Tim Buckley Series, #11: Tim Buckley- Live at The Troubadour 1969 (1994) MP3 & FLAC

"I've been driftin' like a dream out on the sea; I've been driftin' in between what used to be."

1969 was a pivotal year for Tim Buckley. While up to this point his studio albums had, for the most part, stayed within the Folk genre (although Happy Sad  had incorporated a much more Jazz-informed approach), nothing could have prepared his listeners for the radical transformation that was to unfold on Lorca  and Starsailor, recorded within a few weeks of each other, along with the more recognizable Blue Afternoon, in mid-1969. Nevertheless, Buckley had been exploring a more improvisational live approach since the previous year, as he desired to transcend the limited musical possibilities associated with the Folk and Folk-Rock genres, as well as to escape the label of "folksinger" he had been pigeon-holed with by both his record company and the fans of his recordings. Doing so would lead him out on a creative limb that, while almost completely alienating his fan-base and destroying his commercial viability as a recording artist, would produce some of the most innovative music of the late sixties, some of which belongs in the select company of improvisational albums such as Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.

Tim Buckley

Lee Underwood: "Although Tim was not well educated (a high school graduate), he was a very bright guy. He had a marvelous feel for language, for words and ways to use them, not as an acrobatic academician might, but as extensions of intimate, heartfelt emotion. The more he moved in the direction of free-form instrumental improvisation, the more he explored vocal and verbal improvisations too, spontaneously creating verses and sometimes whole songs on the spot, especially during the Lorca  and Starsailor  period." Live at the Troubadour 1969 catches Buckley at the height of this improvisational period, and with the exception of Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, stands as the best live Buckley recording sonically as well as musically. An obvious highlight is "I Had a Talk with My Woman," which manages to trump the beautiful studio version on Lorca, again proving that Buckley was at his best in a live setting. Wringing emotion out of every note while gliding along to Lee Underwood's jazzy guitar ruminations, Buckley pushes his multi-octave voice to its limits throughout the set, particularly on the epic "Nobody Walkin'," which is extended to sixteen minutes of improvisatory brilliance. Live at the Troubadour 1969 is essential because it captures Buckley in fine form during his most fertile and innovative period, favoring languidly impressionistic explorations over pop-song predictability.

The Associates- The Affectionate Punch (1980) / Fourth Drawer Down (1981) / The Affectionate Punch (1982) / Sulk (1982) / Perhaps (1985) / Glamour Chase (1989) / Wild and Lonely (1990) / Radio One Sessions (1994) MP3 & FLAC

"Don't be so sure of days in advance. They might never come, praise be to chance."

Originally calling themselves Mental Torture, vocalist Billy Mackenzie and multi-instrumentalist Alan Rankine formed what would eventually become The Associates in Dundee, Scotland in 1976, but it would take three years and a supreme act of hubris on the part of the young band to garner anything resembling commercial interest. This act came soon after the band's rechristening when Mackenzie and Rankine decided to record a cover of David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging," which they self-released in June 1979 despite the fact that Bowie's original version had just hit the U.K. top ten two months earlier. What could have just as easily permanently dampened The Associates' prospects for gaining exposure quickly turned into a coup, as their quirky stripped-down re-interpretation of Bowie's ironic foray into Post-Punk caught the attention of many, including the thin white duke himself. What quickly ensued was a recording contract with Friction Records and a string of singles that sonically set the band apart from most of their Post-Punk peers by demonstrating a masterful ability to assimilate an eclectic range of influences into a sound that, in managing to be both minimalistic and ornately melodramatic, was nothing if not highly distinctive. Billy Mackenzie: "I had my influences, like early Roxy Music, Sparks, the whole Philly sound and jazz as well. But there were also reasonable amounts of imaginative and surprise elements to the music. I am a very good technical player, so I would pick the chords and then Alan would work with them and embellish them within the chord structure, maybe with another chord that really didn't fit. It was more of a feel thing, but with Alan's musical expertise. So in that respect, I think what we were doing was fresh. And it really wasn't calculated."

