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Writers Without Homes
 
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Writers Without Homes

~ Piano Magic
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
Price: £6.98 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
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Frequently Bought Together

Writers Without Homes + Son de Mar + LOW BIRTH WEIGHT
Price For All Three: £25.56

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  • This item: Writers Without Homes ~ Piano Magic

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

  • Son de Mar ~ Piano Magic

    In stock.
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  • LOW BIRTH WEIGHT ~ Piano Magic

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Product details

  • Audio CD (10 Jun 2002)
  • Number of Discs: 1
  • Label: 4ad
  • ASIN: B00006642R
  • Other Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 90,842 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

    Popular in this category:

    #92 in  Music > Indie > Post-rock

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Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s

Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or view the MP3 Album.

Samples
Song Title Time Price
Listen  1. (Music Won't Save You From Anything But) Silence 6:40£0.79
Listen  2. Postal 3:08£0.79
Listen  3. Modern Jupiter 4:41£0.79
Listen  4. 1.3 1:32£0.79
Listen  5. The Season Is Long 8:43£0.79
Listen  6. Certainty 3:13£0.79
Listen  7. Crown Of The Lost 4:14£0.79
Listen  8. It's The Same Dream That Lasts All Night0:56£0.79
Listen  9. Dutch Housing 3:14£0.79
Listen10. Already Ghosts 4:48£0.79
Listen11. Shot Through The Fog10:48£0.79

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

If nothing else, London-based collective Piano Magic are to be applauded for the enthusiasm with which they have embraced the traditions of their label. Writers Without Homes is almost a parody of the stereotypical 4AD album: the luxuriantly abstract sleeve art, the utterly incomprehensible sleeve notes, the guest appearances by constituent musicians by bands unlikely ever to feature in the running order of Top of the Pops (Tram, Life Without Buildings, George, Le Volume Courbe). It's like This Mortal Coil never shuffled off.

All of which is, obviously, absolutely no problem. Writers Without Homes is a lovely album, diligently assembled by intelligent and passionate people serenely untroubled by the fact that nobody at all will buy it. The music is gloomy but lulling electronica, often evocative of Cocteau Twins (the Cocteaus' Simon Raymonde plays piano on three tracks). The vocals tend toward Leonard Cohen or Ian Curtis-ish monotones (the males) or Mary Margaret O'Hara/Jane Siberry-esque ethereal whooping (the females). It also includes, in "(Music Won't Save You From Anything But) Silence", possibly the greatest song title of all time.

Writers Without Homes is a wholly laudable act of defiant dilettantism, of the sort that only 4AD would even consider releasing. If nothing else, it should be bought to encourage more of this kind of thing. --Andrew Mueller



CD Description

4th full length studio album from this loose collective based around Glen Johnson. On this album he has collaborated with Alasdair Steer, Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins and the Spanish film director Bigas Lunas. Piano Magic previouslyworked with Lunas on the soundtrack for his film 'Son De Mar'.

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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure of dream soaked images, 11 Jun 2002
Piano Magic make music evocative of dreams. Glen Johnson's loose collective of musicians maintain their constant state of flux on this their latest long-player. Like their predecessors This Mortal Coil, Piano Magic's ever changing roster of guest musicians gives each album track its own unique charm. For the uninitiated the band's sound supplies the perfect accompaniment to any art house movie. Pieces combine surreal lyrics, often spoken, over beautiful collages of chiming guitars, Satie-like piano melodies and all manner of found sounds and vintage electronica. Piano Magic's mesmerising, often chilling, music conjures up a treasure of dream soaked images.

All the album tracks are wonderful and beyond categorisation. Highlights include Modern Jupiter with vocals by Ronald Lippock of Tarwater, The Season is Long sung by The Czars' John Grant and Already Ghosts featuring Tram's Paul Andersen. The album's gem though, for me, has to be Shot Through the Fog with Piano Magic regular Caroline Potter's spoken words falling like snow on Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde's haunting piano.

For those music lovers who cherish music that pushes the boundaries of convention Piano Magic's music offers the ideal soundtrack to this uncertain world...but don't expect it to save you from anything but silence.

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3 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars bleak, repetitive, dismal rubbish, 17 Dec 2002
I cannot believe the other reviews. I found this incredibly depressing music that could induce severe melancholia. This album goes right downhill after the almost rousing opener "(Music wont save you from anything but) Silence". I mean, with a title like that you should know what you're letting yourself in for.
I genuinely felt like smashing up my stereo when Dutch Housing came on - totally unlistenable, very repetitive, in fact the whole album is horribly repetitive. ....Silence may have been an ok song if it had finished around the 3 minute mark, but it's padded out to some 6 minutes.
I bought this album after getting the great Seasonally Affective compilation - what a mistake. I dont think it's just me, I saw 3 copies in the racks of my local 2nd hand music store.
Avoid.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Spectral and perplexing..., 4 Nov 2009
I had never heard of Piano Magic, but recently it was announced that Brendan Perry and Peter Ulrich would be guesting on their next album (since released) Ovations, which made acquainting myself with Piano Magic something I felt I should do, and Writers Without Homes became the first thing I heard by them. First impressions were good, I was playing it on headphones walking through evergreen forest. I was reminded strongly of This Mortal Coil, many of the songs inhabiting a kind of uneasy calm, perched on a knife-edge, having a rather un-nerving fragility about them and a curious shyness.

Since that first listen, however, I have rarely felt drawn to Writers Without Borders, it's been about three months now. I'll consider playing it, maybe spin a couple of tracks, but I'm not engaging with it particularly. I enjoy the most (Music Won't Save You From Anything But) Silence - which bursts into life from a deceptively quiet, almost whispered intonation; Already Ghosts - which I'd like more still if not for the odd gutteral chatter that the piece opens with; and Shot Through The Fog - a nice spoken word and piano exit from the album (which is not 10.47 on my copy, whatever the sleeve says, it finishes perhaps 8 minutes too early).

On the one hand I appreciate it as a well-crafted series of poetic visions of melancholy, on the other hand I find it offering up an un-memorable vagueness, and being determinedly evasive, which suggests to me that it is music best appreciated when a sense of physical and mental isolation descends. It seems like an album you almost cannot play in company, that was born to be your sole companion in solitude. It isn't the kind of company I generally gravitate towards at the moment, but all the same I acknowledge it is a fine album in its way, that I might well warm to in the spectral depths of winter.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Something for the sensitive heart
This album served as my introduction to Piano Magic and after some initial difficulty I found it to be very lovely. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Leviathan King

4.0 out of 5 stars great stuff
I can think of very few acts at present who can fuse together so many eclectic soundworlds as Piano Magic. 'Writers Without Homes' is very much a testimony to that. Read more
Published on 6 Aug 2002 by Mal Beast

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