Marillion released Sounds That Can’t Be Made

Sounds That Can’t Be Made Marillion

Released: September 17, 2012 Peak: -- US, 43 UK, -- CN, -- AU Sales (in millions): -- Genre: neo-progressive rock

Tracks: Song Title [time] (date of single release) Gaza [17:31] (9/4/12, --) Sounds That Can’t Be Made [7:16] Pour My Love [6:07] Power [6:07] (7/17/12, --) Montreal [14:04] Invisible Ink [5:47] Lucky Man [6:54] The Sky Above the Rain [10:34] All songs written by Marillion with lyrics by Steve Hogarth except “Pour My Love” which has lyrics by Hogarth and John Helmer. Total Running Time: 74:19 The Players: Steve Hogarth (vocals, percussion) Steve Rothery (guitar) Pete Trewavas (bass) Mark Kelly (keyboards) Ian Mosley (drums)

Rating: 2.943 out of 5.00 (average of 16 ratings)

About the Album: “Sounds That Can’t Be Made sounds like vintage Marillion. They’ve returned to prog with a vengeance, delivering an eight-track collection that fires on all cylinders.” AMG On Radiation and Marillion.com, [they] began utilizing drum loops, ambient atmospherics, and U2-isms.” AMG “2001’s Anoraknophobia (the first ever crowd-funded album) went even further by introducing tropes from trip-hop, Brit-funk, hip-hop, and jazzy dub. While 2004’s Marbles was a marked a return to their sprawling cinematic origins, subsequent long players again backslid toward pop mediocrity.” AMG “Tempered by their restless experiments in the pop wilderness, Sounds That Can’t Be Made is evidence that Marillion always knew who they were as a band. If anything, they’ve become better musicians for having taken in all those extant sources.” AMG Things kick off with “the 17-minute epic Gaza. Delivered from the point of view of a young boy living in the region, it looks at the violence, poverty, and Palestinians’ will to independence without going after the nation of Israel.” AMG It is “perhaps the most overtly political song Marillion has done since 1989…Steve Hogarth explained, ‘This is a song for the people – especially the children – of Gaza. It was written after many conversations with ordinary Palestinians living in the refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank...It is not my/our intention to smear the Jewish faith or people…and nothing here is intended to show sympathy for acts of violence…but simply to ponder upon where desperation inevitably leads. Many Gazan children are now the grandchildren of Palestinians BORN in the refugee camps – so called ‘temporary’ shelters…Gazia is today, effectively, a city imprisoned without trial.’” WK “Tempo, texture, and key changes abound throughout as…Hogarth shapeshifts through terrain that recalls Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis at his most emotionally taut. Steve Rothery brandishes a more aggressive guitar attack than he has in years.” AMG “Two other double-digit-length cuts, Montreal (a tribute to Marillion fans) and closer The Sky Above the Rain, offer myriad layers of inventive keyboards and expansive drum and bass work as Rothery and Hogarth deliver with peak prowess.” AMG “While Power flirts with sophisticated pop, it’s set free from such constraints by the interplay between Mark Kelly’s keyboards, Ian Mosley’s drum kit, and Pete Trewavas’ lyrical bassline, while Rothery’s guitar playing moves around Hogarth’s singing, filling the margins with colorful tonalities.” AMG “Closer Lucky Man…begins with majestic aggression and shifts toward a bass-heavy, bluesy melody that evolves into anthemic prog with Hogarth giving his best rockist delivery.” AMG Marillion used pre-ordering again to fun the album. As with Anoraknophobia, Marbles, and Happiness Is the Road, those who pre-ordered got “the special edition deluxe campaign edition box-set.” WK In this case, it included a DVD with a full-length documentary about the making of the album and numerous sound checks for songs on the album. There were also videos for “Lucky Man” and “Power.” Notes: A 2013 special edition added a second CD with three songs recorded for a radio session, a demo of “Lucky Man” and live versions of “Sounds That Can’t Be Made” and “Invisible Ink.”

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Marillion AMG All Music Guide review by Thom Jurek WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/6/2022.

Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy released

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Kanye West

Released: November 22, 2010 Peak: 11 US, 12 RB, 16 UK, 11 CN, 6 AU Sales (in millions): 1.35 US, 0.1 UK, 1.59 world (includes US and UK) Genre: rap

Tracks: (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. Dark Fantasy (with Teyana Taylor, Nicki Minaj, & Bon Iver) (12/10/10, 60 US) Gorgeous (with Kid Cudi & Raekwon) Power (with Dwele) (6/12/10, 22 US, 22 RB, 36 UK, 49 CN, 100 AU, 2x platinum single) All of the Lights (interlude) All of the Lights (with Drake & Rihanna) (12/11/10, 18 US, 15 UK, 53 CN, 24 AU) Monster (with Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, & Bon Iver) (9/18/10, 8 US, 32 RB, 43 CN, 91 AU, platinum single) So Appalled (with Jay-Z, Pusha T, Prynce Cy Hi, Swizz Beatz, & RZA) Devil in a New Dress (w/ Rick Ross) Runaway (with Pusha T) (10/2/10, 12 US, 95 RB, 56 UK, 13 CN, 46 AU, platinum single) Hell of a Life Blame Game (with John Legend) Lost in the World (with Bon Iver) Who Will Survive in America Total Running Time: 68:36

Rating: 4.358 out of 5.00 (average of 19 ratings) Quotable: “The 21st century’s most awe-inspiring hip-hop masterpiece.” – Rolling Stone Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: If you doubt whether Kanye West is a genius, then you’ve probably stopped reading as soon as we mentioned his name, but My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is all the proof you need if you’re still not convinced.” FO “He emphatically delivers the goods.” FO “It’s a swaggering effort that remains the benchmark for his career and is the cultivation of West’s evolving sound across his first four records, blending to create a show-stopping work of art that became Kanye’s magnum opus.” FO Kanye West’s fifth album is “every bit as chaotic as he was at the time” RS’20 as he “throws standard conventions to the wind.” FO He explores “decadence, grandiosity, escapism, sex, wealth, romance, self-aggrandizement, and self-doubt.” WK The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin said it was “darkly funny, boldly introspective, and characteristically fame-obsessed.” WK Prefix magazine’s Andrew Martin said it was a “meditation of fame” in which West laments the burden that goes with it. WK On Fantasy, West “made music as sprawlingly messy as his life” and that he crafted “songs full of the kind of grandiose gestures that only the foolish attempt and only the wildly talented pull off.” RS “The sonic overkill was lavish, but the record hit so hard because he mixed megalomania with introspect… West later called Dark Fantasy an apology record.” RS’20 David Amidon of PopMatters.com said “there are few more human albums in hip-hop.” WK Kanye’s ego has understandably drawn criticism. NME’s Alex Denney said West was “by turns sickeningly egocentric, contrite, wise, stupid and self-mocking.” WK He is “an instinctive consumer with a mouthful of diamonds and furtive bad conscience, a performer who lives the American dream to its fullest with a creeping sense of the spiritual void at its heart.” WK The Independent’s Andy Gill called it “one of pop’s gaudiest, most grandiose efforts of recent years, a no-holds-barred musical extravaganza in which any notion of good taste is abandoned at the door.” WK The album “received general acclaim from music critics, earning praise for its varied musical style, opulent production quality, and West’s dichotomous themes.” WK “It is a pop album undoubtedly, but like all the best pop music, the chart had moved to him rather than Kanye consciously chasing commercial acclaim.” FO “Nobody else is making music this daring and weird.” SH There’s an “implicit biblical feel to the album” FO and West “goes for the grandeur of stadium rock, the all-devouring sonics of hip-hop, the erotic gloss of disco, and he goes for all of it, all the time.” SH Among the album’s musical diversity were “string sections, Elton John piano solos, vocoder freakouts, Bon Iver cameos, King Crimson and Rick James samples” RS Time’s David Browne said that “few combine disparate elements as smoothly as West” WK while Steve Jones of USA Today said it “easily outstrips anything he’s done.” WK Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield echoed that statement saying it was West’s best album and “his most maniacally inspired music yet.” SH In their 2020 update of “The Top 500 Albums of All Time,” Rolling Stone called it “the 21st