Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Magical enchanment, 17 Dec 2004
During the last year I've been listening to music made across Scandinavia. This was prompted by a winter holiday in Norway and BBC3's Late Junction.
My discovery of Susanna and the Magical Orchestra at this year's London jazz festival opened up another door to the joys of music experimentation played with passion, affection and a certain sense of humour. What a treat to find them on record. Stripped down to basic melody, aching instrumentals. Her lyrical vocals and music can only warm. Apart from the staggering version of Dolly's Jolene and a wonderful version of Berstien/Parkers Who am I, Susanna's own songs bear repeated listening and give real depth to the poetry they contain.
A lovely album full of that sweet joy of melancholia.
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15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Blair Bjork Bergman Witch Project, 16 Sep 2004
The CD case gives this one away - the cover features singer Susanna Wallumrod shot in grainy black & white, a scarily blank expression on her face, while the back is a similarly grainy image of two vague figures in a forest, both images hinting at the disturbing, other-worldly music contained within.For this glacial Danish electro-balladry has few parallels in contemporary music - Bjork's "Vespertine" perhaps (though "Lists..." is far, far weirder), or maybe Juana Molina's bizarre electronic folk experiments; probably the most kindred spirit is fellow Scandinavian Stina Nordenstam, whose terrifying "Dynamite" album has a similar air of devastated resignation. The combination of minimalist electronica and wistful female vocal is almost becoming a cliche but Wallumrod and her Magical Orchestra (in reality studio boffin Morten Qvenild) have raised the bar a few notches here; Qvenild is capable of swift, shocking mood changes, switching from barely audible bleeps and strings to cascading arpeggios, while Wallumrod's vocals, though occasionally a tad prosaic, are equally capable of shifting from robotic Nico-esque intonation to the breathy folkiness of Beth Orton or the slightly sinister sneer of the aforementioned Stina Nordenstam. It's by no means easy listening, with even more conventional numbers such as "Turn the Pages" or "Believer" being so despairing they could easily soundtrack an Ingmar Bergman film, and with the album's warmest, most romantic track bearing the coldly scientific title "Distance Blues and Theory". The two covers which open the album are equally bizarre. Leonard Bernstein's "Who Am I" is totally deconstructed and is so minimalist and light that it's barely existent, while Dolly Parton's "Jolene", originally the defiant plea of a woman desperate not to lose her man, is transformed into a such tearful murmur of desolation that it's hardly recognisable. No barrel of laughs then, but in the right context, say if you're stuck in a log cabin in the middle of a forest with only a bottle of vodka, a bottomless well of despair and some unnamed horror creeping around in the snow outside for company, an essential listen...
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9 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bjork minus the yelping and beats, 7 Sep 2004
By A Customer
Bleak and wintery atmospherics are the name of the game here, courtesy of the eponymous Susanna Wallumrød and keyboardist Morten Qvenild (affiliate of German avant-gardists Jaga Jazzist). However, it's a weary and winsome effort, forcing you up close and personal with the icy (Icelandic) vocals, with not much else to hold on to, bar some desolate and meandering electronics. The trouble, for me, is the relentless focus on the doleful vocals, which aren't bad in their own right, but lacking in truly memorable intonations. Almost all of the tracks have no rhythm section, and the listener is very much marooned in Susanna's emotional world. A plodding trawl through Leonard Bernstein's 'Who Am I' and Dolly Parton's 'Jolene' set things off to a bad start, but turn out, in retrospect, to be unlikely album highlights simply through their structural familiarity. 'Friend' and 'Hello' could even draw an unfavourable comparison to Dido, while a tendency towards abstraction pervades the latter section of the album - with mixed results. No doubt there will be some people who will connect with Susanna instantly, and fall in love with this album, but without that connection, there is little else to distract on an album so sparse and solitary.
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~ Susanna and the Magical Orchestra
~ Susanna
~ Bon Iver
~ Rachel Unthank And The Winterset
~ Antony and the Johnsons
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