Day 376: you and me death

When I arrived back at my normal home last Friday night the new Kent cd "Du och jag döden" was waiting for me. The first visual impression is that it is pretty black - the Max 500 cd that arrived a week or so earlier was black (like an old playstation disk) with black label and in a black sleeve, so I had kind of expected the trheme to carry on. This cd was also black like a playstation disk. The case was made of dark smoked perspex so you could just see the cover through it, which was also on black paper. The front cover picture is a skeleton playing cards with an ugly bloke, but on close inspection you notice that it isn't a bloke and she is a little odd looking (I hope it isn't based on a real life person - if so I hope I haven't caused any offence, and I'm sure you look good in real life). The pictures inside the booklet are also of this skeleton and girl - they are computer generated and the skeleton has quite a puppet like appearence, probably due to the fact that it has very long and very thin arm and leg bones. The girl has a big nose.

I didn't get chance to listen to it until Saturday morning on my way into town. The first track opens with a really great instrumetal section with some intresting drum interjections that got me liking it straight away. The whole cd has a real air of quality to the sound, production and arrangement. It has been a fair gap between Vapen & Ammunition and this one, but it is obvious that on listening to it it is going to be compared with it. V&A seemed, to me, to have some quite differring, but equally good songs that one could get into pretty much on first hearing. The songs on Du och jag döden seemed not to have the same instant catch to them, and each song seemed similar to the previous one. But I could tell that with more an more listening they would grow on me and probably reveal more depth than one tends to get from songs that hit you more on the first listen (as happens when listing to Peter Hammill). I do tend to feel that the more it takes to get into some music the more rewarding and long term the listening pleasure is (apart from stuff which is just plain crap of course).

I am currently on about my 7th listening and I am beginning to remember the songs more and as expected each one no longer sounds at all sumilar to the others (though there does seem to be more of a consistent style than the songs on V&A). Until now V&A was pretty much the best cd I had heard, but I di think the new one is going to at least match that. I'm really looking forward to hearing some of these songs at the concert in Stockholm at the end of May.