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Jan 2, 2013Bish Bosch is as much about challenging the people that absorbed and accepted Tilt and The Drift as it is challenging the rest of the world--and while that makes it consistent with all his work since Nite Flights, each subsequent album giving his fan base another hurdle to overcome, it also gives it a thrill that's unique to both his discography and the majority of the music you could compare it to. If, indeed, there is any.
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Dec 20, 2012Bish Bosch is a wilder, more scattered (and scatty, in the case of Epizootics!, ten minutes of sax-driven jazz which could almost be seen as accessible, if it wasn't so dark and threatening) work than its immediate predecessors.
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The WireDec 7, 2012The album's primary emotion of disgust is cushioned by performances and production so luxurious as to be sinister. [Dec 2012, p.63]
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Dec 7, 2012This is an album of a depth and ambition that should, frankly, set a standard for contemporary art music.
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Dec 6, 2012It's not just that it's larded with harsh dissonance; the compositions, arrangements, poesy, and performances come at the listener in discrete shards.
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Dec 6, 2012While Bish Bosch may not be the most easy album to digest, it doesn't lack for talent or shock value.
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Dec 6, 2012Bish Bosch is Walker's most accessible (extremely relatively speaking) work since Climate.
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Dec 4, 2012Scott Walker is one of the true geniuses of modern music and the treasures are as rich as ever for those prepared to go the distance.
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Dec 3, 2012The album can be heavy going, with or without a dictionary, but its sheer, lapidary obsessiveness provides its own rewards.
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Dec 3, 2012The album is a widening and a deepening of the style we've come to expect of Walker – but it's also got elements of a brightening of that sound as well.
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Dec 3, 2012With Bish Bosch, Walker creates a kind of Möbius Strip: by virtue of creating a less physical sonic landscape, he provides a way into his great trilogy on his way out of it.
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Dec 3, 2012As much as it can sound like it stands alone, Bish Bosch is part of a tradition of music that tried to find new ways to articulate that same old misery.
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Dec 3, 2012It's an anti-spectacle, but also an anti-mystery. Because you drawn to return to it, to find the details and hidden gems that make you feel this music deeply-for better or worse-even as you know there's no clear answer.
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Dec 3, 2012Bish Bosch may sound a little strained at times, but it's still a big, ballsy achievement, the work of a committed artist delving further into a land of vaguely sketched nightmares.
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Dec 3, 2012Walker is almost unique among his generation in continuing to provide mind-food instead of cosy nostalgia. If you go into Bish Bosch half-wishing he'd belt out a ballad, you leave it with absolutely no regrets.
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Dec 3, 2012Given time and patience, it will eventually unravel into a truly gripping that, although disturbing, is worth every minute of your time.
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Nov 30, 2012There is a strangely addictive quality to hearing something quite so aggressively sui generis as this.
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Nov 30, 2012Listeners that can't stand the noise can just move on to the next pop record. Walker is in a whole different dimension. [Oct/Nov 2012, p.126]
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Entertainment WeeklyNov 30, 2012[Walker] is stronger and scarier than ever on his violently gorgeous 14th album. [7 Dec 2012, p.75]
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Nov 30, 2012Bish Bosch really is his beautiful, dark and twisted fantasy made manifest.
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Nov 30, 2012It's a bastard of a listen--a rare, tough piece of meat too savory to spit and toss aside.
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Nov 30, 2012This very refusal to cohere, to make sense, to play the game of identity and otherness, of harmony and disharmony, makes Bish Bosch this year's only necessary work of art.
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Nov 29, 2012It might not encourage repeat plays, but to dismiss it as a racket is to do it, and its maker, a huge disservice.
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Nov 29, 2012Whichever side of the fence you fall on, you'd be hard-pushed to claim there's anything else remotely like the album itself.
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MojoNov 27, 2012It's still one giant leap into the unknown, with all the notions of genre once again gleefully sidestepped. [Dec 2012, p.82]
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UncutNov 27, 2012Throughout, there's evident delight in lexicographical obscurity that echoes James Joyce or Will Self: no bad thing in itself, though when allied to the sometimes impermeable, abstract constructions, the results can be frustratingly opaque. [Dec 2012, p.61]
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Nov 27, 2012What's really amazing about Bish Bosch is that all of its myriad components are somehow pulled in to exist on the same insane planet.
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Nov 27, 2012Whereas Walker seemed to grasp something on that album [The Drift], here he seems restless and inconsistent, but his continuing artistic quest remains peerless and fascinating.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 24 out of 32
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Mixed: 2 out of 32
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Negative: 6 out of 32
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Dec 26, 2012
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Dec 13, 2012
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Dec 8, 2012