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A changed definition of "live album"

Z. Komar | Croatia | 12/12/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"i've never really liked live albums. the reason for that is that they pretty much always lack coherence and are just a selection of songs, "hits", even with small (i use this word in a commercial sense) bands, because every band/artist, no matter how big or small they are, has some instant crowd-pleasers for some reason. i do hate that, crowd-pleasers and crowds pleased in that way. (i'm not talking about songs that are really PERSONAL to you and that are liked by you as an individual. i'm talking about those "insider's-hits"). so, live concerts are many times just a mish-mash of this and that thrown quickly together and it just doesn't make sense when recorded and played at home because it simply doesn't go anywhere musically or artistically in general. while i do feel that an earlier current's live record "all dolled up like christ" is a lot like that, this one isn't at all. actually, all of the concerts that c93 has played recently (for example this one, which was held in london in the end of 2003 or lisabon and torino ones in 2004) are just completely coherent, follow a very specific mood and basically, i feel they are new records consisted of previously written pieces because of the intriguing context that all of the pieces make together and an incredible amount of passion and intensity of Tibet's performance primarily and then all the other players' performances as well. it all aplies to this record. it flows. it is a journey. thematically it can never be as well-structured and focused in terms of substance as a "studio" album, but somehow it gets close, it just makes sense and is not fractured at all. i think c93 has always attempted that with live concerts, but recently they are really succeeding, in my opinion. that's why i think this bends the rules/definitions of live albums as we've known them (i think coil's recent live performances were like that too).



the line-up includes tibet-vocals, cashmore-guitar, elliot-piano, budenholzer-guitar, jeffery-piano, wood-whistle,violin, contreras-cello, karl blake-voice, sands-voice. i guess i don't need to say that they don't play all at once. but anyway the sound IS more dense compared to recent c93's studio work such as hypnagogue or soft black stars. however, it doesn't kill the space within the songs at all - they have remained beautifully spacey and they breathe. i'll say this again: all of the songs are incredibly intensely performed and lots of them are changed from "studio" versions quite alot and in a beautiful way. the songs are mostly from albums from thunder perfect mind till hypnagogue and are pretty much equally represented and it all lasts 67 minutes. it is packaged in digipak with beautiful artwork. so...go for it."