...great! I couldn't resist sharing this news.
I have her new record called Paradise. It's a promotion CD with German notes. The programme is: Haditha; The Sloganeer; Middle Earth; Virgo; Lovely, Lovely; Elliptical; Shirk; Article 3; Blacknuss; Headline; Evolution; Solomon; Relief (The End).
I'm no professional reviewer so let me just say that to these ears this is one of Meshell's best records, and even harder to pidgeon-hole than the previous ones. If you think the record is just more of what's on the Article 3 EP, you'd be wrong - the other songs (generally) are more dreamy, spacey, jazzy, mystic... In total we have a mixture of rock (inc. punk-rock, progressive), electronica, dub, jazz, world... and more... And her bass playing is great - there are some splendid walking notes - you can imagine how Meshell composed her songs by playing bass to a drum machine and generating ideas. There is also a lot of great guitar playing (Metheny?), some limited jazzy horns (inc. a trumpet which reminded me of Molvaer), moody electronic sounds and the ! vocals (can't find an adjective here)... Just don't expect straight RnB or "hits" and you shouldn't be disappointed at all!
Having heard the Paradise record I wonder if delay of the release is due to the material being not "commercial" enough? Perhaps there is some wrangling around mixing the music? Interestingly, Elliptical is mixed differently from the EP, more spacey with better defined bass and with additional 3 minutes thrown in, where bass interplays beautifully with a trumpet, percussion and electronica.
So, even though I have the Paradise and I love it, I am very impatient awaiting TWHMMTMOMD (and hoping for another set of mixes - just to have a pleasure to hear yet another take on that great music).
Cheers to all Meshell's fans. Hope to see her live in Europe this year.
Darek

(sorry, i hit edit instead of reply)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: matthew,

hopefully you weren't the one that paid over $220 on ebay for it...

i just hope that more copies aren't out there and that for everyone's sake (not just meshell's) that the album doesn't get leaked. that would be bad for meshell and her admirers who've been so patient...

i can't find the logic behind the delays in putting this out. too much of a risk in this day and time, when the product has been finished for so long... and now it's leaking on ebay and the heavy hand of wb isn't there to stop it... just a matter of time before it falls into the wrong hands.

how long has it been in the can now? nine months? a year? she's not with maverick anymore, right? what's the hold up?

but hey, as adam would say... good times!

The CD is safe in my hands and is not distributed. Actually, I had been thinking of putting it on eBay now that I've heard the music and have it on my iPod - but for the sake of the music not being leaked Paradise will stay with me. (and I will buy a regular release too - no harm for Meshell whatsoever...)
The record is so good that I find it hard to believe they're delaying the release. The only problem for music execs might be where to file it under - Soul? Rock? Alternative? Electronica?
Or, perhaps, there is a problem with the concert tour which should follow the release date? Can't see any confirmed concert dates beyond July.
Just speculations...

There's been dates here and there, but I don't know what's up. With anything

Also, I kind of assumed you wouldn't leak it, and I'm thankful (and I'm sure most of the people that read this thread will be as well) that you're not putting it back up on ebay...

Btw, I was the 2nd highest bidder on both auctions... so I guess I sort of owe you an apology.

And I owe you an apology too! Sorry, there could only be one winner... and I was prepared to pay a lot.
(actually, had I known the other bidder was you, the guy behind the Forum... well I may have relented - surely you would write a better review for the sake of all forum members. But anyway, everybody is more interested in hearing the thing rather than reading about it, right?)

nah, i'm kind of glad i didn't have to pay that much for it... especially since she doesn't see a dime of it. my only intention was to keep it away from someone who might leak it.

i'm glad someone around here has it. i don't have to worry about that auction anymore...

and i'm not very good at writing reviews. i'd have sent it to kt in the hope that he'd write one. or to derek since he's remained consistent in his support for the site and meshell.

Darek, here's the cover art for your $216 cd

Yeah, I like it. Whatever it is, it fits the music perfectly

Hey Darek,

Glad you're enjoying the disc! I'm curious what other songs that we've been hearing live have made it on. These are the tunes that I don't know by name:

Middle Earth
Virgo
Lovely, Lovely
Solomon
Relief (The End)

Are any of them "Point of No Return"? Do we know any of the others by lyrics or a different name?

Also, "Virgo" isn't Wayne Shorter's Virgo, is it? (after all, she did cover "Fall")

Thanks!

a few random thoughts...

"middle earth" aka "point of no return."

"virgo" aka "capricorn."

"lovely lovely" is nice, but i'm afraid k'alyn is missing from the backing vox. he's been in ethiopia though, so that might have been out of the question to have him on the album. i'm just saying that it's NOT the same with sy smith by herself. k'alyn and sy were great together, but with it only being her... well... it's not something i've been able to get use to. that's just my personal opinion of course.

