Victorialand
Label: Virgin Schallplatten GmbH
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: Europe
Released: 1986
Genre: Rock
Style: Ethereal, Ambient, Dream Pop
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The premise of Victorialand is really a good one, and a great one for this particular band. It's essentially a concept album, in the best sense since they aren't trying to tell a damned story but rather are making a collection of songs aimed at invoking a concept. The concept is a simple one (as concepts should be), they're making a whole album of songs meant to sound like Antarctica or other polar regions. It's right in the title of the songs and the album itself (Victoria Land is the name of a British portion of Antarctica).Every song here plays toward the theme without exception, and if you know anything about their delicate gorgeous sound you should definitely be nodding your head in agreement that this fits them well. And you know what? They do it pretty proud.
The songs are without exception extremely pretty, and all sound like perfect soundtracks to montages of glaciers and icebergs. It is basically a success. Unfortunately though..... it falls victim to one major issue. That everything more or less sounds exactly the same. Not sort of the same. Exactly the same. All the tracks pretty much could at best be different movements of the same symphony, you could make them fade into eachother with little issue. Sure they have a pretty well defined sound, but nothing about their sound means that the stuff has to be this similar. After all one of the major strengths of Treasure was that every gem on it had it's own personality even if they were basically cut from the same sort of cloth. "Ambient Snowscape Aria" could be the descriptor of damn well everything here.
There's much they could have done to avoid this honestly, namely they could have dared to add percussion? Yeah, there's next to no percussion on here at all. They stick to this very very rigidly. I don't really know why they did either, maybe they thought drums would break the concept?? Beats me. Drums on some of these tracks would have gone a long way toward making some stand out from others. Overall it's a huge shame because the songs are all so gorgeous, they didn't just forget all the genius on Treasure, this is definitely the same band that made that one. Except they've stuck to one note through and through, a really wonderful note, but one note nevertheless. This might be better suited to actually being a soundtrack, a perspective it seems 100% tailored toward. But as an album it can't really be considered great.
The songs are without exception extremely pretty, and all sound like perfect soundtracks to montages of glaciers and icebergs. It is basically a success. Unfortunately though..... it falls victim to one major issue. That everything more or less sounds exactly the same. Not sort of the same. Exactly the same. All the tracks pretty much could at best be different movements of the same symphony, you could make them fade into eachother with little issue. Sure they have a pretty well defined sound, but nothing about their sound means that the stuff has to be this similar. After all one of the major strengths of Treasure was that every gem on it had it's own personality even if they were basically cut from the same sort of cloth. "Ambient Snowscape Aria" could be the descriptor of damn well everything here.
There's much they could have done to avoid this honestly, namely they could have dared to add percussion? Yeah, there's next to no percussion on here at all. They stick to this very very rigidly. I don't really know why they did either, maybe they thought drums would break the concept?? Beats me. Drums on some of these tracks would have gone a long way toward making some stand out from others. Overall it's a huge shame because the songs are all so gorgeous, they didn't just forget all the genius on Treasure, this is definitely the same band that made that one. Except they've stuck to one note through and through, a really wonderful note, but one note nevertheless. This might be better suited to actually being a soundtrack, a perspective it seems 100% tailored toward. But as an album it can't really be considered great.
This review was made by Zephos [http://rateyourmusic.com/~Zephos]
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nice! thanks!
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