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William D Drake Drama Linda Draper |
Dream Theater Dreamworld Dresden Dolls |
Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger/Trinity Minnie Driver Droids |
Joe Droukas Drown Druid |
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Melancholy World EP (2002, 9.32) ****/TT½Melancholy WorldLarge Life Freedom and Love |
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William D Drake (Bill to his friends) is one of Cardiacs' more celebrated and prolific ex-members, having been involved in several different projects since he left the band in the early '90s. Strangely, I only recently discovered that his first solo release was 2002's Melancholy World EP, sounding like, well, like Bill Drake, really, with an almost pre-war feel to some of the melodies, Bill's sonorous baritone sounding little like anyone else (in a good way, Bill). The title track's probably the best track here, as you'd expect of an EP, but all three are worth hearing for anyone with even a passing interest in Cardiacs and its offshoots.
Part of the reason it's strange it's taken me so long to learn of this release's existence is that I believe that's my Mellotron providing the major flute, string and choir parts on the title track and the strings on the brief Freedom And Love. Bill asked me if I might be able to bring it down to his place in South London back in 2000 or 2001, which I duly did, although it managed to break down in his front room, leading to a frantic out-of-hours call to Mellotron HQ. Having got it working, Bill recorded some parts using all three sounds on my main tape frame, before several of us went out for dinner in a Polish ex-servicemen's club. As you do. That was the last I heard of it until recently, having assumed he'd never used them. Well, here they are and very nice they sound, too. Cardiacs fan? Buy this.
See: Samples etc. | Cardiacs | Nervous
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Drama (1972, 41.34) ***/½Dreamed I Was the PresidentI'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man No Doctor Melodrama Smile or Yell Tell the World I'm Coming Brains or Not Give Up and Go |
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Drama were a Dutch vaguely-progressive one-off, whose eponymous 1972 album isn't quite sure what it wants to be when it grows up, mixing straightforward rock (opener Dreamed I Was The President), dodgy blues (I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man) and pleasant, if rather unadventurous prog (No Doctor, Melodrama, Brains Or Not) into an amorphous stew of average early '70s rock. That makes it sound worse than it is; their lack of focus (or desire not to be pigeonholed) makes for an overly-eclectic record, in a mainstream-ish kind of way, if that makes any sense. Dreamed I Was The President is probably the best thing here, Hoochie Coochie Man the worst, until you get onto the CD's bonus tracks, where you'll find the horrible glam-pop of Mary's Mamma, also hated by the band.
Keys man Ulli Grün adds Mellotron cellos and strings to Melodrama, making one of the better tracks on a very ordinary album slightly better. This is available on CD, but you'd have to be a pretty dedicated fan of Euro nearly-prog to want to shell out good money to hear a couple of passable tracks; barely scrapes three stars.
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One Two Three Four (2005, 43.31) ***/T |
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| Super Zero Big Blue Sky Baby Inchworm The Broken Muzzle Needlessly Jezebel Parasite Seven Black Crows |
Lifeboat The Sleeping Giant Candle Opera One Two Three Four |
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Linda Draper's fourth album, One Two Three Four (is that an implied Ramones tribute from a fellow New Yorker?), is probably best described as folk, or maybe singer-songwriter, although it seems to lack a certain something that we've come to expect from those areas of music. The songs may be better than they first seem, but giving this the several plays it may need to appreciate it properly is, sadly, beyond the scope of this very busy webmaster. Any single track taken at random sounds reasonably good, but taken as a whole, the album quickly palls, I'm afraid to say.
Nobody seems to be credited, but given that the legendary Kramer (a previous Mellotron user) produces, it seems likely that it's him playing what appear to be polyphonic Mellotron flutes on The Broken Muzzle, although the choirs in Lifeboat sound either real or sample-generated. Overall, a passable album, but despite its sensible length, Draper's voice grows monotonous after a while and the bulk of her songwriting isn't really up to par. Heard worse, but definitely heard better.
