[review]
English art rock band Roxy Music created a futurist rock mixing jazz, rock, melancholic and danceable rhythms, decadent singing and electronic. Each member of the band practically made Music History: Brian Ferry (singing), Brian Eno (keyboards and synthesizer), Phil Manzanera (electric guitar), Andy McCay (saxophone) and Paul Thompson (drums). Starting from their 1972 debut album ROXY MUSIC, they became forerunners of movements like New Wave and genres like synth pop, while their unique and innovative style blended jazz-rock, psychedelia and progressive rock. Among the album’s masterpieces stand the monumental and successful Virginia Plain, the mutant Ladytron and the incomparable If There Is Something, with its superb and rich arrangements (David Bowie will cover this jewel in the bridge of his 2013 song The Stars Are Out Tonight). The album epileptic and often dissonant opener Re-Make/Re-Model is their manifesto: it starts among the tables of an English pub full of lunatics, then the saxophone and the electric guitar defy each other in a battle of amazing riffs, until the wild closure where each instrument reclaims its leadership and shows its own personality. The second part of the album is darker, including the surrealist The Bob, the dramatic Sea Breezes and Chance Meeting, and the melancholic Bitters End. It’s amazing how the band mixed avant-garde music and rock and at the same time reached the mainstream public. Many artists all around the world, even the greatest ones, should learn from them.
Listen:
Order on iTunes:
