Search - Nico :: Peel Sessions

Nico at her best: just the harmonium

A Customer | 11/12/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Until the release of "Frozen Borderline" this was the only place to hear "No One is There" played on the harmonium, and it is so haunting and beautiful! The same can be said for "Secret Side." The harmonium arrangement, without the synthesizer overlapping, is so much more effective. It's too bad she didn't make more recordings using only her "throne of doom." I recommend this to anyone who delights in Nico's melancholic music."

Powerful... a woman and her harmonium, an epic thing.

derf | My living room, Maui HI | 08/21/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"i bought this album for it's version of "Secret Side", which Nico supposedly wrote about her rape as a child in Germany during the war, at the hands of an American GI. one of the most unsettling and beautiful of her songs, i think. the synth-laden cut on "The End" just about drove me crazy, i wanted to smack whoever was trilling those notes over her song. i guess it was Brian Eno. if i ever see him i will have to smack him and say "that was for secret side. now, how about some coffee?"

this "secret side" is eerie, melodic, more focused - - it feels like a personal idictment, an affront, as if Nico is challenging you directly. she exposes something very personal in this song.

it is a good album, only four songs long, but it is just her and her harmonium, which is magic and a priviledge few know about.

"