Customer Reviews

Carnival Of Souls

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From the same artits who brought you: the very madrigal album "madra , 1991" , the little masterpiece "iris , 1992" , the unique and richly orchestrated "suspiria , 1993" , and the surprisingly diverse & baroque " fairytales of slavery ,1994"...are back with this very tortured/gothic & jazzy album called "carnival of souls , 2000". Only this time,with a different line up. katharine blake (vocals ,violin) , trevor sharpe (percussion , drums) and ben golomstock (guitars) are back for this latest brilliant album.

ex-members, contralto Donna McKevitt (who also worked for derek jarman's TRANSLUENCE & BLUE soundtrack) , and soprano Kelly McCusker (also worked for jarman & balanescu quartet's album "possessed")...have been replaced with teresa casella (bass,backing vocals) , mike servent (keyboards) & barney hollington (violin,hammond organ).

the 11 tracks are all worth listening & exellent. (there are 12 tracks but one of em is only "incidental" & very short)...there are 6 tracks that really stand out from the rest:"tonight" , "close to the sky" , "caravan" (superior to the original version) , "sleeping beauty" , "broken glass" , "all there is"...carnival of souls is worth buying if you like gothic,experimental and original music. if that's the case. then order it now! ps: you can also find more of katharine's work in her latest group called "mediaeval baebes"... & the soundtracks of "BLUE" , "DELUSION" , "HIDEAWAY"

-ex-singer & member of miranda sex garden "jocelyn west" (previously worked for "madra" ,the group "fortran 5" , "david lynch" , "barry adamson" , "derek jarman"..etc).. has a solo album... called:" LUX VIVENS" , her name changed,she's now called "jocelyn montgomery". -donna mckevitt , performs occasionaly for the "mediaeval baebes" -... photograph book called "songs of the flesh"...- drummer trevor sharpe is also the founder of the group "NAKED GOAT".

I've been listening to this cd almost continuously for the past week. An epic masterpiece! GOD IT'S WONDERFUL! It's not as raw or unproduced-sounding as their last cd, the heavily Einstürzende Neubauten-influenced FAIRYTALES OF SLAVERY. No 9-minute instrumentals like on SUSPIRIA, either. But overall there's more great songs here than on both those albums combined. Much better production too. Singer Katherine Blake's voice is as seductive as usual. No more Donna McKevitt, though. So the madrigal-style harmonizing that was ever-present on previous releases is mostly absent. But you won't even notice Donna's gone, since Katherine sings so hypnotically. As you might expect in a Miranda Sex Garden cd, there's plenty of atmosphere, dramatically complex song structures, exotic percussion, and loads of spacey guitars and violins. And there's even a french horn on some of the songs. This one seems to have more "shoegazer"-style long blasts of sheer noise than previous albums, too. To me, the single 'Tonight' reminds me a little of a Portishead song. The wonderful 'Caravan' too. But most of the other songs are as loud and scary as anything they've ever recorded. (Well, there's nothing on here as scary as 'Play' from SUSPIRIA, but that'd be impossible to top). 'Broken Glass' is so gorgeous you'll want to put it on repeat-play forever. And 'Close to the Sky' is even greater, if that's possible. This is a near-perfect cd by a perfect band. I'm thrilled they've finally made an album that lives up to their well-deserved reputation as being one of the greatest live acts of our time.

This album has all the dark moodiness of "Fairytales of Slavery," and with a little more rock abandon. Blake's voice is as beautiful as ever. The best "It's like..." I can think of is if the cast of Alice in Wonderland stole The Smiths' musical gear and did a Switchblade Symphony album.

This is what usually happens when some talented musicians with no future prospect of recording anything else together are allowed again to do the music they do best without any restrictions; in other words, there are times when a masterpiece is quite likely to come out from a long-shot, being artefacts like "Carnival of Souls" the palpable truth of it.