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Falling Into Infinity (1997, 78.20) ***/T½ |
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| New Millennium You Not Me Peruvian Skies Hollow Years Burning My Soul Hell's Kitchen Lines in the Sand Take Away My Pain |
Just Let Me Breathe Anna Lee Trial of Tears It's Raining Deep in Heaven The Wasteland |
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The Making of Falling Into Infinity (1997, 77.04) ***/T |
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| New Millennium Basic Tracks Piano, Acoustic Guitar, Stick and 7-string Guitar Overdubs You Not Me Basic Tracks Strings, Piano, Vocals and Key Overdubs Peruvian Skies Basic Tracks Rhodes, Mellotron, Acoustic Guitar and Vocals Overdubs Hollow Years Basic Tracks Acoustic, Edge and Classical Guitar and Vocals Overdubs Burning My Soul Basic Tracks Guitar, Key, Vocals, Talk Box and Whisper Overdubs Hell's Kitchen Writing the Finale |
Lines in the Sand Intro, Key, Piano and String Overdubs Bass, Guitar, Synth and Vocal Overdubs Doug Pinnick Vocals Take Away My Pain Alternate Take Basic Tracks Space Guitar, Hawaiian Keys, Heavy Keys and Vocal Overdubs Just Let Me Breathe Basic Tracks Feedback and Rhythm Guitars, Lead Guitar and Keys, Vocal Overdubs Anna Lee Derek Noodling At The Piano Basic Tracks Mellotron, Acoustic and Leslie Guitars, Slide Guitar Overdubs Trial of Tears Basic Tracks Lead Guitar, Bass, Acoustic Guitar and Piano Overdubs The End (?) |
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Dream Theater burst on to the scene at the end of the '80s, inventing modern 'progressive metal' in the process; many bands had mixed the two genres in the past, but DT discovered a particular combination of influences that caught the ears of large numbers of fans from both camps. Somewhere between Yes, Rush, Metallica and anything involving Steve Vai, they sounded, at least for a while, fresh, exciting and contemporary. Their debut, When Dream and Day Unite (***) was rather formless, but they followed up with one of their best albums, Images and Words (****), containing several concert favourites.
Falling Into Infinity, their fourth full studio album, was seen by many to be their attempt to 'go mainstream', although there seems to be little audible evidence to back this up. It was their second keyboard player Derek Sherinian's only full album with the band and he surprised quite a few people by his fairly retro approach to his sound; loads of Hammond, some analogue-type synth sounds and Mellotron on a couple of tracks. The music is typical Dream Theater, though; too much double-kick drumming, too much pseudo-Metallica riffing and too many pseudo-Vai solos. Peruvian Skies features a little Mellotron strings, but nothing you couldn't live without, to be honest, while Anna Lee is a bit of a piano ballad if truth be told; this is probably one of the tracks that's given the album its strange 'commercial' reputation. More strings on the track, but it's still a bit inessential, I'm afraid.
The band have gained a reputation for multiple 'fan club' releases, although I believe they're available to anyone who orders them from their website. Alongside rather pointless and doubtless metallified live recreations of famous albums (Dark Side of the Moon, Made in Japan, The Number of the Beast etc.) are a slew of demos, 'making ofs' and the like, including The Making of Falling Into Infinity, made available to fan club members at the end of that year. The full-length disc sounds like snapshots of mixing and overdub sessions, individual tracks dropping in and out of brief snippets of the album's thirteen songs. No, it isn't a 'regular listen', but yes, it is a fascinating document of the album's genesis for über-fans, highlighting otherwise hard-to-hear highlights like King's X's incomparable Doug Pinnick's guest vocals on Lines In The Sand or, of course, Sherinian's Mellotron work. You can now quite clearly hear obviously real string section and flute parts in preparation for Peruvian Skies and a briefer strings part on Anna Lee, which at the very least seem to verify that they used a real machine.
