- Audio CD (27 Aug 2007)
- Number of Discs: 1
- Format: Import
- Label: XIII Bis
- ASIN: B000OI1JE4
- Other Editions: Audio CD | MP3 Download
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 160,996 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
Jubilee Offer: Patriotic Classics for £2.50 |
Product details |
Track Listings
| 1. I'm Set Free (Lou Reed) |
| 2. Yoo Doo Right (Can) |
| 3. Where Did You Sleep Last Night (Huddie Ledbetter) |
| 4. Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan) |
| 5. Love Lies (Captain Beefheart) |
| 6. Oh My Love (John Lennon) |
| 7. Voodoo Chile (Jimi Hendrix) |
| 8. Heart & Soul (Joy Division) |
| 9. Persuasion (Throbbing Gristle) |
| 10. Ruler Of My Heart (Irma Thomas) |
Product Description
Review
This album is a featured release on BBC's Asian Network
33 1/3 is the fourth album in globetrotting, 2001 Mercury nominated singer/songwriter, Susheela Raman's repertoire. 33 1/3 was also Raman's age when she began recording this album in living rooms across Iceland, Italy and England in summer 2006.
It's a brave record, covering sacrosanct songs by hallowed 20th century artists including Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and Joy Division, but Raman rises to the challenge. Rock classics are imbued with gentle Afro-Asian hues, making many of these timeless songs entirely her own.
The album opener, a cover of Lou Reed's 'I'm Set Free' liberates Raman from the themes of culture and identity that dominate her earlier works. 'It feels like a new beginning,' Raman says of her album.
She treats these English-language songs with intimacy and passion, exploring this new repertoire with compelling, mesmerizing ease. 33 1/3 has a sparse, stripped down tone, mostly Raman's thick, treacly voice and a guitar, with dashes of tabla and African chanting.
"Love Lies" is an ethereal track, Raman showcases a cooler, lighter aspect to her timbre alongside Bjork-esque blues. Can's 'Yoo Doo Right', though not approaching the coruscating 20-minute attack of the original, sees Irish and African folk collide and over six minutes Raman is transformed into a singing, chanting whirling dervish.
Raman's cover of Joy Division's 'Heart & Soul' is 33 1/3's stand-out moment: a tabla provides a restrained D 'n' B pulse complementing Raman's honeyed, sensual tones and it's hard to imagine that this song didn't ever originate from the East.
33 1/3's beautifully stripped back production is a case of less is more, enabling a vocalist with a singular voice to express her full range and passion. --Rahul Verma
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Susheela Raman has always been known for her bravery, and this set is her most audacious yet, a confident reinterpretation of rock classics by the likes of Lou Reed, Hendrix, Lennon and Dylan, which are now treated as though they originated from India, Africa or the Mississippi Delta.
Amazingly, she gets away with it. If her last album, Music For Crocodiles, was best when she explored her Indian roots (she was born in England to parents from South India) this new set shows she can show equal passion when treating English-language songs, which are tackled with emotion and a restraint she has not always shown in the past. The result is an unexpectedly inventive but intimate set, in which Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone' becomes a cool personal ballad with an African edge and Hendrix's 'Voodoo Chile' is given and Indian jazz-tinged setting. Perhaps she didn't realise that she had borrowed the album title from George Harrison, but I suspect he would've approved.
Amazingly, she gets away with it. If her last album, Music For Crocodiles, was best when she explored her Indian roots (she was born in England to parents from South India) this new set shows she can show equal passion when treating English-language songs, which are tackled with emotion and a restraint she has not always shown in the past. The result is an unexpectedly inventive but intimate set, in which Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone' becomes a cool personal ballad with an African edge and Hendrix's 'Voodoo Chile' is given and Indian jazz-tinged setting. Perhaps she didn't realise that she had borrowed the album title from George Harrison, but I suspect he would've approved.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
She has quietly got better with every release.
3 Sep 2007
Format:Audio CD
The fourth album from vocalist Susheela Raman features her unique take on some of contemporary music's finest songs.