Recorded under a rather precarious situation (the band was in a kind of limbo since dropped from Mute Records in 1995 and the label sugar-daddy had very few chances to survive) Miranda Sex Garden performs in this album in the best (and only) way they can, that is, as if there was no tomorrow, no future chance to do the same thing again. It must be said that they succeed completely as this record constitutes, against all odds, their best effort to date. A triumph which is even more remarkable if we take into account the high level of excellency displayed in all their previous albums (`Iris', `Suspiria', etc).

Released in the year 2000, "Carnival of Souls" is a magnificent collection of songs and a few instrumentals that, paradoxically, went almost unnoticed. Even the group's former releases were more widely discussed, which is a tragedy, considering the sheer quality of this very album. Structurally, the record follows the same line of past works, alternating both vocal songs and instrumental tracks. The overall sound is a little bit more accessible compared to the other albums without betraying at any moment the peculiar and indescribable style of the band.

There are also, as usual with this group, some changes in the line-up, being Donna McKevitt and Hepzibah Sessa replaced with Teresa Casella (from medieval baebes) on electric bass together with other musicians such as Mike Servant and Barney Hollington. Trevor Sharpe and Ben Golomstock are available one more time on drums and guitars respectively. Of course the group's linchpin, Katharine Blake, is again doing most of the singing and writing the lyrics. I would say that she's never sung better than on this one. Songs like "Sleeping Beauty"; "Broken Glass", "Tonight" or "Close to the Sky" are real highlights. I see the band in this album more proficient and self-confident than ever. As a whole, Miranda Sex Garden managed to create twelve impressive tracks that, to quote one of them, are very close to...perfection. Too bad that the CD is out of stock and has become an expensive collector's item.

I'm looking forward to hear some new material by MSG in a not very distant future. Such talents shouldn't give up so soon. I have a feeling that the best for them is yet to come. There are not many bands out there that meet up every single one of my expectations as a listener, but MSG does it every time. Unfortunately, their increasing difficulties to find a label do not precisely fuel up my optimism. How can it be possible that people like this can't get a record deal? It's crystal-clear that the music industry is even more incompetent and dimmer than I thought. To cap it all, the lyrics of the gorgeous "Ever & Ever" sound to me very much like a farewell. Deeply disturbing...

I expect that "Carnival of souls" won't be the last chapter in Miranda Sex Garden's enthralling career. This wonderful story cannot stop here. But for me there is one sure thing: whether they come back or not I, at least, will always have a very special place for them in my memory. They deserve it. I don't know, it must be that I pride myself on not following the sheep mentality which is characteristic of mainstream music, but the truth is that I cannot help to feel myself fortunate for having had the luck to come across a band like this one.

Miranda Sex Garden are unprecedented and unrepeatable (and I think they are aware of that).

Very few albums manage to provide the polar mood intensities found within Miranda Sex Garden's Carnival of Souls. It is a mix of solace and alarm; a mix of terror and seduction; a fusion of the angelic and the demonic.

Though the group's members have shuffled in and out over the past couple recordings, Katharine Blake's vocals remain an identifier for MSG fans. Her sweet voice delicately muses one minute and explodes the next, while retaining it's beauty throughout. The band, as of this recording, is a great merge of talents--together they make the music gush into a marvelous waterfall of sound. Landing a steady record label is probably the main reason MSG has gone so unnoticed, and why their fanbase is still considered underground.

For those unfamiliar with Miranda Sex Garden, the group's name is reflective of their sound, to say the least. They are a garden of beauty and forbidden treasures. Carnival of Souls carries only a light fragrance of the first entirely madrigal album, but the overpowering style is more of their merge into a jazzy, industrial/goth rock...if you can even classify it.

Carnival of Souls is a fitting name for the album, as we have moments of feeling like we're travelling through a maze of mirrors or being thrust about some sort of sinister ride. My favorite track is "Tonight," a saxaphone seduction carrying cinematic mood of a 1950's detective scene where we're about to uncover a tragic secret. "Tonight I lose you to the waves," Blake sings. I love the mystery of the song "Caravan," a semi-salsa semi-industrial semi-cabaret mix woven with soprano achings. Then are are the individual stand-out moments of the album, like rise of the cello and violin in "All There Is," where the strings are on fire.