Climate of Hunter [Import]

Product Description
1984's Climate Of Hunter was Scott Walker's only album of the decade and his only for Virgin Records. It drew critical raves for its minimalist, trancelike ambience that showed him keeping abreast of cutting edge 80's rock trends. Digitally remastered for the first time and includes sleeve notes by Jarvis Cocker. Virgin. 2005.

Climate of Hunter,Scott Walker,EMI/Virgin,Pop,Rock/Pop

Climate of Hunter [Import]

Average customer rating:

Fluid sonic sculpture
Genius

Climate of Hunter
Scott Walker
Manufacturer: EMI
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Similar Items:

Boy Child: The Best of Scott Walker 1967-1970
The Best of the Walker Brothers
Sings Jacques Brel
Nite Flights
Everything Under the Sun

ASIN: B000A7SBMC
Release Date: 2006-02-06

Tracks:

Rawhide
Dealer
Track Three
Sleepwalkers Woman
Track Five
Track Six
Track Seven
Blanket Roll Blues

Album Description

1984's Climate Of Hunter was Scott Walker's only album of the decade and his only for Virgin Records. It drew critical raves for its minimalist, trancelike ambience that showed him keeping abreast of cutting edge 80's rock trends. Digitally remastered for the first time and includes sleeve notes by Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne. Virgin. 2005.

Album Details

Scott Walker Made his Name as One Half of the Walker Brothers (Not Brothers, and Not Called Walker!) in the Mid-sixties. Although American He Found Success after Moving to the UK and Stayed Here During his Solo Career. A Sporadic Series of Albums Followed Both as a Solo Artist and also Reunited as the 'brothers'. 1984's 'climate of Hunter' was his Only Album of the Decade and his Only for Virgin Records. It Drew Critical Raves for a Minimalist, Trancelike Ambience that Showed Him Keeping Abreast of Cutting-edge '80s Rock Trends. This Version of the Album is Digitally Remastered for the First Time and Has the Addition of Sleevenotes by Jarvis Cocker. Other Fans Include Julian Cope, Brian Eno and David Bowie.

Customer Reviews:

Fluid sonic sculpture.......2006-08-16

I suspect this album will be loved by those who value the artistic experience of listening to the 2 subsequent albums ('Tilt' and 'the Drift', both of which I adore).

The musical language is to me comparatively more accessible, less dense, and less disquieting but still exciting in its originality, depth, and variety of shape and movement. There are passages where orchestral arrangements by Brian Gascoigne integrate perfectly with the non orchestral arrangements in a way that makes them essential to the artistic whole - a masterclass for musical arrangers.

However, with no disrespect to fine guitarists or hard rock and metal fans such as myself, I suspect the artistic integrity was compromised by Virgin Records in Track 3 and Track 7:

In the former, which was released as a single, the music continues the extremely high artistic level of the first 2 cuts until the guitar solo, which is of the typical high register, showy styles a la Kirk Hammett and other guitar heroes. If there HAD to be a solo I suspect the bassist Mo Foster could have given us a tasty treat more in keeping with the flow and mood.

Track 7 is perhaps initially tolerable despite the boringly simplistic rock drumming but then became unlistenable for me when a similar style of showy guitar soloing started. Someone else may like to comment on this track as I immediately skipped to the next and have no intention of trying it again (unless there's something not to be missed later in the piece).

The last track is the only non Walker written one - a very short but beautifully understated rendition of a traditional style blues with music by Kenyon Hopkins and words by Tennessee Williams - finishing the album nicely.

Regarding the rather intense poetry which forms the lyrics, I can only say at this stage in my comprehension that it's powerful. (I prefer to interpret while listening, contemplating what I've heard - for those who want to read the words, they are all printed on the insert).

As I say, if you like Walker's musical art I think you will love the experiences that listening to this CD will generate.

