Scott Walker "Bish Bosch"

December 3! I couldn't possibly be more excited.

Pretty sure the last one has pipped "Scott 3" as my fave at this point, so... bring on the "Bish Bosch" already!

yay!

http://www.brobible.com/files/archive/images/buzz/chris-bosh-crying.jpg

http://www.thewire.co.uk/images/artists/walker__scott/Bish_Bosh.jpg

http://www.hazelmchaffie.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/alan.jpg
http://positivebusinessdevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/delboy.jpg

Please that be the cover.

Greatest album title since Kish Kash.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6c/Kris_kross.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02177/PF-loadsamoney_2177214b.jpg

http://www-4.toolbox.co.uk/bosch-gsb16re-impact-hammer-drill-750w-00103584M.jpg

http://toomanysebastians.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/boing.png

http://jobryantnz.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/batmantext.jpg

http://itsbashy.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/bish-bash-bosh.jpg

http://www.1worlddecor.com/images/MW/mw-garden-earthly-delights-bosch.jpg

http://www.signdepot.co.uk/images/menus_gallery/menu2.jpg

The winner.

(got any crisps?)

http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1927362237/pish_posh_avitar.png

Posh Bosch

Do we reckon on this one that he'll be punchign washing machines instead of pig carcasses, then?

Sounds on the record include machetes, finger snaps, rams horns and BJ Cole on Hawaiian pedal steel.

'sandwiches, baguettes and tortilla wraps' i hate these places

be glad they don't add 'paninis and ciabattas' i guess

all those different ways of wrapping up the same unimaginative boring fillings

hang on, that could be an ILM thread

neti pot, kumbyana, um...

And we have website:

http://www.bishbosch.com/

I love stuff like this:

For an example of Scott’s unorthodox songwriting techniques, take the album’s centrepiece, the twenty minute ‘SDSS1416 + 13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)’. The title contains two brown dwarves: one, the coldest sub-stellar body in the universe discovered so far; the other, Zercon, was a real-life Moorish jester at the fifth century court of Attila the Hun.

yesssssssss

i am soooooooooooo excited for this

Fuck me at that song title.

waow that description has me mad with want.

Not totally comfortable here with a Moorish jester being called a 'brown dwarf'

loool r u serious

I guess? Haven't read the whole press release though, so maybe I'm misinterpreting what it's saying

that is so much like a thing a person would write if they were trying to send up the sort of thing he does

on the other hand so do neutral uninflected descriptions of a lot of the things he does

Dude has a sense of humour

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/98/RedDwarfShipOriginal.jpg/250px-RedDwarfShipOriginal.jpg

Hehe, I love it when people like Whiney think they deserve an award for pre-emptively not liking something.

goldstar.gif

anyway I love this
“I was thinking about making the title refer to a mythological, all-encompassing, giant woman artist.” Scott Walker

His gooniness is its own reward

on the other hand so do neutral uninflected descriptions of a lot of the things he does

― human centipede hz (thomp), Monday, September 24, 2012 9:23 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

Great - really can't wait for this. His last two albums have been unofficial late night Christmas soundtracks for me over the last few years, so this is perfect timing really

I can't wait for Scott's take on "Paranoia paranoia everybody's coming to get me!"

Hieronymous Bosch' "Garden of Earthly Delights" - I called it :-)

Yes though the lovely thing is he imagines this 50FT Queenie version of Hieronymus.

‘SDSS1416 + 13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)’

humina humina humina

http://takemystockplease.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ralph_kramden.jpg

Sterzing was a total bolthole.

incredible titles!

Corps De Blah
'See You Don't Bump His Head'

!!!

Can't wait.

Is "Darkness (Plague of Locusts)" still his most recent pop song? That was a cool formula, whatever it was... Satanic gospel?

thick silences

Well, to my mind "Cossacks Are" rocks like Public Image, and there was "Only Myself to Blame", for the Bond film The World Is Not Enough.

Can't wait for the fart noises.

This plus Swans in 3 months. I forgot that music could still make me this excited.

"Zercon’ features ramshorns, among them the kudu shofar, a monstrous natural instrument used in ancient times"...a kudu shofar, noch, I'm kvelling....

Can't wait for the fart noises.

Bish Bosch & Mike Watt's Hyphenated Man double feature, please.

Got my hands on an advance copy. HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I want to believe but I desire proof.

Proof that it's great? It's every bit as good as the Swans record in a very different way. It feels like a deconstructed black metal album in places. The silences are unbelievably, oppressively SILENT.

Aaaugh I want to hear

Or...not hear.

The sounds of silence...MURDERING YOUR SKULL.

I wonder how many people are going to fall for this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49Fdd35hZWc&feature=share

That is the best thing I've ever seen on youtube.

LOL

For an example of Scott’s unorthodox songwriting techniques, take the album’s centrepiece, the twenty minute ‘SDSS1416 + 13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)’. The title contains two brown dwarves: one, the coldest sub-stellar body in the universe discovered so far; the other, Zercon, was a real-life Moorish jester at the fifth century court of Attila the Hun.

this was already done pretty well on the 1987 monkees reunion album pool it. maybe scott is running out of ideas?

In the telling, Scott often veers dangerously close to self-parody. In the listening, not so much. I have faith this is going to be terrific.

Watched 30th Century Man again last night... Fantastic film. Hope they do a docu about BB.

As confirmed by Beggars US via Twitter:

1st line of the new Scott Walker album: "While plucking feathers from a swan song, Spring might gently press its thumbs against your eyes"

I wonder what you could get on eBay for a microphone that Scott Walker had farted into?

Hehe, I love it when people like Whiney think they deserve an award for pre-emptively not liking something.

goldstar.gif

― some white dude (Turangalila), Monday, September 24, 2012 4:37 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wgw posted a pic of Chris Bosh

yeah big crossover between scott walker fans and basketball. unless you know who that is he just looks like a bored dude.

has there been a joek about bosc pears yet?

I'll punch a bosc pear in the streets of Galway

And I used to be a citizen
I never felt the pressure
I knew nothing of the horses
Nothing of the bosc pear

lol'ing so hard at that 'trailer'

He is shaking to wash
The pear pulp away

is bosc really pronounced "bosh" and have i been mispronouncing it all these years?

bosh for bosch is the correct pronunciation.

Yep, bosch definitely pronounced "bosh"

now can someone tell me how to pronounce "Miele"?

is it german? it's probably "meel-uh"

It is. And it is.

Miele is a German surname. Most famously the name of the electronic appliances manufacturer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miele

More reports from the field, in this case J. Edward Keyes on Twitter:

"Nothing clears a room like removing a brain" - standout lyric on the new Scott Walker record.

So much tubax on this Scott Walker record!

He added on FB:

It is his most violent record, in every possible respect.

kinda guessed that from the album sleeve

And further!

It's a lot more aggressive over all; a lot more guitar, too. The strings are more high-neck horror-movie style that shoot in out of nowhere and terrify. I'm still absorbing, but the Bosch reference isn't accidental. It has that same gruesome feel.

that description of the strings fits in with SW's avowed love of Bartok (from whom the 'horror movie style' largely derived)

I haven't anticipated a new album so much in years. From the description it sounds like it's going to be amazing, if just maybe a little TOO Scott Walkerish for even Scott Walker?

The Drift was, for me, basically a further exploration of the sound of Tilt (which is fine seeing as Tilt was my all time favorite record). As great as The Drift is, though, there was a bit of disappointment for me that it did not represent the same kind of unthinkable leap and break that had separated Tilt and Climate of Hunter, and Climate from Nite Flights.

To put it another way, The Drift was deeply satisfying and moving but not STARTLING.

I'm letting myself hope the new one will actually do my head in in a new way.

^^^

mostly agree with this, except that I think The Drift is better than Tilt. More refined. From what I'm reading about this new one it looks like it's just going further in the same direction, which is fine with me (more than fine really, should be amazing).

if just maybe a little TOO Scott Walkerish for even Scott Walker?

yeah, the documentary was the first time i really thought he was drifting into unintentional self-parody, and the news on this new one is a little bit o_O in that respect.

still like climate of hunter best of his late-period (that is, the last 30 years!) LPs, i think.

and we have a track listing

1 'See You Don’t Bump His Head'
2 Corps De Blah

3 Phrasing

4 SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)

5 Epizootics!

6 Dimple

7 Tar

8 Pilgrim

9 The Day The "Conducator" Died

Is 9 a follow up to "the Night that Minnie Timperley died" ?