"solomon" is a song dedicated to her son. not sure if the intro and outro are by his father, but it's one of the best tracks on the cd. would not have been out of place on "comfort woman."

"relief (the end)" is what was one of the songs that reportedly aired on the "noah's arc" series. i believe it's been redone. NOT "afterglow"... a different song. and it's wayyyy overproduced.

i think this album is meshell's first production that doesn't involve an outside producer. it may have been produced completely by meshell herself. (in other words, no "produced by" cato, craig street, david gamson, kofi taha, etc) i don't know if that means that she's entered an area where prince is where there isn't someone in the studio to suggest to her that "maybe this isn't a direction you want to go in" or "this computerized sound is drowning out your bassplaying" or "hey, your vocals are being drowned out by that computerized sound"...

for me, the album works as a whole... but quite a few of the songs don't work by themselves. it's the first album of her's where i haven't had a problem skipping past a song. i mean, i have skipped past certain songs of her's for year's now, but that didn't happen on the 2nd or 3rd listen...

one of the other things that has happened with her studio material this decade is that it's increasingly become more and more overproduced. i'm not sure if that's the correct term or not, but it's the same thing that's wrong with a lot of prince's material. it sounds fantastic live, but on record it sounds like whoever was in the studio was going for perfection. constantly tinkering. it's what's also wrong with marcus miller's studio work.

one of the best examples i can give was hearing the live at kcrw version of what was then known as "the river" before meshell renamed the song "andromeda" and added a ton of other sounds to it in the studio. the most notable addition was the louder drums, which kills the tone that was set with the kcrw version.

it's like she went from the perfect album ("bitter") where it was just the musicians. no sound effects or tinkering. then something happened with her sound (different studio equipment?) somewhere between "bitter" and "cookie." where things had to be tinkered with until they were perfect. i'm sure if i were her i'd probably do the same thing. go for the perfect sound, see how many different sounds i can add to a song to make it better or different. but sometimes it doesn't work.

i'm looking forward to reading ernest hardy's thoughts.

most shocking is that this album doesn't have the usual standout love song/ballad that all meshell albums do. there's no "outside your door," "beautiful" or "trust." though i'm sure some will argue that "elliptical" is the ballad on this album... only one question though. who is captain gerard? it repeatedly takes you out of the moment. i keep thinking of gerard depardieu or am wondering if meshell was inspired by "the life aquatic." i'm sure it's none of that. the point is, is that it takes you away from what makes her music so special, and therefore is not a "sweet love" or "stay"...

again, just my own personal thoughts on the album. as with everything meshell does, each person will have a different take on it.

and before meshell or anyone here thinks i want another "bitter," i don't. i just want (or long for) the honesty in her music and lyrics not to be drowned out by sounds that she can't or won't play in concert.

that and if she has 300-500 unreleased songs, to fill out her discs a little more...

nothing worse than being a fan of sting's and to put his new cd in and it only be 39 minutes long. yes, it's the artist's vision to have the album put out that way, but then sting will release a b-side on every single. why not just put them all on one album?

"bitter" is a masterpiece, but i have no doubt that there were 3-5 more songs from that time period that would've fit perfectly on it (and kept with her vision for that record) to make it a full cd...

just a little something to hold us over during that 3-4 year time period between albums.

speaking of "bitter," we're still waiting on a live cd. i can understand (and give reasons for) why one hasn't been released. just know that we're still waiting

Matthew,
I see that you had a chance to listen to the new album too. Your thoughts are very interesting but I have a different perspective. I wouldn't be so negative about the new music - actually I like it very much! Obviously it comes down to musical taste. I love the sound full of electronica and jazzy sounds, even if it is less acoustic, less "true". And while there are no likely megahits here (what makes a song a megahit anyway? ), there are many superb songs with, simply speaking, great melodies. To name some: Elliptical (probably my favourite, especially the longer version), Lovely Lovely, Virgo, Solomon, Relief (not to forget the Article 3, Shirk and other "old" stuff).
And excuse me - most of them are better to me than Outside your Door given as an example of a standout song (comes down to personal taste again!).
Also, I have no complaints about bass - I don't think it is not "drowned out" by other sounds. Maybe it's a matter of the audio system.

I simply think Meshell is going in a new direction and I am grateful for this. There will be no more Bitter unless she decides in the future to come back to more acoustic playing.
Whatever the genre, whatever the production values this is still great Meshell's music to me and it resonates with me. It has plenty of the "Meshell factor" in it... perhaps just a different factor for each of her fans.
Just my 2 cents.
Darek

PS: GinBoxer - I don't recall Wayne Shorter's Virgo - Meshell's has a jazzy intro, but then follows with a memorable melody, interesting bass playing (of course!), there is a saxophone solo - so maybe it is WS stuff?
PS2: the voice on Solomon doesn't sound like a father of her son - to me it sounds like a 20-year-old (but I'm not an expert here ;-)

Darek,

Don't get me wrong. I love the new sound. I've been wanting a rock and roll album from Meshell for the longest time. My only complaints were that the studio quality doesn't match up with previous albums. Such as "Peace Beyond Passion" which received a Grammy nomination for Best Sound. To me, there's something wrong in how it was mixed or something. When her beautiful voice or bassplaying or the guitar level is being drowned out for seemingly no reason at all, it seems more of a technical liability than a artistic choice.