The idea for "33 1/3" came to Susheela while on the tour bus. She realised that her next album had to reflect the energy of her stripped down live set.
Since the last world tour, Susheela had deliberately paired her band back down to its core. Performing with just guitarist Sam Mills as accompanist or, at most, augmenting the sound by including cellist Vincent Segal and tabla payer Aref Durvesh.
Determined to capitalise on the sound of the live set, Raman took her band and rushed into a studio in Iceland. Although invaluable musical contributions are made by both Segal (Cello) & Durvesh (Tabla), firmly at the heart of this album is Raman's beautifully expressive voice and her powerful musical relationship with guitarist and producer Sam Mills.
Raman is quick to point out that although this is highly re-imagined set, she's not looking to disguise the fact that this is a covers album. A record made up of of an eclectic selection of art-rock oddities that have helped to shape her IDENTITY as a musician, just as much as her passion for Indian classical music has done in previous outings. Susheela just felt that the time was right to address the influence these contemporary classics have had on her.
Talking about her "IDENTITY,"I'm happy in my multiple identity" she says. "After all, the idea of being 'English' gets more accommodating all the time. It's just that I come at it a bit differently because of my Tamil background. It's the same with music, I've played 'Indian' music with musicians from all corners of the globe and being between worlds is a powerful creative position. I really enjoy it. And while this is an album of 'rock' songs, it's full of Indian and African references... and in the end I think it still sounds unmistakably like a Susheela Raman record".
She strips the songs to their essence and lets them breathe.
Beefheart's "Love Lies" and Can's "Yoo Doo Right" are rather good, but the real treats are Velvet Underground's "I'm Set Free", Throbbing Gristle's grubby "Persuasion" and Joy Division's "Heart and Soul".
In this company, "Like a Rolling Stone" is too obvious, and Raman struggles with the soul-stripping of "Ruler of My Heart" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" but otherwise it's her most consistent set yet.
Susheela Raman has quietly got better with every release, indeed.
Music For Crocodiles
Breathing Under Water
Philtre
OK
Love Trap
Without Zero
The idea for "33 1/3" came to Susheela while on the tour bus. She realised that her next album had to reflect the energy of her stripped down live set.
Since the last world tour, Susheela had deliberately paired her band back down to its core. Performing with just guitarist Sam Mills as accompanist or, at most, augmenting the sound by including cellist Vincent Segal and tabla payer Aref Durvesh.
Determined to capitalise on the sound of the live set, Raman took her band and rushed into a studio in Iceland. Although invaluable musical contributions are made by both Segal (Cello) & Durvesh (Tabla), firmly at the heart of this album is Raman's beautifully expressive voice and her powerful musical relationship with guitarist and producer Sam Mills.
Raman is quick to point out that although this is highly re-imagined set, she's not looking to disguise the fact that this is a covers album. A record made up of of an eclectic selection of art-rock oddities that have helped to shape her IDENTITY as a musician, just as much as her passion for Indian classical music has done in previous outings. Susheela just felt that the time was right to address the influence these contemporary classics have had on her.
Talking about her "IDENTITY,"I'm happy in my multiple identity" she says. "After all, the idea of being 'English' gets more accommodating all the time. It's just that I come at it a bit differently because of my Tamil background. It's the same with music, I've played 'Indian' music with musicians from all corners of the globe and being between worlds is a powerful creative position. I really enjoy it. And while this is an album of 'rock' songs, it's full of Indian and African references... and in the end I think it still sounds unmistakably like a Susheela Raman record".
She strips the songs to their essence and lets them breathe.
Beefheart's "Love Lies" and Can's "Yoo Doo Right" are rather good, but the real treats are Velvet Underground's "I'm Set Free", Throbbing Gristle's grubby "Persuasion" and Joy Division's "Heart and Soul".
In this company, "Like a Rolling Stone" is too obvious, and Raman struggles with the soul-stripping of "Ruler of My Heart" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" but otherwise it's her most consistent set yet.
