Antony & The Johnsons - Cut The World - Printable Version +- Music Discussion (https://www.music-discussion.com) +-- Forum: Music Discussion (https://www.music-discussion.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=4) +--- Forum: Alternative (https://www.music-discussion.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=11) +--- Thread: Antony & The Johnsons - Cut The World (/showthread.php?tid=7403)

Antony & The Johnsons - Cut The World - Music Head - 18-08-2012 online listen who was it bought this, CH? can't join you on this one mate I tried his/her last one also the guy/gal is too far out there for me I enjoy watching it, but just to listen, no thanks I do like the clip, but that's it 1.3 from me and a converted 2.6 from the pros at allmusic from the album - You Are My Sister http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R3CYVLcYZw released August 14th, 2012 Bio - from allmusic U.K.-born, California-raised Antony Hegarty felt himself to be the consummate outsider until he came face to face with the image of Boy George on the cover of the Culture Club's 1982 debut album, Kissing to Be Clever. He relocated to New York City in 1990, where he found a world more accepting of his avant-garde sensibilities and sexually ambiguous nature. He created the cabaret ensemble Blacklips and modeled himself after Blue Velvet-era Isabella Rossellini and the drag queen that graced the cover of Soft Cell's 1982 single "Torch." He formed Antony and the Johnsons and released their self-titled debut on David Tibet's Durtro label in 2000, followed by an appearance on the Lou Reed albums The Raven and Animal Serenade; he toured with Reed throughout 2003. He has also appeared in the Steve Buscemi film Animal Factory as an androgynous convict. Antony and the Johnsons released a series of EPs in 2004, followed by the band's second full-length, the Mercury Prize-winning I Am a Bird Now, in February of 2005. Antony spent the next two years on the road, as well as appearing on Björk's Volta and in the Leonard Cohen documentary I'm Your Man before returning to the studio for the 2008 EP, Another World, which preceded 2009's full- length The Crying Light. Antony and the Johnsons' fourth studio album, Swanlights, arrived the following year. In 2011, the album's publisher, Abrams, issued a companion edition of Swanlights collected in book form, with Antony's paintings, drawings, photography, collages, song lyrics, and writings. In 2012, the band released Cut the World, a symphonic retrospective arranged and performed in collaboration with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra. It featured 11 tracks from their catalog, and the title cut, a new song written for Robert Wilson's stage production The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic. Album Review - from allmusic Cut the World was recorded live in Denmark with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra. It's essentially a "hits" collection, though the title cut is new. Antony and the Johnsons have worked with orchestras before. That said, all the arrangements of the catalog material -- provided by Nico Muhly, Rob Moose, Maxim Moston, and Antony Hegarty -- are new and make full use of the various timbral, textural, and dramatic elements of the orchestra. Hegarty's compositions are all, at heart, spiritual psychodramas, drenched in an emotion so profoundly moving that it walks the balance beam between pleasure and pain. Though they are born in the (transgendered) body and look at the world and its politics -- environmental, social, sexual, economic -- through that gaze, they also struggle to free themselves from its confines and enter the world of the sacred where all things are integrated, and even the dichotomies between the first person and second are fluid. Check the lyrics in the title track -- written as part of the score for the Robert Wilson-directed stage production of The Life and Death of Marina Abramović -- which mirror this perfectly. Hegarty's voice is the channel. Whether it's expressed as a full-throated mellifluous croon or a falsetto so transparent it emits light, it elevates these versions to something approaching prayer. They each reflect the divine as it expresses itself in the natural world and sometimes address god directly. The second cut, "Future Feminism," is a seven-minute monologue to the audience. Hegarty discusses the moon, religion, the environment, politics, and the direct connections between them all leisurely, without didacticism, pretension, or pomposity. These themes are explored humbly, conversationally, humorously, and humbly. The music, however, is performed with the authority of an inner experience that celebrates as it struggles to unite flesh and spirit. "Cripple and the Starfish" is almost theatrical in its drama. "Epilepsy Is Dancing" begins as a simple ballad and concludes as a shimmering paean that seeks one's place in our tenuous environmental balance. "Kiss My Name," with its unexpected rolling snares, becomes a near anthem, a symphonic poem, with Hegarty soaring over the top. Both "Rapture" and "The Crying Light" walk a wavering line between art song and pop song. Cut the World is easily the most revealing Antony and the Johnsons album to date, joining material from various recordings in one extended, sublime document. Track Listing 1. Cut the World 2. Future Feminism 3. Cripple and the Starfish 4. You Are My Sister 5. Swanlights 6. Epilepsy Is Dancing 7. Another World 8. Kiss My Name 9. I Fell in Love With a Dead Boy 10. The Rapture 11. The Crying Light 12. Twilight