Billy Mackenzie & Alan Rankine

Produced by Mike Hedges, who had previously worked with The Cure on Seventeen Seconds, The Associates' debut, the aptly-named The Affectionate Punch, proved to be a brilliant anomaly among early Post-Punk LPs due to Mackenzie's four-octave Scott Walker-meets-Russell Mael croon and Rankine's deceptively spare Hansa-period Eno-esque arrangements, which, taken together, helped create the blueprint for the much more commercially-minded and far less musically accomplished output of the New Romantic movement. This is why it was all the more ironic when, two years later, after signing with a major (WEA), Mackenzie and Rankine decided to remix and partially re-record the album, and in doing so, dressed The Affectionate Punch in the kind of glossy synth-pop textures (albeit still very dark) favored by the New Romantics. It was to be this direction that Mackenzie would continue to follow after Rankine exited the band in 1982 following the release of what is commonly considered The Associates' masterpiece, Sulk, an endlessly ambitious, brilliantly excessive tempest of an album that is arguably among the greatest forgotten gems of the eighties. The two-year interval between the release of their debut and the release of Sulk had seen The Associates take a very unconventional turn, as they issued a series of seven singles for WEA's indie offshoot, Situation Two, instead of releasing an album. Singles such as "White Car in Germany," "A Girl Named Property," and "Message Oblique Speech" (collected on Fourth Drawer Down) found the band further indulging their Berlin Trilogy fetish while pushing beyond the limits of Post-Punk, especially in terms of Mackenzie's acrobatic vocals and the experimental production, and collectively set the stage for what was supposed to be The Associates' jump to pop-stardom but turned out instead to be a very strange fifteen minutes at the top of the charts. Alan Rankine: "In the studio, we were obsessive to the point of manic [....] Everyday was like 19 hours of work. We only stopped when we'd run out of ideas. We knew it was going to sound dense. To us, holding back in the first verse or first chorus, we just thought, 'fuck that.' It's like having a wank and not coming: what's the point? It only lasts four minutes, It's not a symphony, let's just do the fucker. Here's the verse: full on. Here's the intro: full on. Here's the chorus: no difference. The only way you could make it go uphill was down to Bill's acrobatic vocals."

The finished product, the tellingly-titled Sulk, is probably one of the most emotionally and artistically daring albums to ever make an appearance at or near the top of the U.K. pop charts. While on the surface, Sulk utilizes the same type of synth-pop sheen that was applied to the remake of The Affectionate Punch, this is really the only concession it makes to, what almost certainly had to be, the pressures exerted on the band as a result of signing with a major such as WEA. Whereas expectations at the label were likely in the direction of The Associates joining the ranks of New Romantic money-makers such as Duran Duran and ABC, Sulk steadfastly refuses to succumb to the siren's call of commercialism, instead taking the minimalist tones of Post-Punk and forcibly wedding them to watery synth-pop textures and in doing so, creating a gloomy yet strangely poppy concoction. An obvious highlight is "Party Fears Two," a song which manages to literalize the loungiest aspects of Aladdin Sane, while Mackenzie's vocals ratchet up the melodrama significantly. And on the exceedingly dark "Bap De La Bap," Mackenzie and Rankine draw from The Walker Brothers' Nite Flights to create a claustrophobic, nightmarish context for one of Mackenzie's more ominous vocal performances. Despite the willful unconventionality of Sulk, the album, largely on the strength of its more accessible singles, was a commercial success, which caught the attention of Sire Records' Seymour Stein, who was convinced the band could be just as successful, if not more so, in the U.S. Rankine, however, in a dispute over the band's post-Sulk direction, decided to cut ties with Mackenzie on the eve of the Sulk tour, effectively ending The Associates' brief flirtation with mainstream success. While Mackenzie went on to record several albums under The Associates moniker, these efforts, while showcasing his peerless vocal ability and resistance to commercial concerns, suffered greatly from the absence of Rankine's distinct musical touch and from record label incompetence (one album, The Glamour Chase, was never even released). While it is tempting to remember The Associates as a stubbornly original band who were never able to live up to their considerable potential, according to Mackenzie, living up to the expectations of others was never of any interest to the band: "In 1982, after Sulk, me and Alan could have easily took the U2 route, and become extremely successful [....] I could espouse that type of rock element but it was distasteful [....] Also, there's something vulgar about success."

The Associates- "Those First Impressions" Video (1984)

One of the most unique bands to emerge out of the initial Post-Punk melee, this video catches The Associates in New Romantic mode, but Billy Mackenzie's voice is one for the ages no matter what the context. Everything you could ever want from this band is coming soon...

Tim Buckley Series, #10: Tim Buckley- Blue Afternoon (1970) MP3 & FLAC

"There ain't no wealth that can buy my pride. There ain't no pain that can cleanse my soul."

