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Dude#1279435

Audioholic Spartan

Probably my favorite album of all-time. A Storm In Heaven (1993). This is the opening track. Produced by John Leckie who did the Stone Roses s/t amongst others. I love the apocalyptic feeling yet somehow peaceful, like ASIH. It's been pointed out it isn't sonically the best produced album, but I can't visualize what it might sound like so alas. I'd go more along the lines of guitarist Nick McCabe's vision and the "studio" accomplishments before giving them any big credit as live performers. Nick was going for turning the guitar into a synthesizer and using the technology. Apocalyptic, misty, even a whale-like call on one track, and also cavernous as the album cover suggests. I still sort of think of it as the blueprint for outer space but recognize that's not what they might have been going for. It's infinite to be whatever you wish. Even if as Nick said Leckie wasn't great with recording guitars, I think it was his editing or I assume so. Nick was playing and Leckie took the best bits. I remember years ago someone wanted to lay down money for Nick's backlog of stuff, but in hindsight I wonder. Now you have 20-30 minutes of it meandering. As a diehard fan it might have been cool but otherwise I don't know. Circa 1993-94. It was never quite the same after that. Popular opinions says 1997 with Bitter Sweet Symphony, but this was the one at it's most experimental but with song structure restraint. Maybe not as consistently strong as some others, but as an ethereal *experience* its peerless IMO. A funny bit is when Leckie was recording the band he'd go around switching there amp settings or whatever. When he wasn't looking Nick would switch his back LOL. Or when the band were getting drunk and high and finally like oh poop we gotta get this poop recorded and started running around setting up mics all over trying to capture the sound. I'll add more later.

Edit: especially on the outro "I could see the fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire." Insane. Never heard that before.
 
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Dude#1279435

Audioholic Spartan
As the first song of their first album, Star Sail fits perfectly to open a show " Hello it's me , are you there ? " Like a creature from out of space who saw human's behaviours, he just want throw the fire on Earth because Humanity doesn't deserve to go on this way.

I think this song is about being isolated from the world. Being in space is symbolic for being unsure of how things are supposed to be down on earth because it's all such a big confusing mess.
 
D

Dude#1279435

Audioholic Spartan

A beautiful mind or a beautiful body
I know which one I'm gonna end upon
You say you will but you never promised thoughts

A smile and a hand mix like water with sand
As far as you're concerned
A road and a sign I know which one catches my eyes

And I, thought I heard it for a while
Then it all came to me
Sometimes I just don't know I believe in

Don't you want to know when I suffer
It doesn't show
A smile and a hand mix like water with sand don't you know?

I was thinking about moving back home
I don't really need to live here
No no I didn't I could I'm sure I would if I knew that
I didn't I could I'm sure I would if I knew that

A smile and a hand mix like water with sand
As far as you're concerned
A beautiful mind or a beautiful body
I know which one, I'm gonna end upon end upon


This is their best song IMO. Misty, chamber sound with washes of guitar. Ethereal, dreamy. For years Stairway to Heaven was my fav, but I think this has replaced it.


Mark Lager
May 29, 2018

The Verve were a British band that were at the outset lumped into the shoegaze circle. They had all of the trappings of shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine--a strong reliance on guitar effects and other electronic devices that could alter the sound of the traditional rock instruments. The Verve, however, had something which made them superior. They had a wider range of influences. These influences (especially Krautrock) made them look to the stars rather than to their shoes and set them apart from the alternative music of their time.

Like the Hendrix Experience or Floyd, the Verve had a master guitarist as their epicenter--Nick McCabe. Rather than merely burying his guitar under studio generated noise as did Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine or countless other shoegazers, McCabe spent less time in simply hiding the guitar under layers of sounds and more time doing what was the hallmark of all great psychedelic music--bending the notes in new ways. David Gilmour is still renowned not because of his effects arsenal or technical proficiency but simply because of the slow, ponderous emotion that he could wring out of a few simple notes. Like Gilmour, McCabe did not focus on the riff or on noise, but on what can only be termed "washes" of sound that paint the backdrop of the songs while the rhythm section (the bass/drums) do what they do best--keep rhythm.

Another thing which set the Verve's debut LP A Storm in Heaven apart from their peers was, of course, their total defiance of genre. The Verve painted their songs not only with misty and intoxicating guitar washes but also with a breathtaking and inspiring array of various instruments, such as saxophones, trumpets, and flutes, which attested to their experimentation not only with jazz fusion but with atmosphere, in general.

A Storm in Heaven has a Zen/Taoist-tinged sense of beauty illustrated by the cavernous guitar of Nick McCabe, as well as the album art: a front cover with a womb like cave and a figure of rebirth and a back cover with an old man giving a peace sign in a cemetery.

A Storm in Heaven: darkness and illumination, silences and awakenings, oceanic rising and falling, journeys through inner and outer space.

A Storm in Heaven: a blurring of the lines between chaos and cosmos, between yin and yang, between a rock-solid rhythm section and an oceanic guitar of drifts and squalls. And lost in the center of this vortex is Richard Ashcroft.
 
panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
I think bitter sweet symphony is the only song I've ever heard by them. That was a LONG time ago.
 
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