See: Samples etc. | Transatlantic
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On Flight to the Light (1980, 38.09) **½/½Ways of LoveBeneath Silence and Storm Part 1 Part 2 Summerdays Dreamworld's Symphony a) Introduction b) Between Trees and Oiseaux c) Un Rêve Se Réalisé d) Endless Tenderness |
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Dreamworld were the duo of Klaus and Rolf Fichter, who released the seminal Meditation Mass as Yatha Sidra in 1972. Unfortunately, 1980's On Flight to the Light is rather less seminal, being a rather undistinguished mélange of EM, prog and soft rock, the latter taking the lion's share of the album's needle-time. It has its moments, not least the piano section in Beneath Silence And Storm, but the bulk of the side-long Dreamworld's Symphony is as dull as ditchwater; as an attempt to recreate their earlier artistic success, it falls flat as a pancake.
Rolf plays Mellotron, but only just, with some distant, reverbed choirs on opener Ways Of Love, so we haven't even got that to cheer us up. Amazingly, this has been available on CD, although I believe the Spalax label disappeared some years ago now. Don't worry; you're not missing much.
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Yes, Virginia... (2006, 55.16) ***½/½ |
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| Sex Changes Backstabber Modern Moonlight My Alcoholic Friends Delilah Dirty Business First Orgasm |
Mrs. O. Shores of California Necessary Evil Mandy Goes to Med School Me & the Minibar Sing |
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No, Virginia... (2008, recorded 2003-8, 48.42) ***½/T |
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| Dear Jenny Night Reconnaissance The Mouse and the Model Ultima Esperanza The Gardener Lonesome Organist Rapes Page-Turner Sorry Bunch Pretty in Pink |
The Kill The Sheep Song Boston |
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Although ostensibly the duo of Amanda 'ex-spouse of Neil Gaiman' Palmer (songs, bats-in-her-belfry vocals, theatrical piano work) and Brian Viglione (drums, everything else), The Dresden Dolls are pretty much Amanda Palmer's solo project, it seems. Their second (and, to date, last 'proper') studio album, Yes, Virginia... is fairly startling; it vaguely reminds me of some awful '60s piano cabaret stuff I've heard, except it's good. Really good. The vocals/piano/bass-drums sound that informs the bulk of the record sounds like a female Brecht on speed, making a sound that I can almost guarantee you haven't heard before. If the album has a fault, it's that fifty-five minutes is a long time when there's little stylistic divergence, but that's nit-picking, really. Palmer plays near-subliminal Mellotron strings on closer Sing, but if the album's sound wasn't already so sparse, you probably wouldn't hear it at all.
Two years later, a companion album appeared, No, Virginia..., consisting of outtakes, b-sides and a handful of older, but newly-recorded tracks. The Gardener, Lonesome Organist Rapes Page-Turner, The Kill and Boston are b-sides, The Mouse And The Model's a demo and Pretty In Pink's a cover of The Psychedelic Furs' classic (it says here), leaving the rest as the early 2008 recordings. Musically, it's similar to its parent album, unsurprisingly, several of its tracks only being absent from that release due to 'issues with the album's flow', apparently. Best track? Matter of opinion, of course, but Lonesome Organist Rapes Page-Turner tears along at a cracking pace and features a particularly twisted set of lyrics. Sean Slade produces the new tracks and plays (Allaire Studio's?) Mellotron flutes on Ultima Esperanza, more audibly than Amanda's performance on Yes, Virginia..., but hardly anything to set the world alight.
See: 8in8
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7" (1968) ***½/TT½ I am a Lonesome Hobo A Kind of Love in |
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7" (1968) ****/TTT This Wheel's on Fire Black Cat |
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7" (1968) ***½/TT Road to Cairo Shadows of You |
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Given that Auger was the backbone of The Trinity, I always feel they should file under his name, but this is how they were known, so this is where you find 'em. I Am A Lonesome Hobo is probably fairly typical of their bluesy/jazzy style, although This Wheel's On Fire (Dylan, of course, as is I Am A Lonesome Hobo) and Road To Cairo (David Ackles) have a more mainstream sound, at least by late-'60s standards.