Following the release of what many believe to be Tim Buckley's most enduring album, Happy Sad, on which Buckley had introduced a new palette of Jazz-inflected textures to his Folk-based aesthetic, he decided the time was right to make some radical changes in both sound and approach. To begin with, during the months he spent touring in support of Happy Sad, Buckley had grown increasingly disenchanted with playing to the expectations of both the music press and his fan-base, both of which, it seemed, were steadfastly invested in seeing him embrace the role of torchbearer for a folk music scene, that, by the late sixties, was quickly losing steam in the U.S. As the tour progressed, Buckley began introducing new material that was based on a highly improvisational minimalist Jazz approach; he simultaneously began exploring new minimalist-informed arrangements of his older material as well. And, inspired by avant-garde vocalists such as Cathy Berberian, Buckley soon began to push his multi-octave voice to new, decidedly un-Folk-like, extremes. He was also at a crossroads in terms record labels: Elektra, whom he owed one more record, was about to be sold by Jac Holzman; his old manager and close friend Herb Cohen was starting a new label, Straight Records, with Frank Zappa; and, as part of a distribution deal, he owed an album to Warner Bros. As a result, in mid 1969, Buckley recorded three albums in one month, two of which he produced himself.

Two of these albums constituted a significant and startling sonic departure for Buckley, as on Lorca and Starsailor, he explored his burgeoning interest in minimalist Jazz using a largely free-form compositional approach. However, Blue Afternoon, recorded immediately after the extremely unconventional Lorca, in many ways reaches back to the sound and approach of Happy Sad. Lee Underwood: "By the time Tim had evolved into the beginnings of his avante-garde phase with Lorca, it was conceptually regressive to go back to Happy Sad's aesthetic perspective for Blue Afternoon." Nevertheless, "[s]ome of Tim's all-time great songs are on that album [....] True, Blue Afternoon was a collection of old songs, but it was not a collection of unreleased out-takes from previous recording sessions. We recorded them new and fresh specifically for that album [....] Tim knew Lorca was unlikely to be a big hit in the marketplace. He loved Blue Afternoon's old tunes, which had found no home elsewhere. He was shifting labels, moving from Elekra to Herb's new label, Straight, and he wanted to help give that label a commercial launch. For all those reasons, Tim and the rest of us worked as hard as we could on Blue Afternoon, even though it was a conceptual step backwards [....] it was also an effort Tim wanted and needed to make."

Underwood might have characterized Blue Afternoon as a case of conceptual regression, but it would be hard to argue that it is anything other than an artistic triumph. While it was critically reviled upon its release, the album has grown in stature to a significant degree in the decades since its release despite being out of print for much of that time, and though it is usually characterized as little more than an extension of the Happy Sad sound, careful listeners will detect subtle signs of Buckley's more avante-garde inclinations occasionally shining through. The Blue Afternoon sessions were recorded in New York City using the same musicians who had worked on Happy Sad with the addition of drummer Jimmy Madison, while many of the songs themselves were compositions that had failed, for one reason or another, to find a place on Buckley's earlier albums but were deemed too good to remain orphans. While the earlier versions of these songs, which can be found on Works in Progress, are beautiful and revelatory in their own right, Blue Afternoon stands as perhaps Buckley's purest distillation of the Folk-Jazz hybrid that he, along with Fred Neil, either invented or entirely transformed. One of the album's gems is "I Must Have Been Blind," which is easily the equal of anything on Happy Sad, and while on one level it is a fine piece of modern Folk, the unconventional choice of instrumentation, especially the prominence given to David Friedman's vibes, lends the song a strange ethereal feel that compliments one of Buckley's more retrained vocal performances. And then there's "Blue Melody," one of Buckley's best compositions and jaw-droppingly beautiful in this languidly jazzed-up version. What makes Blue Afternoon such a timeless album is its emphasis on dynamics, as the loose interplay between vibes, percussion and Buckley's haunting vocals results in a fluid form of musical expression that differentiates this album from virtually anything else falling under the broad categorical term "Folk." Tim Buckley: "Music. It's the total communication between people in a room. You can take me to a political rally and the relationship between the politics and the people is pretty far removed, so that room doesn't cook. I see music and religion- like the gospel thing- and that cooks. But I see the music as separate from God. The people may do it out of praise for God, but what happens in that situation happens because the people are singing their souls out."

Tim Buckley- "Blue Melody" (1970) Live on Boboquivari, KCET

Buckley & Lee Underwood playing live- this exemplifies the word "sublime"...

