Label: Chrysalis Records (Europe), 259 010
Style: Blues Rock, Classic Rock
Country: Nottingham, England
Time: 33:34
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 206 Mb
Charts: UK #4, CAN #17, FIN #14, GER #6, NOR #16, US #20. CAN: Gold.
And
at last, this time around there was no doubt these guys were gonna be a
major act. Good lads, they seem to have realized all of the mistakes
they made on Stonedhenge, and this time you're in for a listen of your
lifetime! No more stupid grooves or Leo Lyons solo spots. No more trippy
quiet guitar sounds and no more muddy, ear-destructive production. What
you are presented with is a gruff, rip-roaring, tearing-at-the-walls
progressive blues album which boasts brilliant production - AT LAST!
I
may be a little biased towards this album, but really, you must realise
it was a grandiose effort for the boys. Ten Years After was a homemade
album of four guys getting together to play a couple of covers; Undead
was a live album made by the same boys; Stonedhenge was a first try, but
a failure; and this, this is absolutely fantastic. Well, not
absolutely. Ten Years After never made an album that was 'absolutely'
fantastic. Forget about 'absolutely'. But this is definitely fantastic
in the fantastic Ten Years After way.
Where was I? Ah yes, Ssssh. The
only real trouble with that album is an ungly cover and the fact that
you never can remember how many 's' you have to write between the
capital one and the 'h'. Apart from that, there are some great blues
numbers, some great ballads and some great heavy rockers the likes of
which were not to be found previously. The very album opener ('Bad
Scene') is not just heavy - it's practically hardcore punk: a
breathtaking speed and a gruff guitar tone that predicts the Ramones but
also kinda outdates them. But there are also tricky changes in
signature, a special jazzy middle-eight, Alvin's trademark solos,
strange electronically encoded vocals and... well, you get my drift.
There's everything that Stonedhenge sorely lacked.
(full version: starlingdb.org/music/tenyears.htm#Ssssh)
Album recorded and mixed in the analog domain - AAD. That is, a minimum of digital processing.
A=Analog.
D=digital. The first letter stands for how the music was recorded. The
second letter for how it was mixed. The third letter stands for the
format (all CD's will have D as the last letter).
01. Bad Scene (03:30)
02. Two Time Mama (02:03)
03. Stoned Woman (03:30)
04. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl (07:01)
05. If You Should Love Me (05:23)
06. I Don't Know That You Don't Know My Name (02:02)
07. The Stomp (04:34)
08. I woke Up This Morning (05:27)
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