Hmm, interesting -- Conducator was one of the titles that Nicolae Ceaucescu held when he ruled Romania, a bit like Mao's Great Helmsman. It's almost like a sequel to "The Old Man's Back Again" more than anything else!

One could possibly add 'Clara' to this connection as well, iirc?

Yeah that's the first association that came to my mind.

I would be genuinely sad if there was a new SW album without a song about a murderous dictatorship.

"Buzzers" another in the dictator theme.

There's also the virus sequence: "The Plague," "Cue," "Epizootics!"

Well...

I've heard it.

All earlier reports and descriptions accurate.

Sample line:

"This is my job...I don't come around and shut off the red light...while YOU work..."

Also, the closing seconds confirm it could only have been released in December.

That's a pretty funny lyric.

he rejected: "I don't come to where you work and slap the dick out of your mouth."

haha that was what I thought of too!

"I don't come to where you work and punch your donkey on the streets of Galway."

Just seems like a lyric that deliberately deflates the ~serious visionary~ persona. (I am assuming the red light is a double meaning = recording booth)

Ha, I CAN say that the song with said lyric in it has lots of similar lines, plenty of hoary old vaudeville chestnuts and the like. The net effect is said deflation AND increased creepiness thanks to the delivery. Lars Gotrich just called the album "more harrowing but more human than The Drift" and I'll go with that.

Oh also: 73 minutes long.

Oh also: 73 minutes long.

Jesus.

I'll be making A and B side playlists for this one then.

In the face of any accusations of "Scott Walker, self-parodist", I'd like to note that the guy has always made very funny records, despite his reputation as a serious cat

totally

"Can't go by a man with brain grass" lol you are correct

Agree. So many moments on The Drift sound like mentalism on paper but work brilliantly in practice.

Another leaked video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrMBBt1BYTc

Oh wow, a ton of albums on his MySpace, from the Walker Brothers on (gotta click Album; MySpace Radio tries insert itself after playing an isolated SW track.Can always pause Album when needed) http://www.myspace.com/thegodlikegeniusofscottwalker/music/albums

Also, the closing seconds confirm it could only have been released in December.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 5 October 2012 14:20 (Yesterday) Permalink

keeping my fingers crossed this is true in the 'bob dylan christmas album' sense

In the face of any accusations of "Scott Walker, self-parodist", I'd like to note that the guy has always made very funny records, despite his reputation as a serious cat

― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, October 5, 2012 11:04 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but not as much on his last three records though.

In '68 he released a song called The Amorous Humphrey Plugg. Title alone is totally lol-worthy.

heard the first track off of this, think it's a hit!

"Nothing clears a room like removing a brain."

do any cartoon characters make a cameo on this one?

yeah but not as much on his last three records though.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Saturday, October 6, 2012 5:43 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wrong

You could easily picture this in the current top ten

I hope he does another solo acoustic number for the closer like the last three.

yeah but not as much on his last three records though.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Saturday, October 6, 2012 5:43 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wrong

― We demand justice: who murdered Chanel? (Matt P), Tuesday, October 9, 2012 12:18 PM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really? i guess i just don't hear much humor on the recent ones--maybe a bit of it on the drift. i'd be interested to hear where you find humor in these LPs.

There's not much humour in Tilt, is there? There's a fair bit in The Drift but it's one of the reasons i don't like the record very much - punching donkeys in Galway & donald duck voices & easily seeing this in the current top ten - it's just not my sense of humour.

I only ever found those funny when they were pointed out to me as funny. Before that I just found those bits terrifying.

I think the demonic duck on The Drift is supposed to be terrifying AND funny.

Whereas the Rick Dees one...

Lots of musical jokes. The tape rewinding... "Birds!" Pst pst pst pst! Pst pst pst!
And you could play Xiu xiu? or "The drift"? with "This is not a cornhusk doll / dipped in blood in the moonlight / like what happened in America" or the "pee-pee soaked trousers" bit

Not haw haw funny but macabre and witty and definitely not 100% serious

Cryptic is the word for this album. Like a hall full of doors that contain keys to other doors.

Is the tape rewinding supposed to refer to something specific? I find that bit rather out of place/unexpected. The whole thing is fairly post-modern in its humour which is kind of surprising considering the canvas it's painting on.

This time for real:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Accd9StNlYE

I don't want to hear it until it comes out officially, but I'm worried it'll have been discussed to death on here by then. Would a NO SPOILERS PLEASE rule be alright?

down already. that was quick.

http://youtu.be/PfrVuhD8maE

trailer's super well done. the songs sound awesome. so psyched for this.

Seems to 'rock out' a little more than The Drift, without sacrificing all the vast, nerve-wracking spaces. With all that studio footage, is it too much to hope there will be some sort of longer-form 'making-of' sort of thing eventually?

Whoa

xpost -- it definitely 'rocks out' more. The slabs of guitar feedback aren't there for nothing.

Can't wait for this.

"Bish bosch" almost sounds like a genre name.

I predict this will be the best album to ever feature a dude scraping machetes

Cue Richard E. Grant "he's sharpening the fucking knife..."

http://www.boerderijcampingdelinde.nl/Fotos/Biesbosch.jpg

"Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights. Sorry about that."

Aaaarghh, YouTube in Germany is such a pain in the ass.

"YouTube in Germany" is my favorite Associates song btw

his url's not perfect, but that can be altered

finally got around to listening to climate of hunter. 80s production aside, this album takes my breath away. so hauntingly beautiful and mysterious, and all such adjectives. wish he made at least one other album in this vein. def looking forward to the new one.

80s production aside

gtfo

Amazon Germany has 30 second clips from each track online... they seem to be almost randomly cut but there are a few lyrical gems in there ("If shit was music, you'd be a brass band...")

http://www.amazon.de/Bish-Bosch-Walker-Scott/dp/B009CXLS4S/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1352039563&sr=1-1

"Corps De Blah" actually fits in nicely with that fake trailer

huge pic, so linky here: http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/387575_10152260524970265_560626555_n.jpg

Desperately trying to avoid this thread before Christmas. I kind of regret watching that preview video upthread cos afaic it contains spoilers.

please don't hate me but after listening to those AMAZON samples my conclusion is that if it wasnt a Scott Walker album - no one would give a shit imo

Got a copy of this today, will report back after I have some time with it.

Desperately trying to avoid this thread before Christmas. I kind of regret watching that preview video upthread cos afaic it contains spoilers.

― make like a steak and beef (dog latin), Monday, November 5, 2012 12:53 PM (Yesterday)

This one? (which I *still* laugh to myself about often)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=49Fdd35hZWc

please don't hate me but after listening to those AMAZON samples my conclusion is that if it wasnt a Scott Walker album - no one would give a shit imo

― nostormo, Monday, November 5, 2012 2:45 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This implies that someone other than Scott Walker is capable of making this album, which I really doubt is the case.

two songs streaming on spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/7JtIJipLCZT7HjOGbrvvjY

Just came here to post that. Epizootics! -- holy shit.

a big f u to the u k

please don't hate me but after listening to those AMAZON samples my conclusion is that if it wasnt a Scott Walker album - no one would give a shit imo

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md37rr3AzN1rw2gyh.gif

OK, listened to this album. First thing that came to mind was Robert Wyatt recording a heavy metal album. Lots of weird guitar riffage throughout, plus the usual nutty percussion (sharpening knives, etc.). Walker's voice seems a little ... higher? More histrionic? Def. a predictably intense listen, made more severe by all the repetition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ih7KzKLLWA

That was an exhausting and fast-moving 10 minutes. Whoosh.

AWESOME

Love it. Great video too. Though sitting in the dark and letting the music paint its nightmare-scape in yr brain is still the only way to listen to latter-day Scott IMO.

i think "epizootics" is my single of the year.

