Customer Reviews

Amy Denio - Greatest Hits

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this is one of the coolest cd's i've come across in some time. not only is amy denio filled with an amazing voice but her music (along with that of her various groups) is sensational. this "spoot" music is something very very honest and beautiful. i'd go to seattle just to check out one of her shows. this CD has a nice mix of styles and essentially a collage of aural pleasure. "les some se repondent" is a nice stereolabish song, "dishwasher" is very funny and has cool dishwasher sampling, "you never call me anymore" is filled with deep louie armstrong vocals...etc etc. take a listen, you will not regret it.

I went to a concert last night where Amy Denio was guest artist with the Relache Ensemble Music at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. I was immediately struck by the quality of her music when she started singing daring overtones with her voice and accordion. I have a gift for recognizing good quality music (maybe I should say ...the music I like!, but you know what I mean), my simple categories are: "good", "bad", "deserves more listening". Amy is strikingly good. She seems to me like a serious "researcher". Sometimes I wonder about music genres, "what happened to jazz", where is the good "research" going? In this example, no need for labels: it is just good music. Denio's pieces, some of them composed for the Relache music ensemble, were the artistic highlights of the evening. The musical atmosphere was intense, well-structured, intelligent, sometimes painful (but never indulgent), sometimes very humorous (in some sudden changes of rhythm). Some compositions suggest a long, tough process of personal maturation ("Hopeful ID" was the interesting title of one of the pieces at the concert; I wonder if that refers to "identity", and/or has a more Freudian connotation). Back to the "Greatest hits" CD. I bought it at the concert and found the quality I expected. This is a collection of songs with different groups (or solo) over more than 10 years. I will just mention my favorites: "Secret crush" (interesting combination of instruments with alto sax and cymbals among others), "Traffic island Psycho" (I would call this a...psychiatric text! see also "Psycho marlboro"), "Salvatore" (Italian...salad, see the Ferrari-amore-mozzarella text; this one has a good change of rhythm), "Funeral music" (good use of the alto sax; not at all sad as the title would suggest), "you never call me anymore" (accordion and bass go well together; oops there is another "psycho" here...this one is I would say "psycho-humoristic"! and boy, what a voice!), "Les sons se repondent" (good bunch of players), "Ambaraba ci ci co co" (Italian filastrocca - yes I am from Italy - makes me curious about the "Non lo so, Polo" album; please note the closing "ci ci"!). Conclusion: I recommend this album to anyone interested in good music and art in general (which is rare: Amy, sincere congratulations). Enjoy.

Absolutely wonderful. Hard to categorize. A little jazz, some ambient, a bit of French bubble gum... If you appreciate music by Kate Bush, early Throwing Muses, or the Red House Painters, you'll probably enjoy it.

One wrong way to start an Amy Denio review is: "If you like Dr. Demento, you'll *love* A.D." Another goes something like: "a dash of Frank Zappa, a sprinkle of Ornette Coleman, two shakes of Weird Al, and a dollop of Brian Eno ...."

But Amy Denio is unique. Her work is eccentric, often bizarre, but that does not explain her. Nor will it explain anything to say she's a musical genius, though she unquestionably is. She's a fearless adventuress in avant garde "fusion" music, but she merges her countless influences in singular ways.

As her 1986 debut album, "No Bones," revealed, she was a maverick from the start. One track, "National Holidays," was a spoken-word satire of middle-class conformity (punctuated by a strange "hey hey, ha ha" female chant gibbering in the background); another was a first-person account of a woman needing a "Career Change," in which Denio engaged in odd vocal crescendos and an instrumental accompaniment that sounded like a suction cup frantically smooching a hot water bottle. Still others were kinky instrumentals, sax-dominated by Amy herself, which clumped along on weird, unpredictable rhythms and tempo changes. Every single track was funny. But here again, to merely call Denio a "comedienne" misses the point, since it gives the impression that she's nothing but a jokester with little real interest in music.

The facts are these: Deniois a fluent jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, guitarist, and accordionist with a 3-octave vocal range who can play in any style, and who sometimes segues from bebop to free jazz to pop to (whatever) within the same piece of music. And while she's virtually unknown in conventional music circles, she's quite familiar to fusion aficionados in her native Seattle, as well as the savvier experimentalists on the current music scene. Much of her work has a definite rock inflection, but her range is far larger than that, and she uses her vast knowledge of myriad styles to create a new experience.

Nevertheless, Denio differs from most experimentalists in her charisma and sense of fun. Many of her avant garde brethren seem intent on sterile versions of post-modern parochialism, trapped in ivory towers of their own devising. Denio scorns all that. As a musical globetrotter, she has played with all kinds of bands (Bosnian, Italian, Taiwanese) in virtually every genre --- one of her albums is a "rearrangement" of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1; another is an irreverent "Gospel Record," in which she sings what sounds like a multi-layered imitation of the bluegrass group, The Lewis Family. She's done many soundtracks for film and theater.

Through it all is a basic kinky-ness which takes no prisoners, and for that reason alone, many listeners will be put off. But I beg anyone who feels this way on a first attempt to reconsider. She's a serious musician with a surreal mask, but when you pull off that mask you will NOT find Erik the Phantom. She doesn't want to lock you up; she merely wants to spin you around in her cyclotron before spinning you out again.

As for this album, it's merely a "sampler," and like all samplers it can only represent a portion of her persona. This is particularly the case with someone as versatile as Denio. For example, while it's fine to see the EC Nudes' version of "Salvatore" (she's done several over the years), I'm disappointed that "Mr. Awfully Nice" is missing, since it's one of the funniest recordings ever made. "Nice" begins with a hoarse, honking imitation of the Beach Boys' "Help Me Rhonda," and ends with an equally hilarious echo of the Beatles' "She Loves You," delivered in a 12-second growl like a female Louis Armstrong wailing through a kazoo.

Another missing gem is her amazing cover of "Spanish Eyes," which is enough, by itself, to demonstrate her originality. It's impossible to describe just how different this version is from the sappy original by Al Martino, but the original tune doesn't even show up until she's halfway through the record, whereupon she tolerantly moans a few bars' worth before reverting to the rhythm of a San Francisco streetcar. Martino would probably hate it, but that doesn't mean you will.

Counterbalancing the missing are the inclusion of "When Bush Was Head of the CIA (a bumptious but eerie excursion into 1984-style paranoia) and "Birthing Chair Blues," which warns some unidentified young woman about the future pains of childbirth. These are among her best and most polished compositions. But Denio is almost incapable of making a dull track, so all are worth hearing.

By all means try this "sampler," since it may very well lead you to additional adventures contained in her other albums. It's not, of course, a Greatest Hits album, since Denio has casually avoided conventional notions of "greatness" for the last 20 years. Her true greatness transcends normal categories. And remember that the mere act of listening attentively to Amy Denio's work makes you something better than "normal."