Customer Reviews

Rising

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you read the liner notes, and the lyrics, you might be slightly afraid to listen to this album. It is about fighting her sadness and lonliness and growing up amidst the horrors of war. Yoko compellingly compares her friends in New York struck with AIDS, to the sufferings of the people in Hiroshima. It is an album where she expells her demons, but manages to bring you up again to a safe shore...and show you some Great music/instrumentation, feeling and just about everything else with her son Sean Lennon's band IMA. It manages to have a Fresh alternative sound and keep the listener interested.
Very Yoko--Very reccomended! ^_^

A deeply moving, spiritual experience listening to this album. The final song Revelations is penetrating. If she wrote the words herself for that song without inspirtion from a written or verbal source, then in she is a guru in disguise.

I have every full length Yoko Ono cd available, and I love each and every album of hers. This album though, is perhaps one of my very favorites (if not my ultimate favorite). I recommend this to any fan of Yoko Ono's, and also to the ones that are wondering what her music is like.
Yoko Ono's popularity has gone up more and more within the past few years, because of the success with the songs they continue to remix, and I think it's great that more and more people are getting into her music. It's unbelievable that so many people dislike her, but don't know what her music and/or what her art is like. Yet, there are so many musicians out there that credit Yoko Ono for inspiring them, and now more and more people are getting inspired by her. GREAT ALBUM, HAUNTING SONGS, WONDERFUL LYRICS!

The first song I have ever heard from Yoko Ono was Where Do We Go From Here, and especially that song is my favorit.
This album is moving and good written and it touches my soul, Whit her shrill voice and depressed eyes she will always be the best. Warzone is about Yoko's childhood days from world war 2 really moving, Wouldnit is about wanted and wishing to be someone you never could be, Ask The Dragon is the supernatural song, Turned The Corner is about how fast but still long life could be, and it's also telling not too waste your life and you should respect and love everyone you love before they are gone, Where do We Go From Here is about the world today it's about how wrong we all are living. Buy this album and give your respect too a legend of music Yoko Ono.

Yoko has always been pretty much a personal experience for me. Only Dylan has the ENERGY of Ono. I put my headphones on, as they are now as I listen to the "Rising" CD and comment on it, and there is this powerful, personal surge to a private place within. Won't try to explain it but I find it's something worth the sharing. So much insanity as the technological, Wall Street Age defines our direction as a people. For me "Rising" comments on the state of affairs currently moving us in a "strange" direction. The music is dark, scratchy, loud, searching for direction and tenderness. It seems to contain a gurgle of hope beneath and between the Rage! and the Grief! I would own and recommend this CD for the song "Revelations" alone. It would make a great Christmas card to those you love. I play it when I need to pause and re-energize myself. A good self-help mantra that speaks wisely and to the point. I sometimes wonder why people beat Yoko over the head, both personally and as an artist. Her personal life is none of our business. If you don't like her music don't play it. I personally look forward to more music from Yoko. After hearing the "Imagine" bonus track on "StarPeace" I would very much like to see a live CD.

I hadn't played this album/CD in a long time, despite my love of Yoko's music. So I finally broke it out again, and it's awesome. Yoko was asked to compose some songs for a play called Hiroshima. Memories of the bombing and the war (Yoko lived through the Allied bombing of WWII, and the scars are still there) inspired her to compose an entire album. It was her first CD in quite some time (almost 10 years), but she didn't miss one beat. She sounds as fresh and as engaged as she did with her early work with John. This is one of her finest works, a scarred, scary, but ultimately human portrait of our world. I especially like New York Woman, the brilliant, deeply sad Turned the Corner (with a dark, great vocal by Yoko), the cathartic I'm Dying (which is reminiscent of Don't Worry, Kyoko), the epic title track, and the sweet, sincere finale Revelations. Sean Ono Lennon's band, IMA, backs her very well, with some really powerful bass and crazy guitar (especially on the track I'm Dying). This is essential Yoko, another phenomenal recording from a phenomenal, grossly maligned woman.

this album is worth the money just for track 11 at 10 minutes and 54 seconds, when Yoko, entranced in a fit of rage, despair, and frustration belts out the title of this gorgeously painful album, and sounds like no other human being on earth. the album is rife with such ethereal sounds and tribal, basic emotions. the epic title track is one of all time favorite art pieces. make no mistake, yoko is first and foremost an Artist, and sometimes she likes to put her art to music. this is her musical art, and if you have the courage to purchase it and truly LISTEN to it, it has the power to change your life.

Somedays this lady scares me to death but other days she's kinda ok. This cd ain't too bad at all. Definitely worth a listen or 2. I ordered it used off amazon and don't feel like it was a bad purchase. Hey, it's better than listening to 95% of the new stuff out there these days.

And by the way, she didn't break up the beatles - so just drop that judgement.

I have followed Ms. Ono since I first discovered her in the 1970's through her collaborations with John Lennon. My favorite album until now being "Approximately Infinite Universe (1975)." Although my new favorite is "Between My Head and the Sky" (2009), "Rising" is a close second or third. I am impressed with son Sean Lennon's production of Ms. Ono's songs. Without Yoko Ono, we (arguably) would not have Bjork, the B52's, PJ Harvey, or the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. Anyway, this album is not only unique, but beautiful!

Many alternative rock artists have credited Yoko Ono as an inspiration to their own music. On this, her first album since 1985's 'Starpeace', we find Yoko, along with her son Sean's band Ima, returning to her roots as the First Lady of the Avant-Gard or as she is now called "Granny Grunge". When it was first released, many people were anxious to see how the woman who had unwittingly "started it all" would fair in a world where her music is not as "Outlandish" as once considered.

For the most part, 'Rising' is a good album, but it starts off solid, then drifts by the second half. The album's two main songs "Talking to the Universe" and "Ask the Dragon" were both club favorites in other countries, but I have yet to hear them get any play here in the states, with the exception of "Talking to the Universe" appearing on the Yoko episode of "Mad About You". These songs are featured in remixed forms on the enhanced cd 'Rising Mixes'. There are other fine moments on the album, but as stated earlier, by the middle of side two (if you have the cassette) the focus starts to drift.

The album's title track, a 16+ minute freeform piece gets tiresome after the first 3 minutes (and this is coming from a hard core Yoko Fan!), I would have gladly traded this song for 5 more "New York Woman"s. Also the next two songs, "Goodbye My Love", and "Revelations" pale in comparison to the similar themed "Goodbye Sadness" from 'Season of Glass' and "Rainbow Revelation" from 'Starpeace'.

For those looking for the Yoko of the Plastic Ono Band era, this album offers the 90's answers to "Why" and "Why Not" in the form of the head banger rhythms of "I'm Dying" and the beautifully harmonic "Kurushi". If you are looking for a more alternative sound, check out "New York Woman" or the reflective "Turned the Corner".

I have to say the oddest moment (this doesn't however make it bad) lies in the song "Will I", in which Yoko contemplates her own immortality over the sound of a ticking clock. I would say this piece is reminiscent of Laurie Anderson, but Yoko came first! It is in the artsy vain of her 'Fly' album and could have easily fell into catagory with pieces like "Mind Holes" or "Don't Count the Waves".

Also included on this album are two songs from Yoko's musical 'New York Rock'. Featured here are the album's opening track "Warzone" and the somber "Where Do We Go from Here". The latter showcases Yoko's trademark little girl voice, the former, a more freeform piece than it's NYR version. Missing from the album is the Yoko/Paul McCartney collaboration "Hiroshima Sky is Always Blue"