I am saving this for tonight right before I go to bed

This is great.

my conclusion is that if it wasnt a Scott Walker album - no one would give a shit imo

This is true inasmuch Walker is a huge name, and most people making this sort of music don't get the attention they deserve. Hell, the beginning (before the unmistakable voice kicks in, obviously) sounds kind of like Volcano the Bear. Nobody really gives a shit about them, but they're one of the best bands out there. So... yeah, maybe.

I can't imagine anyone would make this album other than Walker, so the premise is kind of built to break.

i think "epizootics" is my single of the year.

"You could easily picture this in the current top ten"

xxpost also, no one wanted to talk about Tilt at all for like 8 years after it came out. Believe me, I tried.

Don't think this is true, in the UK at least. It got quite a bit of coverage, including more mainstream stuff like Newsnight. Hell, it even made the charts!

Yeah I can only speak to the US part. People were excited about rediscovering the 60s albums but Tilt was unwanted evidence for quite awhile.

I remember they invited a fair few celebrity Scott fans to the debut play-out of 'Tilt', and they ran out. (Marc Almond, yep)

Possibly told the story here before, but when I bought Tilt the dude behind the counter (who knew me!) asked repeatedly if I knew what it was like before letting me buy it. IT'S AWESOME, DUDE. LET ME GIVE YOU MY MONEY.

ya bish bosch

woah

That video is outstanding.

Not so much its Scott Walker, rather its that species who had a chart hit and now are doing this thing which won't get any wide attention but more than your neighbourhood aargh avant outfit (much of this began with the likes of Eno, then Robert Wyatt, etc.) Something that is marvelled at more than it should be.

There's nothing too novel about that, nor this track - lots of his macabre cabaret. Its ok, will be praised for being different and so on, don't think its moving far enough sideways from The Drift (as that was from Tilt).

Might give the record a listen though.

I disagree about the lack of novelty -- this kind of music doesn't usually attempt to swing that hard, and Walker's emphasis of the swing rhythm is obviously tied to the lyrics in an important way, and that's absolutely something he does that nobody else does much.

He also sings the hell out of this song -- once you adjust your ears and realize it's extreme crooning more than failed bel canto you realize how very flexible that voice is, on this track much more than anything on Tilt or the Drift.

My abiding feelings about his music since Tilt is that it really must be so much fun to assemble these tracks and put it all together in the studio.

Check out the documentary about the recording of the previous album - there's a bit where they build a huge wooden box in the studio just to get a 'thumping a huge wooden box' sound.

yaaay this is terrific and fun

TWU otm

Wow, so 4AD. Gotta get!! Perfect for winter nights.

This album is neither as radical nor as harrowing as "Tilt" or "The Drift." Like I said earlier, a whole lot of odd guitar riffage scattered throughout, which I don't recall hearing before.

I like what seems to me to be the increased accessibility.

this sounds way different than the last two albums. the new song. doesn't remind me at all of the drift.

the creepycrawly david lynch vibe is similar but the way it comes together sounds very different to me.

wonder if scott is a jandek fan. i'm just glad these albums exist. i don't play tilt or the drift much but i like knowing they are out there in the world.

i play Tilt a lot (probably too much). The Drift I'm not keen on but "Clara" is absolutely my favourite "song" Scott ever made. What a thing that is! really!

but Julio on here, just a post on ILX, gave The Drift the best and most honest review it ever had.

i reviewed the drift for decibel magazine. which is a metal magazine. i thought metal fans would like it. i was happy that my editor let me review it. i don't think it's online. came out pretty good.

well, The Drift is a heavy, heavy album. i think a lot of people attuned to the methodology behind some of the more interesting metal artists would at least appreciate it.

Hey, if someone else is doing this thing as well as Scott Walker, please point me to those records.

xpost Opeth dude said The Drift was one of the biggest influences on the Watershed album.

circa 1916, yeah i don't think anyone does Drift-style music with anywhere near the same intensity or effectiveness as Scott Walker, particularly given that his sound and approach are made up of so many strikingly unique constituents. that said, i was listening to Origin's Hesitation by Fushitsusha the other day and noticed that that album share's SW's flair for creating tension and an all-round discomposure through its excessive and unpredictable application of silences.

Jon, yeah i remember reading about the SW influence on Opeth's music. it seems kind of strange, given that Watershed still strikes me after close listening as quite a tepid, wishy-washy album overall. maybe it shares The Drift's tendency to hop all over the place, but even in that regard, SW has a better handle on creating a uniform and encompassing atmosphere that holds firm through the album's various detours.

(jed tx for the kind words..)

I think it was a fairly, yes, easy-ish assemble of horn -- some abrasive, thers not -- and gtr sounds. I just found a settling down to the strange world of Scott Walker that isn't really strange.

But I'll see how it'll work with the rest of the record. Feeling anxious as The Drift was a big deal for me..

charlie h - that's an interestng leap to Origin's Hesitation. That's Fushitsusha's most panned alb bcz they weren't doing what they were meant to.

are any of you guys fans of this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV8bOaxDMJI&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkiOnPNFH-o&feature=related

i ask cuz THAT guy ghedalia tazartes has a new album out with some other guys credited to REINES D' ANGLETERRE on bo weavil and its really good and strange and reminds me a little teeny bit of SW at times. but just glimmers of it. the vibe. they are different things. but in answer to who are some of the people making records like this...

anyway, i highly recommend the new album on bo weavil. called GLOBE ET DYNASTIE.

and jon voight as the general...

oops rong thread...

Hahah I'd LOVE to hear Jon Voight on a Tazartes OR a Walker album.

fiy: spotify took down the two new tracks.

FYI

I have to go to bed now an that brass loop from epizootics! is going round an round

*and - stupid iPhone

I will look up that Julio post. I've only listened to "The Drift" five times or so. I think I posted something once about how it's not a record that needs to be listened to that often.

On a nerd note I was really surprised to read "this is an analog recording" on the liner notes of "The Drift", as if it was all recorded to tape? I don't believe it, there is no hiss on that recording and there are many, many nearly-silent sound sources

I read the same thing about The Drift, and I seem to recall a brief shot or two of analog tape during the studio bits in 30th Century Man. But yeah, a friend of mine who's a huge Scottophile remarked on first hearing, "Ugh, why did he have to use Pro Tools?"

We have a Studer 2-inch 24-track deck here in our studio, and, when freshly calibrated and demagnetized, it is quite incredibly clean sounding. In tandem with external noise gates and noise reduction devices there's little to no perceptible hiss, even at high volume - a lot of this depends on the mixing board and outboard devices as well. And virgin tape too. Scott, I assume, is working in very high-end studios which are much better equipped, with better outboard and presumably very skilled engineers, so whatever little surface noise survived the mixing process could easily be killed in the mastering stage. It's not surprising that it all sounds so clean with the kind of resources he's working with, though it also wouldn't surprise me if there's some digital in there too.

i'm pretty sure it was assembled digitally. it certainly sounds like it was. i dunno what pro tools is but it's a badly pieced together record imo. it sounds so computery.

they're not really comparable but the new cat power album was put together on pro tools and it sounds terrible. i mean there are a few good songs on it but even they sound like shit. it's like there's no reality to it.

jed I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that 99.5% of the music released in the past five years was recorded to a computer

:-)

i have no idea what i'm talking about but sun sounds awful and the drift sounds wrong.

saw ghedalia tazartes perform a live soundtrack to Haxan not that long ago, it was great, tho' a bit more homemade/lo-tech than scott tbh, but yeah there is def an absurdist-gothic thing going on in both their stuff.

there's an interview w/scott in the wire this month where he fairly firmly rejects improvisation ("jamming") in the studio, so he wld prob never collab w/ someone like tazartes... or the bohman bros...or graham lambkin etc - scott always seems a more 'high-end' guy

Nah I wasn't trying to josh you, I think I've read you or others comment on the computeriness of both records and it's an interesting point!

@ alb lucky you with a studio. There are no good tape studios where I live. I don't doubt that Scott has the capacity to record in an A+ room but serious, put on studio monitors and compare "The Drift" to any other similarly quiet analog recording from any era and the different is remarkable. "The Drift" is one of the cleanest sounding records I've ever heard and I just assumed "this is an analog recording" meant that they mixed to tape or something

fwiw I have noticed a computery sound on Cat Power records but it might be a psychosomatic reaction to a photo of her playing guitar into a clamshell Mac

oh i know! but i really don't know what i'm talking about :)

i thought the drift sounded cool. i've only heard the vinyl though. i don't know what it sounds like on cd.

would it not sound computery if he had added virtual reverb?

