Lou Reed : The Raven 2003

The Raven is a concept album by Lou Reed released in 2003 . Its goal is to recount the short stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe through word and song . Both "The Bed" and " Perfect Day " are new and very different versions of well-known Reed songs from previous albums , and the song " Fire Music " is noise music . In addition to Reed it features a number of guest vocalists including Laurie Anderson , David Bowie , Antony Hegarty , Steve Buscemi and Willem Dafoe . The producer , Hal Willner , had previously overseen the Poe tribute album Closed on Account of Rabies .



The recording was simultaneously released as a two-disc set of recordings and in an edited single-disc version .

This is the Limited Edition 2 -CD Set .

Lou Reed has called The Raven " A movie for the mind " and that description just begins to capture this double CD's phantasmagoric impact . Though it's based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe , The Raven is less a strictly literary or musical work than a dreamlike evocation of Poe's obsessions : Loss , Guilt , Violence , Self-destruction and failed bids for redemption . Of course , those have been Reed's own obsessions for more than three decades . It's an artistic marriage that could hardly have been made in heaven -- the album's demonic power clearly emanates from the fires down below .

In that subversive spirit , The Raven will confound purists of every stripe . Most provocatively , Reed is far more faithful to the spirit than to the letter of Poe's work . He stirs verses from "Annabel Lee " , "The Bells" and " The Fall of the House of Usher " into a hallucinogenic stew , boldly altering Poe's language and adding his own as impulse dictates . On the other hand , the readings by actors such as Willem Dafoe , Elizabeth Ashley and Amanda Plummer not to mention the serene deconstruction of Reed's "Perfect Day" by the otherworldly singer Antony will bewilder the rock & roll animals among Reed's following .

Open-minded listeners , however , will revel in The Raven's impurities , its Poe-like perversions . Heaven and hell collide in Reed's raucous duet with the Blind Boys of Alabama on " I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum) " and he revisits the purgative roar of Metal Machine Music on the instrumental " Fire Music " On " Who Am I? (Tripitena's Song) " meanwhile , he delivers some of the most personal lyrics of his career . " One thinks of what one hoped to be " he sings , " and then faces reality " . The reality here is that Reed has once again stretched the boundaries of popular music and , in doing so , has honored Edgar Allan Poe's illustrious legacy , along with his own .


ANTHONY DECURTIS
Rolling Stone Magazine


Disc 1: Act 1

1. The Conqueror Worm
2. Overture
3. ld Poe
4. Prologue (Ligiea)
5. Edgar Allan Poe
6. The Valley of Unrest
7. Call on Me
8. The City in the Sea / Shadow
9. A Thousand Departed Friends
10. Change
11. The Fall of the House of Usher
12. The Bed
13. Perfect Day
14. The Raven
15. Balloon

Size 121 MB
Bitrate 320

Take it HERE

Disc 2: Act 2

1. Broadway Song
2. The Tell-Tale Heart (Pt. 1)
3. Blind Rage
4. The Tell-Tale Heart (Pt. 2)
5. Burning Embers
6. Imp of the Perverse
7. Vanishing Act
8. The Cask
9. Guilty , spoken
10. Guilty , sung
11. A Wild Being from Birth
12. I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum) Listen this track . It' s great !!!
13. Science of the Mind
14. Annabel Lee - The Bells
15. Hop Frog
16. Every Frog Has His Day
17. Tripitena's Speech
18. Who Am I? (Tripitena's Song)
19. Courtly Orangutans
20. Fire Music
21. Guardian Angel

Size 172 MB
Bitrate 320

Take it HERE



Ornette Coleman : alto saxophone on " Guilty "
Laurie Anderson : vocals on " Call On Me "
Antony Hegarty : vocals on " Perfect Day "
David Bowie : vocals on "Hop Frog"
The Blind Boys of Alabama : backing vocals on "I Wanna Know (The Pit And The Pendulum)"
Willem Dafoe : voice on "The Raven" and "The Cask"
Steve Buscemi : voice on "Broadway Song" , "Old Poe" & "The Cask"



THE CONQUEROR WORM

Lo! 't is a gala night
A mystic throng bedecked
Sit in a theater to see
A play of hopes and fears
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres

Mimes, mutter and mumble low
Mere puppets they, who come and go
Disguised as gods
They shift the scenery to and fro
Inevitably trapped by invisible Wo

This motley drama
to be sure
Will not be forgotten

A phantom chased for evermore
Never seized by the crowd
Through they circle
Returning to the same spot
Circle and return to the selfsame spot
Always to the selfsame spot
With much of madness and more of sin
And horror and mimic rout
The soul of the plot
Out
out are the lights
out all
And over each dying form
The curtain a funeral pall
Comes with the rush of a storm
The angels haggard and wan
Unveiling and uprising affirm
That the play is the tragedy "Man"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm

I WANNA KNOW

Under the intense scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes
I have felt the full knowledge
And force of their expression
And yet been unable to possess it
And have felt it leave me
As so many other things have left
The letter half-read
The bottle half-drunk
Finding
Finding in the commonest objects of the universe
A circle of analogies
Of metaphors
Ooohhh
For that expression
Which has been willfully
withheld from me
The access to the inner soul denied
I wanna know, ooohhh
I wanna know
I wanna know, oh
I wanna know
In consideration
In consideration of the faculties and impulses
Of the human soul
Of the human soul
In consideration
Of our arrogance
Of our arrogance
Our radical, primitive irreducible arrogance of reason
We have all overlooked the propensity
We saw no need for it
The paradoxical something which we may call perverseness
Perverseness
Through its promptings we act without
Comprehensible object
We act for the reason we should not
We act for the reason we should not
For certain minds this is absolutely irre-, irre-
irresistible
irresistible
The conviction of the wrong
Or impolicy of an action
Is often the unconquerable force
The unconquerable force
It is a primitive impulse
It is a primitive impulse
Primitive impulse
The overwhelming tendency
The overwhelming tendency to do
Wrong for the wrong's sake
To do wrong for the wrong's sake
We persist in acts
Because we feel that we
should not persist in them
Because we feel we, feel we
should not persist, per-, persist in them, ah
Ooohhh
So I wanna know