Genius.......2006-05-18

When you remember the hits of the Walker Brothers with their spacy wall of sound, you'll recognize something here.
Only thing is, there are no hits on this unique record.
I bought it in the eighties, but it's psychedelics here quite different from other music of the time.
Though its dreamlike but exalted sound is acquainted maybe to contemporary music like Associates, Dead Can Dance or even Arvo Pärt, it really is more of a prelude to the music of the Tindersticks, all on its own.
Lonely and wonderful.

Average customer rating:

An Ominous Masterpiece
cool climate
Anybody remember Billy Ocean?
Timeless. Literally.
Climate is Great

Climate of Hunter
Scott Walker
Manufacturer: EMI/Virgin
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Soft Rock | Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music

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ASIN: B000007UKU
Release Date: 2006-01-31

Tracks:

Rawhide
Dealer
Track Three
Sleepwalkers Woman
Track Five
Track Six
Track Seven
Blanket Roll Blues

Album Description

Album Details

Recorde in 1983. Features Guest Appearances by Mark Knopfler, Evan Parker, Billy Ocean and Ray Russell.

Customer Reviews:

An Ominous Masterpiece.......2005-04-06

This is a strange and eerie record. The compositions are moody and extremely complex. It can take many listens before one of these songs unlocks itself for you: they seem at first to be endlessly shifting, going nowhere, but they're not. Their logic, when it becomes evident, is devastating.

The arrangements are sparse and often strikingly dissonant. At times, the drums seem to be pounding in empty space, throbbing anomalously in a sea of long, uneasy keyboard washes.

And floating bleakly above it all is that VOICE. Walker's always been a highly mannered singer, but here he shapes his low baritone into the strangest tone; ghostly, elegiac. Weird as it seemed at first, it grew on me. Now I can't imagine any other way of conveying these darkly abstract songs.

The man is a genuine pathfinder. For those with adventurous ears, this is indispensable. If you're looking for a pop record, forget it.

cool climate.......2004-08-03

Some suggest that the eighties wasn't the best decade for popmusic. And with hindsight they're probably right. Bombastic and overdubt productions make it hard even to appreciate such classics as ABC's The lexicon of love (still the best and most representative album of the decade). However if you dare to look a bit closer one can find precious jewels that should be polished again and deserve a new audience. Climate of hunter is such masterpiece. Not only because Scott Walker is an outstanding singer with a deep voice that you make you shiver, but mostly because the songs are timeless. As only great popmusic is.

Buy it!

Anybody remember Billy Ocean?.......2003-02-20

Before TILT & THE DRIFT there was CLIMATE OF HUNTER. Just as strange, just as eerie, it's an essential chapter in a 30+ year career that could be called anything but prolific.

As others have cited CLIMATE has the production values of Roxy's Music's AVALON cut with the bleak, obtuse lyricism, that has become Walker's trademark. It's all capped off with a haunting coda of Tennessee Williams', "Blanket Roll Blues". The song Brando crooned in THE FUGITIVE KIND.

If that's not incentive enough, CLIMATE also features MTV One Hit Wonder Boy, Billy Ocean harmonizing on "Track 3". Other contributors include Mark's Knopfler & Isham.

Sprawling & cinematic,lines like,"The shadow of the son made the son a shadow", seem more concerned at creating atmosphere than establishing any narrative. Call it "deep", pretentious, or self-indulgent, Walker's influence is undeniable. Bowie, The Divine Comedy, Bjork & Portishead are just a few.

Timeless. Literally........2001-09-01

Like so many in my country, I was late to catch on to Scott Walker, in my case when I first heard his first solo album in about 1976 by which time it was a cool period piece. But from that point forward I kept my eye out for Walker's scarce vinyl, picking it up whenever I crossed paths with one of his records.

