Customer Reviews

Tilt

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

You have to have an open mind to sit through this album. It is very distubing and I would not listen to this on my personal stereo late at night. This is challenging in the extreme and not for the faint-hearted

Having said that, this is a work of such genius and beauty that, to me, it is like opera. Here is a man who can sing anything - and proves it on this album.

My advice to everyone who wants to know about this album and wonders if there is anything similar to it, is to ignore all his early albums. I listened earlier to "Boy Child" - the compilation of Scott's music from 67 to 70. It's a magnificent collection from his first six albums, but this is nothing like that - the music on "Boy Child" and "Tilt" could not be further away from each other, they're light years apart.

To have any clue about what to expect musically and lyrically here, you might listen to the last Walker Brothers album - "Nite Flights" - and Scott's previous release "Climate Of Hunter". Even then, you'll put this on your stereo and listen in wonderment and disbelief.

You can't categorise this music, you can't sing along to it - you just listen to it and marvel at it's originality and it's brilliance. The musicianship is magnificent and simple and the strings, in all of this albums oddness, stand out beautifully.

A distubing work of genius. As others have said, you can't accuse of Scott Walker of selling out, of writing to get hit records.

The bad news is that there has been nothing from Scott since this album - 9 years of nothing, although I am ever optimistic that there is another album in him. The further bad news (for other writers, that is) is that most of them could not write material of this massive quality even in their dreams (or their nightmares).

This is immense in the extreme. A strange but glorious masterpiece.

"Tilt" is the most recent CD from reclusive genius Scott Walker, best known as lead singer for 60s pop sensations, The Walker Brothers. I don't know much about the Walker Brothers; they were before my time. But Walker Brothers fans should beware. "Tilt" is about as far away from frothy pop as it is possible to get. I guess the transition would be the equivalent of Rickey Martin suddenly opting out of the Top 40 to join a music concrete ensemble.

"Tilt" is difficult to slot into any neat category; it defies categorization. But if I were pressed to make comparisons, I would say that parts of it remind me of the very early 4AD era Associates, with Walker's voice having the same emotive soar as the late Billy Mackenzie. In other parts, "Tilt" calls up Colin Newman's (Wire) early solo work or Bowie circa "Low".

"Tilt" lives up to its name being subject to sudden angular shifts in mood. Lush orchestral passages (with a real symphony) dissolve into harsher, disjointed, angular runs before returning back to a soundtrack-like dreaminess. Cuts that especially stood out are "Farmer in the City" and the title track.

The more I listen to it, the more I can say that "Tilt" is work of singular breadth and vision, almost breathtakingly so. When others with his past would be content playing Las Vegas lounges, Walker has instead carved out a distinct and bleakly romantic vision., eschewing all concessions to commercial success and successfully carving out a distinct musical territory he alone occupies.

I'm enthralled by this magnificent CD. A masterpiece of contemporary music, totally unclassifiable, unique in its beauty and magic. The intricacy of these compositions is astounding, with intriguing instrumentation, some lush, some loud/crashing, but all knit together with riveting drama and passion.

The meaning of the lyrics, or are they poems?...or perhaps a script ?...are incomprehensible to me, but I "feel" them in the way that they're sung. Charged with emotion, his expressive voice conveys more than words could ever say. A dark inner/outer journey to his/our world of alienation.

This is challenging music. Scott said about this recording: "I worked hard at it and they (his listeners) should work at it as well. More and more I think there are people around who'll do that". So if you're willing to go down the path Scott made, put this CD on late at night, turn off the lights, and explore it...it's a wonderful voyage.

"Tilt" is one of those very few albums that changes the way the listener connects with music. Before pressing the Play button, conventional ideas about song structure and melody must be scrapped: you are entering a horrifying landscape that is the aural equivalent of a nightmare in which you try to scream, but can't. It's the sound of fever, bottles shaking on tables, bugs and the vertigo rumble of an impending storm. Like Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, it's the kind of musical turning point that makes all your previous favourites seem somehow different. Scott Walker has always marched to his own drummer, but this time he has fired the whole band. A courageous, trailblazing masterpiece.

Some reviewers have pointed to the difference between Scotts earlier records and this. However I think his records have always been slightly ominous and soundscapey. Listen to for instance "Such A Small Love" from "Scott", it's really not that different. It's more like he has been working at refining that sound and cutting away the fat and has now ended up with this more minimalistic music. Granted the songs doesn't follow conventional song forms, but that doesn't mean they are formless, it's just different structures. As mentioned one of the songs is dedicated to Pasolini and a lot of the songs are like little movies, just as the sounds also reminds of the same austerity, that you might find in a Pasolini movie. Of course some people might complain, that it isn't pretty like his old records, however I find that exactly because he seems to scrap conventional song forms and follow his own ideas, it makes this a very inspiring and liberating record.

