Snee, pleasant, listened and nodded.
Splitting instruments and sounds between the left and right channels on a stereo makes for a much more pleasant listening experience -- except when you are sharing headphones with a friend.
You could happily do away with half of what's here and be left with a more pleasant listening experience.
And it's not all pleasant listening -- the La Monte Young track can be painful, especially when listened to through headphones, since it's intended to be heard in a room in which the listener can move around.
Before long, he is trawling the internet for accounts of violence against Jewish people across the globe ("I'm not saying it makes pleasant listening," sighs Finkler, "but it's not exactly Kristallnacht, is it?"), joining Libor for a Seder dinner and hooking up with Hephzibah, a woman who is about to open a museum of Anglo-Jewish culture.
Melding snippets of piano (which she played herself) and guitar, coproducer Stephan Betke (a.k.a. Pole) lays down a solid foundation of techno-pop that makes for pleasant listening on a quiet afternoon.
The cumulative effect, however, is intelligent muzak: pleasant to listen to, but emotionally and stylistically uncommitted.
A pipe can jam and play on seemingly forever, much like a stuck car horn and about as pleasant to listen to.
The song ticks all the boxes: it honours a recently dead legend, it's sort of about religion and it's actually pleasant to listen to.
The soprano Ricarda Merbeth is an impressive Elsa who soars vocally in climactic moments, and Linda Watson, a well-known Brünnhilde, contributes a frightening Ortrud who is not always pleasant to listen to.
