Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest

by

The Fireman

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"Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest" is the first of two albums which Paul McCartney released under the pseudonym The Fireman. Essentially, it is a collaboration between McCartney and a musician/remixer/engineer who simply calls himself Youth. The fruits of this album came about during a remix session for what was then Paul's latest album "Off The Ground". Instead of properly remixing that album's title track, Youth and McCartney created something entirely different. Upon listening to this CD, you would be hard-pressed to think that this music was done by McCartney. It sounds like nothing he has done before. Also, apart from the song titles and publishing credits, there is no other liner notes in the CD cover. McCartney was definitely undercover on this one.

Musically, the album is quite interesting and trance-inducing. It contains nine lengthy variations on a single theme set to a moderately paced drum rhythm. This is a far cry from "Silly Love Songs" or "Band on The Run". However, once you get used to the strange sounds and plodding rhythms, this CD can become an excellent piece of background music. It's simplistic and stays out of the way. This album is very much in the same style as modern composer Steve Reich especially with his composition entitled "Drumming". Both feature the same idea of trance-like rhythms with uncompilcated melodic and harmonic patterns.

All in all, The Fireman McCartney's "Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest" is an excellent CD. It's also now extremely rare, out-of-print and very expensive. However, if you're a Paul McCartney collector, this CD is a must. I will not reveal in this review how much I paid for this CD but I will reveal that it was very much worth it.

Questo disco sarebbe stato molto migliore se fosse durato la meta'. Infatti, a dispetto delle 9 tracce, si tratta di un solo brano, un unico riff aggiugerei, riproposto in 9 mix differenti. Di per se le singole tracce non sono male, i mix sono tutti piacevoli all'ascolto, ma essendo sostanzialmente costituiti da un unico riff, risultano troppo simili tra loro, e quando vengono sentiti tutti insieme, creano un esperienza d'ascolto ripetitiva, faticosa, e pesante. Pertanto,benche' la musica contenuta, contestualmente al genere proposto, sia comunque di buon spessore e contenuto, l'album nel suo insieme, per quanto detto, non puo assolutamente superare le 3 stelle.