Björk - Selmasongs (Dancer In The Dark OST)

As far as Björk albums go this has to be the most boring one I have heard so far, if you can even call it an album at only seven tracks in length. Selmasongs is the "OST" to the film Dancer In The Dark, which also stars Björk in the main role. I've never seen the film and don't particularly plan on watching it, but I expected from Björk and all her super-creative weirdness a very challenging and enjoyable self-made soundtrack, but alas all we have here is a bunch of orchestral scores (which are nice in their own right, I suppose) with the odd Björk tune thrown in for good measure. Massive disappointment.

I can't really complain as I only paid £0.01 for this on Amazon (good luck "bricks'n'mortar" record stores!) but I was insanely let down by this short CD. Totally not worth waffling on about, and for Björk purists only.

James Levine & The London Symphony Orchestra - Mahler's Symphony No. 1

This is my second £1 Mahler purchase, and the second time I've been disappointed at not receiving some bat-shit insane classical music. I'm guessing that maybe Mahler gained his ambitions over time? The 4th is rather straight forward but complex in it's own way, and number 6 (the final symphony he wrote) is absolutely maddening as fuck. Number 1 however, after building and building from nothing over a long period  breaks into something that sounds like a typical background film score. The second movement, however pleasant, is like something out of an old Disney film (before they started having rap music in lieu of orchestrated scores) and drags on a bit for me.

Side two opens beautifully with the mournful third movement (you can fuck off if you think I'm going to write out all the German titles) that sounds like more of a soundtrack out of a Bioware game, or maybe earlier Elder Scrolls stuff by Jeremy Soule. It is like early Mortiis or prison Burzum but with a full blown orchestra and it sounds bloody brilliant, if I'm honest. If I close my eyes and concentrate for a bit I can literally see a small band of various adventurers shuffling around the wilderness of Baldur's Gate's Sword Coast at my command. Eventually the composition starts to get all Disney bunnies hopping everywhere before it fizzles out on a rather eery note. The final movement starts with a heart-attack inducing crescendo before becoming something that I think would go well to a montage of being chased through a busy, ambiguous European city by the Gestapo. Very good.

The link below is a performance by a different conductor with a completely different orchestra, probably even in a different country in a different period in time, but it is still Mahler's 1st in all it's glory. If you got an hour and fancy a change from endless goregrind check it out. 

Martin Grech - Open Heart Zoo

This is one of those albums that I forgot about for nearly a decade until one day it's existence just came crashing back to me like some sort of acid flashback. Of course, all that was left to do was to buy it off Amazon for 3p. In hindsight, I'm not sure if it was worth it.

The title track is a totally epic and original composition of heaving modern-classical and emotional vocals. It builds and builds and then explodes like a typical post-rock song (without sounding anything remotely like the genre). And from there on in, things go downhill. "Dali" is enormously heavy for a track in this genre, although the extended LP version does get a little bit tedious. After that, this record sadly sinks to the unfathomable depths of Radiohead worship. Every single song begins to sound the same, which is total fucking disaster considering they all sound like bastard cunting Radio-fucking-head.

"Penicillin" is probably the most boring and drawling song ever written in the history of the world, and closer "Death of a Loved One" is an absolute test of patience. You can see how brilliant "Open Heart Zoo" is compared to the rest of this pile of shit by checking out the video below. This was put out on some overblown major label, which I think is Universal. Martin Grech went on to make a whole bunch of albums that I couldn't give a fuck about.