Customer Reviews

Shamballa

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

 

 

This is what free jazz was meant to be. A mind numbing explosion of mathematical chaos enclosed by the spirit drumming of Mr. William Hooker. This album can grow its own organic fruit, it has its own planetoid orbiting the universe in which manifests on listening. I cycle downtown with my headphones on, smelling the sweet night air, Hooker in my ear, Thurston on my tongue and Sharp in the gun. Thurston Moore is the devil. He can bleed a guitar dry and then some. His creative guitar noise compliments Hooker like a bread machine toasts a bagel. It all ends up blending in, like watercolors on sandpaper to form the heavenly spectrum that is **Shamballa**. Elliot Sharp can grow trees like a fractal when he pluck lucks away at his guitar/bass. He is the equation we seek to find the answer to the questions we are afraid to ask. Like a science experiment gone wrong, this free jazz movement dwells upon mutation after mutation, like karma, no like a new disease. An ice cream sundae type disease, the kind you skip school for. Yeah.

I loved this CD from the opening moment. It was one of the first I bought from the SY sideman and William Hooker (who I had seen in Seattle that night with Lee Ranaldo). Moore is his usual brilliant self, resonating perfectly with Hooker's textures, never out of sync. The Smith piece is less interesting.

i saw william hooker at the cooler in nyc, opening for unwound. a friend had reccommended them so i checked out their cd which is not much different from them live. i found alot of noise, nothing interesting and nothing worth mentioning. now, i love noise. i play guitar and love burying my head in my speaker while my guitar screams as if it is being destroyed but it all has to go somewhere. noise for noise sake is mindless.
william hooker is noise for what seems like noise sake. there is nothing but alot of senselss noise. i was very disappointed because i am a huge fan of thurston moore and his band sonic youth. on their album dirty, they have a song (#11) called on the strip. it is a standered rock song until about two thirds in where the drums drop off and in trademark SY, you get a great noise fest kind of thing which is made incredibale when they bring the noise to a melody and return back to the song's original format. amazing. if you ask me what each "song" has here that makes it different fromt the others, i could not tell you. what is most disturbing here is that there are two guitar players in elliot sharp and thurston moore and yet i can not make out any discerable style or distinct sound. it all sounds the same. it all sound like one long noise fest which might be cool but comes off as mindless, senseless and detracts from good art, which this could be if it was any good. unfortunately, either i missed the boat or they did. someone email me and explain me if i missed something.

milkboydanny@hotmail.com