Nick Tosches is an American writer, with vast experience from the fields of journalism, biography, fiction and poetry. For the Taking is his fourth CD release, on which Tosches has written the lyrics and do the vocals; while instrumentation is handled by Rick Whitehurst.

Musically this release is a rather odd one. The music is most times close to ambient industrial and ambient techno in style, where mostly dark moods from the synth combined with mostly tribal rhythms form the musical foundation for Tosches, reciting his prose in a very calm, warm dark and likeable voice. Fleshing out the soundscapes and flavouring the mood are sounds, pure samples, electronically enhanced samples and electronic noises.

The music seems to be quite simplistic in style; although there are more than a few moments of complexity on these 8 songs. As for mood and style; it's generally dark, with more than a few macabre moments. The individual elements each track consist of seems to have been added to add to the general mood of the dark and the macabre that is the foundation of most of the lyrics here.

The noises, the moods and the melodies here seems to have been pulled from some sort of terrifying nightmare; albeit a poetic one. There are no horrors or atrocities here, but when you hear a calm voice speaking words like "when I slew and severed into many / our son" over a musical landscape of tribal-inspired rhythms, sampled screams and generally dark and disturbing music; an intense feeling of uneasiness will be the result in most listeners minds. And much of this release is kind of similar to that; more or less slightly disturbing words; poetic in form and style; recited over a dark, bleak likewise disturbing musical framework.

Clearly not a release that will top the Billboard chart; but a potential gem in the CD collections of people that find the macabre and the dark fascinating - fans of Lovecraft and the darker side of Edgar Allan Poe should be amongst those that'll be intrigued by this release.

My rating: 90/100
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Nick Tosches on disc 

It began with the sale of an old rarity and ended with the making of a future one. Vinyl collector and musician Rick Whitehurst one day found an old vinyl single, "I'm a Lover", by heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston, recorded a few days before Liston's death and until then mostly known by rumour only. 

"I bought the single", Whitehurst says. "But when I started investigating it turned out that there weren't any known history about the recording or how it came to be. Actually, nothing at all was known, apart from a slight suggestion in Nick Tosches biography "The Devil and Sonny Liston". So I checked with Tosches. It turned out that he had been obsessed with getting hold of this recording." 

The result was that the legendary rock journalist and writer Nick Tosches purchased "I'm a Lover", and that Rick Whitehurst convinced him to record an album, "For the Taking Volume I". What it was really about was that Whitehurst was allowed to use previously recorded spoken words performances the writer had done from his poetry collection "Chaldea and I Dig Girls". 

Tosches himself, known amongst other releases for his Jerry Lee Lewis biography "Hellfire" (often regarded as the best rock biography ever written), the Dean Martin book "Dino", the novels "Cat Numbers" and "In the Hands of Dante" as well as loads of classic rock journalistic work in magazines such as Creem and Rolling Stone, says he really didn't have much to do with the final result. 

"He asked, and I told him that he could do what he wanted", Tosches explains in an e-mail. "The recordings already existed, I made them with Hubert Selby Jr. many years ago".

"The recordings scared the living daylights out of me. The poems were totally psycho! But also filled with insight. The music had to resonate to that. I worked at one poem at a time and experimented with it, sometimes adding baby cries, screams and similar stuff, sometimes adding sampled violins", Whitehurst says. "Nick seemed to like the end result, bit I don't really know. He might just have been polite." 

If any more albums will be made is unclear, but you shouldn't miss out on "For the Taking Volume 1". Tosches poetry actually becomes even more interesting and nightmarish when you listen to him reading them on this release. 

Klas Ericson
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Fascinating and hallucinogenic... I loved it!
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This was the weirdest stuff I have ever heard. Scared the hell out of my Mom. After the initial shock I found myself playing it over and over in my car for weeks on my way to work. I never heard Nick Tosches before, but have read a few of his books. He seems like a freaky guy... Trippy album.
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