Susheela Raman has quietly got better with every release, indeed.
Music For Crocodiles
Breathing Under Water
Philtre
OK
Love Trap
Without Zero
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Strange and wonderful cover versions
8 Feb 2009
Format:Audio CD
There's nothing Susheela Raman can't sing. I remember thinking this the first time I heard her first record, Salt Rain, in 2001. Raman is a British singer of Indian origin (who grew up in Australia), and 33 1/3 is her fourth album, an homage to other people's songs, particularly album tracks from beloved vinyl records (hence the title). On her website, she describes 33 1/3 as "a kind of homage to the well-attested pleasures of the `long player,' of owning some tangible artefact of music's immaterial magic."
Her song choices are wonderfully, almost absurdly pluralist and wide-ranging:
I'm Set Free - Velvet Underground/Lou Reed
Yoo Do Right - Can
Where Did You Sleep Last Night - Traditional (I'm wondering if it's a Nirvana reference?)
Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
Love Lies - Captain Beefheart
Oh My Love - John Lennon
Voodoo Chile - Jimi Hendrix
Heart and Soul - Joy Division
Persuasion - Throbbing Gristle
Ruler of My Heart - Linda Ronstadt (Norah Jones?)
Holidays in France - Michel Polnareff
What unites this material is the tasteful treatment is gets. There is reverence in these cover versions, yet - in the best `jazz' tradition - they are often barely recognizable, having been re-fashioned into entirely new music. Raman's band, led by guitar player/producer/arranger Sam Mills, is a world music powerhouse - everything pulses with a lucid life force, a deep-seated rhythm that makes even the slower numbers swing. You never lose interest: in her renditions, these songs become new again, validated by being re-imagined and entered into Raman's repertoire, all of which sounds like a ritual, an incantation, an exploration of identity and of how music unites us easily and naturally.
As world music seems to have fallen permanently out of favour in the English-speaking world, Raman appears to tour mostly in France (the last bastion, apparently; the French appear uninterested in restricting their music consumption to white men with no rhythm). This is a shame, because I'd like to see her live and because I think her music most strongly relates to what we think of as vocal jazz - her closest musical `relative' might be someone like Cassandra Wilson, who is also known for her tasty and virtually unrecognizable but beautiful cover versions.
33 1/3 is an independent release. It appears to be somewhat available on Amazon, but you can also order it from Raman's web store. Her other three records - Salt Rain, Love Trap and Music for Crocodiles are widely available and highly recommended. They all contain some of the best singing, and downright the best and most organic sounding acoustic/world band you'll ever hear.
Afterthought: Can't have a review of 33 1/3 without at least mentioning the superb weirdness that is Susheela Raman's cover of Throbbing Gristle's `Persuasion.' Wow. What a strange piece of music!
Her song choices are wonderfully, almost absurdly pluralist and wide-ranging:
I'm Set Free - Velvet Underground/Lou Reed
Yoo Do Right - Can
Where Did You Sleep Last Night - Traditional (I'm wondering if it's a Nirvana reference?)
Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
Love Lies - Captain Beefheart
Oh My Love - John Lennon
Voodoo Chile - Jimi Hendrix
Heart and Soul - Joy Division
Persuasion - Throbbing Gristle
Ruler of My Heart - Linda Ronstadt (Norah Jones?)
Holidays in France - Michel Polnareff
What unites this material is the tasteful treatment is gets. There is reverence in these cover versions, yet - in the best `jazz' tradition - they are often barely recognizable, having been re-fashioned into entirely new music. Raman's band, led by guitar player/producer/arranger Sam Mills, is a world music powerhouse - everything pulses with a lucid life force, a deep-seated rhythm that makes even the slower numbers swing. You never lose interest: in her renditions, these songs become new again, validated by being re-imagined and entered into Raman's repertoire, all of which sounds like a ritual, an incantation, an exploration of identity and of how music unites us easily and naturally.