This computer discussion is pretty wearisome TBF.

you don't say

yeah god forbid people should actually have to make this shit and want to talk about how it is made

I don't generally go round being a content fascist on ILX - people can talk about whatever boring shit they like - but here we are, on the brink of one of the most highly anticipated releases of the last six years from possibly the most dynamic and challenging artists around today, and we're discussing whether the SILENCES were recorded on a computer or a tape.

On a more positive note, Christmas can't come any sooner for me :-D

i appreciate the the modern Scott Walker sound. i like the sound and the production.
he IS one of "the most dynamic and challenging artists around today",
as he WAS at the sixties, but something important is missing (to me, at least): a melody. the new song sounds almost like a spoken word.
i wonder if it's just me.

I hate to use a cliché, but his music's very much like a Magic Eye picture, I find. At first it sounds like operatic singing pasted haphazardly over an atmospheric collage, but over time they do tend to reveal themselves as song songs, just arranged and framed in an unorthodox way. Someone upthread mentioned the difference between bel canto and crooning, and I'd be inclined to agree. You could totally turn something like "This is not a cornhusk doll/Dipped in blood in the moonlight/Like what happened in America" into an (albeit sinister) swing tune. Far-fetched as it may be, I like to think of songs off the Drift as a deconstructed bizarro/Silent Hill/alternate reality version of what he's always done. After subjecting myself to the Drift almost every day for the last few weeks I find the more melodic/song-based stuff even up to and including Tilt to be almost bludgeoningly and transparently accessible by comparison. And so I'm actually glad to hear a further abstraction of his sound from what I've heard of Bish Bosch.

Melodies are so 20th century, so its just you I'm afraid :)

dog latin - tough shit if you don't like the discussion.

would it not sound computery if he had added virtual reverb?

― marguerite yourarsenal (clouds), Sunday, 11 November 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How would you know he added reverb as oposed to it being an element that is just there? One answer would be in the randomness of the placement.

But Scott's last few records sound very calculated too (this is not to imply they are stiff; this is an inference I'd reject). So the question could also be about adding randomness as if its calculated??

Really don't know, just trying to think this through.

"Melodies are so 20th century"

yeah, i forgot Scott is a 30th century man, but it still sounds melodic to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AexzqFLquG8

jeez have you people not heard schoenberg

From Rob Young's piece on the Bish Bosch site:
"What we did was record the drums, bass, percussion, strings and vocals in digital and analogue simultaneously. Because we knew there were a lot of silences in it, especially in something like ‘Zercon’. And in the endings – the ending of ‘Tar’, where you don’t know what’s going on. So in those spots we just cut off the analogue, and where we had the silences we just used the digital. And then we turned on the analogue again when everyone was playing together. Everything was recorded that way, so it’s about eighty per cent analogue."

even my mom heard schoenberg!

MJ - thx!

Is it worth buying Wire for that review? Might pop out and get it at lunchtime.

Nostromo - that's just an youtube excerpt btw, in the actual version the silences cut off and switch between analogue and digital silences for another 5 mins, its quite riveting you know.

dawg latin I'll keep the analog? or digital? discussion to the pro music boards if you promise to never use Silent Hill as an adjective again

music's very much like a magic eye picture.

How would you know he added reverb as oposed to it being an element that is just there?

that's what i'm saying

Michael Jones that is an illuminating thing that you posted, thank you. Of course that's the easiest and most economical explanation!

So in those spots we just cut off the analogue, and where we had the silences we just used the digital.

On the vinyl, the silences will be replaced by excerpts from "Yakety Sax."

Is that ish of Teh_Wire on the stands in the US yet?

When "Epizootics!" gets to the tubax solo I thought "cool tubax solo" not realizing I hadn't ever heard an actual tubax, it just sounds so much like what it would be

Meantime, a little good reading while we wait:

http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/nite-flights/

Thanks for that link, Ned, that's a great article.

That blog always delivers.

some kind of special preview event being thrown by Beggars tomorrow at something called Sleep No More in NYC. I used to be in the loop.

Good old bowiesongs.

Yeah I noticed an FB contest to be one of three lucky fans to go to the NYC thing.

Obv if anyone gots a hookup for that get at me.

oh my god. the long song goes all jacques brel!

this is one of the best side-long songs i've ever heard

watching/listening to the video for epizootics!

holy hell this is something

some kind of special preview event being thrown by Beggars tomorrow at something called Sleep No More in NYC. I used to be in the loop.

wow. hadn't heard about that listening party. Sleep No More is a participatory theater thing held at a warehouse converted into an old hotel. it's pretty great actually, we went in July.

and yeah you're kind of out of the loop for not knowing what Sleep No More is, it's been on Gossip Girl and everything ;)

it's really grebt. I keep having to stop myself from watching it again. It's quite addictive

xpost

xpost as far as I know ian and wife went to the listening party...

Yeah. On your prodding Ian offered me an extra ticket at the last minute but I already had dinner/evening plans. MIkey IQ from Other Music went and posted some stuff on facebook "Oh, and cheers to whomever decided to host the event at Sleep No More in the McKittrick Hotel. Best listening party EVER."

I am a 42 y.o. sad fuck who had to get up at 8 the next morning so the 10.30pm start time was too much for me. Regretting myself now...

leaked btw

Must... Not...

2012 - the year experimental rock broke

Actual lyric, reportedly:

You're so fat when u go out in a rain jacket people mistake u for a cab

i donkey punch a ho in the streets of galway

xpost confirmed!

listening my way through the leak.

yes that just confirms to me that as much as i like scott his sense of humour is quite far from mine.

I've been listening to this while writing lecture notes; not the ideal way to do either thing, really. Hard to get a handle on it, but it's pretty extraordinary. The cab lyric is real, sounds fine in context.

I've severed my reeking gonads. Fed them to your shrunken face.

Just saying.

The line is actually:

You're so fat that when you wear a yellow raincoat people say "TAXI!"

But I heard it as:

You're so fat that when you wear a yellow raincoat people say "TAKE ME!"

Other good insults in the lyrics:

If brains were rain you'd surely be a desert.
If shit were music, you'd be a brass band.
Does your face hurt? Cos it's killing me!
Don't move, I want to forget you just the way you are.

I was trying to recall where that last one came from, or where I'd heard before, anyway.

The Monkees' "Head" film!

xp
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/Billy_Joel_-_Just_the_way_you_are.jpg

**SPOILERS**

this record contains simulated fart noises accompanied by lyrics about sphincters tooting.

thanks, that's gonna spoilers my dinners

Wire articles great. More PLAGUE vicar?

i swear on the wet head of my first case of gonorrhea that this is his best album since scott 4

Can't wait for the fart noises.

― LaMonte, Monday, September 24, 2012 8:17 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some truly amazing SONICS on this record. the machete sharpening/rolling on "corps de blah" is just WOW. i mean, so many amazing SOUNDS! really. but then he uses the same or a similar sound in Tar.

i don't know if it all hangs together or if it's meant to or if it should. I was rereading The Drift thread and Julio's criticism of that record applies here too. "It does many things in a 'samey' manner...its going for a consistency in mood, but at the same time he undermines this by throwing the odd humourous line" - apologies for referencing his observations AGAIN but they do cut to the heart of the matter, imo. Apart from 'See You Don't Bump His Head' and "Epizootics!", a couple of others, everything seems pretty much interchangeable, could be part of any other track. Again, this is probably the intention )a song-suite) but over a sustained period (the length of a CD) it sounds like a multitude of sonic ideas ultimately sounding the same. Would i know that "SDSS14+13B" had ended and "Epizootics!" had started if i had not already heard "Epizootics!"? if so does it matter? "you're so boring you can't even entertain doubt" is a great line but i don't know if it has any meaning or interest to me beyond being clever and funny. other lines in the same vein aren't even funny (to me). maybe that's the point too? i don't know and i'm confused by it.

but it IS fascinating, a window into a very singular mind. whether that's a cause to revisit it more than a couple of times remains to be seen. sometimes i really want to listen to "farmer in the city" or "patriot (a single)" or "clara" but i can't imagine having that impulse with any of these tracks, songs, "pieces" or whatever you cry them.

When Tilt came out all I wanted to hear was Climate of Hunter. When The Drift came out, I was all over Tilt. Now this new one has me crooning 'Cossacks Are' as I walk down the street.

All of these records seemed verging on self-parody to me on first listen. They genuinely do take years to sink in and become enjoyable music... that's how I see it at least.

Any time there's Donald Duck or Farting Noise there's a tendency in all of us to go "Scott, You've Gone To Far This Time"

this is such an amazing record. prefer it to The Drift already. plus its very funny.

Can we get Sissy Spacek onto that one? (xpost)

Rainbo iirc

"They genuinely do take years to sink in and become enjoyable music... that's how I see it at least."

life's too short.

also, almost every "difficult" record will sinh in after some years.

i'm finding this very enjoyable from second listen onwards.

I got into this one way more quickly than The Drift or Tilt, enjoyed it on the first listen and have grown to like it even more on subsequent listens. I guess it helps that I listened to epizootics! about 5-6 times before the album leaked.

I'm probably listening to this album too much. It's weird to have music like this stuck in my head.

Odd that he's using these slighty hackneyed lines like "There but for the grace of God goes God". Mind you, Stafford Cripps is not referenced nearly enough by younger artists, if you ask me.

So. Had a chance to interview him. Will let you know when it runs. Sadly was done by email rather than phone but you can't have everything.

Still must've given you chills to receive an e-mail!

BrelDu✧✧✧@a✧✧.c✧✧

dammit, forgot about that

Hahah

Wow that is awesome Ned
I can't actually think of anything to ask him except I'd probably urge him at age 80 to go back and listen to the records he's made and wallow in self-pride for a day

Hahaha. He had some great, thoughtful answers. There's one in particular that's a throwaway bit that's pretty damn funny.

David Toop interview with him for Pitchfork:
http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/9003-scott-walker/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/23/scott-walker-interview?INTCMP=SRCH

Went to Universal News in manhattan the other day but The Wire was a Brotzmann cover-- did I miss the Scott issue or is it not on US stands yet?

The Scott one will be the next one up after old Brötzy

Ha, that's who got the Pitchfork interview! I pitched to do that but it had already been claimed -- good choice for sure.

yes that's a good interview. i think i was completely wrong upthread about this record and i'm very pleased to say that.

The Guardian guy gets some facts wrong but nonetheless conducts a pretty great interview.

I'm refusing to hear any of Bish Bosch until I can have the CD, and I gather there's a lot of gallows hilarity on this one, but this particular lyric quoted in that article sent shivers down my spine:

"Earth's hoary/fontanelle/weeps softly/for a/thumb thrust"

I gather there's a lot of gallows hilarity on this one

Understatement.

impressive lack of dropoff for album tracks (esp after SDSS14), per last.fm

1 'See You Don't Bump His Head' 1,171
2 Corps De Blah 1,062
3 Phrasing 989
4 SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter) 873
5 Epizootics! 867
6 Dimple 778
7 Tar 756
8 Pilgrim 745
9 The Day the "Conducator" Died (An Xmas Song) 688

there were no moors in the fifth century

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17387-bish-bosch/

oh, but that's just a joke, right? it's almost like this review proves the other side of the argument it's trying to make about artistic and intellectual ambition

i deeply dislike the 'reviewer voice' tone of that kind of music writing

that's one nasty 8.0 review. jesus.

all you need to know about that reviewer is that he thinks scott walker is the david lynch of music

who would have thought Pitchfork would have written an awful review of this, really
this doesn't read like "8.0" at all

is 69 middle-aged in pitchfork-land? does that website even have any editors?

mr. pitchfork's thoughts on scott walker and the avant-garde remind me of a tea partier talking about barack obama and socialism

He's essentially going for an Emperor's New Clothes approach here, but makes a really bad case for it. There is hyperbole surrounding Walker and this release, true, and often he gets pedestalised as this purely original, utterly unique musician with a single vision and blahblah... But I don't think even his greatest fans would argue he doesn't have a huge number of influences guiding him, from Brel to Sibelius to, well, I bet the guy listens to hip-hop - all the old troll-codgers do. So this "don't be fooled by this faux avant garde bollocks" stance doesn't hold water because while he might not comfortably fit into that category, there's no one on the current "pop" landscape using these influences and taking these risks.

I can imagine the 8.0 marking was an editorial decision.

lol haven't read the review yet but powell's one of the great regular pitchfork dudes, guy navigates complicated reactions to things better than almost anyone i can think of on staff right now (tim would be the other that comes immediately to mind). his review of the philip glass remix thing is one of the best i've read recently

if that's the best pitchfork can do these days, oh boy

Why has the Graun reviewed this twice?

Petridis' is the Guardian review, Kitty Empire's is the Observer one.

When I was up in Scotland I noticed this got reviewed (fairly positively too) in the Daily Record, that's the Scottish equivalent of the Mirror - that 60s crooner fame is awfully persistent.

OK wait this is actually in US stores today? I thought US would lag a couple of weeks behind UK?

haven't listened to this yet because i had to pick between this and kesha and picked kesha

psst psst

goddammit so tempted to go to other music on my lunch break but that's a long-ass lunch break.

i will go to reckless as soon as i'm not broke as fuck

if anyone has mog, it's streaming on there in full.

Can't bear to stream this one. Need full spectrum for my boy Scott.

Haven't really had the chance to listen to it yet but one thing i must say is that the packaging for this thing is just fucking tremendous, size limitations of the CD format aside. If you were thinking of skipping the physical version, DON'T DO IT!

I have to wait till Xmas as I've asked for the vinyl... I feel like I'm about 6 y/o with all the Christmassy excitement

http://beardrock.com/reviews/scott-walker

"The centre of the album is "SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)", the closest that the album gets to traditional coherence and also it's most difficult piece - a twenty minute musical story about a time-travelling dwarf, born in the fifth century, who eventually becomes a dwarf star (the SDSS1416+13B of the title) and dies. Yep."

Stopped at Earwax on the way home. They sold out of the CD.

SFJ piece in this week's New Yorker. Just snuck a read of the first page in the bathroom at work. He tells SFJ that he generally composes (after creating the lyrics) at a keyboard which translates what he's playing into score. Don't think I'd heard that before.

... he says the same in the Wire interview. I'm not convinced by this album tbf.

... I mean tbh

http://thequietus.com/articles/10908-scott-walker-interview

Not sure where I saw this said, thought it was this thread but Ctrl-F is turning up naught, but: Lulu > Bish Bosch. And that's coming from someone that loved the previous two.

brandon soderberg said that

"I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours"

Thanks, that's where I saw it. (xpost)

Scott's film picks for some online streaming thing:
http://thequietus.com/articles/10918-scott-walker-curates-curzon-on-demand-film-season

Had less than 10 dollars in my bank account but discovered 20 bucks credit on one of my cards last night, so hello Bish Bosch.

Just finished my first listen. This was so much greater than I dared hope. Transcendental KO. The Drift now feels like a transitional record en route to this. This may be as good as Tilt. Fuckin' A.

Was seriously ready for disappointment.

My copy is waiting at home.

How is it doing in the midweeks? Anyone?

I mean, Tilt made #27 and The Drift #51.

Have we discussed the fact that on the last track ('...'conducator'...') Scott plays everything himself? Not just voice + guitar as before but a whole arrangement? Stunning track.

Here's something I'd never seen till it was mentioned in The Quietus review:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q2EoduCLKYY

Was he doing someone a favor? Did they throw money at him? Did he do it for fun?

I don't know the story behind it but I do know that, even at the time, it seemed like a coup to get him to do it.

Currently collecting the more substantial interviews (Guardian, Pfork, Quietus) into a single PDF cause I'm a fuckin' dork like that...

'Wire' as well.

Yeah that I'll be buying.

I'm loving this. Second listen today.

I'm not loving the drum sounds.

did scott walker fart

are those farts real or autotuned?

this album is like the worst ever btw, like if I were to spend 10 mins making a fake scott walker album it would prob sound like this not trying to big myself up or anything btw

ixiiivixvvi

We should have done a precover of this one.