I first heard Climate of Hunter in about 1986; it was already three years old. There were still those same incredible vocal pipes but wow the music had really moved! I was frankly unable to absorb this album at first though I gave it many tries. I suspected that the fault was entirely my own and not Scott Walker's. By the time this record reached about ten years of age I could understand it. The very best of other recording artists had begun to catch on to Walker's musical ideas presented here. And now Climate of Hunter just sounds like the most beautiful visionary piece of modern music imaginable. Think of a much more musically substantial "Avalon," and you will have some idea of what Climate of Hunter sounds like. But it is much less sweet, much more intriguing, with much more to offer on repeated listenings. When you have put away all of your old pop records as childish playthings Climate of Hunter will remain on your shelf (or in your hard drive) as a permanent fixture in the music that you take with you to the end of your life. I'm not kidding.

Being the middlebrow type that I am, I am still currently struggling with the musical challenges presented by Walker's newer (but now fairly old) album "Tilt."

Climate is Great.......1998-11-15

Scott Walker has had a long and varied carrier in music.From the highest reaches of chart success in England with his brothers,(Walker Brothers), to his series of hit solo albums in the late sixties and early seventies. Along with the sudden lurches of success were extreme moments of doubt and much self reflection. Walker would be on the verge of launching his career and suddenly vanish into the mists from wens he came.Following his success's he found himself thrust from the mainstream

and into the adoration of a cult following. After the release of "We Had it All"in 1974, he simply vanished for two years only to resurface to reunite his brothers to record the strange and mystical "Nite Flights" in 1978, a bid to find some middle ground of recognition. Finding no solace from this recorded endeavor, or the reinvention of the brothers, he left England and disappeared for five years, thought dead or in self confined exile.Coaxed by those closest to him to return and record again, Walker resurfaced in 83 with "Climate of the Hunter", a tour de force of mesmerizing instrumentation and ambient styled vocalizations that severed any associations of his past recorded history. Hailed by music critics at the time as pure genius and released to a public that was unreceptive, "Climate of the Hunter" sank without a trace, only to resurface in the early 90's to a repeated hail of critical acclaim. Self produced, "Climate of the Hunter" imbues the darkness and vocal depth of one possessed in creating and capturing something that simply eludes capturing, in the sense of reaching out and grasping at a musical note in flight. To describe Walker's vocal inflections in this work is like attempting to describe to someone what the wind looks like as it blows through a meadow on a windy day and is best experienced first hand.Comprised of Peter Van Hooke(drums), Mark Isham(Trumpet), Brian Gascolgne(Keyboards),Mo Foster(bass) with masterful feathered orchestration written and conducted by Walker himself,"Climate" excels at constructing a musical ambiguity of immense proportions. From the opening sound of rambling cowbells with a resonating bass guitar in "Rawhide" you realize this is no light weight listening session you are about to embark upon. Scott Walkers lyrical content speaks in cut up bits and pieces of information and observational spaces that T S Eliot so excelled in and is best experienced as a whole with the musical compositions.Once you become lost in the rhythmic meters of flowing vocal ambiance mixed with the accompanied musical tapestry things really begin to make sense and all of the little nuances begin to shine brillantly."Track Three" which is my personal favorite, Ray Russell plays a lead guitar embellishment like a man possessed with Walker in his best form of vocal presentation. "Sleepwalkers Woman" possess the energy of pure beauty and insanity, complete with backing orchestral strokes that bring to mind a soundtrack from some long forgotten nostalgic film."Track Five" bursts open with a flowing keyboard backing sounding something like a bird taking flight on an illuminating and misty early morning. Scott Walker with "Climate of the Hunter" has embraced all the defining elements of progressive music in subscribing to the basic spirit of creating something unique and inspiring while turning his back on the pre formula, pre-packaged product that so many claimed he was destined to produce. For this courageous movement throughout his life's recorded achievements, we owe "Climate of the Hunter" a listen and the long past respect it's due.

Climate of Hunter
Average customer rating:

1983's solo return...

