Starcastle - Citadel


Bottle's taxonomy of music criticism is filled with deep, probing questions like "what the hell am i listening to?," "who?," and "whaaaa?!" Today we get to use all three.


Now, i think we can all safely judge this particular book by its cover. Space fantasy, of the wackadoodle variety. And those guys can't exist ouside the vacuum chamber of absurdity that is the 1970s. I'm not familiar with the band Starcastle, but this is clearly some variety of Prog, and there will be Moog. Oh yes, there will be Moog. 

What's their story? The inner web of the networldtube tells me everyone thinks they're just Yes clones. Kay, that's not helpful, guess we'll just have to make up our own minds. Alright, first thing, it's going to take you a bit to get used to Terry Luttrell's voice. It's not weird or funny, but it is testicle clenchingly high. It doesn't sound like falsetto, i think he's just a legitimate Alto. That's totally normal for Prog Rock and the 70s in general, it's his dead inside, lack of any color tone that i have to get used to.

Sure, fine, if Yes is your benchmark for 70s rock, then they sound like Yes. Synths and jammin basslines, hardcore chorus vocals, but that's like saying all Industrial rock sounds like NIN; your perception is a bit skewed toward celebrity as opposed to genre. This is definitely prog, and the Moog is strong on this one. It's also so sunshiny i'm worried about carcinoma. I wouldn't call it cheesy, though. Definitely eccentric, but so polished and happy you desperately want to punch them in the face.

As is often the case, this album is musically fantastic. But, and it's another one of those big buts that Becky's friend simply can't refrain from commenting upon, i can't tell you what any of the songs are about because i can't remember a single word he sang for the entire album. Some stuff about love, possibly the word "leper," and maybe a little bit of outer space. Lyrically, this is an example of how to guarantee you will be obscure in the future. That doesn't bother me, i like this quite a lot, there just isn't anything to really latch onto as far as statements go.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Hit & Run Holiday

Image
I noticed today that the strange part of the world who actually knows about My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult has finally accepted that they are in fact "industrial disco." The history of Wax Trax and Chicago industrial music is a subject worthy of an entire library, but MLWTTK is my favorite band to emerge from those humble record store beginnings. They are an unpredictable band for sure, and i definitely don't like all of their albums, but Hit & Run Holiday is an album i think every human being on the planet should hear at least once. This album is simply impossible to describe, because it doesn't actually belong to a musical genre as we understand them. It's actually a movie. I know that sounds weird, but the band is actually a movie. My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult was the name of the movie they were trying to make, but composing the soundtrack led them so far afield that they just shrugged and kept going as a band instead. All of their albums come f
Read more

Eyrth - Meridian

Image
A terrible sadness accompanies the release of Meridian by Latvian Ambient Metal band EYRTH. Since their debut Fracture in early 2019 the band, and indeed the whole world has suffered a global pandemic, intense ideo-political turmoil, the death of friend and bandmate Igor Golovin, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  The war in Ukraine still wages on, even though we in the Western hemisphere seem to have largely forgotten. These are turbulent times, and Alex and Andrey are rightfully entering an extended break. We may not see or hear new music from them for a while, if ever, and that is completely understandable. The music they've created, however, is truly breathtaking. Self-described as "Uranium wreckage in audio," the music of Eyrth is every bit as hauntingly beautiful as it is brutally crushing. Close your eyes and you'll quickly find yourself in the achingly cold and desolate wasteland of human technological atrophy. Slow, ponderously heavy, at times rabidly ragi
Read more