The Beatles, Love
Inspired by the Beatles' Cirque du Soleil show, legendary producer George Martin and his son Giles reached into the Fab Four's vaults to create this soundtrack. Not content to simply remaster the classics, they splice together songs to create a medley reminiscent of Abbey Road, except it's 10 years of music flowing together and overlapping. It's a fascinating idea, not to mention the remixes all sound fantastic. Love's ""Strawberry Fields Forever"" is better than any previous version, the acoustic demo of ""While My Guitar Gently Weeps"" gets a gorgeous orchestral backing and a blend of ""Within You Without You"" and ""Tomorrow Never Knows"" outpaces both originals in terms of surreal sound.
Is it a true Beatles album? Maybe not, but Love makes their music sound cleaner and more original than it has in years. Plus, long-time fans can have a treasure hunt tracking down what song pieces are used.
—Les Chappell
Junior Boys, So This Is Goodbye
Since the early days of Kraftwerk, many of the joys of electronic music have been cheap thrills derived from the Nintendo-like quality of the music and the limitations of production technology.
In that regard, the Junior Boys' So This is Goodbye didn't at first even register as an electronic album. Most of the sounds were unmistakably synthesized, but the songs show a sense of restraint towards the glitchy and robotic tendencies of the medium. Augmented with a stockpile of funky beats and a melancholy sort of sex appeal, So This is Goodbye sounded more organic than an electro album has any right to.
Tracks like \Double Shadow"" and ""The Equalizer"" lodged themselves in the memory with understated, almost subliminal hooks. Others like ""In the Morning"" were too infectious to take sitting down, but were a few beats too slow to dance to. Consequently, So This is Goodbye is the perfect nightcap of an album, whether after the party or after the breakup.
—Matt Hunziker
