47 minutes, 43 seconds

Bel Canto
Shimmering, Warm & Bright

This is the last Bel Canto album I bought. I recall listening to Magic Box and Rush, their two subsequent full-lengths, and thinking the band had decided to go in a poppier direction. The special quality of Anneli Drecker's voice had been processed out. Hers was always a warm voice, but the early recordings had a Northern European coolness to them--a certain aloofness and mystery that added a deeper layer of attractiveness to the vocals.

That was gone on Magic Box. Well, not entirely. Some songs seemed to have kept the band's original essence, but for the most part that album went on a globalist hunt for "funky" sounds and what to me sounds like R&B-manqué production.

It's all a far cry from Birds of Passage, their 1990 masterwork, and the album they released just before Shimmering, Warm & Bright. I still think Birds of Passage (made when Geir Jenssen was with the band, before he left to found Biosphere) is one of the best albums ever made, by anyone. If you haven't heard it, you're missing out.

Also today:

47:42 Dargaard, Eternity Rites
47:41 Cleen, Designed Memories
47:41 Gaë Bolg, Aucassin et Nicolette
47:41 Genetic Selection, Orbital Ground Attack
47:40 Harold Budd, The Pavilion of Dreams
47:40 In Slaughter Natives, Enter Now the World