Word: avante
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Bass Player John McVie and Drummer Mick Fleetwood provide sonic propulsion as Buckingham's melodies range widely and easily between old English folk and avant-garde pop. The sound sometimes flirts with the sort of revisions of Eng lish folk idiom that Fairport Convention used to bring off with such foursquare inspiration, and sometimes, as in the title cut, skirts the sonic experiments conducted by Lennon and McCartney on songs like Revolution...
...spread among the masses, radio almost unheard of and there was no television. Moreover, most of the proletariat was not only illiterate, but steeped in the tradition of the icon. So ideological control of static visual images was necessary to the party. One might even say that the Russian avant-garde was the last group of artists to work in a society where painting and, to a lesser degree, sculpture were still dominant mediums of discourse...
DAVID BOWIE returns triumphantly to earth with his latest record. He had been off exploring the possibilities of avant-garde electronic rock, an amazing journey guided by British synthesizer genius Brian Eno, for two albums. Those albums, Low and Heroes, were fascinating but uneven. Bowie seemed to be exposing an extravagant side of his musical language, one that wallowed in nine-minute moans and tones. He also turned out some excellent songs, especially the first side of Low and the title track of Heroes...
...because Bowie assumes many characters on it, but because he draws on the different musical styles of his past to find the right sound for each. The album has straight rock and roll, some R&B-influenced pop, some ballads and anthems, and a lot of the electronically treated avant-garde rock a la Low. Eno's role in the preparation of Lodgeris considerably narrower than on the previous albums; Bowie apparently called the shots here, with Eno simply finding the perfect sound to match Bowie's ideas...
...ditched them for mellow production and a cute smile, letting pretense win out over her instinct to play the music hard. Reed, more respectably, has done as much with them as he can and them tried to break away gently. Neither can tightly be called a leader of the avant garde. Reed is tired out, and though his work may point the way for others, his days of leadership are over. Smith has forfeited her leadership in a vain attempt to pretty her music up for the mass market...