Tim Buckley Series, #9: Tim Buckley- Works in Progress (1999) / The Dream Belongs to Me: Rarities & Unreleased 1968-1973 (2001) MP3 & FLAC

"How can my giving find the rhythm and time of you, unless you sing your song to me? "

Lee Underwood: "Right from the beginning, Tim moved me deeply with his music, his attitude, his intelligence and sense of humour. I played guitar with a number of people back then, but he was different. He was not afraid of change. He kept me and the other musicians on our toes. When he moved into this avant-garde or modern classical dimension, I felt both challenged and thrilled. It was one of the most exciting times of my life." Tim Buckley's creative restlessness can best be gauged through the meteoric arc of his work over the course of his first three albums. From the tentative beauty of his overly mannered debut to the stunningly gorgeous Folk songs of Goodbye and Hello to the Jazz inflected explorations of Happy Sad, Buckley's approach in the studio bore the mark of his iconoclastic tendencies and mirrored the increasingly improvisational nature of his live performances. Once, when asked to what extent his music had changed, Buckley responded, "It's not for me to judge. I'm living too close to it. It's a transition. I have to be ruthless and say what is happening. I'm not sentimental over old songs. I'm constantly writing. The main thing is the music." Buckley's "ruthless" need to push boundaries first came to the surface in an explicit way midway through the 1968 recording sessions that would eventually yield Happy Sad. Early on, Buckley and his band recorded a number of the songs that ended up on the final album, but they did so utilizing traditional Folk-oriented arrangements, nearly all of which were quickly abandoned as the sessions took a very different turn. Most of this material was thought lost, but it was eventually rediscovered in the early nineties, a selection of which materialized in the form of Works in Progress at the end of the decade. While Works in Progress is, for the most part, an album of outtakes, it is nearly as essential as Buckley's studio albums, for, not only does it offer a rare glimpse into his creative process in the studio, but, more importantly, it is comprised of a gorgeous set of songs such as "Danang" and "Ashbury Park," which ended up on the final album as parts of a longer composition, "Love from Room 109 at the Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway)." Both sound as though they would have been revelatory stand alone tracks. And then there's the amazing rendition of "Song to a Siren," one of Buckley's best songs, which would end up appearing on Starsailor in a vastly different, less straightforward, arrangement. This is the song Buckley played during his now-iconic appearance on The Monkees after having been invited by his old friend Mike Nesmith: "They asked me to sing on the show. I went along and there was Mike in his mohair suit, and I turned up in working shirt and trousers. Mike said, 'Hey, you're still wearing the same old clothes.' I replied, 'Yes, and I'm still singing my own songs.'"

Tim Buckley Series, #8: Tim Buckley- Happy Sad (1969) Japanese Remastered Edition (SHM-CD) MP3 & FLAC

"Oh, when I get to thinkin' 'bout the old days when love was here to stay, I wonder if we ever tried. Oh, what I'd give to hold him."

In an early 1969 New York Times interview, Tim Buckley discussed the impending release of the first of his experimental, Jazz influenced albums, Happy Sad: "You know, people don't hear anything. That's why rock 'n' roll was invented, to pound it in. My new songs aren't dazzling; it's not two minutes and 50 seconds of rock 'em sock 'em, say lots of words, get lots of images. I guess it's pretty demanding." If Buckley's previous album, Goodbye and Hello, had been as close as he was willing to come to playing the traditional role of the socially-conscious folk-singer, then Happy Sad was Buckley leaving behind the expectations of both his fans and his handlers at Elektra, in order to chase a sound that simultaneously tapped into the foundational influences of pop music and progressed beyond the melodic and structural limitations of that music. While clearly bearing the influence of Jazz artists such as Miles Davis and Bill Evans (particularly the modal Jazz of Kind of Blue), Happy Sad also features a noticeable transformation in Buckley's approach to integrating his vocals into the arrangements. On songs such as the gorgeous "Dream Letter," Buckley's voice functions more like a lead instrument taking the basic melody and drawing it out through improvised variations, thus guiding the song (often quite subtly) in unexpected/unfamiliar directions, an approach that became the hallmark of his live performances of the time. Happy Sad also marked the end of Buckley's partnership with lyricist and longtime friend Larry Beckett, who had written many of the lyrics for Buckley's first two studio albums. Gone are the overt political references and literary flourishes, replaced by Buckley's more introspective and impressionistic approach, which is, in turn, given a secondary role in support of the music itself. As Beckett recalls, "He was moving toward a jazz sound, so to have wild poetry all over the map, you'd miss the jazz." The jazz sound Beckett speaks of is evident from the very first track, "Strange Feelin'," which, on one level, is clearly paraphrasing Miles Davis' "All Blues," but the song is also replete with textures quite foreign to straightforward jazz, such as Buckley's 12-string acoustic guitar, a sound that allows the music to retain elements of its folk origins. Lee Underwood's bluesy guitar work is also a distinguishing element that, in tandem with Buckley's other-worldly vocals, lends Happy Sad a unique mix of aching beauty and fearless experimentation. These traits are pushed to extremes on the album's centerpiece, the epic and free-styling "Gypsy Woman," which features Buckley completely set free of the structures and conventions governing Western music. This twelve minute song establishes a floating rhythmic sense borrowed from Indian classical music that allows Buckley to take his vocals into uncharted waters. While Happy Sad was only Buckley's first step toward making music that is, as he said, "pretty demanding," it is arguably the high point of, what was to ultimately become, a four album journey into something quite unprecedented (though it should be mentioned that Fred Neil was a major inspiration). Later albums in this vein, such as Blue Afternoon & Starsailor  are certainly classics in their own right, but on Happy Sad, there is a palpable sense of newness, a freedom recently fought for and won, and the beckoning (if only for a brief time) of infinite possibility. Of course, all such things eventually come with a price. Buckley: "My old lady was telling me what she was studying in school- Plato, Sophocles, Socrates and all those people. And the cat, Socrates, starts spewing truth like anybody would, because you gotta be honest. And the people kill him. Ha, I don't know if I'm being pretentious but I can see what happens. It happened to Dylan...I don't know what to do about that."

