View Full Version : Black Soul Choir - 16 HP still delivers the 90s
Davey
10-15-2011, 02:36 PM
Listening to both of the first 2 long players from Sixteen Horsepower today, "Sackcloth 'n' Ashes" and "Low Estate", and just felt that I had to say something. There's a few fans here, and we may all have our favorites, but what a great couple records. "Black Soul Choir" up at song of the day right now, but only one of many, many songs that keep running through my mind from these records. Their last label put out (another) collection this year called "Yours, Truly", one of those 2-CD things with a set of voted fan favorites, and another set of odds and ends. Not bad really, boosted levels but no news there, go for the originals if sound is a priority, but good collection overall. Love the "Bad Moon Rising" cover, it was a b-side on "For Heaven's Sake" from Low Estate. Put that up at song of the day too. Those first two albums flow so well though, just doesn't sound right anymore when you hear some of the songs out of context.
Slosh
10-17-2011, 02:27 PM
That's a cool cover. Sounds exactly like 16HP and nothing like I expected. Thanks!
Davey
10-17-2011, 03:47 PM
That's a cool cover. Sounds exactly like 16HP and nothing like I expected. Thanks!
Yea, exactly. I still like CCR, in fact I was just listening to Green River a couple days ago, but some of those songs just don't really need to be heard again by a lot of us. Sixteen Horsepower makes the music sound more like the lyrics, like the end really is coming soon. There's also the live version on "Hoarse", but I never liked the sound of that record. This one is from the "Ditch Digger" single at the time of Low Estate. It's also on the recent Yours, Truly collection, and sounds about the same, though the bass and everything is goosed a bit more on that one. Not too bad, but these days the original is almost always better when it comes to music reissues.
Don't know if you're a fan of Gun Club (just uploaded Sex Beat), but 16 HP also do a pretty nasty version of "Fire Spirit", which was a bonus song on the European version of Low Estate, and is included on the second Yours, Truly CD. The original is on Gun Club's pretty great Fire of Love record, which does have a cool sound but is kind of a low budget recording with phasey stereo and not much bottom, so the 16 Horsepower version comes on like a hellstorm in comparison All in all, a pretty nice collection for those that want some 16 HP, but not a whole stack.
Jim Clark
10-20-2011, 06:05 AM
Knew nothing about 16 HP until after you turned me on to Woven Hand's Mosaic a few years back (thanks again for that). Your post got me into a 16 HP grove the past couple of days. Worked out to Disc one of Yours Truly yesterday and had disc 2 going in the car the past couple of days. Not really a band that makes a good soundtrack for the world series though. Wild Flag and Mates of State however...
tonight I get to spend some time with We Were Promised Jet Packs, which while underwhelming upon first listen, I'm hoping is a grower.
Oh and go Texas.
jc
Davey
10-20-2011, 08:05 AM
Your post got me into a 16 HP grove the past couple of days.
Cool, in a dark and forbidding kind of way, but not in a Slint way (sorry, that just came out of somewhere, and I know where because I've been listening to Slint's amazing Spiderland too much lately, as I tend to do too much lately, like this morning, and ...well, if you have to explain a musical reference then it usually means it's kind of a dumb reference, but you know at the end of Pinback's great AFK, he says "...and I miss you, not in a Slint way, but I miss you", which I guess would be lost unless you've experienced Spiderland's monumental closer, which ends with McMahon's pained screams of "I miss you". A very creepy song, and certainly one of the best couple minutes in modern rock history as it builds toward the ending). :)
Well, that was a long ride for no place to go. Funny, but speaking of Sixteen Horsepower (which I just remembered this thread was about), someone else was just asking for my old Decade of Alt Country tracklist, which uses a 16 HP song from my US version of Low Estate, and I was just mentioning above about there being a different EU version of Low Estate that includes a Gun Club cover. What I didn't mention is that it includes most of the "The Partisan" EP, which adds a cover of Leonard Cohen's "The Partisan", and the Gun Club's "Fire Spirit", along with the "Ditch Digger" single. Which would seem to make it the version to own, except it sacrifices that hellfire and brimstone song I chose for the Alt Country comp, "Dead Run", and which I love too. So now I have both versions of Low Estate, along with most of the EPs and singles surrounding it, which of course makes the two versions redundant, and which I probably don't need to say while responding to one who has a couple hundred overlapping Wall of Voodoo recordings in his collection :)
OK, I'm done rambling now.
Slosh
10-20-2011, 03:58 PM
This reminds me, I have Secret South on DVD-Audio. It has a bonus track, "24HRS", a Joy Division cover too.
bobsticks
10-21-2011, 09:37 AM
Sixteen Horsepower makes the music sound more like the lyrics, like the end really is coming soon. . .
Quite foreboding really...cascading reverberation, banjos, and that plaintive yelp...the end is, indeed, coming soon.
It wasn't until much later that I discovered Gun Club though I was more aware of some of their contemporaries across the pond...the British positive punk movement that along with the Goths brought so much more foreboding music.
I think I'm gonna put on a Steampunk outfit and spin some Spear of Destiny and Fields of the Nephilim records...
nobody
10-21-2011, 10:23 AM
Gun Club do a great version of CCR's Run Through the Jungle on their album called Miami.
And as long as I'm flying off on a tangent, Two Lone Swordsmen do a killer version of Sex Beat on The Double Gone Chapel.
Davey
10-23-2011, 11:46 AM
And as long as I'm flying off on a tangent...
Cool, I just wanted to get up to 100 views. Not much of a goal on the worldwide web, but when there's only about 10 of us posting around here... not bad :)
On a David Bowie kick this weekend, mostly Hunky Dory and Ziggy. Got a great vinyl rip for HD, and been exploring the SACD ISO rip at different sample rates in foobar for Ziggy, compared to my old favorite MFSL vinyl rip which is a little bloated in the bass. I prefer both on my RCA International pressings by Bilbo at Tape One, but don't have digital copies, and actually hard to care all that much when listening to Hunky Dory, just such a great record, easy to get lost.
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