CDs listened to today:

• Ace of Base: The Sign (Cheesy pop-music, sure, but also an interesting melding of reggae-based rhythms with contemporary dance rhythms of the time.)
• Ted Leo & The Pharmacists: Shake The Sheets
• Alban Berg: 3 Orchesterstucke (This disk also includes the Schoenberg 5 pieces and the Webern 6 pieces. I can't say I think much of the Webern. His usual efforts to keep things as brief and compact as possible betray him here. Anton seemed to have a problem with the orchestra--perhaps it was too many colors and textures for a guy who thought in terms of miniatures. In spots, the pieces seem to be trying to make every note a different hue and it just feels squirrelly. Schoenberg's works are always welcome and as usual, his are the best on the disk. While these three composers are fairly linked in musical and historical terms, their personalities revealed in the music are radically different. Only old Arnold makes a complete personality appear--confident but retiring, joyful, sad and a million other shades of feeling and thought well up in just a few minutes of these works. This is the Karajan recording of these and I'm sad to say that I believe this is out of print in this version.)
• Charlatans: Up To Our Hips (I think this might be the last act to use an organ effectively. Steve Nieve, best known for backing Elvis Costello, had mostly abandoned the organ in favor of the piano by the time this disk was released [1994]. The Charlatans used the organ like a second bass; big, low leads that powered some very funky grooves. The closest we've heard since then is the production team that once powered N'SYNC and Britney Spears' best tunes with big, synthetic bass leads)