Also, for further clarification purpose... I wasn't comparing the new music to "Outside Your Door." I was saying there wasn't a standout ballad on the album. That's all. My point was that all of her past albums have had one and that this one does not. There are slow moments throughout the CD, but there is not the standout ballad.

As for the bass, I wasn't referring to the bass level. Again - I was referring to the seeming lack of expertise in the mix. Like certain things were being drowned out or mixed wrong. It's not the audio system, trust me

As for my comparisons to "Bitter,"... well, I wasn't and I believe that you're misunderstanding my thoughts or they've been lost in translation.

Again, I've longed for this direction (Rock & Roll) from Meshell and I hope that it continues. I could just do without the overproduction (or lack of production, a second ear, a voice she trusts in the studio) is all. I can't wait to hear this stuff live, because that's when everything goes to another level.

Lastly, the recording of the young man sounds like it may have been recorded years ago. The young man is obviously talking about his newborn son, which would put the recording of his voice to be from around 19 years ago. Who knows

It sounds great that the two you have different perspectives of the same music yet within the fans reach. I've personnally loved all of her music so far.I just don't understand the decline of the amount of music being put on albums lately. Seems like the albums of 60's and 70's. Believe me if it was asked that fans pay more for extended albums of additional music by artist, fans would comply (I look for bonus tracks of artist all the time).Sometimes those outtakes and/or extra music is great to hear. So I hope one day someone in the industry will start letting the artist add material, no matter the time requirement.

So Matthew, which song title is soulspaceship?

that song was left off the album for some reason. i think i speak on everyone's behalf when i say that it will hopefully be on a future release.

quote:

Originally posted by matthew:
Darek, here's the cover art for your $216 cd

<a style="cursor: help;" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000LZ554U/dvdlisform" target="_blank"><img src=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v339/suomynona/cvr.jpg></a>

hello

according to a universal france employee it will not be exactly the same version :
the mix , some arrangements re-done : more choruses, percussions ,guitars, bass more ahead in the mix. So the paradise version is already a collector !!!
for those who can read the french here's the
link !! the guy name is slystoned
and he talks about the new version at the pages 6 & 7
peace

ps : i hope those who have the paradise version will share it when the final album will be released (on 3 september according to the universal dude)

quote:

Originally posted by Bassy.B:
according to a universal france employee it will not be exactly the same version :
the mix , some arrangements re-done : more choruses, percussions ,guitars, bass more ahead in the mix.

that's great news... i knew it wasn't just me.

So record industry execs are forcing Meshell to redo her record to make it more "successful" in the marketplace... OK, I'm kidding. If yet another version is released in September I will be a very happy man!

I know you said you're kidding, but I just want to make sure you understand. They're only fixing the things that I said was wrong/bad with the disc.

And that's under the assumption that the person from France posting on that message board is actually in the know - knows what they're talking about.

I'm hoping it's true.

There's a big difference in being asked to mix something correctly (or whatever is wrong with the sound on what we have) than what Maverick pulled during the time "Bitter" was being created.

Matthew,
I hope you're right about the remix, though no one here knows for sure what is going on. Giving bass a more prominent place in the mix would make sense, though adding percussion not necessarily so - for example I love the sparse percussion sound on Elliptical, with cow-bell and high-hat (played by her).
Best regards and don't get irritated :-) (I owe you a lot - thanks!)
D.

quote:

Originally posted by matthew:
that song was left off the album for some reason. i think i speak on everyone's behalf when i say that it will hopefully be on a future release.

Well Matthew, It seems I'll have to hold my breath again for a song that seems to once more not fit the format of yet another direction on a Meshell album.For example, the song "Mass Transit" performed at the D.C.show(maybe one of those 300-500 unreleased songs we hear about).I can only hope there will be singles with b-sides,or added to soundtracks if not included on album.

Darek, no worries If it's what the French person is saying, and our interpretation is correct, then you'll understand what I meant.

Again, just to be clear -- not bass (as in bass and treble) - her bass playing

feenin, I've never heard "Mass Transit."

I don't know how it works though. I fear the stuff recorded while under Maverick may not see the light of day until those rights expire... if they ever do. (Think PRN & WBR.)

matthew, what did maverick pull during the "Bitter" creation?