Now he says it.

:-(

Nah, I'm looking forward to tomorrow's remix/working the Christmas thing and the Beatles track.

Woouldn't have had the time to do that one as well

agree with soderberg that Lulu's better but I loved Lulu so that really isn't as damning as it should be. love Tilt but this one isn't clicking with me like it should

ixiiivixvvi is a total hook. best track on the album (for now).
not sure if i like it as much as the drift, but... enjoying hearing it again and again, that's for sure.

Scott appears on this episode of J cocker's show, which expires in 2 hours:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p3lgz

interview starts at about 46 minutes in.

this album isn't very enjoyable to listen to. i like the horns on epizootics! and other little moments like that. it's certainly no Lulu, which I liked as well.

I've managed three tracks so far. The opening track is pretty strong, in a bludgeony way, Corps De Blah has several beautiful 30sec chunks which don't add up to much and Phrasing has stuck in my head as the best of the three. I don't know when I'll get around to the 21min track.

I'm sure a large part of why Tilt was a big deal to me and I kind of ignored The Drift were my very different domestic circumstances, 11 years apart. At 27, I was single, living alone, no neighbours to speak of, nice stereo, lots of free time; at 38 I was married with kids, no time, long work hours. My principal memory of The Drift is being stunned by the Donald Duck Moment on the top deck of a number 3 bus in Dulwich. And then I probably didn't listen to it again for six months. I've gone back to it recently - "Jesse" still marvellous. But this issue of barely having the time and space to give these records the room they (maybe) deserve is present again with Bish Bosch.

the cobwebby cum spray font works

i can empathise with Michael Jones. I heald off buying the Drift on vinyl because I thought, shit, am I really going to want to play this out loud, but I currently live at home and I'm loving the aura of vinyl playback lately so I'm looking forward to hearing BB on a turntable in my room.

Currently collecting the more substantial interviews (Guardian, Pfork, Quietus) into a single PDF cause I'm a fuckin' dork like that...

― Tomb Of Spatula (Jon Lewis), Friday, 7 December 2012 19:17 (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd love a copy of this if you wouldn't mind?

Album is straight in at number 95

The Mighty Bosch

"My Gran used to love him in the 60s, so she'll love getting this for Xmas"

Actually my mum used to like him but I won't be getting her this

god jesus, there are gonna be a few heart attacks over the festive season. i actually fear...

Okay, so the last 2/3rds of this album is pretty engaging, but those first two tracks are the ones that really scan as Walker self-parody to me. Shave those two off and this is quite a bit better.

dog latin, i will send when i get a chance. It's not slick, I just c & p'd the text from each one.

no that's cool - thansk man, would be nice to read em all in one place once i have the album.

this album is a gas

i never know what to DO to scott walker albums but even if i never wanted to listen to them i "enjoyed" the sensation of totally forbidding, serious awe that tilt and the drift elicited. this one just had me pursing my lips at the fart noises. if you're gonna be unlistenable at least be completely 100% humourless ffs

i like the humour

Yeah. For some reason I've been reaching for this a lot more than I did when I first got The Drift.

loved this at first listen, don't really want to listen to anything else. good accompaniment for all holiday activities.

streaming on spotify btw

i haven't fallen this hard for one of his albums since i first heard Scott 2

Finding it impossible to listen to this when the sun is out.

album of the year

this one has the upper hand on The Drift for its earthy humour and bigger dynamic and rhythmic shifts. Tilt remains my favourite masterpiece because it has enough of the orchestral, balladeering, crooning Scott - it's a mixture of the two approches, really. The Drift pretty much dispensed with that trait of his, which returns in select points on the latest.

album of the year for me, too.

I haven't listened to this yet! This is the first SW album where I can afford to promptly go out and buy vinyl and debut it thataway so I'm holding off until the right listening opportunity presents itself

Annnnnnd...my interview is live:

http://www.spin.com/articles/scott-walker-bish-bosch-interview-MP3s

Way to go, the Nedster. He's plugging the arse of this album, old Scott.

nice one, yeah i'm surprised at how much press he's doing

Oooh yay gonna read it right now!

Looking forward to that appearance on the One Show (xp)

hah, i'd actually LOVE to see that. The interview in this video (skip past the shoddy music video recording) is pure buttclench LOLs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=3e8vpoj0lDs

great interview ned. if i could ask him one question, i'd wonder what's with all the greek references. el greco, drachmas, athens, bears/romans, etc

You must always, if possible, allow enough stand-back room so that you remember the initial pleasures you had when it was all coming to you in its embryonic stages. If you're not careful, the many things that are happening around you in the studio can kill those gifts.

This is so true and so difficult IME.

(about many kinds of creation)

one of the best interviews with him I've read anywhere. bravo Ned. much better than the Toop one! your questions are especially incredibly interesting, no wonder he comes across as very much interested in answering them.

on an unrelated note, uncanny how much young Walker resembles young Julian Cope (his ardent fan and proselytizer at that time). it's something that recurs on and on in pop genealogy when you think about it, making somewhat of a point of "becoming what you eat" or something.

in '80s Yugoslavia, where I grew up, there was this hugely popular Croatian cover of 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore' (you'll spot 'Ashes to Ashes' Bowie all over it):

http://youtu.be/-OkmaK7uJDw

Wonderful interview, Ned. Love this:

I'm always surprised when people make comments like, "What happened to melody in your work?" I hear an abundance of melody in it, and even better melody than I wrote before.

I always find that, if you swapped Walker for latter-day Sylvian and put him into his chair, the interviews would work pretty much the same as they are.
I wonder what the two of them think about each other's work right now. I expected Toop (a known Sylvian fan) to raise the name with Scott at any moment, but he never did.

sylvian's nine horses album a couple years back sounded especially like a scott album

Scott did sort of compare and contrast himself with Sylvian a little in the 1995 Wire interview.

xpost - really? I find it nothing like, I was thinking (maybe more obviously) about the latest, Manafon.
thanks about the Wire interview info, Jon.

the lyrics and crooning delivery are very engel, "the banality of evil" particularly ~ "king of the castle, room at the top, off with their heads, chop 'em off. hey, hello neighbor, right you are" ~

right, I can see it in the lyrics - thanks! maybe one day I'll be able to hear it in Sylvian's voice, too. for now, jaded cantankerous Sylvian fan here, who thinks everything he sang on Nine Horses and the last one is identical in tone and identically dull in delivery (I wish I could hear Scott, or anything else there, really).

and, to link this observation with the melody critique to Scott, it is somewhat true his melodies are frequently much the same, both on The Drift and Bish Bosch. this is why I tend to drift (pardon the pun) on the second half of BB.

but then, Bjork's melodies are often much the same, too.

dave's vibrato on the nine horses album has a little bit of bryan ferry in it but sounds an awful lot like scott's

I've managed three tracks so far. The opening track is pretty strong, in a bludgeony way, Corps De Blah has several beautiful 30sec chunks which don't add up to much and Phrasing has stuck in my head as the best of the three. I don't know when I'll get around to the 21min track.

You can position it in a different way - I would think you put more of yourself to when you get to play the record.

With Walker's later records its not so much about how many times you get to play them but the gap of time between each play.

I understand the 21-min track can sound overwhelming as a prospect, but really it is so diverse than it's also the most entertaining.

with this record I like how, on first spins, you don't know exactly which is the beginning and which the ending of the various tracks.

it is somewhat true his melodies are frequently much the same, both on The Drift and Bish Bosch

"Tilt" is esp. guilty of recycling melodies from "Climate of Hunter" imo, not so much recycling them as he can't seem to work out what melodies will fit the music. Have I told you all I don't like "Tilt" all that much, or as much as I once did?

I haven't listened to it for some time now, but I still think it remains my favourite. I'm a sucker for classic arrangements, I find they haven't quite exhausted their emotional punch. it's always a breath of fresh vista I get when that know Walkerish string cloud comes to hover under his voice (or is his voice hovering over that harmonic cloud). The Drift was too sameish for me, especially for a long album. I like variety, that's why I like Bish Bosch better. but yes, I guess Tilt remains the best of both worlds for me.

you're quite right about the same melodies employed on Tilt and, say, 'Sleepwalker's Woman'. but I almost don't notice that because I so like that harmonic context and his change of tone when singing over it. when the same trick unexpectedly comes up for a brief while in one of the 'cosmic void' sections of 'Zercon', I'm a happy boy.

