BLOW UP HOLLYWOOD
Fake (MJ12)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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By no means is this music suitable for the low end of a manic swing. You couldn't take it. It's breathtakingly beautiful but you're surrounded in a blanket of fragility and sadness. If, however, you're the even keeled sort, this is probably going to be one of those CDs that reacquaints you with the repeat button. As I write this the album is playing through for the fifth time and I can't get over how gorgeously ethereal this music is. "Just Before Dawn" layers sounds upon sounds, including swells of ambient noise and spine-tingling, stratospheric slide guitar, until it becomes an enormous sonic symphony that fills and lifts you up. Which makes the repeating line of "NDE," "I don't wanna come down," seem very appropriate. You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I've played this five times in a row because It feels pretty good. Sure, it's a pretty somber album, but something about it seems cathartic. And maybe it's perfectly suitable for the low end of a manic swing because, as it turns out, it's the soundtrack to time at the bottom (with light at the end of the tunnel).

© 2004 - DJ Johnson