Track listing
Show track credits
- 1 Sleepwalk 5:13
- 2 Prison of the Rhythm 4:54
- 3 I'm Not Sorry 5:07
- 4 This Is How It Feels 4:45
- 5 To a Stranger 5:41
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vocals
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- 6 The Wonder 4:55
- 7 Breakdown 4:59
- 8 These Days 4:09
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keyboards, programming
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vocals
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keyboards
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- 9 Rain Holds 5:52
- 10 Twist the Knife 5:21
- 11 Bird Flying 5:54
- 12 A Divine Kiss 3:15
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vocals
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- Total length: 60:05
Rate/Catalog
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Review
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3 Issues
- Release view [combined information for all issues]
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This Is How It Feels Digital file, StreamingLossless Digital
4 Reviews
I guess if no one's gonna show this album some love, it's up to me. As Chuck Mosely once sang: "Oh, its a dirty job but someone's gotta do it."
Anyway, I can see how someone would borderline hate this record. This has to be one of the most monotonous records I've ever reviewed. It smacks of some music majors jumping on the trip-hop bandwagon without stopping to properly learn the musical language that they are assimilating, and because if the presence of Bill Laswell, this conclusion may look like an attractive one. I've already written at length about His Esteemed Royal Highness Laswell, but suffice it to say that he lost much of his credit within the rock hinterland by jumping on trends like drum and bass, and ambient music, and sucking anything that made said genre good out of the music and replacing it with his own DNA. Laswell's worst stuff stinks like a music major jumping onto a trend simply because they think they can do it better because of their talent. That being said, this is not one of those cases. Laswell got on the trip hop fad surprisingly early on, 1993, and this is not specifically a Bill Laswell record. No, The Golden Palominos were formed by a solid group of luminaries from the NYC no wave/downtown music scene in the early 1980s, and while their first album was skronky, no wave math rock, the band retained only the core of Laswell, and percussionist Anton Fier, who is the only remaining original member to this day. Guitarist Nicky Skopelitis was fairly constant member as well. Other musicians who passed through the ranks of the band included Arto Lindsay, Michael Stipe, Jack Bruce, John Lydon, and Chuck Leavell, the guy who played the awesome piano on The Allman Brothers' Band's "Jessica." The second album was a piece of fairly conventional post-punk tinged rock, while the followup, Blast Of Silence was even more conventional still with the band bringing on a new singer for accessible rock tracks such as "Work Was New." The band had begun to venture further from the conventional rock tracks on 1991's Drunk With Passion, which included dreamy, female-sung tracks like "When The Kingdom Calls" and experimentation with ambient music on "Begin To Return." That shift away form the accessible would reach fruition with This Is How it Feels.
Fier and Laswell brought on a new vocalist for this album, Lori Carson, who would end up co-writing most of the album. And I don't really like Lori Carson as a vocalist or a lyricist. She comes across as a much less interesting version of your various trip hop divas such as Shara Nelson (without the lung power that made "Unfinished Sympathy" so captivating) or Beth Gibbons (who pulled off the "very edge of suicide" style of singing much better that Lori does). I simply don't give a shit about Lori's lyrics here. They sound like vaguely erotic poetry written by a high school sophomore. It's hard to point to a specific example, but it's that VIBE I don't like. Yeah, I know that its a copout, but great trip hop depends on the power of the vocalist to make the music album nightmarishly intimate. Think of Tricky's dreadful (in the best possible way) croak on songs like "Suffocated Love" and how it plays off the the sweetness of his companion Martine Topley-Bird. I don't even feel like I need to mention Beth Gibbons again. The point is, I have to ignore Lori here, most of the time. Yada yada yada, the deeply troubled lyrics are delivered in a serene voice, yada yada yada. She still inserts some decent hooks, though. There's that "Just tell me why/tel me whyyyyyyy" bit in "Twist The Knife," but that part's equally as memorable as Anton Fier's awesome drum fill in the next measure. And I guess that "walk outside and wonder at the wonder" bit in "The Wonder" is pretty good too.
