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35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A shabby tribute to a great artist..., December 11, 2003
This review is from: 5 Easy Pieces (Audio CD)
Well, first off, as another reviewer said, the music presented here is (overall, at least) first-class. Scott Walker has done work that is unsurpassable in its genres (brooding orchestral pop, avant-industrial oratorio) as well as some pretty mediocre MOR slush in the 70s that it is conveniently forgettable. This compilation takes the challenging approach of attempting an overview of the artist's entire career: from the mature, Phil Spector-influenced teen ballads of the Walker Brothers to the Neo-Romantic / Industrial barrage of implosive psychic disintegration exemplified on "Tilt". Not an easy task, and one at which the pseudonymous and unknown producers of this debacle have regrettably failed. To begin with, the half-baked notion of arranging the music by corralling the songs onto separate CDs based on 'themes' such as 'the introspective Scott', 'songs for/about/or by females', or 'An American in Europe' (which preposterously contrasts the Brel-inspired chanson of "Scott" 1 through 4 with Walker's embarrassing forays into country music), results in an incohesive mix. On the 'soundtracks' CD you have MOR Hollywood film themes from "The Moviegoer" unflatteringly butted up against the dark, sublime Mahlerian orchestrations of "POLA X". Or (on the 'songs for women' disc) a disposable performance by Esther Ofarim (whose only excuse for appearing on Scott's fifth solo album was that she was the producer's wife!) followed by the harrowing Ute Lemper tracks. If you are going to break the content down into digestible portions and present an overarching survey of all of Scott Walker's work, it might have been better to segregate the music onto separate discs such as the Walker Bros period, the classic 60s solo work ("Scott" 1-4 and "Til the Band Comes In"), beautifully reinterpreted MOR standards (from the 60s to 70s), avant-garde experimentation ("Nite Flights", "Climate of Hunter", "Tilt"), and (how about it?!) a CD of rare demos, outtakes, and B-sides. The negligible liner notes to this box claim that this set is for the average listener and not the die-hard fan. Well, who buys multi-CD box sets apart from the die-hard fans?! A casual listener is not going to spend the equivalent cost of five new list-priced CDs on a set devoted to a single artist unless he/she is already a devoted enthusiast. In producing a box set one is attempting to pay tribute to a significant artist with an estimable body of work. Usually one expects to find some previously unreleased tracks (there are some rare treasures on "Five Easy Pieces", to be sure, many out-of-print though all previously released). At the least the box set can be expected to come with a lavish or elegant package design, detailed track notes (recording location & dates, personnel credits), thoughtful and informative essays, unpublished archival photographs. Virtually all of the box sets I own by my favorite artists (Stooges, Velvet Underground, ABBA, Faust, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, Eric Dolphy, LaMonte Young) demonstrate a worthwhile degree of thought, care and expense in production and packaging. But as our other reviewer Mr Orton complained, this is one flimsy, insubstantial package (thin cardboard, poorly printed booklet, dimwitted texts, substandard graphic design worthy of a cheapo KTEL production). Which certainly is a great injustice to such an uncompromising, discriminating artist as Scott Walker. Well, I did say the music here is great, and there are some RARE GEMS included, no doubt. And since many of Scott's important recordings are currently out-of-print, fans who have been unable to find such titles as "Climate of Hunter" or unwilling to pay the high prices these albums command on eBay can now get a taste of such work. While I am a 'die-hard fan' I am by no means a completist, and there are some monumental tracks here I have never heard until now. The two pieces Scott wrote for Ute Lemper a few years back are brilliantly suspenseful epics of entropic orchestration on a par with "Tilt". One of these two pieces was only released on a Japanese pressing of Lemper's CD, and the other, 'Scope J', reminds me uncannily of something from the Carla Bley / Paul Haines avant-opera "Escalator Over The Hill". While Ute Lemper's vocal performance is far from sublime (how much better it would have been to hear Dagmar Krause or Diamanda Galas sing these tracks!), the composition and arrangements carry the affair despite her expressive limitations. And the two tracks (pre-Tilt) from the French film "Toxic Affair" only came out as a CD-single and would cost an exorbitant amount if you managed to procure a copy. Chances are, if you are a fan, you will want this collection for the luxury of at last getting to hear such rare tracks. One song I am very disappointed they failed to include here is the movie theme "I Still See You" (only the lovely B-side is featured on this collection). Scott's biography "A Deep Shade of Blue" tells of how Scott enraged the producers and songwriters by altering the lyrics to conform to his own skewed vision of irrational absurdity, and I have yet to hear the record. One final warning (which demonstrates just how shoddy this whole production is): The copy I bought of this box is defective. Bizarre as it must sound, Disc Three has ONLY ONE CHANNEL OF AUDIO (the right channel) - The left channel of the stereo mix is entirely absent. I returned it to the store where I bought it (a megastore which had about a dozen copies in stock at the time of purchase) and was told by the sales clerk that THE WHOLE PRESSING IS DEFECTIVE in this respect: no left channel on Disc Three. This type of error seems like it would have to have occurred at the mastering stage and would seem likely to be reproduced on ALL COPIES, though I am not in a position to affirm this. I exchanged the defective box for another one and found the same problem. When the clerk told me he had read online that the whole pressing is defective and that the label would probably not bother to do a second pressing, I decided to live with it, since I already have all but two relatively minor tracks from Disc Three on other CDs in my collection in their full stereo mix. But jeez, this is one bottom o' the budget compilation, I gotta say...
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
AVOID. Go with the individual albums., February 18, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: 5 Easy Pieces (Audio CD)
OK, so, i adore Scott Walker but i have to say that this piece of crap was a complete let-down. The only reason i gave it two stars is because of the remastered versions of the tracks off "Climate of Hunter" and "Nite Flites" and some of the b-sides and soundtrack work. "Pola X" in particular is virtually impossible to find. BUT WHAT on earth were they thinking? It's so weird, the way they pass off these quotes from contemporary artists as "liner notes." Is a casual fan going to shell out upwards of a hundred bucks for an artist they are unfamiliar with because Thom Yorke says to? Doubtful. So why are they trying to talk-up and sell us on the music that we obviously already love? I couldn't give a rats ***! I thought the testimonials adorning the recent american NEU! reissues were very effective in "selling" the music to "the kiddies," but those were single discs and not such a big investment. The track listing is also terrible. The set eschews chronological or any other sensible order in favor of some random guy's tastes. My copy does not have the manufacturing error some have reported on disc 3. I wish it did because I could copy the 6 tracks I need and return the thing. Two other box sets I own, Velvet Underground and Burt Bacharach, are beautifully put together with extensive liner notes and tons of great photographs. I still spend time just looking at and listening to them. Scott is definitely on par with Burt and Lou in terms of influence and strange brilliance, so why is this set so skimpy and stupid? i'd like to smack the idiots who ILL-conceived it.
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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Why did they bother?, November 7, 2004
This review is from: 5 Easy Pieces (Audio CD)
This box-set is pretty much a waste of everyone's time. The compilers have put far too much of their own (lack of) personality into the song selection and packaging for it to be of any lasting interest or worth to Scott Walker fans, whether of the casual or obsessive persuasion.
The compilers treat this box-set as five separate compilations, all leading "into the heart of Scott Walker", or some such pretentious blather. Much of Scott Walker's output does lend itself to the idea of compiling along thematic or stylistic lines, as opposed to strict chronological order, since he was often producing music in different styles or genres at the same time, often to the confusion of the listening public. These five "thematic" compilations, however, are far too personal and incomplete to cater for anyone other than the compiler themself. The themes themselves are generally infantile and the song selections are arbitrary; songs are most often grouped together on the basis of lyrical content or song titles. A more musically literate approach is necessary in compiling Scott Walker, no matter what the thematic decisions may be. Entire aspects of Scott Walker's recording career are disregarded (eg. most of the Walker Brothers, non-Brel covers from Scotts 1&2, the TV Series, early 70s albums) presumably in the interests of stressing the "cooler" and more fashionable aspects. There's a spare hour or so of unused space over the five discs which should have been put to use.
The booklet is a bit of an embarrassment, offering only sparse, generally idiotic quotes from celebrities, collected in an apparent attempt to convince us (or for the compiler to convince themself?) that it's cool to be into Scott Walker. Apart from that there's a short "Compiler's Note", comprising a lecture that goes on about how completists wear anoraks and don't listen to music, and rarities are rare because they're not worth hearing - no wonder no-one put their name to it. Never mind rarities (of which you won't find many on this box-set), what about (for example) some of the best tracks from Scott 4? And surely part of the point of a box-set is some sort of analysis, perspective, even information about the artist and the recordings? The booklet is a waste of paper, and the packaging overall is cheap and impractical.
The sound quality seems fine, but with no marked improvement over previous releases containing this same material.
The strangest thing about this box-set is that presumably it received approval from Scott Walker himself for its release. As he's apparently vetoed the release of other unavailable Scott Walker albums on CD, making fans go in search of old vinyl copies or bootlegs, and many CD releases are now out of print, it seems strange to be approving pointless releases like this. Just make the original recordings available - we can make our own compilations!
Unlike Scott Walker's music, this box-set seems to be going for style over substance. Even that wouldn't be so bad if the compilers had any...
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