Tim Buckley Series, #7: Tim Buckley- The Copenhagen Tapes (2000) MP3 & FLAC

"Just like a buzzin' fly, I come into your life. Now I float away like honey in the sun."

Recorded during the same tour that produced the sublime Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, Tim Buckley was in fine vocal form for this October 1968 concert in Copenhagen, Denmark. As was the case throughout his fall 1968 European tour, Buckley was operating with only part of his formidable backing band: percussionist Carter C.C. Collins and stand-up bass player John Miller could not make the trip overseas due to the tour's financial constraints. As a result, and thoroughly in keeping with the improvisatory Jazz-influenced approach of Buckley's music at this point, "local" players stepped in to fill these spots at each stop on the tour. Whereas the show documented on Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 saw The Pentangle's Danny Thompson take over stand-up bass duties to great effect, the concert documented on The Copenhagen Tapes features no less than European Jazz legend Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, who, as a teenager, was so esteemed in Jazz circles that he was extended an invitation to join the Count Basie Orchestra of all things, which, amazingly, he refused. Also present for the Copenhagen concert was Buckley's inimitable sideman Lee Underwood, whose beautiful electric guitar-work, though completely improvised, always functioned as something of a harmonic anchor to Buckley's fearless vocal peregrinations. Buckley's approach to live performances at this point in his career was profoundly influenced by experimental Jazz; as Underwood explains, "For better or worse, Tim gave me and all his other musicians complete freedom. That is, he did not hire us as sidemen to simply play memorized parts. He hired us for our unique approaches to his music. We didn't have any input into the composing part, but the playing was ours alone, nearly all of it improvised." The Copenhagen Tapes is comprised of four lengthy tracks, the first of which, the 21 minute "I Don't Need It to Rain," supposedly intended as a vocal warm-up for Buckley, is nothing less than a tour-de-force. A bluesy slow-burner that finds Buckley frequently exploring the upper range of his seemingly elastic voice, the song also features some great ensemble work from vibe master David Friedman and Underwood. However, it is on the band's gorgeous rendition of "Buzzin' Fly" from Happy/Sad that Underwood's masterful contributions really step forward. Simultaneously carrying the melody and pushing the song beyond its Folk-Rock origins, Underwood's Telecaster weaves a fuzzy web of chiming notes for Buckley's soaring vocals to momentarily embrace and then transcend. In terms of fidelity, The Copenhagen Tapes is not the best-sounding Buckley live recording available; however, it captures him at the height of his improvisational powers, stretching his songs to their compositional limits and beyond, and for this, it is qualifies as essential Tim.

Tim Buckley Series, #5: Tim Buckley- Honeyman: Recorded Live 1973 (1995) MP3 & FLAC

"And when the bee's inside the hive, you gonna holler in the thick of love. I'll buy you all the jag I can. This honey man's gonna sting you again."