But its the music here that I really love. This record is ALL ABOUT THAT BASS...well not really, but the band backing Lori up is deeply funky in a way that most trip hop simply wasn't. Trip hop, as you'll recall, rose from sound system and DJ culture, and many of the best bits were sampled. Anton Fier's drum sound here is awesome. Check out the DEEP snare tone that he pulls out in the intro to "I'm Not Sorry," and you'll get an idea of how cool his drums sound here. His rhythms are deeply funky all the way through. Come to think of it, this whole album is just really DEEP, everything seems to reach far down. The keyboard work on top is also incredibly effective. Check out those great Hammond organ licks in the opening "Sleepwalk," played by Bernie Worrell himself. Or that single piano chord that it hit at the end of each lyrical line in "To A Stranger," that holds the whole song together and provides the sole source of melody. And Bill Laswell isn't really doing anything different on his bass from what he usually does, staying on the low strings and preferring to be an deep, dub-like presence rather than sticking his basslines up front and inserting catchy licks, but his approach works much better for me here than it does on his twenty gajillion dub records that he's released in the past twenty-five or so years. His dub-influenced basslines were never meant to back up actual dub music (THAT'S TOO MUCH DUB FOR ANY ONE MAN!) but were meant to branch out into other forms of music. He still throws in the occasional catchy lick though. Check out the ascending bassline that drives "The Wonder," or the really cool descending line that opens up "Breakdown." And the guitars, handled mainly by Nicky Skopelitis, do some really good stuff here too. There's that really neat arpeggiation that hangs in the background of the chorus of "Breakdown," or that funky lick that drives the quieter sections of "Twist The Knife," and there's just too many other cool part to mention because this review is already running longer than I intended it to anyway.
So yeah, this album is deeply flawed. It didn't need to be sixty minutes long, for instance, or have nearly all the tracks top out around five minutes, or be so gosh darned monotonous all the way through. It's the same style all the way through, ride or die. And yet, I still LOVE these grooves. They're just not quite like anything else that I've ever grooved to. The Golden Palominos (this incarnation anyway) could have made a great living as a live studio band backing up hip-hop artists. Lori would stay on for on more album, Pure, which had the same atmosphere but included a few failed clubby experiments. I haven't listened to anything that the band did after 1994, though they supposedly branched out again into industrial music. But still, this is potent stuff. It's not really for everyone, and I won't hold a grudge if someone absolutely hates this thing. But I'll defend it.
Even if I thought, on my first listen, that it sounds like "Justify My Love" stretched out for an entire album. And I HATE "Justify My Love."
Anyway, I can see how someone would borderline hate this record. This has to be one of the most monotonous records I've ever reviewed. It smacks of some music majors jumping on the trip-hop bandwagon without stopping to properly learn the musical language that they are assimilating, and because if the presence of Bill Laswell, this conclusion may look like an attractive one. I've already written at length about His Esteemed Royal Highness Laswell, but suffice it to say that he lost much of his credit within the rock hinterland by jumping on trends like drum and bass, and ambient music, and sucking anything that made said genre good out of the music and replacing it with his own DNA. Laswell's worst stuff stinks like a music major jumping onto a trend simply because they think they can do it better because of their talent. That being said, this is not one of those cases. Laswell got on the trip hop fad surprisingly early on, 1993, and this is not specifically a Bill Laswell record. No, The Golden Palominos were formed by a solid group of luminaries from the NYC no wave/downtown music scene in the early 1980s, and while their first album was skronky, no wave math rock, the band retained only the core of Laswell, and percussionist Anton Fier, who is the only remaining original member to this day. Guitarist Nicky Skopelitis was fairly constant member as well. Other musicians who passed through the ranks of the band included Arto Lindsay, Michael Stipe, Jack Bruce, John Lydon, and Chuck Leavell, the guy who played the awesome piano on The Allman Brothers' Band's "Jessica." The second album was a piece of fairly conventional post-punk tinged rock, while the followup, Blast Of Silence was even more conventional still with the band bringing on a new singer for accessible rock tracks such as "Work Was New." The band had begun to venture further from the conventional rock tracks on 1991's Drunk With Passion, which included dreamy, female-sung tracks like "When The Kingdom Calls" and experimentation with ambient music on "Begin To Return." That shift away form the accessible would reach fruition with This Is How it Feels.
Fier and Laswell brought on a new vocalist for this album, Lori Carson, who would end up co-writing most of the album. And I don't really like Lori Carson as a vocalist or a lyricist. She comes across as a much less interesting version of your various trip hop divas such as Shara Nelson (without the lung power that made "Unfinished Sympathy" so captivating) or Beth Gibbons (who pulled off the "very edge of suicide" style of singing much better that Lori does). I simply don't give a shit about Lori's lyrics here. They sound like vaguely erotic poetry written by a high school sophomore. It's hard to point to a specific example, but it's that VIBE I don't like. Yeah, I know that its a copout, but great trip hop depends on the power of the vocalist to make the music album nightmarishly intimate. Think of Tricky's dreadful (in the best possible way) croak on songs like "Suffocated Love" and how it plays off the the sweetness of his companion Martine Topley-Bird. I don't even feel like I need to mention Beth Gibbons again. The point is, I have to ignore Lori here, most of the time. Yada yada yada, the deeply troubled lyrics are delivered in a serene voice, yada yada yada. She still inserts some decent hooks, though. There's that "Just tell me why/tel me whyyyyyyy" bit in "Twist The Knife," but that part's equally as memorable as Anton Fier's awesome drum fill in the next measure. And I guess that "walk outside and wonder at the wonder" bit in "The Wonder" is pretty good too.
