Wednesday, July 23, 2008

APHRODITE'S CHILD - 666 (1972)

FOLLOW THE SYSTEM
ARTIST``````APHRODITE'S CHILD
ALBUM`````
`666
GENRE``````PROG-ROCK, ART ROCK

YEAR````````1972

WHY:
This over-the-top pretencious album is just tooo huge, titanic and monstruous. Eclectic messages about pretty much everything, glorius, mystified lyrics that occassionaly sound a bit "cheesy" along with a couple of infamous, experimental tracks like "Infinity" where a famous greek acctress yells "I am, I am to come. I was." while having an orgasm + one 19 min spectacular non-listenable mixed track. Everything a bombastic cult album needs is here and stuck together in 1, 18 hours of 1970's rock spectacle.

...and - I really hate Biblical references in music but sometimes, when put in right perspective and from a safe distance, mixed with lots of humor it can acctualy work as a pure concept and as pure musical pounding entertainment.

This is considered to be the very first "concept album" and one of the greatest achievements of the genre ever by the way.



BAND BIOGRAPHY:
A Greek band of the late '60s and early '70s, Aphrodite's Child scored only one European hit, "Rain and Tears." Though it was a big one, the group became little more than a trivia answer after keyboardist Vangelis PapathanassiouChariots of Fire

The band began to record their crowning achievement late in 1970: a musical adaptation of the biblical Book of Revelation, entitled 666. Silver Koulouris, having finished his Greek army duty rejoined the band. However, relations between all the band members were not good at the time, and continued to worsen during the album's creation. dropped his surname and hit number one with the theme to in 1981.

Essentially, 666 was Vangelis' concept, created with an outside lyricist, Costas Ferris. The music that Vangelis was creating for 666 was much more psychedelic and progressive rock oriented than anything the band had done before. This did not sit well with the other band members, who wished to continue in the pop direction that had brought them success. Furthermore, Roussos was being groomed for a solo career, and recorded his first solo single "We shall dance" (with Sideras on drums), and his first solo album On the Greek side of my mind, whereas Vangelis recorded the score for L'apocalypse des Animaux and worked on a single with his girlfriend Vilma Ladopoulou, performing with Koulouris using the pseudonym "Alpha Beta".

By the time the double LP 666 finally came out in late 1971, and having sold over 20 million albums[1], the band had already split.

DOWNLOAD

The lyrics for "666" here

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

שלום!

Hey Panda Slayer, this link is wrong. That Vrench is not a 70's tune ;)

You fix, we (the readers) click click cha cha

respect

Bleeding Panda said...

Hahaha stupid me:) I left the old link. sorry:) It's fixed.

andy said...

great album!

Jack Celliers said...

Roussos and Vangelis? Were they part of the band??

Anonymous said...

I was just listening to some of this stuff on YouTube. Some of it is pretty good--but guess what's going thru' my head now? "I am. I am. I am. I am to come, I was. Iam.Iam.IamtocomeIwas. IAM.IAM.IAMTOCOMEIWAS!!!! IAM!!!!! IAM!!!!! IAMTOCOMEIWAS!!!!!!" Aaaaaaaa! Make it stop!!! *lol*

TalkingBook said...

Just picked this up on vinyl yesterday after not hearing it for 10 years or so. The first disc really kills!

It's amazing how often I'm led back to this blog.

Thanks again Panda!

Anonymous said...

Amazing LP.
here's a link on 4shared :
http://www.4shared.com/rar/-I9GKrWp/aphrodites_child_-_666.html

Sounds like something so contemporary, like Lykke Li, especially "The Four Horseman"

Related Posts with Thumbnails