Customer Reviews

Seven Souls

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The aficionados of this album are a select crew and for some reason this hidden masterpiece has never become widely known. I heard it playing in a record store back when it had just been released and it instantly grabbed me; I had to own it. It's been with me ever since and has aged very well.

The music on this album is, in retrospect, almost startlingly ahead of its time, anticipating a variety of different sensibilities that became more fleshed-out in the 90s. A haunting, profoundly polished darkness glistens over the entire album. It achieves a high level of smoothness using "conventional" instruments and voices in combination with keyboards, rather than relying purely synth for such a tight sound as later artists would probably have done. In this sense, the music is a triumph of the outer limits of "analog" music, similar to some of the more polished work by artists working in the 80s such as Harold Blume, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, or David Byrne.

Burroughs' spoken word pieces are generally quite good, but the general problem with spoken word in music is that it often deters listeners from repeated listening because they think "I've heard it before." Or else they concentrate on the words to the exclusion of the music. Either approach would be a shame here, because the music deserves repeated listening. Fortunately, the spoken word overlays are not annoying upon repetition, are not overly intrusive, and are blended skillfully with the music.

Material explores some hard-to-define emotions and themes. There is a bit of the long, arduous, but beautiful voyage through the unknown here. The album retains a distinctiveness that has made it sound contemporary and not out-of-place at each listening over the past 16 years. Overall, highly recommended.

Take NY funk, add a layer of Moroccan soul, and top it off with a crunchy topping of Bill Burroughs, and you've got "Seven Souls." The rhythms of Sly Dunbar and Bill Laswell are slinky and cool, the airy Moroccan vocals and violins slice like razors, and the Voice carries us along on a journey to the Western Lands. The quest for immortality is the theme and it is never strayed from. Struggles more important than life and death are explored and questioned, leaving the listener to decide whether or not to pursue the prize. Highly recommended.

I remember the times quite well; nobody else did anything as creative or startling as this in 1989. And you could hear the ideas seeping out of this and into some of the more widely-heard college rock.

Herein, Laswell and his co-conspirators create lush soundscapes where hip-hop beats meet Middle Eastern instrumentation. East meets West and it grooves very nicely. This all becomes a backdrop for William Burroughs to recite readings over the top of. The music is state of the art and Burrough's narration quite memorable also.

Material has been an adventurous project band for Bill Laswell since the late 1970's. Seven Souls grabbed me at the time it was released quite strongly (mid eighties). It is still captivating today. I titled the name of this review with the title of the strongest potentially commercial track of the recording. It is a heavy beat track with much urban influence, which was not over done as the urban sounds often are today. On the rest of the recording you can hear much of the dark ambient influences effecting Bill in thoses days... but ALL the players are excellent musicians on this record! This record, with the addition of William Burroughs, makes it a keepsake for us "Space cadets". It has much to offer to an adventerous open ear. Excellent spin!

After listening to this album for years on cassette tape, I decided to finally buy a CD. It came with different cover art than the original; the original has the gold sun in a black block near the center--the new art shows heiroglyphs over a collage. When it arrived, I popped it in the player and was immediately EXTREMELY disappointed. This is not even a reissue! The playlist is different and is made up of mostly alternative versions and so-called "remixes" which seem to also be alternative takes. Whoever is responsible for this took an incredible, exciting and beautiful album and turned it into a boring, dreary piece of trash. It is absolute fraud to issue this under the same title with no disclaimer. The only clue is the playlist on the cover lists the first three songs as: (a dangerous road mix), (tim simenon mix), (remote control mix); but don't let that fool you--every track is different or has been altered from the original. All are inferior to the original. I am returning the CD to the seller as "Wrong Item Shipped". Hoping I can find a used copy of the original somewhere--till then I'll make do with the cassette.

Material (with William Burroughs) / Sever Souls:

This new disc has the new bonus tracks at the beginning of the CD but the last Seven tracks are exactly the same running time as the 1989 CD.

Some confusion has been created by faulty listing of running times on the original 1989 CD, which is sometimes listed as being very different than the accurate listing on the new disc.

The 1989 CD:
Listings of times on two key songs on the 1989 are wrong (I have checked it myself)

1- Ineffect (virtually the same time listed as new disc)
2- Seven Souls (virtually the same time listed as new disc)
3- Soul Killers (virtually the same time listed as new disc)

*4- The Western Lands --The 1989 CD lists the time as 6:54 but it is actually 6:17

5- Deliver (virtually the same time listed as new disc)
6- Equation (virtually the same time listed as new disc)

*7- The End Of Words --The 1989 CD lists the time as 5:06 but is actually 4:20

If there are any other differences between the old and new CD, I do not know of them (besides the extra tracks on the newer version).

One song was featured on the Sopranos. I've think it's out of print, but it's a very cool album. The product I ended up with was a preview CD which included extra tracks, which was fine. The best song is the title track. I feel this is the best Material album yet.