I'm on the verge of coming round to to the opinion that "Climate of Hunter" is his best post-60s album - just a pity about the fretless bass

I love the fretless! it suits him quite well on that record : )
in general, I don't understand people rewriting history so to speak (and the fretless being a pet peeve: God, talk about invalidating whole careers - Mick Karn comes to mind). is it an '80s album? well, accept it for an '80s album it is. a work of art doesn't grow apart from its context. we will get to hear charges about 'over-drily recorded vocals' from the 2000s soon enough. 'tis all good, and it's everything for grabs (and enjoyment).

I love the fretless too!

The only "production error" I hear on CoH onward-- obv this is the most personal observation ever-- is that I find the drums and "static, noisy elements" on Tilt to be dated and ineffective. Pola X soundtrack seemed like an exercise in How To Make Noise, like he worked out those details

Me I love that "Farmer in the city" is a late-period Romantic one-off, absolutely my favourite latter day track (with "Clara" close behind) and made all the more powerful by its singularity.

I love the fretless on CoH too. What bothers me is the electric guitar solos.

That's a nice observation abt 'Farmer'. Totally OTM.

On a personal note, there is always a part of me that loves "Farmer" so much that I just want to go "full Phantom" on a new song but then I think of Neil Hannon and think better of it

awww Casanova is still a great record.

I don't find 'Farmer' a particularly one-off moment on that album, which is littered I think with many equally romantic crooning moments throughout (think 'Patriot (a single)'). which is really why it stays my favourite album of his, as I've stated upthread.
the one-off moment for me is 'Rosary', though. I remember I wanted to hear a whole album full of such 'rosaries'.

Oh yeah, for sure! "As in the wind!" etc. is the most scene-chewing moment on the entire record, but it's more "Romanticism deployed as a device" rather than the backbone of the sonic world.

And as for "Rosary", I thought "A lover loves" was a suitable rejoinder

quite right so, I meaned that just in the context of that album. I like his guitar playing a lot.

Hey, thanks to all for the kind comments re: the interview. It's cut down from the overall transcript, BTW, so I might put up the other answers later.

Oh ned please do!

I revisited Pola X and And Who Will Go to the Ball? both twice this week. They're good but neither has anything like that feeling of startling inner necessity of the song albums. They feel like workshop pieces. The two songs for Ute Lemper, on the other hand, are every bit as good as anything he's ever done. I don't know why no one ever asks him about them. (Did you, perhaps, Ned?)

No, I just concentrated on the current album.

I'll be very glad if you do that, Ned, thanks in advance.
it's not just about Scott, it's your template was so good to begin with. so, I'd like to have more of a good thing.

Has anyone read The Impossible Dream: The Story of Scott Walker and the Walker Brothers? Worthwhile at all?

(back in the Tilt era I read the Deep Shade of Blue bio...)

There is a pretty good interview with SW and Peter Walsh, his longtime producer in this month's Sound on Sound magazine.

Oh, "Dimple" is terrific. That's my take-away classic from this so far, a la "Jesse" and "Farmer in the City". (I haven't got to the last two tracks yet).

vinyl sounds amazing! they did an amazing job. you could definitely use it as some demented reference record for fancy speakers. the tones are all over the place so it would work well. just a great transfer however they did it. very little surface noise. which obviously means a lot if you have fancy speakers. my ancient - not so fancy but nice - speakers like this record a lot.

I listened to SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter) the other day while reading the lyrics. I couldn't sleep afterwards. This album, it is unlike other things.

Having attempted to listen to this in a darkened room in full on vinyl last night, I've come to the conclusion that it's pretty much impossible to listen to this album all the way through, even if you love Walker's steez. By the end of the third side my mate and I had both agreed that we'd started tuning out and that it just sounded like a TV had been switched on in the room. This isn't really a bad thing. I think the value of these tracks work best when heard apart; maybe on headphones rather than in a room with other people.

I've found that, in general, it is a bad idea to listen to Scott Walker in a room with other people.

even if everyone's a fan, it doesn't work. you just end up feeling weird and laughing nervously to yourselves/each other.

I approach almost any album that fills an entire CD as Side A and Side B. Or if there are dud tracks I delete them forever (that doesn't work for Bish Bosch, though).

Here's a suggestion:

Bisch Bosch playlist one: everything except 'Zercon'
BB playlist two: 'Zercon' by itself

This album is definitely something you listen to alone. Preferably somewhere dark and cold.

I really like this record, but really, do you really need much more from it other than Epizootics! and Zercon? The rest just feels like sponge cake to those tracks' jam and icing so far (note I've only had this since Christmas).

ah xposts to Jon Lewis - this could be the best strategy. Luckily Zercon takes up a whole side. It's the one I seem to go back to the most, admittedly.

epizootics! and zercon are the ones that make the most immediate impact, but there are a lot of other tracks that are worth paying close attention to. Dimple has been a favorite lately.

The closing track is definitely a highlight, blew me away right off the bat.

I've been meaning to compile "The Drift" and "Bish Bosch" to add to my digital Scott box. For one thing, I can do without the sphincter symphony...

this album freaked out my dog. i thought she was gonna bite my speaker.

Guys what is this sphincter symphony i keep hearing about? It sounds amazing! Is it a fart sound collage or something?

'Corps de Blah'. You'll know it when you hear it.

FWIW I think it's awesome.

oh shit this is wonderful

it took me three listens to recognize the farts in corps de blah

As in... ID them?

I need some comfort in my commute, so I keep going back to Dimple.

yes

Finally gave this a full listen. It's as good as The Drift and Tilt. Different than either, etc.

What I didn't expect was, despite the singing, lyrics, and arrangements how LIGHT this was in comparison. It felt like half an hour total listening to it. Also, despite the long songs, Bish Bosch sounds all like one multi-part piece, except probably the final track, which sounds like a coda.

Bish Bosch should be the first Scott Walker experience for fucked up teenagers, then working backward from there.

I don't know, I don't dislike this album or "The Drift" or "Tilt" but I don't get very much out of them... so, I suppose, I'm not a Scott Walker fan anymore?

i first listened to this record in a room full of people, albeit it was a hotel lobby done up to seem haunted

what a fantastic album. Would enthusiastically await a cd full of tracks like Conducator.

Sun City Girls : Horse Cock Phepner :: Scott Walker : Bish Bosch

The only SCG album I don't have :(

The only rare one I DO have.

lest anyone think my apt is worth breaking into, a lot of them i only 'have' as mp3. But Horse Cock never turned up on P2P like the others.

I could hook a brother up

get at me

done

not their best album but def the most entertaining one

I expect it to remind me of Piano Bar in that respect

THANKING U

np

Scott Walker 70th birthday special

Scott Walker 70th birthday special

Woops, sorry my iPhone did that by accidump

A broadcast on what might have strayed Scott from the path. I don't see Ligeti as a component of what Scott is thinking on orchestration at all -- the movement from the Chamber Concerto is very fast, with agile (the mechanised thing maybe) interruptions and not at all on a 'nightmarish' kick. There is a myth that this music is a horror show soundtrack and its completely untrue.

Then when you get to the Greenwood - vacuous writing purely cast as a 'soundtrack to Hitchcock'. Cynical writing.

Loved it for the Galas - I need to see her in concert one day.

I know when he was describing what he wanted to Evan Parker for that amazing track on Climate of Hunter he referenced Ligeti.

Sure, and in the broadcast the presenters talk about how Scott mentions Ligeti. I can't hear it apart from 'dense' sounding strings but a few composers wrote that kind of thing.

I'll give The Drift a go again, haven't heard Bisch Bosch.

Evan Parker talks a bit about his work on Climate of Hunter in this interview:

http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/fulltext/mparkint.html

I've had to give Bish Bosch a bit of a rest. I listened to it non-stop over Christmas week but I think, like The Drift, it's not an album that's supposed to be listened to every day.

I did put Epizootics! on a mixtape for a car journey at the weekend, and watching the country road unwind into darkening mist was just incredible.