Following the commercial and critical failure of Tim Buckley's now-legendary experimental Jazz-Folk albums, Blue Afternoon and Starsailor, he, to a great extent, withdrew from the music industry in order to deal with severe artistic and financial crises. His eventual return, though initially heralded by another great album, Greetings from L.A., marked the beginning of a slow descent into heroin addiction and a mostly unsuccessful attempt to adopt a more commercially viable sound that would have his career in shambles by the time of his tragic death (from an accidental heroin overdose) in 1975. The unconvincing results of Buckley's awkward embrace of Funk, particularly on his final studio albums, Sefronia  and the utterly forgettable Look at the Fool, were largely attributable to a lack of urgency and of quality on the part of Buckley's songwriting, poor production choices, and uninspired session players. Given such a context, it might seem that a live recording of Buckley from this period would have nothing revelatory to offer, but Honeyman: Live 1973 suggests otherwise. While this recording isn't of the same luminous quality as Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, it does represent a dramatic re-contextualization of Buckley's later work due to arrangements that are far superior to what is found on Sefronia and Buckley's breathtaking vocal performance. The transformation is evident from the first notes of "Dolphins," which was done in by some horribly cheesy backing vocals on the studio version, but here, it is just Buckley strumming an electric 12-string guitar, minimal but effective backing from his band, and a world-weary cadence in his voice that sounds authentically heartbreaking. Even the funkier material benefits from the live setting; for example, "Get on Top," stripped of all the studio-schmaltz, turns out to be a fine vehicle for some of Buckley's trademark soaring vocals. After listening to Honeyman: Live 1973, it seems clear that much of awkwardness of Buckley's late-career studio albums was likely the result of record company pressure to push his music in a more commercial direction. However, Buckley's restless and fiercely original  muse was never a good fit for such an approach, which explains why out on the road, just playing his music, Buckley sounds as masterful and uncontainable as ever.

Tim Buckley Series, #4: Tim Buckley- Sefronia (1973) MP3 & FLAC

"This old world will never change the way it's been."

The purest distillation of Tim Buckley's creative muse is encapsulated in the trilogy of Jazz-inflected experimental albums he released in 1969-1970: Lorca, Blue Afternoon, and Starsailor. These were intensely personal and uncompromising documents of Buckley's unique musical vision, but all three met with a lack of comprehension from critics and a lack of interest from the record-buying public. This period was an extremely tough time for Buckley both personally and financially, as he was crushed by the cold reception to his most ground-breaking works and consequently suffered so much financially that he had to occasionally work as a chauffeur and cab driver to makes ends meet. When Buckley returned to the studio in the early seventies, he had largely left behind the highly improvised Jazz-Folk hybrid he had been exploring since the late-sixties and instead pursued, with decidedly mixed results, his own idiosyncratic version of Funk-inspired Soul. Sefronia  was Buckley's second album in this vein and while the first, Greetings from L.A., still retained, to some degree, his improvisational approach to vocals, its follow-up comes off as a badly (mis)calculated attempt at chasing mainstream success. To begin with, Soul isn't the best vehicle for Buckley's voice, and to make matters worse, he is backed by L.A. session musicians ill-equipped to do justice to the music itself. Nevertheless, we're talking about Tim Buckley here, and that means his voice alone offers some moments of redemption for the album. For example, on the cover of Fred Neil's "Dolphins," a far superior live version of which can be found on Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, Buckley offers an understated performance (by his standards) that, coupled with Lee Underwood's always lovely guitar work, makes for a promising, if not inauspicious beginning to the album; however, towards the end of the song, back-up singers (in the worst sense of the term) leap into the mix and overwhelm the song's fragile emotional content with the kind of cheesiness that is far beneath an artist like Buckley. Things get even worse on "Peanut Man," an awkward attempt at white-boy Funk that will leave permanent cringe-lines on your face. Despite moments like this, Sefronia also contains the two-part title suite, which echos Buckley's experimental work three years earlier. While not of the same caliber as the earlier work, these songs are free of the arrangement-related missteps that sink much of the album, and feature Buckley's multi-octave voice set free from the prison of bad Funk. While nowhere near as accomplished as his earlier work, Sefronia stands as a last glimpse of Buckley's prodigious talents.

Tim Buckley- "Dolphins" (1974) Live on Old Grey Whistle Test

Here's Tim nearing the end. Still, even in the grip of an escalating heroin addiction that would claim his life the following year, that amazing voice of his still sounds peerless:

Tim Buckley Series, #1: Tim Buckley- Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 (1990) MP3 & FLAC -For thestarry-

"If you tell me a lie, I'll cry for you, or tell me of sin and I'll laugh."

At the risk of sounding as if I'm lapsing into hyperbole, I will simply put it out there: Tim Buckley's Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 just might be the greatest live album released during the past 40 years. In addition to comprising a complete concert from one of Buckley's most creatively fertile periods, the album is arguably the best thing ever released with Buckley's name on it, as it catches him in top form in a live improvisatory setting, which always suited his uncontainable voice far better than the confines of the studio. Not only this, but the album was impeccably recorded, giving the listener a great sense of the depth and space of the original venue (Queen Elizabeth Hall in London). Most important is the music itself, which features some great players in support of Buckley and his Guild 12-string, including guitarist Lee Underwood, David Friedman on vibes, and the inimitable Danny Thompson (Pentangle) on double-bass. This was supposedly Buckley's first live performance in England and finds him a few months away from releasing his artistic breakthrough Happy/Sad. While the set-list tends to focus on his upcoming album and even more so on his previous album Goodbye and Hello, another calling card for Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 (as if it needed one) is the fact that it contains no less than five tracks that were never to appear on any of Buckley's studio albums. One of these tracks, "Troubadour," is a gorgeous minor-key Elizabethan ballad, featuring some great counterpoint contributions from Lee Underwood. The album also features Buckley's best rendition of the Fred Neil masterpiece, "Dolphins,"  in which he breathtakingly draws out his vocal phrasings, lending the song a languorous beauty that suits it well. This album, in my humble opinion, is Buckley's finest moment on tape, and 21 years after first hearing it, it still continues to amaze and delight me in ways few other recordings can.

