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Track Listings
| 1. As Of Now |
| 2. Hello |
| 3. Cat & Bird Blues |
| 4. You Know The Story |
| 5. For The Birds |
| 6. A Good Year For Spiders |
| 7. You Don't Love Me Blues |
| 8. The Bullfighter |
| 9. The Guru |
| 10. The Akond Of Swat |
| 11. You Were So Crazy |
| 12. Cliche Heaven |
| 13. Truth Mute |
| 14. A Thousand Bingbangs |
| 15. Quark |
| 16. Fibonacci Numbers |
| 17. Hole In The Ego |
| 18. Miniver Cheevy |
| 19. A Thousand Dreams |
| 20. What's There To Do |
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Customer Reviews
They start having a most bizarre conversation. Ken, who is still half-asleep, seems to sense there's something odd about it but can't quite work out what. "Where did you say you were calling from again?" he asks at one point. All the time there is this eerie muzak playing quietly in the background - all the more disturbing because you can't work out whether it's playing at Ken's end or his alter-ego's.
The "caller" asks Ken if he's heard of the "truth mute", a device that can mute truth so that you can live happily in the comfort of lies. By now Ken knows there's something very wrong but somehow in that way of nightmares he can't wake up enough to figure out what the problem is.
Even heard on my iPod on a brightly-lit and crowded train this track makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck!
Not all the tracks are nightmarish though. Some are dreamlike in a more psychedelic chilled-out sort of a way, while the final track of the album is just a simple love poem delivered in an understated - i would say humble - manner.
And get that voice! So deep and gravely it makes Johnny Cash sound like a lightweight.
This CD won't change your life, but it just might change how you think you see your life. Ken's words and vocal images are razor sharp and waste no time cutting apart your preconceived notions about what you are and how your world really is. It's all Seriously Different than you thought. And it's all Ken's fault.
Get the album, some wine, some low lights and a sound system with a good low end. And be prepared to have your mind changed.
But how can you get angry with Ken for changing your perceptions when he does it with that laughing *edge* to his voice? How can you do anything except say, "...ooh, yeah, man... he's really *got* something there..."
But now, man, _Transparent Mask_ is dissapointing. None of the tracks are very clever, in story or words. Plus it's much more "normal" poetry than what I was used to from Ken. It felt like instead of putting energy into clever ideas (like what a museum of sound would be like, or how was the color yellow was allowed into the spectrum) he's just trying to rhyme.And the subject matter is blase also -- songs of birds and spiders, not songs of Vidiots.
He still has one of the deepest voices I've ever heard, but it just aint enough. If you're a fan don't buy this CD, if you aint a fan buy Colors or Word Jazz -- they'll make you a fan.
Less successful are the cuts where Nordine decides his word jazz ought to rhyme. Paul Simon he ain't. The results are often constricted and self-concious, not strong enough to stand as poems, and lacking melodies to make them songs (For example, "You Know the Story" includes the strained couplet "Crowds in the hallway, milling about / Like molecules moving, looking for clout." Molecules looking for clout? I think not).
Bottom line: when he's free-associating just for the fun of it, it works; when he tries to make it sound profound, he's overreaching.
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