But its the music here that I really love. This record is ALL ABOUT THAT BASS...well not really, but the band backing Lori up is deeply funky in a way that most trip hop simply wasn't. Trip hop, as you'll recall, rose from sound system and DJ culture, and many of the best bits were sampled. Anton Fier's drum sound here is awesome. Check out the DEEP snare tone that he pulls out in the intro to "I'm Not Sorry," and you'll get an idea of how cool his drums sound here. His rhythms are deeply funky all the way through. Come to think of it, this whole album is just really DEEP, everything seems to reach far down. The keyboard work on top is also incredibly effective. Check out those great Hammond organ licks in the opening "Sleepwalk," played by Bernie Worrell himself. Or that single piano chord that it hit at the end of each lyrical line in "To A Stranger," that holds the whole song together and provides the sole source of melody. And Bill Laswell isn't really doing anything different on his bass from what he usually does, staying on the low strings and preferring to be an deep, dub-like presence rather than sticking his basslines up front and inserting catchy licks, but his approach works much better for me here than it does on his twenty gajillion dub records that he's released in the past twenty-five or so years. His dub-influenced basslines were never meant to back up actual dub music (THAT'S TOO MUCH DUB FOR ANY ONE MAN!) but were meant to branch out into other forms of music. He still throws in the occasional catchy lick though. Check out the ascending bassline that drives "The Wonder," or the really cool descending line that opens up "Breakdown." And the guitars, handled mainly by Nicky Skopelitis, do some really good stuff here too. There's that really neat arpeggiation that hangs in the background of the chorus of "Breakdown," or that funky lick that drives the quieter sections of "Twist The Knife," and there's just too many other cool part to mention because this review is already running longer than I intended it to anyway.
So yeah, this album is deeply flawed. It didn't need to be sixty minutes long, for instance, or have nearly all the tracks top out around five minutes, or be so gosh darned monotonous all the way through. It's the same style all the way through, ride or die. And yet, I still LOVE these grooves. They're just not quite like anything else that I've ever grooved to. The Golden Palominos (this incarnation anyway) could have made a great living as a live studio band backing up hip-hop artists. Lori would stay on for on more album, Pure, which had the same atmosphere but included a few failed clubby experiments. I haven't listened to anything that the band did after 1994, though they supposedly branched out again into industrial music. But still, this is potent stuff. It's not really for everyone, and I won't hold a grudge if someone absolutely hates this thing. But I'll defend it.
Even if I thought, on my first listen, that it sounds like "Justify My Love" stretched out for an entire album. And I HATE "Justify My Love."
Published
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I´ve tried and tried, but always, without fail, I felt bored to death. The album gets two stars for the techinical sophistication of the production, but beyond that there is not much to admire.
Published
People who like sophisticated funk and trip hop will likely go for this record. "This is how it feels" grooves along hypnotic dance rhythms. Guest vocalist Lori Carson sings with a seductive high-piched croon, but just as often she "speak-sings" and employs breathy whispers and sensuous moans. The lyrics are self-confident and explicit, dealing in relationships, God and existentialism.
But after a while the music can get a bit repetitive and the songs start to sound similar. That's why I don't always listen the whole album at once. Still, "This is how it feels" is well worth having, and the many stellar musicians (Bill Laswell, Anton Fier and Nicky Skopelitis to name a few) all make excellent contributions. Highly Recommended!
But after a while the music can get a bit repetitive and the songs start to sound similar. That's why I don't always listen the whole album at once. Still, "This is how it feels" is well worth having, and the many stellar musicians (Bill Laswell, Anton Fier and Nicky Skopelitis to name a few) all make excellent contributions. Highly Recommended!
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Catalog
15 Apr 2024
13 Apr 2024
6 Apr 2024
1 Mar 2024
-
1
Sleepwalk
-
2
Prison of the Rhythm
-
3
I'm Not Sorry
-
4
This Is How It Feels
-
5
To a Stranger
-
6
The Wonder
-
7
Breakdown
-
8
These Days
-
9
Rain Holds
-
10
Twist the Knife
-
11
Bird Flying
-
12
A Divine Kiss
21 Feb 2024
5 Feb 2024
29 Jan 2024
-
1
Sleepwalk
-
2
Prison of the Rhythm
-
3
I'm Not Sorry
-
4
This Is How It Feels
-
5
To a Stranger
-
6
The Wonder
-
7
Breakdown
-
8
These Days
-
9
Rain Holds
-
10
Twist the Knife
-
11
Bird Flying
-
12
A Divine Kiss
30 Dec 2023
18 Dec 2023
30 Oct 2023
14 Oct 2023
12 Oct 2023
10 Oct 2023
6 Oct 2023
22 Aug 2023
