Customer Reviews

I Was Young & I Needed the Money!

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

...i have listened to this several times and still dont know what to make of it...my reactions veer from "whutha'ell!?!" to "whutha'fu#k?!?"....enjoyable, omost pleasant one moment; jus plain noisy the next.
the best way for me to describe this is if you let a romper room full of hyperactive kids have access to some jazz records, a sampler, a recording studio and chocolate!!!
electronic-freejazz-on-acid...
even tho i gave it four stars i might give it only one tomorrow...and then five stars the day after that!
this is the armeggedon filtered thru the ghost of dizzy gillespie and medeski, martin & wood...
both calming and chaotic! (and now my head hurts!)....

Clifford Gilberto is has successfully bridged the gap between trip hop, durms and base, Brazilian funk and old time big band jazz and fused all of those elements into one terrific drill and base phenomenon that rivals and pushes over the best in the business. This is a fantastic cd. From haunting ballad like instrumental tracks like "Restless" to vynel driven hooks like "Kuia World" and "soulbath" to confused drill masterpieces like "I wish i was a motown star" and "earth v/s me" this CD is a rare gem that i feel is dangerously overlooked. Vocal samples are really cool and sometimes funny and lighten the mood of this cd a bit cuz theres plenty of seriousness to go around. Clifford Gilberto is an accomplished guitar player and that is evident in many tracks where you will find underlying organic guitar riffs and short melodies which are totally cool. Ever since i baought this CD (2 months ago) it hasent left my cd player. By releaseing the Cd Clifford Gilberto has placed himself right in front of the long line of musicinas who are pirme architects of futeristic music.

quite simply, this is one of the best albums i have ever owned. whenever i travel, or am somewhere stranded from music, i tend to take this album, miles davis' kind of blue, and amon tobin's permutation as a general rule. this album is my anthem, my lullaby, and my oil for mental coherency. ever had a whole album stuck in your head? find out what its like.

One never hears these tunes unless by accident, but every now and again I stumble across an artist who really moves me. Amon Tobin (Permutation) was the most recent, and now on his same label, Ninja Tune, comes an incredible CD by Clifford Gilberto called "I was Young and I Needed the Money". So, if you enjoy the breakbeat samples of musicians raising the bar on Drum and Bass and Acid Jazz, give this a spin.

This CD is amazing, possibly the single most diverse album i've come across in recent years, and it still manages to remain one coherent experience. i have listened to it tons of times and there are still new bits i keep discovering, both details in tracks and entire tracks, they just seem to change with the time of day and take on a completely different sound... i don't know where to start. i bought this on the back of the amazing tracks mr gilberto did on the XenCuts and i got even more than i expected! buy this, now!

When I heard this album first time I thought that Amon Tobin rented a garage and made another masterpiece. It's not just a mix of drum'n'bass and jazz, it is also music of contradictions - raw but sophisticated sound, serious with some humor tunes, electronic that sometimes sounds very organic, simple and complicated, cool and exciting... the list is long. Anyway, it is one of the best in this branch of electronic music Warmly recomended!

This is one of the best, most entertaining and innovative CDs I have ever heard in my life. This man is brilliant. Most of the songs are hyper, Jazzy, frenzied, sometimes hilarious. The songs are so quick-changing and varied that this must be LISTENED to, there are so many subtleties and nuances. One thing which facinated me - Gilberto demonstrates one of the important orgins of Drum-n-Bass - which is Be-Bop Jazz drum solos. He shows this by playing samples of old Max Roach or Tony Williams-eque Jazz drum solo, and then juxtaposing it or "answering" it with a frenzied drum-n-bass phrase, showing how similar they are.

If you only buy one CD this year, buy this one!