Portishead- Numb EP (1994) / Sour Times (Nobody Loves Me) EP (1994) MP3 & FLAC

"'Cause nobody loves me, it's true, not like you do."

The Numb and Sour Times (Nobody Loves Me) EPs house the first two singles culled from Portishead's stunningly original debut, Dummy. Comprised of both non-LP tracks and significantly different versions of the title tracks, these EPs provide an interesting and often rewarding addendum to the album proper. On the Numb EP, "Numbed in Moscow" treats the title track to a cooler, more emotionally detached mix, while "A Tribute to Monk & Canatella" takes Portishead in a noir-jazz direction; the results are mixed, but it's never anything less than intriguing. The clear highlight on the Sour Times (Nobody Loves Me) EP is "Theme from 'To Kill a Deadman'," one of the best non-LP tracks Portishead has lingering in the backwaters of its discography.

Portishead- Dummy (1994) MP3 & FLAC

"Love don't always shine through."

Seventeen years and countless imitators after the fact, Portishead's debut, Dummy, still sounds as fresh as the day it was released, which is a testament to the album's originality and stark emotional depth. Something of a unique mash-up of Hip-Hop-inspired beats and samples, singer-songwriter pathos, psychedelic overtones, and electronic-based sonic manipulations, this unapologetically moody classic, while categorized as "Trip-Hop," is actually genre-defeating from start to finish. Dummy also marks the first appearance of one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of the past thirty years, and it is Beth Gibbons' contributions to Portishead's sonic palette that consistently allows the music to transcend the sum of its parts. Nowhere is this more in evidence than on "Glory Box," a seductive slow-burner, which combines Gibbons at her soulful best with sampled strings and distorted guitar to create an indelible melodic effect. Gibbons oscillates between several vocal styles during the course of this song, while showing the ability to express myriad emotions through the simplest of inflections. Truly, one of the most stunning releases of the nineties (a decade not particularly known for stunning releases).

Scott Walker Series, #15: Scott Walker- The Drift (2006) MP3 & FLAC

"Has absence ever sounded so eloquent, so sad?"

In the years preceding the release of Tilt  in 1995, the prospect of a new album of original material from Scott Walker seemed remote at best; however, the possibility that he would not only release such an album but that it would also turnout to be an avant-garde masterpiece was unthinkable. He did just this. Eleven years later, Scott Walker somehow managed to top this by releasing a darker, more dissonant, more harrowing, and less structured album equally deserving of being labeled a "masterpiece." Yet, like its predecessor, The Drift is anything but a user-friendly masterpiece, a shiny jewel to gaze upon over and over again; rather, it functions more like a bitter glass of absinthe, tearing down your assumptions and skewing your perceptions as it seduces you into its terrifying arms. As on Tilt, Walker's lyrics are cryptic to say the least, but they always provide a revealing counterpoint to the music, which Walker has described as "blocks of sound."  These "blocks" put each song into a state of constant flux in which moments of melodic stability (and they are just moments) explode into an abyss of dissonance. This makes listening to the album feel a little like riding a huge roller-coaster when you were four years old: horrific and awe-inspiring all at the same time. For example, on "Jolson and Jones," Walker croons over ominous-sounding strings that sound straight out of an old noir film, until oscillating industrial static breaks into the mix, which then gives way to a burst of cacophonous dissonance that even includes a sample of a he-hawing mule; the first time I heard this (wearing headphones), I almost dove for cover (seriously). While The Drift isn't for everyone, what is? Proceed at your own risk, but do proceed. Scott Walker's nightmares will always be worth listening to.

Scott Walker Series, #13: Scott Walker- Tilt (1995) MP3 & FLAC

"The good news you cannot refuse, the bad news is there is no news."

