blonde redhead 23 album download Barragán. For over two decades, Blonde Redhead have made a career of channeling their experiments into music that's different than what came before, yet unmistakably theirs. Penny Sparkle's hushed electronics -- an equal and opposite reaction to 23's maximalist shoegaze -- made for an album that felt like a dream that couldn't quite be recalled upon waking. But instead of turning up the volume again, Barragán barely rises above a whisper. With the help of producer/engineer Drew Brown, Kazu Makino and brothers Simone and Amadeo Pace explore a stripped-down sound that's something of a risk, considering that the band's other reinventions focused on dense sonics. Though the band's ninth album is often quiet, it's never muted. Barragán's songs have more spark than Penny Sparkle, and their nakedness is just as thrilling as the lavishness of previous peaks like 23 and Misery Is a Butterfly. "Dripping"'s fragmented beats and synths coalesce into dreamy yet propulsive electro-pop that lets its silences be just as vital and beautiful as the music itself. Meanwhile, "No More Honey" focuses on Makino's alternately caressing and aloof vocals and elastic guitars - - which convey all of shoegaze's psychedelic sensuality with half the distortion -- with such hip-swaying confidence that it suggests Blonde Redhead's surreal touches are arguably even more stunning when they're laid bare. The album's motifs reveal themselves gradually: the title track drifts in on acoustic guitar, harpsichord, and flutes, casting a fairytale spell that feels radical and timeless; "Mind to Be Had" sets a winding, quintessentially Blonde Redhead melody to an unhurried motorik rhythm; and the wounded, wondering "Defeatist Anthem (Harry and I)" puts it all together to transporting effect. Thanks to the minimalist production values, Makino's one-of-a-kind voice is even more central on Barragán, most strikingly on the coyly sexy "Cat on Tin Roof," where her teasing vocals dance over some of the album's most powerfully spare instrumentation. Even in this incarnation, the band still conveys the highs and lows of (likely) star-crossed love like few others; airy chamber folk pieces like "The One I Love," "Penultimo," and "Lady M" all reflect the flowing beauty of their best work since the early 2000s. Just as poetic, mysterious, and bewitching as Blonde Redhead's more baroque albums, Barragán is a quietly audacious set of songs that ranks among the band's finest music. Blonde redhead 23 album download. Add to Custom List. Add to My Collection. AllMusic Rating. Overview ↓ User Reviews ↓ Credits ↓ Releases ↓ Similar Albums ↓ facebook twitter tumblr. AllMusic Review by Heather Phares. With each album since Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, Blonde Redhead has made huge strides forward with their sound. Misery Is a Butterfly pitted fragile melodies against dark, swirling arrangements, and its tragic glamour turned the album into a cult favorite. On 23, the band trades the cloistered chamber rock of Butterfly for tone-bending dream pop and subtle electronics; while the wide open spaces sound a little bare at first, this streamlined approach ends up making this Blonde Redhead's loveliest and most accessible work yet. The group begins each album with a bold statement of purpose, and 23 is no different. The epic title track's delicate electronic rhythms, swooping, shimmering guitars, and majestically bittersweet melody pitch it somewhere between My Bloody Valentine and Asobi Seksu, showing how a more restrained Blonde Redhead can still sound lush and haunting. "Spring and Summer by Fall"'s streaming, comet-tail guitars and "Silently"'s thorny melody hark back to Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, while "Heroine"'s vocoders sound surprisingly fresh, giving the song a fairy tale-meets-sci-fi vibe. This more whimsical, if not exactly lighthearted, feel flows through much of 23, especially on "Dr. Strangeluv," which boasts playful percussion and sparkling synths, and "Top Ranking," which layers Kazu Makino's vocals into futuristic girl group harmonies. However, Blonde Redhead hasn't ditched the brooding beauty of Misery Is a Butterfly entirely. "The Dress" is just as darkly stunning as any song on that album, with looping gasps and insistent guitars circling lyrics like "the fear starts creeping up when you have so much to lose," while "SW"'s melody and psychedelic brass interlude have a Butterfly-esque intensity. And as always, Blonde Redhead has a flair for haunting melodies, particularly on "Publisher," the chorus of which sounds peculiarly like Aerosmith's "Dream On." 23 is stunning -- in fact, its only flaw might be that its track listing is a little top-heavy, resulting in an album with