Climate of Hunter
Scott Walker
Manufacturer: EMI Int'l
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Soft Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
General | Rock | Styles | Music
Pop Rock | Pop | Indie Music | Stores | Music
Soft Rock | Pop | Indie Music | Stores | Music
Pop | Imports | Stores | Music
ASIN: B0000075YB
Release Date: 2004-04-27

Album Details

Recorde in 1983. Features Guest Appearances by Mark Knopfler, Evan Parker, Billy Ocean and Ray Russell.

Customer Reviews:

1983's solo return..........2004-03-21

Climate of Hunter came five years after Walker's last offering- the four songs he composed (his first in seven years) for the final Walker Brothers LP Nite Flights (1978). Walker was reportedly working with Bowie, Eno, Lanois & Sylvian...though they never appeared on the return that was Climate of Hunter (co-produced with Peter Walsh, who had been behind Simple Minds'New Gold Dream). In the meantime, Walker had become more of a cult- Julian Cope assembling the compilation 'Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker'. Climate of Hunter was Scott's sole offering in the 1980s, some of which has been remastered for the Five Easy Pieces box-set...

Climate of Hunter doesn't share too much with the fabled 60s solo Scott, its origins are more in songs like The Electrician and Nite Flights (Tracks Three & Seven sound not unlike the latter)& listening here you can see how he would get to 1995's baffling masterpiece Tilt. The album as a whole has more in common with releases of the early 80s than ScottIII, sounding deeply original but making sense alongside such albums as Avalon (Roxy Music), The Correct Use of Soap (Magazine), Music for a New Society (John Cale) & Sulk (Associates). Despite being only 31-minutes long, it works well as an album and is intense and part of a complete vision Walker had: the sequence of songs is perfect, drifting from ambient to avant-rock to semi-classical to minimal-guitar...

The lyrics are rather oblique, as opener Rawhide demonstrates: "Cro-magnon herders will stand in the wind...The insomniac gnaws in the On-Offs..."; while a song like Dealer predicts the vast sound of Tilt, though has more in common with Nite Flights at this point (it's more rock than avant-)Lyrically Dealer has that Beckettian thing going on, the lines "Move a circuit on the white...The windows are ringing...Ice junkies packed hard on a seam" seem to both advance and relate to The Electrician (Scott's bleak tale of CIA-torture in South America and in many ways his year zero).

Track Three (Delayed)and Track Seven (Stump of a Drowner) feature rock-guitar and recall Nite Flights (the song) & are also not far away from Avalon-Roxy and early 80s Peter Gabriel (e.g. Shock the Monkey, I Don't Remember). They give the album a varied quality and take us from slower pieces...

Sleepwalkers Woman is the missing link between 1969's Boy Child and the avant-classical Walker moved towards: Mahler, Schoenberg, Reich, Messiaen. That voice is still there, and its clear this is a big influence on KidA/mnesiac-Radiohead (How to...Completely, Pyramid Song): it sounds wonderful loud, another world completely (though the lyrics are the usual vague type, talking of exile & return). 60s Scott fans should love this, even if left confounded by Tilt...

Track Five (It's a Starving) is more nightmare-lyrics and sounds, opening as a semi-ambient piece then expanding; while Track Six (Say I) sounds like another precursor of Radiohead and 1.Outside-Bowie, sounds like insects and horses braying: this is the most horrific moment, Walker's diabolus in musica still in song-form with lovely bass that recalls Barry Adamson and Mick Karn. The album concludes on the sparse cover of Blanket Roll Blues, written by Tennessee Williams & Kenyon Hopkins for the film The Fugitive Kind. This just features Mark Knopfler on guitar & Walker on vocals and has more in common with Derek Bailey/Bill Frisell than Dire Straits. An ambiguous note to end on, Walker's film-obssession concluding this vague collection of songs...

Climate of Hunter is an underrated album in my opinion, it's one that reveals itself with every listen and its atmosphere was apparently an influence on U2's With or Without You. Perhaps a remastered version needs reissueing, but in the meantime this will do & is a reminder that Scott Walker made one of the great albums of the 1980s...

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