Next up... a battle of two greats! In previous rounds we did song samples, great PA's reviews, with this
round I wanted to do something a different. So I went outside PA's..
what do people outside of this site say about these albums.
First up..
Balletto di Bronzo - YS
The Music of Terror: Il Balletto di Bronzo's "YS"
At one point, I wanted this site to also cover music. In fact, you
can find a few reviews waaaaay back when of some fantastic albums.
Unfortunately, it became more of a chore to add music as we were getting
loaded up with film after film. That isn’t a complaint by any stretch
of the imagination, it’s just a fact. So, music had to make way for
other geek things. Plus, we aren’t the type of people who want to cover
the generic horror “music”-psychobilly, Misfits rip-off bands, gore
metal, etc. We have a varied taste at The Blood Sprayer and it seemed
best suited to just focus on film. Still, their are artists that will
fit all too perfectly into a theme making it impossible to
not cover.
Italian Week posed the obvious of covering Goblin. sh*t, look at all
the soundtracks they did for Argento!! It’s irresponsible to not cover
them. But, for me there is one Italian band, and one record in
particular, that sounds like nightmares put to tape. Blood Sprayer
readers, meet Il Balletto di Bronzo’s “Ys”.
Admittedly, Il Balletto di Bronzo has nothing to do with horror. Ys
is not a score or soundtrack to any of our favorite Italian filth. The
album is deserving of your attention because it sounds like
what those movies are trying to do to you on the visual end. It’s a
frightening up & down, back & forth of beautifully laid out
movements. The melodies that drive the album play out like a
narrative. Essentially, it moves in the same manner that a horror movie
does. There is the the calm, eerie build that spikes with each
emotional beat. As the record progresses, it reaches frighteningly
cacophonous moments that would’ve perfectly heightened some of those
insane Fulci moments. As the album draws to it’s close, you aren’t left
with a feeling of relief. You’re left with the lingering oddness that
the album drug you through.
A
friend and fellow musician told me a story about a drive home from a
show and falling asleep in their band’s van. One of his bandmates was
driving and listening to Ys. He said that when he woke up, and heard
the music that was playing, it scared the sh*t out of him. This is an
example of what sort of emotion this record envokes. On the surface,
you can view it as another weird prog rock record from the 70’s. But
any fans of the band will tell you otherwise. On the short list of
“terrifying” albums, this one ranks up their with the best of them.
Il Balletto di Bronzo didn’t have one of those long-ass, Rolling
Stones careers. The band was short lived and barring a couple
ill-advised reunions, have kind of vanished from the public eye.
They’ve been sited as influences by a few modern bands like Mammoth
Volume and Nurse With Wound and Ys has had a several reissues in
countries like Japan. Still, the band’s work remains relatively unknown
by most. In fact, the 2 people I know that enjoy this band are 2
people who’s musical taste and knowledge rivals most folks. But, I can
assure you if you are a fan of Italian horror and understand how
important the music is to those great films, you’d hear the same thing
that I do when listening to this album. So, here’s my recommendation to
you: Grab your copy of Fulci’s The Beyond, then snag a copy of this
record (go ahead and download it. I’m not a saint-I’m not going to tell
you what’s right or wrong.). Turn down the lights, start the movie and
then fire up this album. You will see where fear and music meet and
you’ll wonder the same that I do: Why the hell didn’t anyone use these
guys for soundtrack work?!
and against YS we have...
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats
For most jazz musicians, they wanted to push the door down and go beyond
the lovely ballads of Bebop and Swing and go into what we call now
"Jazz Fusion", but for Frank Zappa, he decided it was time to go and
push the envelope and give the guitar gods like Jimmy Page, Eric
Clapton, and Jeff Beck a run for their own money and bow their heads of
the Grand Wazoo. After he broke up the original Mothers of Invention
with Uncle Meat in 1969, he wanted to go beyond the doo-wop and
garage-punk rock sound to more arrangement and compositions for the
composer.
One of the albums that would make a leap through after his own take of a
tribute to Varese, Stravinsky, and the guitarish Spaghetti Western
sounds of Lumpy Gravy, would be Hot Rats. This album shows Zappa moving
away from the classical music taste to more of the mad scientist
conductor than doing R&B soul and chipmunk vocals in a high-speed
take. So he got away from the Hungry Freaks Daddy Freak Out! era and
came the jam sessions which featured Zappa, Shuggie Otis, Ian Underwood
to come something that was unbelivable and a mind-boggling fantasy that
you'll never hear on any Frank Zappa record in the Past, Present, and
Future. And in Frank Zappa's words about the genre of Jazz, "Jazz is not
dead, it just smells funny." Well it does smell funny, in a good way
ladies and gentleman. Not to mention the cover of "Miss Christine" Frka
coming out of the grave looking for some bodies to eat in a sexual way
who was part of the groupie band the GTOs which featured Pamela Des
Barres, Sandra Leano, and Linda Sue Parker.