I don't know if Auger used Mellotron on anything else around this period; there certainly wasn't any on the compilation I heard, but that may well not have been definitive, so it's hard to tell. Anyway, I Am A Lonesome Hobo has a Mellotron flute melody and pitchbent string chords, although you can see why it wasn't a hit. This Wheel's On Fire's a fantastic performance (try to forget the Ab Fab connection, Brit readers), starting with Mellotron strings and piano, organ coming in on the chorus, which is where you finally stylistically spot the song's author, while Road To Cairo is more of a ballad featuring Julie Driscoll's great jazz voice and more of those Mellotron strings (MkII, of course). So; three excellent tracks, good Mellotron throughout, worth finding on a compilation.
See: Brian Auger Trinity/Oblivion Express
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Everything I've Got in My Pocket (2004, 46.25) **½/½ |
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| Everything I've Got in My Pocket Invisible Girl Fast as You Can Wire Home Deeper Water So Well Hungry Heart |
Down Yellow Eyes Ruby Adeline |
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Seastories (2007, 51.56) **½/T |
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| Stars & Satellites Sorry Baby Beloved Cold Dark River Mockingbird How to Be Good King Without a Queen Mary |
Lakewater Hair London Skies Coming Back to Life Love is Love |
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British actress Amelia "Minnie" Driver kicked off her recording career in her early thirties, producing the laid-back modern singer-songwriter fare of Everything I've Got in My Pocket in 2004. It's one of those fairly inoffensive albums that doesn't actually really say anything much at all, while avoiding the intense irritation of many of its contemporaries; while Driver has a pleasant voice, the whole affair ends up being a little too unassuming. The countryish pedal steel on Fast As You Can, Home and Yellow Eyes is the album's chief instrumental signature, regaining some sort of balance from the sampled beats prevalent on a few too many songs. Both Mellotron (Marc Dauer) and Chamberlin (Rami Jaffee) on the album, with what sounds like solo violin (viola?) on the opening title track and Down, some sort of generalised background string wash on So Well and nothing audible at all on Yellow Eyes, which all adds up to very little, to be honest.
Three years on and Driver's second album, Seastories, isn't dissimilar to her first, although the songs may be a touch better. It's still more a country album than anything else, though done well enough not to offend, with her 'Midatlantic' accent sounding sufficiently far from the Deep South to avoid accusations of Nashvillisms. Just Jaffee on Chamby this time round, with exceedingly background strings on How To Be Good and much more obvious ones on London Skies, but nothing to get too excited about.
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Star Peace (1978, 32.04) ***½/TT½(Do You Have) the Force - part 1(Do You Have) the Force - part 2 Interspace Tchoung Fou Be Happy - part 2 Be Happy - part 1 Shanti Dance - part 1 Shanti Dance - part 2 Renaissance de l'Amour |
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Like several similar (principally French) late '70s synth/space disco acts, Yves Hayet's Droids cashed in heavily on the Star Wars boom, amusingly titling their lone 1978 release (including the previous year's hit (Do You Have) The Force) Star Peace. It's the kind of album that no self-respecting music lover would've been seen dead with at the time, which has, in the way of things, slowly gained a measure of respect for its superb musicianship, memorable instrumentals and for being stuffed to bursting with analogue synths, top tracks including (Do You Have) The Force, both parts of Be Happy and lengthy closer Renaissance De L'Amour.
Although Hayet programmed the sequencers, Richard Lornac played the album's hands-on keyboard parts, including stacks of Clavinet and, of course, Mellotron on several tracks, with what sounds like male choir on part 1 of (Do You Have) The Force, both parts (in reverse order) of Be Happy and Renaissance De L'Amour. Amazingly, this is actually available again, on Cherry Red; I'm not sure I can recommend it for its gloomy Mellotron work, but anyone who loved Space, or even Jean Michel Jarre, stands a good chance of enjoying this, too.
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Shadowboxing (1975, 32.44) **/TTThe Writing on the WallOutlaw The Sweetest One Sleep with One Eye Open Shadowboxing in the Rain Li-O-Me Hold on to Me Girl Tailfeather |
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Joe Droukas seems to be one of those musicians who's known more to his peers than the public at large, which is one way of saying, "I know next to nothing about this guy". He's written songs for the great and the good, but it looks like his solo career never really got off the ground; 1975's Shadowboxing was his second and last album until a recent release. It's pretty typical of its time, I have to say; middling pop/rock with a New York edge, although when you consider that The Ramones were playing CBGBs the same year... The album occasionally picks up a bit - Outlaw is slightly ballsier than most of its songs - but overall, this is bland, mid-'70s singer-songwriter fare, where the 'songs' are presumably supposed to exist outside their arrangements. Guess what: they don't.