Scott Walker fell silent for 11 years following the release of  Climate of Hunter, and while nothing could have prepared his increasingly cult-sized audience for the singular (and quite challenging) experience of listening to Tilt, in retrospect, it is hard to deny that he had somehow managed to deliver the second masterpiece of his long, circuitous career. Cinematic, nightmarish, lush and caustic all at the same time, the only tether dangled to the listener is Walker's still-peerless baritone, but this is where all recognition ends. Walker recorded the vocal tracks for Tilt in single takes in order to avoid the effects of over-familiarity with the material. Describing his reasoning for this, he has stated, "I'm basically terrified of singing, and I want my own terror to come across on the records." On  Scott 3 and Scott 4, Walker had toyed with actively integrating dissonance into otherwise lush and melodic compositions; however on Tilt, he dives head first into a method of composition that seeks to draw attention to the arbitrary relationship between voice, lyrics, and instrumentation. A perfect example of this is the ironically titled "Patriot (A Single)," which is a mournful, dirge-like song under-girded by monotone strings and stand-up bass until Walker's heart-rending vocals descend from above, delivering the most random, banal lyrics imaginable. To call this disorienting does it no justice. Admittedly, this is not for everyone, but Tilt deserves every bit of its reputation as an avant-garde masterpiece.

Scott Walker Series, #12: Scott Walker- Scott 4 (1969) MP3 & FLAC

"What can it cost to give a boy child back his sight?"

I've always seen Scott Walker as an artist out to deconstruct his own chosen art-form. What I mean by this is that his best work actively seeks to play with, and occasionally undermine, not only the conventions determining what a pop-song can do, but also the conventional attitudes and expectations brought to the listening experience by an audience. While Walker was no stranger to experimenting with the formal structure of a song, Scott 4 marks the place where he began to rethink the aesthetic ambitions of his music. The music he had become identified with through his contributions to The Walker Brothers and his early solo work tended to embrace the romanticized image of a beautiful, world-weary despair; however, by the time of Scott 4, Walker began to introduce dissonance into the musical mix. On songs such as "The Old Man's Back Again," one can hear subtle hints of this in Walker's vocal phrasings, beautiful to be sure, but also refusing to allow the listener to identify completely with the melody. This approach is something Walker would revisit to more startling effect 25 years later with his second masterpiece, Tilt. With Scott 4, Walker tumbled out of the commercial spotlight (although this might have had something to do with originally releasing the album under his given name Noel Scott Engel) and toward his present status as mercurial genius with a cult following; all this aside, it is undeniably the uncompromising masterpiece of his early solo career.

Scott Walker Series, #10: Jacques Brel- Olympia 64 (1964)/ Ces Gens-Là (1966) MP3 & FLAC

"Et ils tournent et ils dansent, Comme des soleils crachés, Dans le son déchiré, D’un accordéon rance."

Still little-known to the English-speaking world, Jacques Brel's cabaret-style character portraits and his intense, emotional vocal delivery have had an incalculable influence on ground-breaking artists such as Scott Walker, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Cave. One of the most distinctive aspects of Brel's work is his penchant for writing songs that lovingly, bitterly, and often satirically bump shoulders with the outcasts and "losers" of this world, whom we tend to push outside our field of vision in the false belief that we are somehow different. While Brel may poke fun at his characters, singing of their impotent resentments and sodden escapades, he never looks down on them. This, coupled with his singular voice (which he is said to have worked on tirelessly), established Brel as one of the most original singer-songwriters of the post-WWII period. Scott Walker has said that it was his discovery of Brel's work that inspired his early solo career, and clearly Walker's existential tales of despair owe a huge debt of gratitude to Brel. The crowning achievement of Brel's recorded oeuvre are his two "Olympia" concerts, the second of which, Olympia 64, begins with the first and only officially released version of "Amsterdam." This is brilliant and essential stuff that is quite unlike anything else you've heard, and it has long deserved a larger English-speaking audience.

Jacques Brel- "Tango Funèbre" (1964) Live at the Huis Met De Pilaren

What's cooler than Scott Walker? Check this out. Fucking brilliant!

Julianna Barwick- The Magic Place (2011) MP3 & FLAC

Reminiscent of the wordless vocal peregrinations characterizing Elizabeth Fraser's much-heralded work with The Cocteau Twins, Julianna Barwick's first long-player, The Magic Place, is a startlingly beautiful recording that sounds both epic in its aspirations and humble in its approach. Comprised primarily of Barwick's voice overdubbed to infinity and looped to create something approximating Gregorian chant, The Magic Place is full of hidden aural nooks and crannies that flicker forth on repeated listens. While many reviewers are using terms such as "nostalgic" and "soothing" to describe this album, it nevertheless possesses a disquieting undercurrent that borders on creepiness in places; this adds an emotional weight to these otherwise quite ethereal compositions, resulting in a choral-ambient hybrid that steadfastly refuses to unfold quietly in the background.