Peaches En Regalia, a classical virtuoso gypsy jazz rock introduction to
the album, is dazzling piece of work featuring Zappa doing a Django
Reinhardt style on the guitar while Ian Underwood does some Coltrane
solos on his Sax and then it becomes a wah-wah bizarre journey on the
acoustic guitar as if Zappa was writing a musical flourish as it goes to
a dramatic bridge and then, BAM! it goes back to the beginning and ends
like a romantic movie gone bizarre in a good way while the Howlin' Wolf
prostitute song, Willie the Pimp continues as a evil pimp looking at 15
year old girls to get some pussy at Lido Hotel. Starting off with
Captain Beefheart's raunchy vocals as violinist, Don Harris, does some
heavy duty eerie violin solos and then plucking the strings to give it
an evil and crime scenery of the slums of illegal girls getting paid to
make sweet love. And then the last 7-minutes of the composition becomes a
Psychedelic guitar solo stand off as Zappa takes the guitar into higher
places.
Then it becomes almost like a prequel in the album with Son of Mr. Green
Genes which is part of the Mr. Green Genes from the Uncle Meat album
released in April of the same year. It starts off the same notes from
the song as it goes into massive passages throughout the number with a
horn section, flourshing keyboards, and then again Zappa takes over on
the guitar doing some amazing fretwork while the bass either Shuggie
Otis or Max Bennett is doing some glorified bass lines to keep the tempo
flowing while Ian Underwood comes in doing a heavy solo on the
keyboards as Zappa and Underwood take it on like dueling brothers as to
see who will win between Guitar and Keyboards. It then becomes a Miles
Davis fusion/hard rock style for the last few minutes and then the intro
for the beginning comes in as it ends like a climatic climax of the
organ giving the dynamic finale as Zappa shreds and Ian does a small
homage to beethoven.
If you are heavily into Bebop Jazz meets Herbie Hancock's Headhunters,
this is it! The Thelonious Monk homage tribute on Little Umbrellas
becomes a beautiful walk in the park theme for a few minutes and then it
becomes something out of the Uncle Meat Sessions on The Dog Breath
Variations as Ian does some heavy Organ work while the drums do a 4/4
time signature as the stand-up bass is almost a cross between Paul
Chambers and Jimmy Garrison walking bass line as the piece moves like a
diamond that hasn't been found for a long time while the flute comes in
to lay in some melodic ballad and then it comes back in like an eerie
soundtrack for a picture show in the ballet orchestra.
Meanwhile, the 16-minute instrumental jam piece, The Gumbo Variations,
becomes a free-for-all grand old time for anyone who has a love of epic
suites roll into one. The sax lays down the groove as it does some heavy
bluesy jazz that almost sounded like metal gears grinding like a
chainsaw while the Bass goes with it to lay down some funky riffs as
Zappa shreds like a motherf**ker and then the Sax starts to go into a
VDGG seizure mode ala David Jackson style and then it goes back into the
King Crimson mode again as Ian takes over coming up with some
Avant-Garde feeling on the Sax while the Bass and drums lay down on the
groove and then Zappa comes in to follow the Sax as he's the Pied Piper
and Ian is Dr. Frankenstein on the woodwind and then the drums does a
Bonham moment while Jean-Luc Ponty comes in doing shreiking violin solo.
Lowell George does some blistering guitar work before Little Feat and
then its Zappa's turn to take it over like a drill sergeant as he makes
the guitar sound like a synthesized god and then the drum solo is almost
a cross of Zeppelin and Sabbath ala fusion style while Shuggie Otis
does funkadelic style's on the Bass and then the Organ, Violin, and
Zappa come in to bring the number down to a T.
The eerie finale, It Must Be A Camel, sounds pre-Magma meets Henry Cow
in the early days as if they had put something bizarre in their tea.
This is one of the strangest piece as it shows Zappa composing the piece
as if Edgard Varese is doing a jazz number in a bizarre mode as Zappa
does some licky guitar frets as the piano and the bass seemed very Mars
Voltaish while the Saxes come in to give a Wes Montgomery ending to fill
your music with bizarre twists.