When I first heard this, I thought the same thing that a lot of people thought: "What's Amon Tobin doing with yet another pseudonym?" However, closer inspection reveals similar influences but rather different results. Whereas Amon Tobin's pieces, particularly his later works, seem to have an underlying structure and several repeated themes, Gilberto's seem chaotic and more improvisational, at times meshing to points of brilliance, and occasionally disintegrating to dullness or apparent randomness. I'm generally not a fan of the cartoon samples either. The one at the end of the title cut to me messes up a really neat ending.
My favorite pieces:
I Was Young And I Needed The Money - The title cut is a good intro to Gilberto's style. The heavy drum'n'bossa influence is strongly apparent here, and the choral theme that appears a few times is my favorite part. This song, or portions thereof, was also featured in an interesting indie short I saw on Atom Films called Black XXXMas (no, it's not porn).
Giant Jumps - This song starts off with the usual weird stuff, and then coalesces into an electronic take on a hot jazz session. There are definitely echoes of jazz classic "Giant Steps" in here.
Earth Vs Me - The intro to this song is just slamming junglesque noise, the intricacies of which you could explore for a good while. I found myself replaying the first minute of this song and listening to the transitions. Lovers of Squarepusher's "Come Now My Selecta" would dig the opening, but the flavor does change a bit and it mellows out to a pretty solid track with the typical Gilberto influences.
Soulbath - This song would be at home on any smooth jazz station, and goes full on into the jazz portion of his interests. The guitar and the steady beat make for a nod-your-head, drink-in-your-hand summer afternoon kind of track.
There are some other great tracks on here as well, but these are the standouts that I replay the most.
I give it 4 stars for originality and quality, I'm reserving the 5th star because I had negative feelings about a couple of tracks and other details.

Clifford Gilberto and his Rhythm Combination make their statement I WAS YOUNG AND I NEEDED THE MONEY! It's not a cry of desperation, but one of jazz freedom. "Restless" may start off like labelmates Cinematic Orchestra, but the tracks quickly mark their own territory. "Deliver the Weird" blends in some throttling beats that aren't at odds with the pure jazz aspects, while subsequent tracks, such as "I Was a Motown Star" up the rhythmic ante, edging into manic drum `n' bass. "A Different Forrest" allows for a melodic return, especially in the form of a sweet synth line at the beginning. Or some different flavor, "Kula World" contains some hints of Latin jazz, while "Skippy's First Samba Lesson," obviously has some Brazilian influences, though these are all subsumed under Gilberto's own aesthetics. The beautiful crazed jazz continues through to "Giant Jumps" and gets somewhat more fractured on "Concrete Cats." The title track goes back to the frenetic, kitchen sink approach (though the Looney Tunes samples might be superfluous). And tell me that "Ridiculo" couldn't be a lost µ-Ziq track. Funky and fascinating.

Squarepusher recently announced a new upcoming album, titled Just A Souvenir (out on Warp on October 27th, of 2008 - and already available via digital download on bleep). But on my first preview of the album, Tom Jenkinson seems to drift even further away from his original innovative broken beats and drill'n'bass, so dominated by the late 90s. Personally, I always applaud the efforts of an evolving artist, and Squarepusher deserves a whole separate hailing review (coming up next). But being nostalgic for that jazzy breaky genre, I dust off a copy of an overlooked album by Florian Schmitt, which cries out to be back in my rotations. Schmitt recorded only a single album for Ninja Tune back in 1998 under the lengthy pseudonym, The Clifford Gilberto Rhythm Combination. He also did a bunch of remixes later under Clifford Gilberto and his real name. But that was a decade ago, and since then, he's been pretty quiet. Nevertheless, the sound of his debut album, I Was Young And I Needed The Money, is fresh and upbeat, after all these years. I did not begin this write up with Jenkinson incidentally, though. Fans of Squarepusher, Amon Tobin, Cinematic Orchestra, µ-Ziq, and The Flashbulb will be absolutely delighted to hear the Schmitt's tracks for the first time, if they somehow missed the album when it first hit the streets. The sound fluctuates between melodic drum'n'bass (closer to a drilling jungle though, then a straight beat) and a jazzy trip-hoppy rhythms with Latin-flavored samples. The Gilberto reference in Schmitt's alias reveals his Brazilian jazz influence... maybe... His biography on Ninja Tune's site claims that he's "the unknown lovechild of Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz", but Schmitt brings to the table much more than the musical genius of aforementioned influential bossa nova artists. Guaranteed to liven up your mood and get you to bop your head. And seriously, if you haven't heard this one, get it! Too many favorite tracks on that one to list.