an amazing first half and a flip side that is only very good. Nitpicking aside, 23 is mysterious and modern, with an artfully strange beauty that is more memorable than perfection. Blonde Redhead 23. Blonde Redhead belong to a lineage that also includes Saetia, Guillemots, Hadouken, and The Arctic Monkeys. By this I mean, they're a band that I avoided for ages because of the kind of people who rave about them (be it people I know, the NME, or certain famous people). Yet, they're also a band, like the others mentioned, that I eventually checked out and loved. In all honesty, what I expected was nothing like this - everybody I know who talked about this band was a hardcore scene kid (I loathe the phrase, but you get the picture). Now, if somebody had bothered to tell me, 'here's a band that used to sound a lot like Sonic Youth, but now pitches themselves somewhere between Interpol and My Bloody Valentine. ' Certainly, this album starts excellently. "23" is a brilliant slice of neo-shoegaze, good enough to have been on Loveless (ya, srsly!). "Dr. Strangeluv" and "The Dress" are a little more straightforward, but equally impressive and beautiful. "SW", meanwhile, moves the band musically into a territory that reminds me of The Twilight Singers circa Blackberry Belle , and the vocals sound a bit like Scott Matthews. There's even a brass/horn fanfare halfway in. What's not to love here? So far, it's four tracks of easily listenable, gorgeously textured indie rock with great melodies. Now, there are dozens (actually, probably hundreds) of albums that get to this point and get me wishing that they'll keep it up. and then they start sliding in quality. 23 doesn't. "Spring and by Summer Fall" actually makes me wonder if I'm over-rating what's gone on so far, because so few albums get this far with me getting this much enjoyment from every track. "Silently" restores my faith - it's slightly more pared-down, in that there's less going on musically, but that melody is absolutely undeniable. The remaining four tracks are again very, very good - "My Impure Hair" deserves a mention for being the only song so far that sounds easy to replicate live, featuring as it does a prominent acoustic guitar and cleaner, more basic electric guitar line. Yet, the swirls and effects remain, elevating it - it reminds me a little of Slowdive's finest moment, "Dagger", which was also a pared-down, more acoustic track at the end of a dense shoegaze-inspired album, although, if I'm being honest, "Dagger" is the better song. I can honestly say that I'm shocked by just how good, and particularly how consistent, this album is. I'm tempted to make more slightly retarded comparisons to Loveless , and that, really, should tell you enough about how great this music is. It's lush, deep, produced and executed to near- perfection, and the songs are just plain beautiful. It manages to be as enigmatic as something like Espers, without sacrificing the accessibility it so effortlessly displays. To top it off, there's not a bad track in sight. Stalling it on a rating of 4 does seem a little harsh, but it should be noted that if I ranked every album I'd rated a 4, this would probably make the top 10. Speaking of top 10 lists, if this isn't in my top 10 of 2007 come the end of the year, I'll be shocked - in what's been a surprisingly good year so far, this still manages to shine through. Definitely recommended. Penny Sparkle. Following an album as majestic and innovative as 23 would be a hefty challenge for any band, so Blonde Redhead went in a very different direction with Penny Sparkle. Intricate, volatile guitar work has been the mainstay of Blonde Redhead's work since the beginning, even when nearly everything else about their music changed. This time, Amedeo and Simone Pace and Kazu Makino pare the guitars down to a bare minimum, letting the electronic flirtations on 23 develop into a full-blown romance. Though it’s not the most drastic revision the band has made over the years -- comparing Blonde Redhead's Touch & Go output with their 4AD work is almost like hearing the work of two unrelated bands -- it’s one of the most initially jarring. Though the band had explored its more delicate side for nearly a decade by the time Penny Sparkle was released, at first, it doesn’t seem like the album’s spare beats and synths can support its melodies. With time, however, Blonde Redhead's collaboration with producers Alan Moulder and Van Rivers and the Subliminal Kid is just as rewarding in its own fine-boned way as their earlier work. “Here Sometimes” makes the most of Makino’s one-of-a-kind vocals; she still sings in a dialect all her own, hovering somewhere in between Japanese, English, French, and alien, and the song’s limpid electronics bend to her reverie.