Scott Walker (Noel Scott Engel) is an American singer who has lived and worked in England since 1965. Originally discovered by Eddie Fisher and cast as a late-50s teen idol under his real name, he formed The Walker Brothers in the early ’60s and performed Phil Spector-influenced ballads. In 1967 the band broke up and Scott (taking the band’s name for his own) began a solo career. His heavily orchestrated versions of songs by Jacques Brel and others, delivered in a crooning style, became immensely popular in Britain and continental Europe. Since the 1970s his output has been sporadic, first touching on country and MOR sounds, then briefly rejoining The Walker Brothers, before heading off into experimental music, yet continuing critical respect to the present day.
His albums “Tilt” and “the Drift”, differ a lot from his earlier work.
His current artistic direction is extremely avant-garde and has been described as the “sound of nightmares”.
Try playing “Paper Doll,” from Looking Back, and “The Escape” from The Drift, with headphones and liner notes. Then decide how different they are.
His musical evolution is examined in the acclaimed documentary film “Scott Walker - 30 Century Man” in which Scott gives a very candid interview about his creative process and allows access into the meat-punching and box-bashing recording sessions for 2006’s “The Drift.”
(Taken from Last.fm)
I discovered the music of Scott Walker through a good friend of mine. He came around one day and dropped "The Drift". After two, three times of listenning to it this record just exploded in my head. It's a mixture of avantgarde singer-songwriter parts and freak folk. Could be the soundtrack to a real nightmare when you just drunk to much and feel like you want to die. Enjoy this one.
Tracklist
1. Coassacks are
2. Clara
3. Jesse
4. Jolson and Jones
5. Cue
6. Audience
7. Buzzers
8. Psoriatic
9. The Escape
10. A Lover loves
Close. Actually you're just experiencing a memory of modernity. During that time white folks of the western world thought we were going somewhere - they believed in progress, science, and figured the alienation inherent to the liberal paradigm was something to lionize, even celebrate. Look at how alone we all are, circling around in space. Just take the last monologue in the Rocky Horror Picture Show and apply to Scott Walker. Note in the late 60's folks thought we'd be eating out of tubes someday and living in inflated plastic houses; that is if we weren't all nuked to plasma.
ReplyDeleteThen.. none of this happened. Reagan came along, the space program was scrapped and the liberal academic elite pulled us from the precipice of modernity into the real nightmare: post-modernity. The sound we hear from Scott is a correlation of our distance from the sound of the Berlin Wall and our current state; materialist, irrational, incapable of grappling with truths apparent in Scott's youth (overpopulation, pollution, political corruption, and oh yes those nukes). Take it as the sound coming off the B sides of an old King Crimson album; the kind you'd use to sort out the seeds from the good bud. Liberal humanity comes with a cost, that's all. No put down the bottle of pills and grow up.