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| View Larger Image | The Italian Flag | Audio CDby Prolapse
| List Price: | $11.98 | |
| | Binding: | Audio CD | | Studio: | Jet Set Records | | Release Date: | September 22, 1998 | | Sales Rank: | 420,080th |
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TRACK LISTING |
Disc: 1
- Track 1: Slash/Oblique
- Track 2: Deanshanger
- Track 3: Cacophony No. A
- Track 4: Killing the Bland
- Track 5: I Hate the Clicking Man
- Track 6: Autocade
- Track 7: Tunguska
- Track 8: Flat Velocity Curve
- Track 9: Return of Shoes
- Track 10: Day at Death Seaside
- Track 11: Bruxelles
- Track 12: Visa for Violet and Van
- Track 13: Three Wooden Heads
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CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 6 reviews)
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Caustic retro sound  4 Stars
October 29, 2000
This is a good post-punk album by a group who wears its influences on its sleeve. Take it from someone who was there: most of this album would not feel out of place or unfamiliar on a college radio station in 1982. Forget the Fall, the Fall are amusing to listen to; Prolapse is not. What I hear is echoes of early Killing Joke, late Flux, and even anarcho-punks like Crass. Good stuff, in any case.
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A release of frustration against The Gap. by Leclerk (Dallas, Texas United States) 4 Stars
August 27, 1999
I'm sick and tired of things that are twee. The Gap promote pastel shaded apparel and demasculinated models in their annoying cuddly commercials. The, anti-Proplapse, Belle and Sebastain, contribute to the twee fad as well. Frontman, Stuart Murdoch, sings in a whimpy, whiney, voice that is toned down to a snap, crackle, and pop of a chimney fire. "The Italian Flag" isn't a bowl of rice crispies nor any marshmellowed kids' cereal in that matter. If anything, it's a hearty bowl of frosted miniwheats: sweet and raw taste condensed in a small nugget of energy. These Scots borrow a few of the best "patented" styles that alt-rock has to offer: the no-nonsense, fierce rock of The Fall and the noisy drones of guitar and moog found in Stereolab's earlier masterpeice, "Transient Noise Bursts." The grinding guitar riffs, sharply pounded drums, and a repetitious melody and lyrics hammers in the lyrics "I know I need to get my head examined" quite effectively. Clashes are many but controlled. The hard and brutal nature of the instruments and vocals avoid stupidity run loose as each song is well contained in an air tight steel box. Linda Steelyard's soft, restricted voice smoothens the rough edges of the thrashing noise. She shares the stage with hyperactive "Scottish Mick" whose anarachical yelling and and ranting of "crap" are amusing but sometimes interrupts Steelyard's part. At such moments, Mick better shut his Scottish mouth up and let the lady sing. I give "Italian" four stars because only a handful of albums as good as the Fall's "This Nations Saving Gace" or The Smith's "The Queen is Dead" deserve five stars. "Italian Flag" is a definite keeper regardless of the fact that alternative/indie music in the late 90s has lost some inspiration.
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My favorite album of 1998  5 Stars
June 22, 1999
I never heard of this band before reading a review which drove me to search this out. As a fan of their influences (Stereolab, the Fall, early P.I.L.), and a lover of droning and cryptic rock, this album combines an homage to these groups into a peanut-butter-meets-chocolate (remember the Reese's commercials way back?) that collides the misleadingly-billed-as-fragile English female lilt-litany and the gruff, over-the-top Scots anarchist bloke vocal styles into a sweet-and-sour concoction that's heavy on the ears but somehow uplifting even as it batters you into cringing before its aural assault. It is, upon repeated listenings, layered and complex beneath its initially monolitihic surface sound, and I highly recommend it. Not an album I would listen to everyday, but when I'm in the mood for a good bash of the old eardrums which is smarter than most any metal and more innovative than what passes for alternative these days, this is just the album the shrink prescribed.
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The best thing since bread 5 Stars
March 28, 1999
Amazing hybrid of dual-gendered voice interplay and mildly minimal but wonderful music. I've bought it twice.
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The best thing since bread 5 Stars
March 28, 1999
Amazing hybrid of dual-gendered voice interplay and mildly minimal but wonderful music. I've bought it twice.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes
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| Backsaturday
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| Nouns (W/Book) (Dig)
by No Age
The Sub Pop debut by this LA duo is succinctly all encompassing, from the faux simplicity of the title to the beautiful distortion of its sound, to the packaging that includes a 68-page full-color book packed with photos and art pieces. The record opens with a symphony of noise and sometimes creeps, sometimes smashes through a sonic headlock befitting "Daydream Nation"-era Sonic Youth, Kiwi pop, My Bloody Valentine, and experimental noise.
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