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Drama of Exile
Nico
Drama of Exile
Genres: Alternative Rock, Special Interest, Pop, Rock
 
  •  Track Listings (9) - Disc #1


     
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CD Details

All Artists: Nico
Title: Drama of Exile
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Cleopatra
Release Date: 10/19/1993
Genres: Alternative Rock, Special Interest, Pop, Rock
Styles: Hardcore & Punk, Experimental Music, Progressive, Progressive Rock
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
Other Editions: Drama of Exile
UPCs: 741157107920, 741157107944

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CD Reviews

Nico goes to Paris and hires a rhythm section...
The Sentinel | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 02/22/2000
(4 out of 5 stars)

"...and delivers her most accessible work since CHELSEA GIRL. Clearly indebted to the Bowie/Iggy/Roxy/Kraftwerk school of oblique, decadent art-rock with nods to New Wave, disco, funk, electronica, and floating Byzantine exotica -- the penultimate DRAMA OF EXILE lives up to its name in spades. She now has Phillipe "Kilikini" Quilichini for a collaborator (instead of John Cale or Brian Eno) and together they conjure forth a protean piece of soundcraft with breezy arabesque synthesizers, cool jangly guitars, thumping beats, squiggly squealing saxophones, scything violins, and God-knows-what-else swirling in the mix. This Teutonic Moon Goddess is Brunnhilde back from the primeval Wagnerian funeral pyre...a spectral, sepulchral New Romantic banshee with a pocket full of mantras, mandalas, matchsticks, cryptograms, wormwood and mandrake...resurrecting Genghis Khan and Henry Hudson and leading you down the road from ancient Niebelungenland to glittering Vegas and "the boy with a wild smile like Bonaparte." As for the other songs..."Heroes" is surprisingly solid and epic and perhaps even a little more resonant than Bowie's original (her German-ness gives it an added poignance).... Although I dare say the utterly tuneless take on "I'm Waiting for My Man" leaves us a little queasy. MY CD booklet has some great pics of our Christa Pfaffgen -- a marble beauty wrapped in gossamer black -- draping her arm over a tombstone, posing with her son Ari, and falling asleep a la Warhol.Ahhhh...that imperious bearing...those eternal cheekbones...the hair once flaxen like an Aryan-uberfrau-schoolgirl now turned sable...and that luscious, sensuous mouth....MMMMMMM....WHAT A GORGEOUS AND GLORIOUS PHYSIOGNOMY! You can keep all your vapid teenage-junkie supermodels, THIS IS MYSTICAL NECROPHILIAC SEX APPEAL FOR THE AGES, BABY! Never mind Siouxsie Sioux...here's NICO, the once and future QUEEN OF THE GOTHS!"
Dramatic and noisy
E. A Solinas | MD USA | 07/05/2005
(2 out of 5 stars)

"Goth godmother Nico was always her best in front of a spare instrumentation section. Even in the Velvet Underground, her songs tended to be relatively simple and spare; when she departed the Underground, her songs became richer but still simple.



All that flew out the window with "Drama of Exile," a sickly match of Nico's talents with funk-disco art-rock. After the cy grandeur of albums like "The End" and "Chelsea Girl," this screechy disaster buries Nico's talents under a bizarre swirl of incompatible instruments. In other words, it's a mess.



"Ghengis Khan" starts with some thumping drums and squiggly synth. Okay, all right -- every artist has the right to evolve and go in different musical directions. But Nico's voice shows that this wasn't a good direction -- she sounds as distant and computerized as Britney Spears.



Were it only that song, then the album wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately, the dark, computerized sound continues throughout "Drama of Exile," almost without reprieve. The worst moment is a wildly overproduced cover of the Velvet Underground's "Waiting For the Man," cluttered with sonic noise and robotic vocals.



A few of the songs, however, are more downtempo and simple. "Sixty Forty," "Sphinx" and the quietly swirling "Orly Flight" all have a less dancepoppy flavour, and allow Nico to take center stage. She still sounds rather robotic, but the jangly guitars and chaotic synth aren't taking over the song. At some points, she sounds completely natural.



But alas, the album isn't three songs long. Instead, it's burdened with a series of art-dance songs, which are overloaded with too many instruments playing all at once. And the greatest crime is that Nico herself is literally lost in the mix; her throaty, thick voice is rendered flat and sterile by overproduction.



"Drama of Exile" is perhaps the worst album of Nico's too-short career, a messy melange of musical trends that smothered her natural talents. Only for Nico completists."
NICO is a GENIUS
vivdesign@aol.com | New Yawk, New Yawk | 11/26/1998
(4 out of 5 stars)

"How can you not LOVE her? The music is brilliant, the voice is unlike any other. She's like a feminine man trying to be masculine and dangerous. A drag queen mafiaso if you will. And thats just her voice! My favorites are "Sixty Forty", her cover of Bowie's "Heroes", "Orly Flight", and "Genghis Kahn". Pure attitude, without any pretention."