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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent!, November 7, 2003
This review is from: Meet the Flower Kings - Live Recording (DVD)
Excellent double-live DVD! Great picture quality and production, excellent audio quality and mix. The audio is LPCM 48KHz/16bit, not Dolby Digital, but it sounds really good. Good set list and performances. Doesn't really have much a live feel though because it was recorded in a huge studio in front of a small audience. I wasn't much of a Froberg fan but his vocal performance is very strong on this disc set. Overall I would recommend this to any TFK fan. The negatives:
- The Flower Kings are rather boring to watch. They basically just play their instruments -- there is basically no shownmanship in this band (none that works anyway) -- not a big deal because the music is great.
- Has some really silly performance art pieces spliced in periodically (e.g. ballet dancers, clowns, etc.) -- seems totally random and completely out of place. I could do without that footage. It just doesn't fit.
- Hans Froberg's "rock-star" on-stage antics and posing seem silly and out of place. He loves to whip his long hair around and do rock-star guitar poses and it just plain looks silly. Funny thing is that he is the only one in the band who actually looks like he is having a blast.
- Hasse Bruniusson and Daniel Gildenlow -- What purpose do they serve in this band? Hasse is a percussionist who is mixed down so low that you can't really hear anything he is doing. Crazy antics as well -- reminds me of Crimson's Jamie Muir. Daniel Gildenlow (singer from Pain of Salvation) plays guitar and percussion but again you can't hear anything he does throughout the show. I don't see what value these extra two folks provided other than serving as a distraction.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not bad, not great, November 19, 2003
This review is from: Meet the Flower Kings - Live Recording (DVD)
The music, performances, and sound quality are superb on this DVD. I agree with another viewer in that the 'behind the scenes' pales in comparison to the music and doesn't quite work in with the DVD. The live performances have been studio enhanced, so the quality is outstanding, but not exactly live. In my opinion I was dissapointed with the song selections and DVD layout. The DVD features some of the bands epic pieces (Garden of Dreams, The Truth Will Set You Free, Stardust We are)devoting most of the time to these pieces. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I would rather they removed the 'behind the scenes' stuff and added other cuts. What about 'Serious Dreamers', 'Last Minute on Earth', 'I Am the Sun', 'Church of Your Heart', etc.???? This is a 2 disc DVD and only 6 songs!!! I agree with a previous viewer in that the Flower Kings are somewhat unanimated on stage Despite the weaknesses, the music is awesome......which is really most important, even on a DVD. The performance of 'Stardust We Are' is amazing!!!!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Don't know what to make of it, March 21, 2004
This review is from: Meet the Flower Kings - Live Recording (DVD)
= Fairly Decent Recording - but not really "Live" Reviewer: K B from Canada Hmmmm....don't know what to make of it really. It isn't a live recording, really. It is obvious that heavy overdubbing has been done. Some of this is understanble as apparently Hasse Froberg (guitarist and secondary lead singer) was sick, and sounded pretty bad. The whole recording sounds like a studio performance - there is no ambience and no crowd participation or crowd noise. So really, if you are looking for truly "live" flower kings, this is not the place to look. The official bootlegs are properly better, if not in sound quality then in live value. Moreoever, the extra footage in between each song (some studio, some from the band visiting tourist areas) is a waste of space. It has no educational value - no interviews or anything - and if you don't understand swedish, it is hard to understand what is going on. There is at least on hour's worth of this footage on the DVDs, it seems to me, and the only portion of it worth watching is the live single cam stuff that is put in a few spots. They really should have either used the space for more songs or for interviews and documentary footage of the band that isn't pointless or boring. Having said that, the music on the DVD set is great. The arrangments sound fuller than the album versions, especially on Stardust We Are which, in comparison to what is here, sounds really poorly paced and weakly arranged. The same goes for Humanizzimo. The Garden of Dreams sounds great, especially as the band have jazzed it up quite a bit. In certain spots, they are practically performing different pieces to what is on the original. The setlist is questionable in some ways. The band should have other pieces in place of Silent Inferno and Circus Brimstone - which is so boring I haven't even watched it all. I am the Sun would have done nicely as it is surely a major Flower Kings Epic. Visually, the concert looks very nice. It is in a professional studio so it looks a lot more made up then the clubs and small theatres TFK play usually. And it is nice to *see* them play as opposed to just hearing them. The artsy footage sometimes intermingled with the "concert" footage is rather dull, bizarre and out of place really. You would think that after the disasters that were Led Zeppelin "The Song Remains the Same" and Genesis' "In Concert '76" films people would learn - especially the Flower Kings who were influenced by these groups. But apparently not. Overall, one should probably just buy the two CDs. The music is what the Flower Kings are known for and what they should stick to really. And on this DVD the music sounds great.
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