Rothko - Not Gone. Not Forgotten.
(Lo)
I generally find live albums to be a bad purchase; the songs more often than not aren't played as well as on studio albums, and the songs aren't usually recorded well. In the rare occasion that the songs are played and recorded well, they are usually so similar to the studio versions that there is almost no point in hearing or owning them. However, every so often there is a live album that breaks out of that mold, and Rothko's Not Gone. Not Forgotten. is a wonderful example of what I think constitutes a great live album worth spending time and money on.
For those not familiar with Rothko, they are a UK band that is based entirely on the bass guitar. They use between one and three bass guitars to create a mixture of inter-woven bass melodies and waves of soft noise and dense clouds of sound. The majority of their songs are improvised, and most of their songs from the albums cannot be reproduced live. So, when they do play shows, the songs they perform are almost all improvised and will not ever be heard again, and those songs that they play from the albums have had, in most cases, some drastic make-overs.
Not Gone. Not Forgotten. is a wonderful collection of songs from various shows over the band's entire time together (2 songs are from their first show, and a few songs are from 2001), and rivals some of their studio albums in quality. The album is comprised mostly of songs that were never recorded or played again live, and like their albums, combines the use of traditionally played bass, bowed bass, and many other styles to create an incredible mixture of structured melodies with walls of dense atmosphere. Simply beautiful.
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