Ken Ascher (John Lennon, multiple sessions) plays keyboards, including an unspecified tape-replay instrument, probably a Mellotron, with pseudo-orchestral strings on all the highlighted tracks above, probably at their best on opener The Writing On The Wall (sample lyric: "Oh, Edgar Allan Poe, I never read your books, I never took a look...". Pure poetry). Surprisingly, maybe, this is available on CD, although at under thirty-three minutes, with no bonuses, never mind a 2-on-1, I'd hardly say it was good value for money, even if you like his style. Decent, if slightly subdued Mellotron use, though, so the album has one saving grace, at least.
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Product of a Two Faced World (1998, 50.17) *½/T |
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| You Never Listened The Day I Walked Away 1605 (for My Suffering) Kerosene Tired of Living Like This Alone in a Dirty World Redial My Private War |
Need This Need The Dirtiest Hand Two Faced You Monster |
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Oh God: nu-metal. Drown formed in the late '80s as Yesterday's Tear (and you thought Drown was bad), going on to a chequered career, being signed, dropped and signed again, never quite breaking through to a wider audience. Their second and last second album, 1998's Product of a Two Faced World, was recorded for Geffen a couple of years earlier, before the label dropped them for being 'too heavy' or somesuch. Personally, I'd have dropped them for being 'too shit'; vocalist/mainman Lauren Boquette (yeah, it's a bloke) desperately wants be James Hetfield, while the band do all the right industrial/nu-metal moves, all to very little effect whatsoever. Enormously angry, yet strangely toothless.
Duke Decter plays Mellotron, with faint strings on Alone In A Dirty World and a more upfront part, plus cellos on Monster, neither of which make this crummy album any more listenable. Tosh, and noisy tosh at that.
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Toward the Sun (1975, 47.37) ***½/TTTTTVoicesRemembering Theme Toward the Sun Red Carpet for an Autumn Dawn of Evening Shangri-La |
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As legend has it, Druid won their two-album deal with EMI in a competition and funnily enough, recorded precisely that number of records before being dropped. They were also championed by '70s UK music show The Old Grey Whistle Test's 'Whispering' Bob Harris, who also produced their first album. Druid specialised in laid-back melodic progressive rock with a distinct Yes influence (unusual for a British band); extremely pleasant, but they were never really going to be first division.
I'm afraid to say I was under the impression that Toward the Sun was a dullard of an album; I had a vague memory of a fairly up-and-at-it opening track, then a long slow decline to the end. Wrong. Again. The material is good, if not great, but Andrew McCrorie-Shand's Mellotron use on the album is intense. Great swathes of strings layered over everything in sight, completely and gloriously ignoring the 'less is more' maxim. Given how long I've owned a copy of this, I was completely taken aback by just how full-on the Mellotron is. Top marks, chaps.
Now, until recently I've been under the impression that their second album, Fluid Druid (***), also contained Mellotron, but I've just been informed by no lesser a personage than McCrorie-Shand himself that the 'Mellotron' on the album is actually 'real' instruments arranged to sound like a Mellotron! Aaargh! Anyway, the album is generally not as good as their debut and chances are that you're going to find them on the BGO 2-disc set, so you'll get it whether you want it or not. So, all in all, number one's a must, number two (now irrelevant to this site) isn't. If you find the double CD cheap, buy it anyway.
Amusing note: McCrorie-Shand now works as a composer for the BBC; among his works is the theme music for bizarre druggy cult show Teletubbies. Oh, is it a kids' programme? Sorry, my mistake. Anyway, a far cry from Dawn Of Evening, eh?! On a related note, Phil tells me that another kids' programme with which McCrorie-Shand is associated, Rosie & Jim, has been hosted since soon after its inception by Druid's old bassist, Neil Brewer. "Old-school tie, or what?", says Phil.
