| Product Summary | | Label: Sony Music Entertainment | | UPC: 00696998668324 | | Release Date: 10/4/2005 | | Buy.com Sku: 64009632 | | Item#: M2L9M2 | Format:  CD |
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| How long does it take to download a song? |  | Broadband: under 1 minute | | 56 kbps modem: 15-20 minutes |
| Extraordinary Machine is the long-awaited third album from multi-platinum artist Fiona Apple. Extraordinary Machine contains 12 electrifying tracks, including the brand new songs "Parting Gift" and "O' Sailor", all of which feature the brilliant music and poignant, passionate lyrics that have inspired legions of intensely loyal fans all over the world.
| | Album Notes and Credits |
Notes & Personnel Info | | Personnel include: Fiona Apple (vocals, piano); Mike Elizondo (various instruments, programming); Zac Rae (various instruments); Jon Brion (bass instrument); Abe Laboriel Jr., Questlove (drums). | | Recording information: Phantom Studios, Los Angeles, CA. | | Fiona Apple's long-awaited follow-up to 1999's WHEN THE PAWN... had a difficult (and well-documented) inception that involved pulling the notoriously strong-willed artist out of self-imposed seclusion in her California home. The end result, however, is an assured outing that upholds Apple's reputation for exceptional albums, proving that it was well worth the six-year wait. | | Bookended by lush, vaudeville-like tunes created with Apple's longtime collaborator Jon Brion, EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE features production work by Mike Elizondo (50 Cent, Eminem) on all other tracks. Those expecting any hip-hop flourishes will be left empty-handed; this disc presents Apple working in her signature style, with her soulful, slightly mischievous voice carrying these confident, primarily piano-driven songs. The performer's penchant for confessional, witty lyrics is still apparent, but her approach is notably more subtle and mature here. While many tracks are gilded with adventurous arrangements that incorporate an arsenal of organs (Farfisa, Optigan, etc.), marimba, Moog bass, and other unusual instrumentation, Apple also shines when left to her own devices, as on the spare, melancholy ballad "Parting Gift." Listeners worried that the lengthy hiatus might have diluted Apple's potent, inventive aesthetic can sleep well; EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE more than lives up to the superlative in its title. |
Producer: Mike Elizondo; Brian Kehew |
| | Artist Overview | | It may have been tempting to dismiss the 19-year-old Fiona Apple as flavor of the month when her 1996 debut record, TIDAL, earned raves from critics and scores of articles about her appeared in the press. But the outspoken Apple, heavily influenced by Billie Holiday and the poet Maya Angelou, was clearly more than a teen sensation. Provocative videos and constant MTV exposure shot her to almost instant notoriety, but it was Apple's wise-beyond-her-years music that made her a force to be reckoned with. After an epic, highly publicized struggle with her record company over creative issues, Apple's greatly anticipated third album, EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE, was released in 2005. |
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| | Technical Info | | Release Date : 10/04/2005 | | Original Release Date : 2005 | | Catalog ID : 86683 | | Label : Epic (USA) | | Number of Discs : 1 | | Studio/Live : Studio | | Mono/Stereo : Stereo | | SPAR Code : n/a | | UPC : 00696998668324 |
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| | Professional Reviews | | Rolling Stone (No. 984, p.148)
- 4 stars out of 5 - "...Against all odds, EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE lives up to its title as a testimony to its creator's resilience and flexibility...."Spin (p.96)
- "EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE lives up to its name most when Elizondo echoes Apple's cartoon spookiness on 'Tymps,' which sounds like a '60s Disney soundtrack left out in the sun." - Grade: B Spin (p.64)
- Ranked #9 in Spin's "40 Best Albums Of 2005" Entertainment Weekly (p.140)
- Ranked #1 in Entertainment Weekly's 'Top Ten Records of the Year' -- "For all its melodrama, EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE never sounds like the work of a defeated spirit; it's the most paradoxically uplifting music of the year." Entertainment Weekly (No. 843, p.72)
- "...[T]he album places Apple's dusky voice and firm, almost defiant way with piano chords at its center...." - Grade: A Q (p.118)
- Ranked #66 in Q Magazine's "100 Greatest Albums of 2006." Mojo (Publisher)
(p.124)
- 4 stars out of 5 -- "Apple is a savvy and focused cookie with a playful, malleable contralto....A fine, off-beat listen." |
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