As world music seems to have fallen permanently out of favour in the English-speaking world, Raman appears to tour mostly in France (the last bastion, apparently; the French appear uninterested in restricting their music consumption to white men with no rhythm). This is a shame, because I'd like to see her live and because I think her music most strongly relates to what we think of as vocal jazz - her closest musical `relative' might be someone like Cassandra Wilson, who is also known for her tasty and virtually unrecognizable but beautiful cover versions.
33 1/3 is an independent release. It appears to be somewhat available on Amazon, but you can also order it from Raman's web store. Her other three records - Salt Rain, Love Trap and Music for Crocodiles are widely available and highly recommended. They all contain some of the best singing, and downright the best and most organic sounding acoustic/world band you'll ever hear.
Afterthought: Can't have a review of 33 1/3 without at least mentioning the superb weirdness that is Susheela Raman's cover of Throbbing Gristle's `Persuasion.' Wow. What a strange piece of music!
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Doing a covers album, 101
5 Nov 2007
Format:Audio CD
For many artists, the covers album issued after two or three collections of original material usually signifies little more than the drought of inspiration and a short-cut into a creative cul-de-sac - not so Susheela Raman, who's new set "33 1/3" is an object lesson in presenting other people's songs in new ways and making them her own.
Raman has always experimented with high quality covers from both East and West in all her releases, alongside self-penned material. Joan Armatrading's Save Me (on 'Love Trap') was beautiful but perhaps too reverent, while Song To the Siren, which she made into a beautiful signature song, would always have a pretty tough job competing with This Mortal Coil's 'cover to end all covers' version of the Tim Buckley classic released in 1983. This album consolidates and moves forward, and nails the whole art of reinterpretation.
The CD contains 10 songs, many that are well-known (Voodoo Chile), others of which are likely to be unfamiliar to many listeners (Persuasion). The new album mixes fairly straightforward readings of some of the songs (the Velvet Underground's 'I'm Set Free' is a beautiful, straightforward statement of intent that stays faithful until a furious tabla break and scatted vocal takes it to new place) with glorious moments of deconstruction and reinvention (Joy Division's Heart and Soul is played to bring out its religious overtones and a dark sensuality that is continents away from Manchester of the late 1970s).
Not all the versions work - Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' is impressive and ambitious but in a world in which Dylan covers are everywhere (the 'Masked and Anonymous' soundtrack of 2003 has the field cornered, and another two CDs of this stuff have just been released this week as 'I'm Not There') - but this is a minor quibble.
So if you like Susheela Raman's music, you have an open mind about hearing unexpected material given an innovative once-over (the singing and playing on this record are exemplary, and full of space) then you'll *really* like this.
Raman has always experimented with high quality covers from both East and West in all her releases, alongside self-penned material. Joan Armatrading's Save Me (on 'Love Trap') was beautiful but perhaps too reverent, while Song To the Siren, which she made into a beautiful signature song, would always have a pretty tough job competing with This Mortal Coil's 'cover to end all covers' version of the Tim Buckley classic released in 1983. This album consolidates and moves forward, and nails the whole art of reinterpretation.
The CD contains 10 songs, many that are well-known (Voodoo Chile), others of which are likely to be unfamiliar to many listeners (Persuasion). The new album mixes fairly straightforward readings of some of the songs (the Velvet Underground's 'I'm Set Free' is a beautiful, straightforward statement of intent that stays faithful until a furious tabla break and scatted vocal takes it to new place) with glorious moments of deconstruction and reinvention (Joy Division's Heart and Soul is played to bring out its religious overtones and a dark sensuality that is continents away from Manchester of the late 1970s).
Not all the versions work - Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' is impressive and ambitious but in a world in which Dylan covers are everywhere (the 'Masked and Anonymous' soundtrack of 2003 has the field cornered, and another two CDs of this stuff have just been released this week as 'I'm Not There') - but this is a minor quibble.
So if you like Susheela Raman's music, you have an open mind about hearing unexpected material given an innovative once-over (the singing and playing on this record are exemplary, and full of space) then you'll *really* like this.
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