13 February, 2004
Review: Blackfield (Blackfield, 2004)
Having repeatedly listened to the entire album at Walla! *, I really like what I hear, and will definitely buy it when released in the UK. Though the online tracks are in a fairly low-resolution format, with significant digital distortion, the quality is certainly sufficient to showcase excellent music.
Blackfield is a collaboration between Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson (SW) and Aviv Geffen, a chart-topping pop star in Israel. The result could easily be described as a slightly more upbeat, slightly more 'pop' version of Porcupine Tree circa 2000. Following 'Lightbulb Sun', P-Tree followed the 'heavier', guitar-led side of their music into 'In Absentia', but in an alternative reality they could easily have focused on the more keyboard-led, introspective aspect of the 'Stupid Dream' and 'Lightbulb Sun' material: that's Blackfield.
The majority of the ten songs are rather low-key, mainly consisting of SW softly singing to a backing of keyboards and subtle acoustic guitar, but three of the songs switch halfway through, with electric guitars, percussion and 'rockier' arrangements kicking in. On 'Glow', this is effective, flowing into a classic SW guitar outro, but in the case of the otherwise excellent 'Cloudy Now', I can't decide whether the abrupt change to a 'rock' ending works, or just sounds tacked on.
Apparently most lyrics were written by SW and most of the music by Geffen, but that's a little simplistic. Without being familiar with Geffen's other music, I do think this sounds very much like Porcupine Tree, and at least to me, SW's contribution, both as musician and producer, seems to dominate. That's not to diminish Geffen's contribution at all, I simply mean that those already familiar with Porcupine Tree are likely to enjoy Blackfield too; it's not a radical departure.
SW sings lead vocals for most songs, but for even those on which Geffen performs the lead vocals, his voice is passed through SW's signature vocal filtering, so the overall Porcupine Tree feel remains. Incidentally, 'Pain', one of the few songs with lead (verse) vocals by Geffen, is the album's second single, possibly to capitalise on his popularity in Israel. Not that such manipulation is necessary: the first single, 'Hello', mainly sung by SW, went to no. 2 in the Israeli singles chart.
Always a good sign: none of the songs strike me as weak or just fillers. The worst I'd say is that 'Summer' is a little monotonous, so I suspect I'll tire of it rather quickly, and 'Scars' features a distracting overdub halfway through the song which initially made me think there was a fault in playback causing me to hear two pieces at once.
I'm not going to comment on every single song, but one final observation: the opening of 'Lullaby' immediately made me think of 'Chant One' by Bowness/Chilvers (which certainly SW and probably Geffen have heard), or Porcupine Tree's 'So Low', which Geffen has performed live with SW on a few occasions. However, I suppose it's fairly generic.
I understand the album will be available soon from the Porcupine Tree online store at Burning Shed [no; see update], and is already available internationally from a mail order company in Israel [yes, but see this update], but I do think it's a pity that there's no sign of it being available via more mainstream retailers such as Amazon. Established fans would have no problems in finding and buying from specialists, but what about publicising the album to a wider public? Something of a missed opportunity, which I certainly hope will be resolved eventually.
Recommended.
*: Note that the website is entirely in Hebrew, so I needed directions to find the audio samples! This is the route at the time of writing:
- At the lower left of the home page, click on the small 'Blackfield' banner. If the banner is no longer on that page, go here and press the prominent green button.
- Allow the resulting popup window to load fully.
- On the dropdown (drop up, in fact) menu at the bottom right, select the uppermost item on the third menu from the right.
- A further popup will open, and album tracks will play.
[Update 27/08/04: Review of 2-CD international edition]
Posted by Ministry at 17:17
| 713 words