century’s most awe-inspiring hip-hop masterpiece.” RS’20 Critics often referred to the album as a culmination of West’s previous works. Simon Vozick-Levinson of Entertainment Weekly said this takes “the luxurious soul of 2004’s The College Dropout, the symphonic pomp of Late Registration, the gloss of 2007’s Graduation, and the emotionally exhausted electro of 2008’s 808s & Heartbreak.” WK Pitchfork Media’s Ryan Dombal said the album “largely continues where 2007’s Graduation left off in its maximalist hip-hop bent, with flashes of The College Dropout’s comfort-food sampling and Late Registration’s baroque instrumentation weaved in seamlessly.” WK Andy Kellman of allmusic.com said Fantasy “does not merely draw characteristics from each one of them. The 13 tracks…sometimes fuse them together simultaneously.” WK Power, with its “bracing prog-rock” RS sampling from King Crimson, was the first single from the album and garnered West a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Solo Performance. West said it took “500 hours…like literally.” RS’20 The opening cut, Dark Fantasy, “introduces the album’s themes of decadence and hedonism” WK with “a retelling of writer Roald Dahl’s poetic rework of Cinderella.” WK In the song, West references Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology Song)” and Kings of Leon’s “Sex on Fire” as well as musicians Nas and Leona Lewis. All of the Lights offers a story of a “character who abuses his lover, does prison time, scuffles with her new boyfriend, and subsequently mourns his absence from his child’s life.” WK The song features Elton John on piano along with 10 other gues appearances from the likes of Alicia Keys, John Legend, and Rihanna. WK The song received Grammy nods for Song of the Year, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Devil in a New Dress is a song “about lust and heartache” WK built around a Smokey Robinson sample. One critic described the song’s mix of both sexual and religious imagery “part bedroom allure, part angelic prayer.” WK Runaway has a “spooky grandeur” RS built on a “piano-based motif comprising a series of sustained descending half and whole notes” WK that builds “into a mountainous, anarchic tune.” RS’20 At about the six-minute mark, “long after the song has already sealed itself in your brain, the sound cuts out and you think it’s over. Then there’s a plinking piano, the feedback of an electric guitar plugging in, some ‘Strawberry Fields’-style cellos and Yeezy himself singing a poignant Robert Fripp-style solo through his vocoder. There’s no way it should work, but it keeps rolling for three more minutes without breaking the spell.” SH Rolling Stone named it the best single of 2010. Also on the album: “the crushing attack of Hell of a Life” RS’20 features “a psychedelic rock sample and a narrative about marrying a porn star.” WK There’s also “the spooky space funk of Gorgeous” SH and “the paranoid staccato strings of Monster.” SH Indie-folk rocker Bon Iver is sampled for Lost in the World. West turns the original song, “Woods”, and its alienation theme into “the centerpiece of a catchy, communal reverie.” WK The album closes with Who Will Survive in America, which builds on a sample of “Comment No. 1” by Gil Scott-Heron. The original song is “a blunt, surrealist piece delivered by Scott-Heron in spoken word about the African-American experience and the fated idealism of the American dream.” WK The album’s artwork, a portrait by George Condo, caused controversy because of its nude depiction of West and an armless winged female (a phoenix). WK The album was ranked as the top of the year by AlbumoftheYear.org, The A.V. Club, Billboard magazine critics, Pitchfork Media, Rolling Stone, Slant, Time, and The Village Voice. It was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Album. As Rolling Stone said in its assessment of the album in its year-end review, West “made all other music seem dimmer and duller. Is the album dark? Sure. Twisted? Of course. But above all, it's beautiful.” RS

Resources and Related Links: FO Far Out (7/16/2021). “The 21 Best Albums of the 21st Century” by Jack Whatley, Joe Taysom, and Tom Taylor RS Rolling Stone “30 Best Albums of 2010” RS’20 Rolling Stone (9/22/2020). “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” SH Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone (original album review) WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 12/2/2011; last updated 4/28/2022.