Reeves Gabrels – Ulysses (Della Notte): ground control to Major Tom...
Written: May 27 '04 (Updated May 28 '04)
Product Rating:
Pros: let’s see…well, it’s inventive… Gabrels can play the guitar very well
Cons: but is it interesting, or perhaps inspiring? Not even close...
The Bottom Line: Gabrels is a great guitarist (I like his work with Bowie) BUT this solo album is waaaaay out there. I know this stuff appeals to some people… somewhere… out thattaway
bob_tomato's Full Review: Ulysses (Della Notte) by Reeves Gabrels
I’m a card carrying SMC – a Snarky Music Critic…
At least, I'd like to think that I’d qualify for that card, if there was a card for that sort of thing.
Part of my SMC duties would include finding strange and exotic new music to review, writing critical pieces that would enlighten and educate the general public about obscure artists, fantastically complex recordings of sublime musical potentiality – and I’d pepper my reviews with ridiculous sentences just like that one.
I can dream, can’t I?
I decided to test my snark level a couple weeks ago as I searched the album bins at my local Fry’s Electronics (a great place to find off the wall records that appeal to cyber-dweebs like me). I found an album I’d never heard of, recorded by an artist I had heard of - Ulysses (Della Notte) by Reeves Gabrels, guitarist for David Bowie on recent albums like Hours, Earthling, Outside and the side project Tin Machine. Gabrels has also played for the Cure, The Mission, and Natalie Imbruglia, in addition to scoring and performing for television and movies. His cutting edge guitar work, coupled with his penchant for computerized processing has led him to create some of the more inventive guitar sounds of the past fifteen years. My inner SMC perked up at the thought of exploring something edgy, futuristic and potential-riffic…
I have to admit this right up front – I have absolutely no clue how to dazzle you with flashy phrasing or obscure references that will completely distract you from the fact that I have no idea what Gabrels is trying to accomplish with this recording.
First – the good news. Technically, the recording itself is fabulous – the various sounds and the production value are very well crafted.
(thousand one…thousand two).
Oh, and David Bowie, Dave Grohl and Robert Smith make guest appearances.
(thousand three…thousand four)
That’s it. That’s all the good news I can find about this album. Now for the bad news…
I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Believe me, I tried. I really wanted to understand this album, but either I’m a complete failure as an SMC, or this stuff is just too far out there to be accessible to anyone but raving lunatic fanpersons. There is a lot of industrial edginess to this album, at least I think that’s what it’s trying to have – doesn’t Trent Reznor do this sort of thing? I mean, I’m not a huge NIN fan, but what I’ve heard from them is far more interesting than any of the tracks on this album. A lot of it sounds like Gabrels is trying to retrieve Bowie’s Major Tom character from the other side of the wormhole in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 just so we can see what he’s become after thirty five years… It’s a lot of spaced out noisiness that seems to orbit some other planet, a planet I’m not familiar with, one I’m not sure I could ever reach, wormhole or no.
Gabrels can certainly play the guitar, and he’s wildly imaginative – I’ll give him that. But the noise is so constant, and the wild screaming notes get old very quickly – the processing effects are impressive but become boring after a while. It seems to be noise for noise’s sake, rather than noise for art’s sake – if this is supposed to inspire me somehow, it failed spectacularly. You can’t just meander aimlessly searching for what works when performing music – this sort of thing rarely works for this particular art form, and when it does, it’s usually in a concert setting when someone is improvising a solo. Jazz manages to pull off this trick most often, but that’s the accepted nature of jazz – if Gabrels is trying to create some sort of acid rock/industrial age jazz, more power to him, but Ulysses (Della Notte) just doesn’t work for me.
Have I failed? Is my quest to become a real critic, complete with temperamental quirks and snobbish tastes, over? Or am I doomed forever to obscurity as just another hack who writes what he thinks about the music he hears…
Now that I think about it, that doesn’t sound so bad – and now, I’ve certainly heard worse…
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Reeves Gabrels – Ulysses (Della Notte)
Released in 2000 by E-MAGINE Entertainment
Track Listing
Arrow / Lines / Thirteen Years / Jewel / Accident / Trap / Yesterday’s Gone / Standing / Party Puppet
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