Big Blue Ball | Loppylugs

Submitted by Jon Taylor on 14 February 2013 - 10:51pm

Cover:

Artist:

Various

album-ID:

a_34

Nationality:

Various

Year:

2 008

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Whole Thing*Habibe*Shadow*Altus Silva*Exit Through You*Everything Comes from You*Burn You Up, Burn You Down*Forest*Rivers*Jijy*Big Blue Ball*Whole Thing (Adrian Sherwood & Jazzwad Remix)

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_14

Now-num:

Spotify-URL:

6B7ZbFeVrepf17qoSlPtkm

Grooveshark-URL:

Big+Blue+Ball/3492618

Short-title:

bigBlueBall

nominator-ID:

u_3

Meeting-date:

Wednesday, 24 September 2008

MusicBrainz-URL:

0798bb7e-4756-3547-beba-4b13f9b39ede

Wikipedia-URL:

Big_Blue_Ball

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Big-Blue-Ball-Big-Blue-Ball/master/124146

Allmusic-URL:

big-blue-ball-mw0000785501

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108

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reviewers-IDs data

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65

reviewed by

Jon Taylor

A nice collection (a bit dated & uneven) but great in parts

God, you guys are merciless. I hadn't heard this album myself, as you know, but it's an accessible collection of ideas from around the world that sometimes hits the mark and rarely offends. Considering the variety of music you ask the rest of to listen to, you could try to be a little more accepting.
48

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

A somewhat uninspiring mish-mash

7

4-6-12

I have to say I couldn’t summon up the contempt other panelists seem to find for this album, although I did understand their reservations. Just like the slightly dubious notion of ‘world music’ itself, this is music that doesn’t naturally belong together. To my mind, it’s fine to try and fuse a couple of music styles together, maybe even 3 in an emergency, but this is a whole mad smorgasbord of them - a plate of warmed-up leftovers after an international dinner party, almost literally from what I understand. I took particular offence to the Celtic flavoured fayre - penny whistles, fiddles, flutes, Bodhráns, pint of the black stuff, rustic, homespun clichés… yawn… is that the time? The Sinead song, particularly, really is a poor effort.

You've got to admire Peter Gabriel’s efforts off the pitch, as it were, but he's nowhere near the midfield general he once was, on it. I can't see that he’s ever really got over his unexpected chart successes of the 80s, he’s struggled musically really to know where to go from there - hence all the movie soundtracks and collaborations - a failure really to find any new rock voice for himself. His contributions on here, I didn't mind so much but there didn't seem a great deal of point to them.

Just like his songs, where you felt you might have heard something similar before, so too with the other artists. Indeed I have and I preferred what I’d heard elsewhere. There’s nothing here that is ever going to be in any of the artists’ greatest hits, nor probably even on any of their albums at all - that may be an attraction for some fans but for me it is quite the opposite.
36

reviewed by

Richard Norbury
20

reviewed by

Andrew Granger

Over-produced MOR with psuedo-exotic veneer

1-8

4-6-11

Perhaps due to the circumstances of its production, this album doesn't really hang together and already sounds dated in its year of release. There seem to be two main modes on the album: song-based MOR from Wallinger and Gabriel, and "world music"/fusion on the songs with various international guests. The songs are generally unmemorable (although the opening track grew on me after a while) and the touches of world music seem to be used more as colour and signifiers of exoticism/authenticity than being treated as musical elements in their own right. The one exception is "Forest" where the (arabic-sounding?) vocals actually develop and are used to drive the song. There are undoubtedly some very talented musicians on here (Jah Wobble, Sinead O'Connor, Billy Cobham, to name but 3), but none of them distinguishes themselves. Everything is subsumed into an over-produced soup of generic lite-funk and ambient washes.
10

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

The bottom line isn't low enough to warrant one.

3-8

1-2-4-5-6-7-9-10-11-12

Ok, so it’s Peter Gabriel’s creation. As the first track gets underway you realise that nothing has changed since his efforts from the 80s. You instantly recognise the same vocals, the same instrumentation, and the same production techniques. This track, and all the others where he sings (Nos. 4, 7, maybe others) may as well just be re-releases of Sledgehammer - at least that would have been more interesting. These are all instantly forgettable.

Tracks 2 and 3 explore the world music theme, but I can’t help thinking he’s trying to tick boxes, just copying recent chart successes. But these are poor, repetitive efforts.

Already you get the sense that a major label has just thrown money at this, and it has the feel of a very smug album. I have a vision of Gabriel sat in his huge mansion recording studio, sitting around with all his session musicians chums, drinking tea and giving a smug thumbs up to yet another tedious creation.

Track 6, which is apparently Sinead O’Conner on vocals? What an embarrassing pile of toss. Stop war. Stop terror. Riiiiiight Ooooon Bro!

Track 8 is the only track that interested me, and only really because the pounding bass beat gave it a kind of prog trance feel. However, this is rather a rip off of Two Tribes by Frankie. You can actually sing along with it if you try. This is by far the most interesting effort though.

After two utterly dreadful, forgettable tracks (9 & 10) you come to 11, and you think Aha ’ a track with a tune! At last! And then you realise that this is the most awful, insipid pile of tripe you’ve ever heard - even Gareth Gates or Will Young would have been embarrassed to have sung this on the X Factor!

Finally we are offered a bonus track. Bonus? Is he serious? Twist the knife in some more why don’t you.

This is a dreadful effort. Easy listening, middle-of-the-road background trash at best. If people can’t create something interesting then why bother? What’s more disturbing is that it appears there is a market for dull nonsense like this. It's kind of like being debt collector, really.