Green Velvet

Green Velvet

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 25, 2000)
• Original Release Date: April 25, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B00004S7KA
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #98,141 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Chicago's Curtis Jones (a.k.a. Cajmere and Green Velvet) is, by far, on of the top producers of house music in the world. In the mid-'90s, his self-run record labels, Cajual and Relief, spearheaded the continuing renaissance of the genre with distinctive tracks that delivered a powerful dance-floor rush and gave DJs a deep arsenal of guaranteed crowd pleasers. While his Cajmere tracks are upbeat vocal workouts, it's his work as Green Velvet that continues to fascinate and gain legions of new devotees. Jones sets his GV material on a bed of dark, relentless, dirty beats, while adding his own twisted vocal flourishes that are one part Gary Numan and one part Bauhaus. Each track has a distinct narrative (i.e., a tour of a night club or an imagined reincarnation as a drop of water); the results are both frightening and hilarious. Long out-of-print on vinyl, the new Green Velvet CD combines such "classics" as "Flash," "Leave My Body," and "Answering Machine" with more recent material, including the fantastic Giorgio Moroder-inspired drive of "Coitus." --David Prince

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Dark House Album, December 29, 2000

By	Brian (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

OK, I realize some people will not appreciate this, but this is an amazing compilation. You must remember that while this is released in 2000, some of the songs are very old. Flash, one of the more well known songs, was released on vinyl way back in 94 (I think it was 94 at least, maybe 93). Because dance music changes so quickly, some of these songs will sound a bit stale, but there are many many classics on this disc.

If you are looking for a more current sound, I highly suggest trying to find vinyl copies of Flash (Danny T/Timo Maas Mixes) or Answering Machine (Cevin Fisher Mix) that have the 2000 remixes. I'm not sure what mixes the maxi single has, so I can't recommend that. It may have all the newer mixes, but I'm not positive (I like the Danny T Prepare To Dub mix and dubs are usually the first to go off CD singles).

Green Velvet is also very very dark house. If that means nothing to you it is completely different sounding from the tribal/anthem/trance sound that's playing most of the time at clubs. The beats are hard and unforgiving. A lot of dance music is written off as generic; these songs went against the conventional sound and are completely creative, succeeding at making the dance floor move to a new sound.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ridiculously Good, August 15, 2001

By	Orphelius Q. Witherspoon (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

"Velvet, this is your landlord calling. I am calling to notify you that we are, uh... evicting you... we've been getting a lot of noise from your space recently, and, uh... the naked girls running down the hallway yesterday certainly didn't help." ~("Answering Machine")

This is one of the most refreshing, witty, hard, dark, creepy, funny, unrelenting electronic albums I have bought in a long time. Don't play this for your radio-fanatic friends, they'll be scared by Green Velvet's (a.k.a. Cajmere's) goofy voice. (Does anyone else hear the ghost of Slick Rick in here?) But if you're in the mood for something that stimulates your head and your toes at the same time, I can't think of anything better.

Like many, I was introduced to Green Velvet by the standout track "Flash" on Timo Maas's "Music for the Maases." Based on the strength of that track, and the cover art which features GV with a neon feather on his head, I bought this album. If you liked Flash, which is a romping, frolicking narrative through a club filled with "naughty" drug-takers, you're in for more. The beats here are dark and selfish. I can't tell you how many times I rewound the CD, asking myself, "Did he just *do* that with the track?"

While your body is uncontrollably contorting into a variety of positions, you can't help but notice Velvet's weird, weird lyrics. Most of them are rambling narratives on a particular subject, as found on "The Stalker", "Water Molecule" and "Abduction." "Land of the Lost," though it doesn't fit into that category, is one of my favorites. There are some great instrumental tracks here, too.

Velvet is one part stand-up comic and two parts hard, dark house producer of the century. I seriously reccomend this to almost any listener of electronic music.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This disc really grows on you, January 24, 2001

By	"littleoldme" (Fort Collins, CO United States) - See all my reviews

I bought this CD while in a Christmas-induced music buying spree not expecting a whole lot other than "Flash". However, I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of other good material on the disc, such as "Answering Machine", "The Stalker", "Land Of The Lost", "Water Molecule", and "The Red Light". The beats are minimal but catchy almost all the time, and the narratives that often show up are hilarious (and I do mean hilarious; "The Stalker" is literally laugh-out-loud funny in a disturbed sort of way!). Not everything is outstanding, but there's much more than "Flash" or "Answering Machine". If you liked either of those two, this is probably a good buy.