Furious Angels

About

Furious Angels is the debut album by Rob Dougan, released in June 2002 in the United Kingdom and in July 2003 in the United States and Europe. It was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package. Furious Angels was originally released as a single-disc album (14 tracks for its world edition, 15 for its home UK edition) dominated by vocal track. It was then rereleased as a two-disc album, disc one featuring all 15 songs and disc two featuring 10 instrumental versions of the vocal songs from the first disc, as well as two music videos; there’s also been a special-edition set adding a booklet of lyrics and photograph. The album was written, produced and mainly financed by Rob Dougan himself, rather than a studio, with funds generally raised through the licensing of tracks from the album to film and television. This album has been described as “semi-dark, yet fresh and witty”, but its appeal is far from universal, as summarised by the opening paragraph of a 2003 article in The Guardian: Rob Dougan is a rather odd musician. He says he’s not particularly interested in music, for a start. His most famous track, Clubbed to Death, is dance music that you could never dance to. He has written for both Matrix film, but doesn’t seem to think much of what he did for those either. He spent six years working on his orchestral solo album, Furious Angel, which could either be an epic work of panoramic genius or a gargantuan monument to his ego, with strings—it’s hard to tell. And he has just been asked to remix some Frank Sinatra track, even though he thinks remixes are a waste of time. It’s been noted how the overall tonality of both music and lyrics is essentially dark—in a similar way to some blues or folk music. While not a concept album, it seems structured as a descent into darkness followed by an ascension towards light (a comedy in the traditional theatrical sense). Dougan frequently attempts different variations of the same track, which usually find their way onto single release. However the Kurayamino variation of this Clubbed to Death is significantly better known than the first one due to its appearance in the film The Matrix. Therefore, this version is now known simply as Clubbed to Death, and the first one as the First Mix. The subtitle Kurayamino variation is Japanese for darkness’s variation (暗闇（くらやみ） kurayami means darkne, and の no is the genitive suffix). It denotes Dougan’s own mix in a tragic style, as well as his stated inspirations from dark Japanese writers such as Yukio Mishima or Yasunari Kawabata. The short strings intro and piano part are excerpts from the first movement of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variation. The opening string figure from Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter” movement of The Planets is sampled by Dougan throughout this song. The pitch of this figure is modulated down a tone, to fit with the existing harmony. The classical part of Clubbed to Death 2 is built around Chopin’s Prelude No. 4 in E-minor (from Prelude, opus 28). The piece was played in the classic film The Amazing Mr. X (1948). A mix of Clubbed to Death titled Peshay Mix was present on The Big Brother soundtrack, following the first season of Big Brother in the UK. This version features only minimal string, piano and synthesizer parts and light percussion with a breakbeat section in the middle of the song. A sample of Clubbed to Death is used in commercials for the NCAAW basketball tournament. The track is famous in the UK for being featured on numerous reality TV show montage. .

via Last.fm

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →