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This deluxe edition includes a 32 page hardcover booklet and a DVD that features music videos of Flavor, Gold Dust and behind the scenes footage.20 Years of ConversationsHow do you commemorate the 20-year career of Tori Amos, an artist who has sold over 12 million albums, played well over 1,000 shows, won numerous awards and, more importantly, touched, healed or changed the lives of millions of fans? For a composer with such an artful ability to dart and flourish in different directions, experimenting and searching for new ways of creating art, breaking more boundaries than perhaps any other female singer-songwriter, it would be impossible to predict. In this case of her 13th album, Gold Dust burst out of a series of serendipitous events. Gold Dust is the second album by Tori Amos released on the classical label Deutsche Grammophon, in cooperation with Mercury Classics. Soon after she started working on the first album, the acclaimed Night of Hunters, there was a phone call from the Metropole Orchestra in the Netherlands inviting her to play with them in October 2010. Once her songs had been performed live in an orchestral setting it was clear that Tori needed to make an album. I was really touched by the orchestra and I wanted to capture that on recording she says. And so Gold Dust was conceived. Of course Tori's musical history actually began in the classical world, when she entered the prestigious Peabody Institute at the age of 5. Frustrated by the close-minded limitations the classical world imposed on her in the 70s, she checked out and headed into rock when she was 13, magnetized by its expressive and expanding possibilities, intent on expanding her sonic architecture. Now she has been pulled back to approach that world again. Music has a way of taking you by the hand and saying, it's time to create like this she explains. Times have changed and now she feels limited instead by the contemporary world and the derivative sameness of what she hears on the radio. You don't have as many complex structures in contemporary music which is why musicians are trying to explore other ways of constructing a song. But her classical training provided her with the language, tools and understanding of form and structure to create Night of Hunters and Gold Dust. So how did she go about picking the right songs out of her vast repertoire? The track-listing for Gold Dust doesn't read like a collection of her Greatest Hits. Although it includes a number of her best-loved songs - Precious Things, Silent All These Years, Winter - some of the others tracks are lesser known treasures. She compares arranging the songs in a classical setting to giving a woman a makeover, considering who she is and what style would work for her. Tori has always thought of her songs as separate women and girls and jokes: you can't say 'Oh my God bangles are in so let's put everybody in bangles!' It doesn't work like that. Some of the songs have been reinvented quite dramatically with the help of Tori s long time arranger John-Philip Shenale. The fear driven rock sounds of Precious Things and the spheric electro soundworld of Flavor came to a new form of being in the environment of a symphonyorchestra. Other songs have undergone more subtle makeovers, taking, adding or changing individual colours to the beloved original versions. But all have been chosen for a reason. Almost autobiographical in structure, the songs represent stories in Tori's life. Jackie's Strength is about her relationship with her mother. Winter is about her father and grandfather. Snow Cherries from France, one of her favorites, is about falling in love with her husband. To bring them forward into 2012, Tori made a decision not to sing them as they were in the original form, and to avoid trying to be the person she was at the time.
L**S
Beautiful, and the most cohesive in a while.
Having read some of the other reviews, I'm amazed how judgmental and bitter people are about somebody they apparently once loved! My theory is if you don't like her albums anymore - move on, and don't belittle her just because she changed - something we're all allowed to do.I am a longtime fan and the reason I still am is she is still a brilliant composer and musician, even if the 'performer' in her is less strident or fiery than she was. I owned all 3 of the first albums and liked them a lot, but it was 98's 'Choirgirl' that really hooked me, then I revisited the first 3 and loved them. Post 'Scarlet's Walk', she has taken a lot of flack for her albums. If, from the Beekeeper onwards, she had released albums that were only 10 or 12 tracks long, it's true she could have had higher reviews. But those albums each have some or many great songs, and some interesting productions.The other thing that changed was her voice - she matured, became less angry and perhaps more significantly, she doesn't sing from her stomach as much as she used to. She more sings in the head and throat now, rather than belts it out. I believe that vocal shift influences a lot of people, and it took me time to adust to, but she is still brilliant live, and again, produces great songs and productions on every album.And while I agree that she could have chosen some other tracks here to do different things, and that most of these arrangements are either similar or near identical to the original records, what is surprising about this album is how sonically cohesive it is. That makes it feel and sound like a new album. 'Beekeeper' through to 'AATS' were very diverse in production styles on each track, and this can make for varied listening experiences with such long albums. With this album, because of the focus of some of her best songs, great playing, lovely vocal interpretations (and layering that suits them), and more than anything, this rich beast of an orchestra basing the whole thing throughout, hangs together so well.And that is the thing I notice the most, and that actually makes it sonically different to a lot of her last decade's output (Night of Hunters excepted perhaps). Standouts (for me) are: Flavor, Anastasia, Star of Wonder, Cloud on my Tongue, Precious Things, Marianne, Gold Dust and Flying Dutchman.It's a lovely soundscape way to hear some of your favorites and beautifully recorded and mixed. My reaction has surprised me as when I read the press notes, I could have questioned song choices, then some of the customer reviews made me expect it could be awful. Instead, I finally listen and find it to be rich, new in feeling, and very very re-listenable. It also works as background music, because it is so beautiful in pure sound terms- you can have it on as a backing soundtrack to your day, or focus on listening more intently.So for that reason it gets a 5 from me. Thanks Tori for sticking around all this time, changing, and providing a 20 year journey for those of who changed with you.
C**L
Its Tori nothing less than a 5 star review!
I remember the first time I heard Tori Amos's Silent All These Years. It was so haunting and beautiful that I had to hear it again. Being a poor high school student I remember taping the song on the radio with my Sony boombox just to hear the recording again and again. Gold dust is a rendition to Tori Amos's famous works and for the most part I really loved the album. Although most of the songs already had orchestral themes for example: Silent all these years, Winter, Marianne, Gold Dust, and of course Yes Anastasia, etc. I felt that these new orchestral arrangements took the songs to a whole new level. Now some of us old time folks who have followed Ms. Amos career are a bit biased towards the originals, however if you open your mind all the songs were wonderful. I was a bit disappointed with the song selection I thought it should have been longer. Where was Cornflake girl? Where was Icicle? But lets face it. If she would have done this album without Silent all these years, Winter, Marianne, Precious Things, and Yes, Anastasia we would all be going ballistic. That being said my biggest critique of the album was Yes, Anastasia. It should have been the whole 9 minute song. I thought the orchestra and Tori Amos vocals nailed it. But because it was only half of the original piece it was incomplete. I know some people say that it was over produced however, this is what I did I played the first 5 minutes of the original song and then I combined it with this version then I was able to appreciate this version of Yes Anastasia. I loved Star of Wonder I thought it was much better than the original. Did not like the singing of Winter and I felt it was the only song that was downplayed both in vocals and orchestral arrangement. Did not care for programmable soda but it was still good. My favorite songs of the album were the following: Marianne (better than the original IMO), Cloud on my tongue, Flavor, Jackies Strength, Precious Things, and Star of Wonder.
T**L
Bliss
Tori says this CD is about creating a 'memory box' of the songs which for her, have changed with the course of time and through conversations with her ever-adoring EWF fan base, which have given her in some instances, a different vantage view point of a song or songs in her now glorious repertoire. And you have to wonder, if you are interested in that sort of thing, (I am), how a composer/songwriter's evolution would influence songs composed/written at a different time. Can you sing the same song with the exact same feeling with which it was originally written, or do you sing the song differently, do you bring different flavors to a song as time goes by and the hurt heals or you see things in a different light with the passing of time? This CD is a triumph, not merely for the brilliance of the orchestral arrangements, but also for the fact that Tori's voice pops out in places where, in former renditions, she has been more quiet, there are different inflections on different words and for me at least, there are bits I swear I've never heard before - and that is the mastery of Tori. The fact that even though she is singing a song that I've listened to a thousand times before, I am hearing it as if it were new and unfamiliar to me. I adore Tori Amos. I adore Gold Dust.
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