Customer Reviews

Kites Are Fun

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Here's a lovely musical treasure from a very specific slice of time, one that was unfairly dismissed as too poppy & lightweight. Yet it holds up far better than many "serious" offerings from the same time, and has since become an inspiration for contemporary indie-fave artists such as Stereolab.

The gorgeous harmonies, the intricate arrangements, the irresistibly catchy songs -- this is the Free Design! From the joyful summer afternoon of the title track, to the lush, soaring chorale of "Stay Another Season," this is pop music at its best. And while much of the music is boppy & upbeat, the lyrics often offer a poignant, thoughtful counterpoint. There's more going on here than initially meets the ear! Like so many songs from this time, there's often a subtle note of melancholy running just below the surface of the happiest songs. Loss & shaded memories figure just as strongly as wonder & delight.

It's also fascinating to see how they remake the hit songs of others ... for instance, "Michelle" becomes a delicate Renaissance ballad, while "The 59th Street Bridge Song" indeed slows down to a lazy, almost jazzy stroll. A very mixed bag, for all the exquisitely glossy production!

You won't find music this sweetly sincere being made these days, and the more jaded listener will probably pass it by without a second thought. But for those who want to experience another, more idyllic time, this is undeniably the perfect soundtrack. Most highly & happily recommended!

Picture a weird commercial from 1967 - the men wearing turtleneck sweaters, the women with long blonde hair. Perhaps the ad is set in a ski lodge. The sun is impossibly bright, the music impossibly sweat and pure. Around the fire, their eyes would glow as they smiled with perfect teeth. This is a memory that is on the verge of disappearing - or perhaps, for you, it's what Clark Ashton Smith called "the nostalgia of the unknown."

The Free Design opens the gates into this long-ago time - now as dead to us as ancient Rome. Will you go there and greet the men and women at that ski lodge? Why not? It's the perfect soundtrack to a half-remembered dream, or an evocation for a vanished world.

5 stars for putting this out
2 stars for uneven sound quality
Some songs sound very good. Project 3 stereo and all.
Some sound like an MP3. Different sources? Damaged masters?
Some use noise reduction (computer based)to a fault.
The hiss sounds better than the noise reduction.
The act of calibrating an analog studio tape reproducer is becoming a lost art.
The original vinyl sounds BETTER. This is a sorry statement.
Project 3 supposedly cut their master acetates from the first generation tapes.
I can't explain why this CD sounds the way it does.
I'd have to talk to the remastering engineer.
Mike Brydalski Buffalo New York
Remember Lana Clarkson; she cant defend herself

The free design bridged the gap between the mamas and poppas pop rock and the older style pop of the pre rock era. And they did it very well. They never put out a bad cd imo. They harmonize like angels throughout and they even got better than this one as they moved along. This stuff can be supersweet or less so but it's filled with top musicians backing them who just lay it down like the pros they were.
The free design here are sometimes even abstract in songs like 'stop the madness'
but always there was the melody driving things. A underrated group to be sure they can still delight fans of sweet pop that is mulitlayered to this day.

This, like all the late 60s, early 70s Free Design work, is a fantastic slice of polished jazzy pop.

And I say jazzy very deliberately. The title track, My Brother Woody, all the tracks, have those sweet, light harmonies you expect from the Free Design. But the backing band-all session pros of the era-improvises well, keeping the music spontainious, open, and bouncy. There are so many great little flurishes and subtlties in the instrumental work, you hear new things each time you listen.

While the Letterman and the Vouges were doing wooden, stiff sacrine, the Design provided a refreshing and sophistacated alternative.