BUCKETHEAD
1/ The Blind Centipede (Buckethead) 0.55
2/ Kurtz Temple (Buckethead) 2.04
3/ Covert (Buckethead) 1.12
4/ Death Card (Buckethead) 1.03
5/ R.I.P. (Buckethead) 1.02
6/ Plans Within Plans (Buckethead) 0.41
7/ Eye In the Sky (Buckethead) 0.57
8/ Freezer Burns (Buckethead) 0.59
9/ Sky Drones (Buckethead) 0.57
10/ Operation Gateway (Buckethead) 1.18
11/ Bantam Rising (Buckethead) 1.45
12/ Combat Shadow (Buckethead) 0.25
13/ Azzim's Lectures (Buckethead) 1.24
14/ Channel of Secrets (Buckethead) 0.45
15/ Comet Shower (Buckethead) 1.20
16/ The Worm Turns (Buckethead) 1.36
17/ Silhouettes Against the Sky (Buckethead) 1.32
18/ Sleeper Agents (Buckethead) 1.34
19/ Recreational Cryonics (Buckethead) 1.26
20/ The Blind Sniper (Fred Rogers) (Buckethead) 1.42
21/ Atlantis Found (Buckethead) 0.58
22/ The Spider’s Web (Buckethead) 1.18
23/ Blue Crystal (Buckethead) 1.24
24/ Reaping the Whirlwind (Buckethead) 1.01
25/ The Hills Have Eyes (Buckethead) 2.55
26/ The Other Side of Midnight (Buckethead) 0.50
27/ Sea the Hollow Man (Buckethead) 0.50
28/ Unsound Methods (Buckethead) 1.06
29/ Hall of Records (Buckethead) 1.34
30/ Aluminum Clouds (Buckethead) 1.28
31/ Lost Threads (Buckethead) 1.22
32/ Killing Mask (Buckethead) 2.46
33/ Rattlesnake Hill (Buckethead) 0.55
34/ F-4 Phantom (Buckethead) 0.59
35/ Stub Pylons (Buckethead) 0.59
36/ Armour Piercing Projectile (Buckethead) 0.44
37/ Stolen Identities (Buckethead) 1.20
38/ The Shriek of Revenge (Buckethead) 1.17
39/ 5-Card Trick (Buckethead) 1.25
40/ Caretaker of Memory (Buckethead) 1.02
41/ The Kingdom of Nie (Buckethead) 1.08
42/ Kangaroo Kranes (Buckethead) 0.52
43/ High Seat With the Devil (Buckethead) 1.18
44/ Jessy (Buckethead) 1.31
45/ From the Foxholes (Buckethead) 1.22
46/ (F.L.I.P.) (Buckethead) 0.45
47/ Frozen Head (Buckethead) 1.52
48/ Who Is the Enemy (Buckethead) 0.35
49/ Nappler Radar (Buckethead) 0.53
Recorded in the Coop
Assistant: the frozen brain of Shingles
Produced by Buckethead(?)
Mastered at TDRS Music by Travis Dickerson
Buckethead : guitars, bass, beats; SAMPLES - LA Riot Drums, Brain, Bill Laswell, Big Beat, Chopper.
2002 - ION (USA), 2016-2 (CD)
5 stars out of 5
Troy Omafray (courtesy of Amazon.com)
Get ready to be further amazed, for this 61 minute CD features 49 tracks! And each one constitutes a cohesive song bristling with fiery allure and intense charm. Not possible? Ha--you don't know Buckethead. "He's a real psycho."
From the initial note, your attention is aggressively clutched and held fast. Guitars grind and wail and blaze and growl and titillate and jar and swerve and seduce and bewitch. Drums explode and patter and enunciate and propel. Electronic edging slides sinuously amid the rest of the fury, barely noticeable for the brilliant glare of the guitar's ceaseless pyrotechnic displays.
With each song lasting between 25 seconds and 3 minutes (although the majority of the pieces last on an average of just under 2 minutes), these compositions are compacted and refined to express with immediacy. There's no meandering here--it's right to the riff, repeat, deviate and done. And each track is as rewarding as the last one, sating all desires from dance to trance to gritting your teeth with absolute delight.
"Powerful and compelling" does not adequately describe this music's impact.
How is it humanly possible to create such an array of diverse and entertaining melodies? Ah, you're beginning to understand the scope of this creature's talent.
Aiding Buckethead this time (in the form of provided samples) are: LA Riot Drums, Brain (from Primus), Bill Laswell, Big Beat, and Chopper.
Mat Howarth (courtesy of the Sonic Curiosity website)
A collection of 49 "snippets/sketches"? All average one minute, some more, some less. Some are just wierd ambient sounds, grinding and floating around for a few seconds, some start out like "Monsters & Robots"-style pieces: Slammin' riffs, Brain on drums, then they just end. Either they cut out or fade out abruptly. Others are Bucket apparently fooling around on bass with a drum machine or sequencer. Still killer though. Are these demos? Or the B-head just sketching out some ideas? Generally still on par with his last few releases, but the format of minute-long bits is odd, even by Buckethead standards. Some are produced all the way, others are rough-sounding. All in all, I like it, just not as much as "Monsters and Robots" on the one end, and "Colma" on the other. Both of those albums are 5-star extravaganzas on opposite ends of the spectrum. This one has some 5-star jams which start out strong, but minus 1 star because they cut off so soon. As a true Bucket-lover, I would've loved to hear some of these pieces develop more. But dig it for what it is. Bring it on Bucket!
4 stars out of 5
'A Music Fan' (courtesy of Amazon.com)