kemantche (a bowed string instrument). Bruno Caillat also plays zarb and tabla.

评语：So titled because the original album, simply titled Bat Chain Puller, had to be ditched and rerecorded after a legal tuzzle involving Frank Zappa's manager, Shiny Beast turned out to be manna from heaven for those feeling Beefheart had lost his way on his two Mercury albums. Then again, what else could be assumed with a song titled "Tropical Hot Dog Night" that sounds like what happened when Beefheart encountered Miami disco and decided to make something of it? When it comes to singing, though, he's still the atypical growler, snarler and more of lore, conjuring up more wonderfully odd lyrical stories than can easily be measured, while the album as a whole gets steadily more and more bent. "You Know You're a Man" is at once straightforward and incredibly weird when it comes to love and gender, while other standouts include "Bat Chain Puller," a steady chugger that feels like a goofy death march, and the nervy freak of "Owed T'Alex." As for the Magic Band in general, keyboardist Eric Drew Feldman, guitarists Jeff Tepper and Richard Redus and drummer Robert Williams lay down the business with appropriately gone aplomb, as a listen to "Suction Prints" will demonstrate.

评语：This album presents a mix of studio tracks and altered live recordings from Frank Zappa's hard rock period. The tone is definitely less rock-oriented than on Them or Us, only "Stick Together" and "Cocaine Decisions" qualifying as such. The most noticeable trend here is the half-spoken half-sung free-form numbers "The Radio Is Broken," "The Dangerous Kitchen," and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats." They all feature Zappa performing a written text or improvising one on the spot, speech-singing while the band wallops around, reacting to his words. A few instrumental tunes round out the set, including the superb "Moggio" and "Tink Walks Amok," with Arthur Barrow playing multiple bass parts. The album's title comes from a '50s song, included ("The Man From Utopia Meets Mary Lou [Medley]"), while the cover artwork alludes to an infamous Italian tour in 1982 plagued by mosquitoes and riots. There exists two different CD versions of this album. All reissues of the original 1983 LP in digital format before 1992 present a slightly remixed version. Post-1992 CDs feature an extensive remix, the track list has been modified, a bonus track added ("Luigi & The Wise Guys"), and different drum tracks recorded in the mid-'80s by Chad Wackerman have replaced the original live ones in "The Dangerous Kitchen" and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats." Despite of these changes, The Man From Utopia retains the cold digital sound of Zappa's albums around this time but is more varied and engaging than Them or Us.

评语：When Herbie Hancock left Warner Bros. in 1971 after releasing three musically sound but critically and commercially underappreciated albums -- The Crossing, Mwandishi, and Fat Albert's Groove -- he was struggling. At odds with a jazz establishment that longed for his return to his Blue Note sound and a fierce consciousness struggle with free music and the full-on embrace of electricity since his tenure with Miles Davis, Hancock was clearly looking for a voice. Before diving into the commercial waters that would become Headhunters in 1973, Hancock and his tough group (including Billy Hart, Julian Priester, Dr. Eddie Henderson, Bennie Maupin, and Buster Williams) cut this gem for their new label, Columbia. Like its Warner predecessors, the album features a kind of post-modal, free impressionism while gracing the edges of funk. The three long tracks are exploratory investigations into the nature of how mode and interval can be boiled down into a minimal stew and then extrapolated upon for soloing and "riffing." In fact, in many cases, the interval becomes the riff, as is evidenced by "Rain Dance." The piece that revealed the true funk direction, however, was "Hidden Shadows," with its choppy basslines and heavy percussion -- aided by the inclusion of Dr. Patrick Gleeson and Buck Clarke. Dave Rubinson's production brought Hancock's piano more into line with the rhythm section, allowing for a unified front in the more abstract sections of these tunes. The true masterpiece on the album, though, is "Hornets," an eclectic, electric ride through both the dark modal ambience of Miles' In a Silent Way and post-Coltrane harmonic aesthetics. The groove is in place, but it gets turned inside out by Priester and Maupin on more than one occasion and Hancock just bleats with the synth in sections. Over 19 minutes in length, it can be brutally intense, but is more often than not stunningly beautiful. It provides a glimpse into the music that became Headhunters, but doesn't fully explain it, making this disc, like its Warner predecessors, true and welcome mysteries in Hancock's long career.

评语：With Freedom of Choice, Devo completed their transition into a full-fledged synth-pop group, producing arguably their most musically cohesive effort in the process. Synthesizers are now fully integrated into the band's sound, frequently dominating the arrangements and at least sharing equal time with the guitars. Everything is played with a cool, polished precision that mirrors the stylized uniformity of the band's visuals; the dissonance is more subdued than in the past, and the uptight rhythms are no longer jarring, instead locking the band into a rigidly even keel. Oddly, even though the music is the least human-sounding Devo had yet produced, their social observations were growing less insular and more sympathetic. Several tunes -- like the oft-covered "Girl U Want" -- have a geeky (but pragmatic) romantic angst that was new to Devo albums, although the band's view of relationships is occasionally colored by their cultural themes of competition and domination. Those preoccupations also inform their breakthrough hit single, "Whip It," but elsewhere, they're finding enough connection with the rest of the world to moderate their cynicism, at least a little bit. Songs like "Gates of Steel," "Planet Earth," and the title track reveal a frustrated idealism under their irony, one that can't quite understand why Americans don't use more of their freedom to search for happiness. Altogether, there's a little less of the debut's energy, and a little less variety as well. But the songwriting is a match for consistent quality, and moreover, the music on Freedom of Choice is the sound that defines Devo in the minds of many. In the end, that makes it the band's only other truly necessary album.