There is no other album like "Tilt." Imagine Jack Jones or Tony Bennett collaborating with Laurie Anderson and the London Philharmonic Orchestra on a reinterpretation of Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" with additional lyrics by Nico, and you'll have a vague idea.

Admittedly, "Tilt" is not for everyone, not even for all fans of Scott Walker's earlier, idiosyncratic chamber pop. But it's one of the few albums released in the last ten years that makes me want to do what I used to do when I was a kid - put a record on the stereo, turn down the lights, and sit back with my eyes closed and listen.

I have two comments for the previous reviewer: 1) If you thought Walker's vocals were indistinguishable, clean out your ears or get a better stereo; and 2) You heard this on the radio?!? Sorry, but I have a hard time believing that one. I'd venture that there are maybe two or three independent radio stations in the entire country adventurous enough to play even the most "accessible" cuts from "Tilt," and if you were a listener of one of those stations you'd probably have a better understanding of music. When and on what station did you hear "Tilt?"

A multitude of things have been said about this under-recognized album, but I shall simply state the mechanism of its personal resonance upon me.

This album knows exactly what to leave to the imagination; enough is revealed through voice and music to make one supremely uncomfortable and impressed, but enough space is left to make the terror far more personal than would explicit description. The dream-logic quality of the lyrics may cause many people to become frustrated or roll their eyes, but the more one listens, the more they are inhabited by unconcious significance behind Scott's frightened, impassioned wail. You shall be haunted and consumed by the empathy with which this album places you in the center of terrors inflicted by man against his own kind.

This is like the male equivalent of Nico.

I've really made a huge effort to try to appreciate Tilt, without success, alas! Walker has a very distinctive voice, but I find this particular aesthetic to be completely impenetrable. I am giving it 3 stars because it's obviously a well-conceived work of art, but I derive no enjoyment from listening to it. In fact, it induces a feeling of claustrophobia. Very bleak, lugubrious music and the obscure lyrics don't help either. Comparisons are difficult, but perhaps John Cale's "Music For A New Society" is similar in its uncompromising desolation and despair. These pieces at times serve as a good vehicle for Walker's voice, but purely on a sonic level as the lyrics convey no concrete meaning to me except a sense of unease and suffocation. I'm tempted to describe it as chamber music from hell, but perhaps instead it is a bizarre new direction in classical experimentalism.

It took me 11 years to decide to buy this album. When it was first released in 1995 i was unable to come to terms with the material from it i heard on alternative radio in The Netherlands (VPRO). I was 19 and no novice to 'difficult' music. About 5 or 6 years later i decided to give TILT another try. Still no connection; it seemed so pretentious i burst out laughing. When i started listening to opera a few years back, i regularly found myself singing: "Do i hear 21, 21, 21..." (from FARMER IN THE CITY) and i knew i was going to have to give TILT another try.

i was never unaware of Scott Walker (real name: Noel Scott Engel) as i knew of his past with the Walker Brothers, whose music never left a lasting impression on me. TILT was, however, my first experience of the music Walker made as a solo artist. Recently i bought both TILT and THE DRIFT (already released in Europe) together and i was stunned by what i failed to understand 11 years ago.

TILT is a timeless masterpiece of bleak, austere beauty. Although the music is the very definition of commercial suicide (not unlike Nico's THE MARBLE INDEX) coupled with lyrics that are nothing short of cryptic, TILT draws the interested listener back time and again to it's lackluster soundworld. Walker's musical language is mainly made up of ambient, modern classical music and industrial, the overall ambiance of the album defies categorisation. In a time of record companies looking for marketable music, TILT is certainly a statement of artistic freedom, lack of fear, courage and persistance.

As much as i would like to analyse the individual components to make it easier for the uninitiated listener, i feel at a loss when trying to do so, as if disecting a bacteria with a scalpel.

TILT is simply "the journey of a life".

Absolutely Pure....Haunting... Beautiful...not for the faint...Disturbing work of genius.....Soundsscapes of dark places one only fears to tread, yet unearthered Beauty that one dreams of ever to witness! But you must have an intellect, artistic mind and willingnees to disire such - not as I said not for the average person because it may be way over your head