Tales of Heaven & Hell [Enhanced, Original recording reissued]

Wendy Carlos (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 4, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced, Original recording reissued
• Label: East Side Digital
• ASIN: B00000DCVY
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,818 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #29 in Music > Classical > Instruments > Electronic > Computer

Track Listings

1. Transitional

2. Heaven Scent

3. Clockwork Black

4. City Of Temptation

5. Memories

6. Afterlife

7. Seraphim

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ink blot test album, January 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Tales of Heaven & Hell (Audio CD)

This new album of dark musical drama is magical and original, filled with vivid imagery, like a filmscore for your mind. If you want to hear something different, if you enjoy a creepy horror movie, or long flowing, beautiful themes, look no further. But like a Rorschack Test, I suspect "Tales" gives back pretty much what you bring to it, and some listeners will automatically see "sex" in every ink blot, where others see a butterfly.

To those who desire Carlos to be Bach and more Bach and nothing else ("we like your early movies, you know, the *funny* ones!"), better skip this one. The same subtleties are here as her famous Baroque arrangements: top-rate performances, ear-catching timbres and stereo soundscapes, and some truly lovely passages. But the music is mostly new (a portion is based on themes from her score to Kubrick's Clockwork Orange). Tales of Heaven and Hell is not for all tastes, but it is meaty, exotic and irresistible fare for the bored and the adventurous. Recommended.

A too-often bored music fan

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wendy Carlos's Best Work Yet, October 16, 1998

By 

S. Maxey (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tales of Heaven & Hell (Audio CD)

This is probably Wendy Carlos's most coherent and exciting recording. It brings together elements that she has been working on since "A Clockwork Orange"--a richer, more flexible and lifelike synthesized sound, alternative tunings, using music to explore primal themes. While in "Beauty in the Beast" and even "Switched on Bach 2000," the compostion/musical choices sometimes seemed secondary to exploring the alternate tunings, here the tunings are clearly in service to the musical ideas.

And though she pulls on rich and varied musical styles (a hint of Danny Elfman in the first cut, a whiff of Enigma in "Clockwork Black," a theme reminiscent of Bernard Hermann's movie score for "Obsession" in "Afterlife"), this is clearly one album, with an emotional, musical and dramatic through-line from first cut to last.

And, unlike many earlier Carlos compositions that seemed to drop a theme for a new one just when you were ready for it to be further developed, here themes are fully and richly developed.

Overall, this is an exciting new work from an artist who has been a pioneer in synthesized music from almost the inception, and from a composer whose angular works have never been played so well before.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars very nearly a masterpiece, March 21, 2000

By 

Sam Theiner (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tales of Heaven & Hell (Audio CD)

Tales lacks the sheer novelty of all the clangerous tones and tunings of beauty in the beast. . . but I think that's part of the point. This album is a somewhat more homogenous sound-world. Some previous reviewers have mentioned that the music sounds horror-movie cliched. . . well I think that, too, is part of the point. Carlos likes to plant her tongue firmly in cheek and play with convention in an artistic way- what's known as satire. Most Americans seem to have trouble digesting a serious work that is funny (and vice versa); this sort of thing is natural to Western Europeans, especially the English. As for Wendy's "lyrics," well, the same thing applies. I thought they were hilarious and perfectly set. It might seem negative to review an album simply by refuting previous reviews, so I'll leave by simply saying that this is beautiful, rich music, and is head and shoulders above any other electronic recorded music now being made. "Clockwork Black" is like a fun-house ride through horror-movie drama. "Afterlife" is, as Carlos states, more genuinely scary from an intellectual standpoint. The hair on the back of my neck did, as they say, stand on end. This album is a lighthearted look at evil, or, perhaps more bluntly, serious fun.