I do think The Drift is ahead/better than BischBosch, mainly probably because it came before it, but BB seems like "more of the same" in some ways.

Bish Bosch is an easier listen, in all. There's a humorous fourth-wall feeling going on throughout it where the listener gets let in on the whole construction of the composition, which at once draws me in but also stops me feeling completely enveloped by it. Somehow certain elements of The Drift have taken on new meaning in the context of Bish Bosch - the "WHAT'S UP DUCK?" bit was always ludicrous and terrifying, but now I understand Walker's not really doing it with as straight a face as I once thought. There's a very warm, human element to BB that has always been rather guarded throughout his career.

If you can bear Stuart Maconie then the Radio 6 interview was fun, Scott was in good form

... on good form.

.. under good form.

GREATEST THING EVER

http://soundcloud.com/adam-buxton/scott-walker-covers-scream

Anyone got any ideas about deciphering the lyrics? I want to know what all the 'XI V I I X I' bits are referring to on Zercon for example. It seems Scott revealed only a tiny amount of information about the record in interviews.

aargh @ that cover. I want 30 secs of my life back.

I don't know about the roman numerals, but have you read Walker's explanation of the song's subject?

The title contains two brown dwarves: one, the coldest sub-stellar body in the universe discovered so far; the other, Zercon, was a real-life Moorish jester at the fifth century court of Attila the Hun.

“I was interested in this thing about someone trying to escape his situation – in this case Attila’s wooden palace, which he regards as an immense toilet – and achieve a kind of spiritual sovereignty, and a height beyond calculation. As the song moves forward he imagines himself at different stages of height: he imagines first that he escapes and finds himself surrounded by eagles; then there’s the mention of St Simon on his pillar; then he jumps to 1930s America where it’s become a flagpole-sitter…’ Flagpole-sitting – trying to spend several days alone on a platform at the top of a pole – achieved a brief craze status in the 30s.

At the end of the song he eventually becomes a Brown Dwarf, known as SDSS1416. As with the majority of my songs, it ends in failure, Like a brown dwarf, he freezes to death.”

Here's an account from Priscus, which has more about Zercon.

So that first part of the song seems to be the jester doing his job at Attila's court (near the Tisza river in Hungary, which is mentioned) & insulting various types - accusing women of being prostitutes (the opening crack) or going like a gynozoon (which is a female animal trained to have sex with a man, apparently), throwing some national slurs at greeks, Gauls etc. (Basically, It's the chaotic international court of a ruler who's been terrifying the established powers of Europe.)

At the same time there's the rise of ascetic christianity – so there are eunuch lines in there & of course the section about throwing your own mother's food back at her, which is directly about Simeon Stylites i think - it's Zercon, I guess, thinking with a kind of disgust/fascination about this religion, which might be showing him a way to climb up, but is also grotesque.

There's also lot of end of antiquity/dark ages stuff going on in the background - like telescoped northern invasions - Norsemen, Nibelung are Norse-Burgundian kings, 'Basel-cum-Strasbourg-cum-Frankfurt-cum-Speyer-cum' – which is historically later than Zercon/Attila, but all adds doomy living-in-collapse atmosphere.

Those are random thoughts on the opening section. I'd need to read closer (and google harder) to get further.

Still no idea about the numbers though.

hehe, I googled "gynozoon" recently and, well, yeah I kind of wished I hadn't.

I'd read the press release, woof, but not the second bit of your post which is a great help. Would be nice to get a bit more lyric dissection going on on this thread - after all, that's part of the latter-day SW experience really.

Good point about Simeon Stylites (who isn't explicitly mentioned in the lyrics or the accompanying texts), but yeah, he refused to see his mother during all the time he spent on his pillar and wasn't she eventually buried at the bottom of the pillar when she died?

Still no idea about the numbers though.

In the Radio 6 interview he says, in passing, they are supposed to represent telephone numbers, as would have been scrawled on the walls of a Roman khazi if telephones had existed

ha, ok, thanks, would never have worked that out

Send "SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)" Ringtone to your Cell

ohhh, so the insults and gags are toilet graffiti. I get it.

and the flatulence is flatulence..

The whole thing's just one big fart gag

we must make fart noises or else we become a cold dead lifeless star do u see?

ohhh, so the insults and gags are toilet graffiti. I get it.

The insults in "SDSS1416whatevea" are ripostes to hecklers... from the same Radio 6 interview

You have to do a gig to have hecklers.

I guess even Simeon Stylites had to do his business every now and again. Maybe he amused himself by carving out graffiti on the toilet area of his pillar while he was at it.

how the dwarf got brown

I still haven't gotten this album but i think i will soon, this lyric discussion is fascinating.

Anyone know what these refer to:

Adopocere
Maman Neigho

?

Right - that makes sense - it's sort of how I was seeing the earlier ones, the "the red light where you work", "you should get an agent" stuff - but then it's (Zercon-imagined) bog graffiti by the time you get to "flush hard, it's a long way to Athens", "do not eat the big pink mint".

I will listen to that interview when I get in, it sounds informative if I am going down this rabbithole.

(multi xps to Tom that)

the "big pink mint" is a toilet freshener!?!?!

YES

woof, you're the bwast!

I think it's a 'Norseman are thick savages' gag about a toilet freshener.

The 'flush hard' joke is ummmm, either saying 'greeks are shits' or thinking about it some more, 'greeks are homosexuals & likely to be found in your bottom'.

Or saying that Athens is a cesspit

From Wiki:

Adipocere (pron.: /ˈædɨpɵsɪər/), also known as corpse, grave or mortuary wax, is a wax-like organic substance formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in tissue, such as body fat in corpses. In its formation, putrefaction is replaced by a permanent firm cast of fatty tissues, internal organs and the face.

Adipocere in a zoot...? There are a lot of musical and lyrical references to late-40s/early-50s pop culture throughout Epizootics!. I kind of imagine it as West Side Story as viewed by someone who's having an extremely bad trip.

West Side Story South Pacific

Not an answer to dog latin's question, but I've just learned from Google that there's a racehorse with the charming name "Neigh O Me".

Other searches on the family name "Neigho" throws up... nothing much other than it's an ancient name.

wasn't she eventually buried at the bottom of the pillar when she died?

― besides Sunny Real Estate (dog latin), Thursday, January 24, 2013 7:48 AM (5 hours ago)

buried alive actually, the bastard still didn't come down

The Alfredo Garcia cameo in "Epizootics!" makes me very happy altho I have no idea what it's doing there

I pretty much assumed that this album would be my automatic BEST OF DECADE just based on the trailer + "Epizootics!" & the fact that I'm a massive scott stan (listened to the drift nearly every day for like a year after it came out). And then the release date came & I heard it and I just couldn't help feeling deflated, like yeah this is brilliant but none of the songs really get to me the way eg "clara" or "farmer in the city" do.

Happily I'm revising this position & now think that "zercon" especially is one of the most affecting things he's done. The central metaphor, though oblique, is just so elegant & moving: zercon moving to higher & higher peaks (across multiple eras/spaces) in order to escape his circumstances, but of course he can't, and even when he ascends to space he's still a dwarf and the universe is still cold & cruel & unfeeling - Walker's said in interviews that at the beginning of the song zercon is getting "heckled by silence", which is some kinda bergman-level angst right there. At its core it's not a zillion miles away from the 60s character pieces - poor zercon, like big louise, is looking for (fire) escapes in the sky.

I mean I wouldn't really claim to know what's ~going on~ in the song at all times but it seems to be "about" different kinds of human cruelty & the ways people have of coping with them. Hence the many references to past racisms &c. Zercon's defensive strategy against the society that treats him like shit is to give as good as he gets (all the classic putdowns at the start of the song); later, he just withdraws & withdraws until there's nothing left & he "drop[s] into the darkness" (this is how you disappear). The responses to heckles in the last part of the song aren't randomly chosen, they all point towards complete effacement: "I want to forget you just the way you are", "I think you've got nothing there","I hope your face clears up".

This is why I can't get with complaints about the humour - even the funny lines on this album aren't just there for the lolz. Plus there's always been humour in scott's work - on the drift he actually bursts out laughing ffs!

Brilliant post wins

Another thought I had:

ROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICE