#the themes of the songs and the way it's structured and contrasts with the sonic styles and so on because it's got a lot of layers

[septembersghost]

fwiw I would read your essay on the Memphis album ☺

😭 thank you honey, it's worth a lot

#i probably won't ever share it because it feels silly and emotional and nobody needs to see that #idk if it's an essay as much as it is a collection of thoughts about #the themes of the songs and the way it's structured and contrasts with the sonic styles and so on because it's got a lot of layers #opening with: i had to leave town for a little while... #the specific way he transforms only the strong survive #long black limousine being the first track recorded which. i. #such a powerhouse of a song but i cannot HEAR #there's a long line of mourners coming down our street; their fancy cars are such a sight to see #they're all of your rich friends that knew you in the city and now they finally brought you home to me #without crying #and conjuring up specific images of a procession of cars #it just makes my heart hurt so much. but still i listen #i'll never love another! oh my heart all my dreams ride with you in that long black limousine #that record is everything i love it so immensely #i'm giving him a grammy for aoty retroactively btw #again. i need a tag for these posts so you all don't have to be subject to them. the el files. #the fact that true love travels on a gravel road and any day now and gentle on my mind #and in the ghetto and power of my love and i'm movin' on and----all of them exist on the same record #(and TECHNICALLY suspicious minds and kentucky rain. insane) #the tracklist on the physical and on streaming are different but it's mind-blowing what came out of those sessions #revelatory and beautiful and sometimes so sad it's eerie #see? writing this out coherently would be too much probably #anonymous #letterbox

[antifataylorswift]

Okay yeah, I'm playing I Can Fix Her with my favorite Midnights tracks, starting with: Would've, Could've, Should've

All around fantastic song, definitely my top track on the album on first listen and and is still my top track. I don't see that changing.

This one's a solid 9.5/10 for me: she's energetic, she goes hard, she's angry, she contains Themes! Aaron Dessner produced this track, which is very apparent as soon as the guitar comes in. The guitar sound is very reminiscent of what's found on The National's album Trouble Will Find Me (it sounds like a blend of 80% This Is The Last Time and 20% I Should Live In Salt. As an aside: those are two of my favorite TN tracks, so this is obviously for me specifically.) By this point in the album it's a relief to hear some real instruments.

My issues with this track:

The drums. They're used as a focal point within the instrumentals, but they never really grow or evolve or do anything interesting after they come in — it's more or less the same basic rhythm for the whole song, and never really grow or evolve much beyond where they first come in.

The vocal production feels too polished, especially in contrast to the guitar, and especially for the song's emotions and subject matter.

The instrumentals don't really evolve and the music doesn't really build enough. It starts at a 4, gets up to a 5 for the chorus, hits a 6 at the bridge and through the end of the song, maxing out at a 6.5 by the end of the outro. The way that the lyrics are written and the song is structured BEGS to go harder, get louder, and get a little messier by the end.

I Can Fix Her:

Using more of a rock sound would've elevated this one to an 11/10 S-tier Taylor Swift track. I'm thinking something closer to The National's sound pre-Boxer (like Abel or Murder Me Rachael), or more like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Metric.

The drums in particular need to do more and commit more. The rhythm should be more varied and/or drive harder. I think I'm spoiled on hearing this incredibly Aaron-sounding guitar work with Bryan Devendorf's drumming, which tends to be very nuanced and slightly unexpected. To put some sonic distance between this song and The National, I think it would be interesting to hear drums that just commit to driving the song along (for example, more in the vein of like Metric's Help I'm Alive). It needs a lot more cymbals and a bit more snare.

The guitar could stand to be louder and a bit fuzzier.

I'm guessing that the chorus of "ooohs" is supposed to give it a bit of a church vibe, tying in with a lot of the christian imagery. They're too repetitive and don't add a ton. I'd save them until the bridge so that they're more impactful and less instrumental.

Rougher, growlier vocals. Rock vocals! This goes for those "ooohs" too.

More dynamic contrast throughout. Start the first verse where it is or even a little quieter, then get a bit louder adding more instruments in towards the end of the song. Heavy, repeated lines like "I regret you all the time" get more impactful the more they're allowed to build. Keeping everything the same volume minimizes the impact of the song's climax.

Just leaning into more of a rock sound would really put this song in the upper echelons of Taylor Swift tracks, so I hope that's something she's planning to do on tour.

I'm deeply curious what a St. Vincent version of this song would sound like. (Ma'am I'm once again begging you to write another song with Annie Clark.) I'd also love to hear a Florence + The Machine remix or cover? Give me a big ass brass church bell and some harp and some tambourine to go with all the churchy imagery in the lyrics

#i would once again like to reiterate that the more i love something the more time and energy i spend into reimagining it or making tweaks #especially when they're soooooo close to being god-tier! #my love language is critiquing things i can't help it #midnights #ts

[rolandrockover]

The Right Echo

Have I actually ever written anything about mid-sections in Kiss' songs before? Sure. But it I guess doesn't really matter, does it? I mean, as long as something comes out of it.

And because I always have to make comparisons, the first two songs that came to my mind on this subject are Psycho Circus and its counterpart Right Here, Right Now.

It's debatable when exactly Kiss started to incorporate something like an extended mid-section part into their songs, whether it was on their debut with Black Diamond (1) or not before The Elder, where it's literally teeming with them (2), I'm reluctant to tear my hair out over this question.

Psycho Circus' mid-section forms a song-complementary momentum, which remains true to its circus theatrics, and consciously uses the opportunity to open the curtain behind the scenery and allow a supposed look inside, ultimately and faithfully to the main theme, of course, only to reveal all the more magic, epic depth and perhaps even a little piece of infinity. Needless to say, Paul the ringmaster reveals himself for a few moments as Paul the magician, and all in all, impressions are awakening on many levels that we are only at the beginning of a long journey. Not bad for a band with 25 years under their belt, but considering that this was only the halfway point, I guess you can accept that.

Right Here, Right Now offers us in addition a wonderful contrast program that seems almost all too suitable. But that's not meant to be criticism in any form, because Right Here, Right Now, and I mean its mid-section, does pretty much everything right. If I want to look at it as a more or less neo-klassikal element of Kiss' song structure, which, for a change, does not behave as a rip-off, but rather as an opportunity for mature self-reference, without following the usual patterns. Sublimity and dignity are the first words that came to mind, and therefore also inseparable self-confession.

On Monster they somehow manage to pull off this trick several times, something Sonic Boom for example never manages to do, which is not to diminish my love for it. It's just that little goosebump moment in the mid-section of Right Here, Right Now that conveys such finality, as if it were the very last written and performed song of a band just moments before their consciously recognized, inevitable end. Aware of all their highs and lows, glories and disgraces, and with the heads held high. Face to face with fate.

It's hard to imagine what the result would have been if they had continued drilling in that direction, but unfortunately that was as far as it went.

If I used emojis you could see a very sad one at this point.

Side Note:

(1) One could also claim that half of its studio version consists of this.

(2) On Revenge as well, by the way.

To get to the Alpha and Omega please press the highlighted links:

Psycho Circus (1998)

Right Here, Right Now (2012)

#Kiss #Paul Stanley #Curtis Cuomo #Tommy Thayer #Psycho Circus #Monster #1998 #2012 #Roland Rockover #Black Diamond #1974 #Music from The Elder #1981 #Debut #Youtube

[thebandcampdiaries]

Fever Moon has released a new studio album: “God’s Heart”

Six songs that offer a deep dive into the sound of classic alternative rock.

Fever Moon, has just released its highly anticipated mini-album titled “God’s Heart”, which features six songs. The tracks capture the raw edge of the 90s sound, while embracing the immediacy of the contemporary alternative rock scene.

The album was released on May 5th and has been receiving positive praise from fans of alternative rock and indie music alike. Fever Moon’s signature sound is reminiscent of bands like Husker Du, Sebadoh, Armchair Martian, Dead Rituals, Cloud Nothings and Dinosaur Jr., making it a must-listen for aficionados of these groups, and more. 

Although many of the songs are adorned with blankets of heavily distorted guitars, the melody is still an essential aspect of this release. The contrast between the raw tone of the songs and the genuine twist of the vocals allows for more emotional depth and range to be conveyed through the music. The album is a perfect example of how catchy songs don't need to be overly slick and that making music sound more "human" still highlights the true weight of the feelings behind each track. This approach makes for a sense of unity between the music and the lyrics, allowing for a more cohesive listening experience.

The album opener, which happens to be the title track itself, is a perfect introduction. It features a fuzzy, huge soundscape, which swiftly sets the tone for the entire track. The second song, "Old Ghost Ruin," juxtaposes strummed acoustic guitars with distorted electric rhythms and dynamic drumming, adding to the overall energy and intensity of the track. The third track, "Parasitic Sympathy," happens to be a more introspective moment on the album. The vocals are raw and passionate, complementing the instrumental arrangement in a more personal way. The song "Foolin'" shows a different side, with a stronger focus on soothing yet upbeat acoustic melodies. The song's structure is well-crafted, with effective use of big acoustic guitar parts and sparse drums to build an engaging rhythm, while highlighting the personable and poetic lyricism. "The Lost Boys" is a return to the band's fuzzier format, and it immediately stands out with a heavy palm-muted riff that accompanies the vocal melody to perfection. Fuzz is the perfect type of distortion for a song like this because it enhances the complexity of the chords with some harmonic overtones that turn a relatively straight-forward strumming pattern into a more layered wall of sound. 

Last but not least, the song "If I Lose" is a minimalistic outro to this mini-album. 

This is an acoustic track that feels more intimate and personal, offering a deeper insight into Fever Moon's ability to combine gritty indie aesthetics with a more vulnerable and earnest approach to songwriting.

In addition, the artwork is really spot-on as well, as it is reminiscent of the work of greats like Raymond Pettibon, known for his visuals for bands such as Sonic Youth and Black Flag, among others. The use of a highly contrasting black-and-white palette creates a sense of urgency and immediacy that works with the dynamics of the music. The image conveys the emotions and themes behind the songs.

To conclude, this album serves as a great introduction to Fever Moon's blend of indie rock, punk, and alternative rock. It creates a very immersive and energetic musical experience with its back-to-basics yet meticulously well-crafted sound. Throughout the mini-album, the guitar work is particularly impressive with its well-orchestrated chaos, consisting of distorted and fuzz-heavy parts that still retain a lot of melody. In much the same way, the drums and bass provide a solid foundation for the guitar to shine, and the overall production gives the album a 90s throwback feel that adds to its charm. It is safe to say that people who enjoy listening to classic and contemporary alternative rock will appreciate the raw and unpolished sound of "God's Heart."

Find out more about Fever Moon and listen to this release on your favorite digital streaming services.

https://open.spotify.com/album/4uAH4hBuJ1EQeeniYQLeB0

https://www.youtube.com/@fevermoon1134/videos

https://www.instagram.com/mysterycuts/

https://twitter.com/mysterycuts

[passionate-reply]

This week on Passionate Reply: We all know “Don’t You Want Me,” but the early Human League is a totally different beast, featuring a different line-up, and songs about killer clowns and wanting to be a skyscraper, on their debut LP, 1979′s Reproduction. Transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. In this installment, we’ll be investigating one of the most surprising debut LPs around: The Human League’s Reproduction, first released in 1979.

Pretty much anyone with a general understanding of Western pop will already know the name of the Human League, and associate them, rightfully, with their early 80s hits like “Don’t You Want Me.” For many, the Human League were the first genuine synth-pop that they had ever heard, and their work in the 1980s has been immeasurably influential in bringing the notion of electronic pop into the mainstream. But before they were hitmakers and game-changers, the Human League were a very different band.

Music: “Being Boiled”

“Being Boiled” was the first thing the Human League would ever press to wax, way back in 1978. In most respects, this track is everything that “Don’t You Want Me” is not: its pace is languid, its structure is shapeless and meandering, and rather than a simple and relatable love story, its lyrics offer us a strange and opaque condemnation of the tortures endured by silkworms during textile production. While fascinating, and endearing in its own morbid way, “Being Boiled” does not exactly scream “hit record.” The Human League were not only a different band in a stylistic sense, but also with respect to their personnel, driven by a creative core comprised of budding synthesists Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. Prior to the release of the breakthrough album Dare, Marsh and Ware would abandon the group over creative differences, and go on to form Heaven 17 instead. It was vocalist Phil Oakey, and producer Martin Rushent, who would create the sound that their name is now so strongly associated with, and this early incarnation of the group is probably best thought of as an entirely different entity. This album, Reproduction, was their first full-length release, and is perhaps the best introduction to their pioneering sound.

Music: “Circus of Death”

“Circus of Death” had appeared as the B-side to “Being Boiled,” and was included once more as the second track on *Reproduction.* It has a lot in common with the other track it accompanied: a plodding pace, a dark and obtuse lyrical theme, and a sparse, fully electronic instrumentation. The Human League were among the first British groups to utilize a totally electronic sound, devoid of any traditional instruments besides the voice, though in this underground and more experimental context, it doesn’t present a threat to the status quo of pop the way that Dare would a few years later. Alongside fellow proto-industrial acts associated with "the Sound of Sheffield," like Clock DVA and Cabaret Voltaire, they dwelt on the fringes of good taste, crafting subversive music for subversive people. “Circus of Death” introduces us to a demonic figure called “the Clown,” who controls, and torments, human beings by use of a drug called “Dominion,” in a scenario that sounds a bit like Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s worth remembering that while younger generations are quick to think of clowns as icons of evil and terror, clowns were unironically beloved as bringers of joy for most of the 20th Century, and these early portrayals of clowns as killers were indeed shocking at the time. Preceding “Circus of Death,” and opening the album, is “Almost Medieval,” a track with some similar themes, but a rather different composition.

Music: “Almost Medieval”

While “Circus of Death” is slow and dirgelike, “Almost Medieval” showcases the more aggressive side of *Reproduction.* It opens the album with a starkly simplistic tick-tocking beat, reminiscent of an unaccompanied metronome, before bursting into its punk-like sonic assault--a musical representation of how seemingly predictable and deterministic machines can also create something outrageous and unexpected. The lyrics of this track seem pointed towards the past, with the narrator exclaiming that they “feel so old,” and as if they’ve died many times before. Juxtaposed against the thoroughly modern setting of an airport with tarmacs and jet engines, it might be taken as an expression of the horror a person from the past might feel if they were shown the world of the future, created by capitalism and high technology. While it isn’t very accurate, we have a tendency to think of the “Medieval” world as a barbaric, unclean, and uncivilized era, full of witch hunts, chastity belts, and the deliberate erasure of “ancient wisdom.” “Almost Medieval” turns that idea on its head, suggesting that perhaps our world is the one that’s truly barbaric. The image of its narrator, “falling through a rotting ladder,” can be taken as a rejection of the notion of a “ladder” of progress. Similar themes of open-ended symbolism, and the sorrow of modernity, can be found on “Empire State Human.”

Music: “Empire State Human”

Like “Almost Medieval,” “Empire State Human” is lively and faster-paced, with driving percussion. With its straightforward rhymes and repetitive structure, it readily encourages the listener to sing along, almost as if joining in some sort of ritual chant. It’s an idea that Marsh and Ware would return to in their Heaven 17 days, with tracks like “We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang.” “Empire State Human” was the album’s only single, and thanks to this exposure, and its (relative) palatability compared to the rest of their catalogue, it remains one of the best known tracks from the early Human League. “Empire State Human” makes its concept pretty clear, with less ambiguous lyrics and an easy to follow mix that brings Oakey’s voice to the fore: the narrator wishes to become a building, and a mighty skyscraper no less, which might rival the achievements of the Pyramids of the ancient Egyptians. While it is clear that that’s what the song’s about, what we do with this once again high-concept subject matter is up to us. I like to think that this is some kind of perverse commentary on the unnatural and alienating experience of urban living, which may come with the feeling that the concrete and rebar structures that surround us are more significant to our lives than the people who may live or work in them. City life is addressed more directly by the track “Blind Youth.”

Music: “Blind Youth”

“Blind Youth” is probably the most “grounded” track on the album, in terms of its theme, making pointed remarks about “dehumanization” and “high-rise living.” It’s tempting to think of it as a sort of parallel to “Empire State Human,” with a broadly similar musical backdrop, and a more literal expression of the theme hinted at more obliquely by “Empire State Human.” With its focus on the experiences of the titular “youth,” “Blind Youth” can also be contrasted with “Almost Medieval,” whose narrator keens about feeling old. Where “Almost Medieval” deals with the disgust an older person feels at the decrepit state of the human race, “Blind Youth” shows the demented, unthinking joy of the youth, who have grown up in an industrialized and urbanized world, and don’t know different--or better.

While there have been many classic underground albums whose covers aimed to shock and displease polite society, the cover of Reproduction is one of the few that I feel would still be seen as offensive, over 40 years later. It was allegedly the product of a miscommunication between the group and the illustrator commissioned to create it; the band requested a scene in which people are dancing above a ward of babies in glass-topped incubators, and the striking angle, which seems to show people crushing infants underfoot, is an unintentional aspect of the design. Unintentional or not, this crudely violent aspect dominates the final composition, and lends it vileness and immediacy. Like the lyrics of many of the songs, the combination of the cover and title can be interpreted a number of ways. Perhaps it’s a glib commentary on human reproduction as fun and games: we partake in the “dance” of courtship and sexuality, and babies drop beneath our feet. Or perhaps it suggests a contrast between life’s enjoyments, like dancing, and its stressors, like the responsibilities of parenthood. It’s hard not to see so many crying, seemingly distressed infants without becoming upset oneself, and I think the deep instinctual revulsion that this piece inspires is part of why it’s remained so resonant in its subversiveness.

As I mentioned in my introduction, the Human League have gone down in history chiefly for the music they made later, which has largely buried this early period as part of their legacy--at least in the public eye and outside of the dedicated diggings of motivated enthusiasts. If you’re a fan of what you’ve heard from this album, you’ll probably enjoy their 1980 follow-up Travelogue, as well as their EP, Holiday ‘80. Given the emphasis on long-form albums among music aficionados, EPs and their exclusive tracks are quite frequently missed, but Holiday ‘80 is a gem from this short-lived line-up, featuring the fragile “Marianne” as well as a cover of the stadium favourite “Rock ‘N’ Roll,” made famous by Gary Glitter. Thumbing its nose at everything the culture of “rock and roll” stands for, and transposing this hymn to its greatness into an abrasive and sterile lunar landscape of synths, this is one of my favourite covers of all time, and seems to prefigure how a very different Human League would later become the archnemesis of all that rock fans held holy. It was also one of very few tracks to be performed on Top of the Pops, and subsequently see not a rise, but a drop in the singles charts!  

Music: “Rock ‘N’ Roll”

My favourite track on Reproduction is one that appears on its second side, unlike the other tracks I’ve talked about so far: “Austerity / Girl One.” Side Two of Reproduction is mainly focused on longer and more narrative-driven tracks, and this is no exception. Like the opener of the second side, “Austerity / Girl One” is a medley, albeit one of two pieces that are original compositions and not covers, as medleys usually are. This track’s story is both timeless and modern, a bit like a contemporary King Lear: the “Austerity” half deals with an aging father, incapable of understanding his children, dying alone and ignored, while the “Girl One” half puts us in the mindset of his daughter, a New Woman whose life is hectic, but also bleak. It’s a story that many of us will relate to, about people who try their best with what they’ve got, but still feel as though they’ve failed in life. Its simple, but effective musical backdrop of wan synth pulses allows the narrative, and Oakey’s evocative portrayal of it, to take center stage. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening.

Music: “Austerity / Girl One”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #human league #the human league

[acesotonic]

acesotonic reviews | NIKI: “wanna take this downtown?”

the second music review on this blog is dedicated to one of my favourite artists to ever exist - Southeast Asian 88rising queen: NIKI. in her EP, “wanna take this downtown?”, we discover an interesting musical and lyrical atmosphere that is both cohesive and distinctly personal.

NIKI’s debut EP “Zephyr” was packed with lovely R&B tunes, soulful and seductive lyrics as well as some carefree vibes. In “wanna take this downtown?”, she gets more emotional and sensitive. Like the album cover, she bares her feelings even more than she has before. I thought “Zephyr” was already quite a pleasant invitation into her heart and mind. But this new EP opens new doors. And it is pleasant from start to finish, with zero inaccessibility on a listener-level. Let’s dive in.

The first song lowkey, which was a pre-release, unfurls a very pretty and fairy-like introduction. Using light and muted mallet sounds, it serves as a good contrast to the bass synth that comes in as soon as she starts to sing. The percussion in the introduction is delicate and gives the pretty instrumental a bounce. Her lyrics are immediately intimate, which suits the simple yet gentle music. After some piano chords, the song transitions into a chorus full of harmonies. The hook is addictive, repeating “lowkey” rhythmically with a lovely descending melody. In the first half of the second chorus, the drum pattern is seized and suspends the music in the air. NIKI’s vocals begin to soar and you can almost feel the pearly gates of heaven opening... or something like that. Then, the drums come back in together with another mallet sound. This time, the mallets create a staccato counter-melody, with an airy cadence. It is my favourite part of this song because it is playful and attractive. The EP begins very strong already, although my only gripe is that it should have been longer (as with most of NIKI’s discography... but this will pop up again).

Next, urs also begins similarly with fairy-like mallets with a digitised filter. This is a good way for the EP to be immediately cohesive. With light and block-like snaps to introduce a rhythm, the song picks up its pace. NIKI’s harmonies and graceful vocal melodies strengthen it, carrying her emotions of hurt and confusion about whether someone she loves knows that she is willing to give herself to them. She always uses great bass synths in her music, so I am not surprised that the one in this track melds so well with all the other elements. There are these marbly sound effects which act as atmospheric hi-hats, creating a wide empty space in the listener’s ear. This is an effective way to reflect NIKI’s loneliness and vulnerability, which shows in the chorus’ lyrics. The song ends cleanly, but again I feel that it can be longer. Furthermore, I was alright with the drum pattern in the first chorus being in a dance hall sequence. I felt that if there was a switch-up somewhere in the middle or an alternate drum pattern altogether, the track could have juiced out the vocal melodies even more than how it already appears.

The EP moves on with move! with a compelling beginning that prevents giving listeners a consistent tempo. A funky staccato synth is mixed in with NIKI’s low-pitched harmonies, which creates a flirtatious atmosphere - and this foreshadows the lyrics. The clean snaps give a good bounce to the song, and her voice singing “there’s something in the water” is charming, which comes in handy throughout the song’s themes of wanting to be in-charge and mischievous in an already healthy relationship. She even grunts it in the second verse, which is so cheeky and identifiable in NIKI’s real life personality. The pre-chorus features muted bendy synths, which then lead into the chorus: beautifully explosive and sporadic. The clearer bendy synths in the chorus remind me of an alternative pop kind of synthesiser sample. In the second verse and pre-chorus, there are horn-like synths sprinkled across which adds even more character to move!, as if it is a second voice complementing NIKI’s lyrics. I cannot get enough of the bendy funky pop-y chords in the chorus. It is interestingly almost off-pitch but still carries the vocal melodies perfectly. The song ends with the chorus, which really emphasises its sinfully short length. There is so much more unexplored power in the chorus, that could have bled out into a bridge. Nevertheless, move! is a special but very much NIKI piece.

Last but definitely not least, odds gives us a similar introduction that we found in urs with a singular synthesised sound. The difference here is the sound in odds has no reverb on it at all. It is solid and static. It sounds like a phone dial, which sort of creates an image of NIKI talking (singing) to someone on the other end of the line. it is an odd (pun intended) beginning to the song, but still attention-grabbing because of the potential concept it has and NIKI’s personal lyrics. Then, the track continues with a very slow riser and staccato bass synth, and progresses into the chorus. This is where the song gets striking to my ears. The chorus is in a lower register compared to what NIKI sings in most of the time! The low register gives the song a deep colouring, across this record and NIKI’s whole discography. It is full of attitude especially when she sings about how people have come to her for a relationship after they have broken up with someone else... basically reducing her to a “rebound”. Verse 2 plays around with NIKI’s vocals by bending it, while she mockingly calls someone a “mind-game mastermind”. The lyrics, once again, go onto another level of personal and truthful as she describes her desire for a genuine love despite her fame and success. And then we go into the bridge which is watered down slightly, supported by airy vocal harmonies and a soft drum set. The track becomes lyrically conversational, which becomes relatable for listeners. This is also a testament to NIKI’s cool personality, and it shines through even more as the last chorus hits with an extra push on the 808s. Again, I wish it was longer. Still, odds is an enjoyable listen.

Conclusion

NIKI’s 2nd EP “wanna take this downtown?” delivers with consistent tracks filled with personal lyrics, emotional vocal melodies and harmonies, and cohesive instrumentations. Although all 4 tracks could have been structurally extended, and even sonically fleshed out, NIKI has always kept a high standard in her music even with her previous successful songs that fall just below 3 minutes. She has matured in this album as an artist and undoubtedly as a person. I look forward to a full album, and my expectations will never be less than excellent when it comes to NIKI.

8.5/10

#music: review #niki #niki zefanya #niki: wttd? #acesotonic #wanna take this downtown? #critique

[thesuper17]

Nostalgia, the kind fomented unnaturally early in a generation forced to confront its imminent end, soaks Titanic Rising, Natalie Mering’s fourth and finest album as Weyes Blood. The record’s warm, luxurious 70s pop arrangements and brief glimpses into Mering’s tender and empathetic interior life serve to underscore the value of what will be lost, and the necessity of treasuring it while it lasts.

Despite its eschatological subject matter, Titanic Rising isn’t a morose, or even explicitly didactic, experience. The 31-year-old was raised in a religious household (albeit subsequently denouncing Christianity), and a fundamental search for belonging and meaning feels as close to the center of Titanic Rising as its clear-eyed recognition of the coming ecological catastrophe. 

It could easily sound glib to claim, as Mering did in an interview with Pitchfork, that one should “have a smile during the apocalypse and be grateful for whatever conditions exist, because life is a beautiful thing,” but on Titanic Rising, she dispels cynicism with full-hearted commitment to all the beauty left to salvage.

Mering has pointed to religious music as a particular influence on her output, not in terms of content, but staging. Grand cathedrals, at once meticulously ornate and cavernously open, these vast, high-ceilinged chambers feel like a natural arena for the compositions on Titanic Rising. 

Opener “A Lot’s Gonna Change”, for instance, begins in humble simplicity but soon blossoms into a lush orchestral arrangement, all swooping strings and long-held ascending vocal harmonies. The song is an overture to Mering’s approach on the rest of the album, demonstrating her penchant for broad, melancholic melodies and stark but tragically optimistic lyricism.

These tendencies coalesce on the stunning centrepiece, “Movies”, a stirring and poignant lament that real life could approach the deliberate meaning of cinema. On a meta-level, within the self-contained world of the record, Mering achieves her wish. 

"Movies" unfolds in distinct sections, not unlike the separate acts of a film. Its stage-setting, submerged synth arpeggios move subtly as the singer enters: ‘This is how it feels/ to be in love,’ (alluding to the function of art in not only reflecting emotional dynamics but producing them). Again, there is a near-religious sense of ceremony, of slow-moving bodies gradually aligning, led by Mering’s multi-tracked voice.

After building to a sustained perfect cadence, the track is interrupted by a flurry of strings, dry and staccato in contrast to the dreamy build-up that preceded them. A single bass drum pulse corrals the flock into formation and the high-drama second act takes shape. Guided by singular desire, Mering repeats ‘I wanna be/ the star of my own movie,’ her falsetto climbing intervals in a crystalline timbre. The intensity of this movement gathers and crests with a final high ‘my own’, before sloping to a mellow denouement, peaceful but not satisfied.

The filmic quality of “Movies” is clearly indebted to composers like Brian Eno and – as astutely observed by Alex Denning for Dazed – Gavin Bryars’ minimalist opus “The Sinking of the Titanic”, from which Mering’s title is inverted. Her broader palette however, is drawn from the soft-rock and pop of artists like The Carpenters, Harry Nilsson and even The Beach Boys.

The attention to detail with which Titanic Rising reconstructs these profiles is both technically stunning and wholly aligned to the record’s thematic intent. Describing that intent, Mering carefully distinguishes her desire to make something “sorrowful” rather than depressing, illuminating the world’s majesty and leaving context to shape the atmosphere around it. 

That the artists she venerates are so often given to an intimate conception of that duality of love and melancholy (as in Close To You), only contributes further to the record’s synchronicity of theme and construction. 

On “Wild Time” Mering addresses ‘the rising tide’ - both a direct reference to the climate catastrophe and a more general allusion to the instability gripping our cultural, economic and technological institutions. Here, as in “A Lot’s Gonna Change”, her nostalgic yearning targets the neatness of childhood, before the world’s contradictions laid themselves bare. In this way, “Wild Time” addresses a personal loss of innocence as directly as it does the re-configuring of social structures under late Capitalism and global warming.

Constantly shifting tonality between major and minor (reminiscent of a Joni Mitchell composition), the song eludes simple categorisation, refusing to signpost the listener a one-dimensional response. Its overall sonic character is analogue and warm, with thick bass guitar confidently underpinning Mering’s modulating melodies. 

A gliding and pensive wordless middle 8 section gently floats the song to its final chorus, whereupon the singer locks on to a steady note for the word ‘time’ rather than the shifting pattern she adopts prior. The note holds fast while all around her, strings, drums and keys forcefully ascend, again suggesting Mering’s hopeful resolve against total uncertainty.  

More contemporary reference points for Weyes Blood like Father John Misty (lampshaded by Phil Elverum in “Now Only”, where he talks to the two of them about songwriting ‘in the backstage bungalows’) and Lana Del Rey differ from Mering in their elevation of wry cynicism over sincerity. Sincerity is one of Titanic Rising's most commendable traits, but should Mering have immersed the album in earnest sentiment entirely, it would’ve risked buckling under the weight of self-seriousness. 

In discussion with Mark Kermode on Ari Aster's Hereditary, film critic Robbie Collin brings up the idea that brief winking moments of humour can act as a 'steam valve' for the audience, allowing intense experiences to avoid tipping over into overwhelming ones, where they become parody.

On Titanic Rising, "Everyday" functions in precisely this way. Accompanied in video by a whimsical send-up of vintage slasher films, the track is a relentlessly bouncy and upbeat exploration of the re-organisation of love in a digital age. Without ever explicitly breaking character, "Everyday" lets in a small current of air that actually imbues the parts of the album played straight with more power. 

Instructively, Mering has said "I'm actually really sincere. But I feel like humour is a part of the great cosmic question." Rather than morbidly drilling down on a singular theme, she successfully evokes a kaleidoscope of experience and emotion. Humour, just as misery or elation, is part of what comprises a full life: 'It all just overlaps.' 

"Everyday" strikes this intersection most cleanly with a line in its third verse: 'True love, is making a comeback/ for only half of us the rest of us feel bad.' The heartbreaking purity and tenacity of its first half is so immediately deflated in the second, it's almost impossible not to crack a smile. A gorgeous and kitsch electric piano flourish cascades beneath Mering's voice to drive home the absurdity.  

It is these smaller, intimate moments on the record, as it is in life, that invoke real wonder. The drum fill before the second chorus of “A Lot’s Gonna Change” or the duelling slide guitar motif in "Andromeda". The deeply personal ode to a friend who passed on "Picture Me Better", where Mering offers only kindness and understanding 'We finally found a winter for your sweater/ got a brand new big suit of armour'. 

Titanic Rising is replete with pockets of surprising beauty, weaved carefully through its construction, its homage, its themes, its heart. In this delicately manufactured capsule, filled both with artefacts from a collective cultural memory and thoughtful preparation for a stormy future, Mering makes her case for hope; that both the past and present contain splendour worth holding onto.

#titanic rising #weyes blood #review #father john misty #carpenters #pop #carole king #harry nilsson #music

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on Quantum Natives 5

J. Ka Ching: Another Vanishing City

Cover by J. and awe IX

Catalogue number: QNR026

Reviewed format: review copy of 320kbps/48kHz MP3 album as kindly provided by Quantum Natives

Welcome to the new review in the Fluid Label Focus series on the Quantum Natives label in which today I’m reviewing their most recent release, the album Another Vanishing City by J. Ka Ching. As always the album’s download includes all album tracks as MP3s, this time in 48kHz for better sound quality, as well as the cover artwork and also lyrics and credits text files. Indeed, you guessed it, this is one of the few song-based releases I’m reviewing on this album and Another Vanishing City does have quite a poppy sound to it, albeit with a quirky personality through energetic bursts of synths and Chinese influences in the instrumentation, but all about that in the next paragraph as I’ll first talk a bit about the album cover artwork. The album artwork is by J. Ka Ching (Jevon Voon) and awe IX and features a nifty collage like image of a Chinese style mountain landscape consisting of two different images of this landscape in monochrome layered over each other, with the background image seemingly showing an “older” image of the mountain than the more refined centre image. J. Ka Ching’s artist name and the album title feature on the cover in true Quantum Natives fashion, in heavily stylised graffiti like type that also has this wild post-internet alien feel to it but could also look a bit like a “remixed” version of Chinese characters. A very nice recognisable cover and overall it quite matches the Chinese aspects of this album’s sound as well. So indeed, let’s have a look at this 25 minute album’s 9 tracks now.

As I mentioned Another Vanishing City is pretty much a song driven album, though the tracks on the album are mostly quite short with the songs being mixed with shorter instrumental pieces making the album feel like a short soundtrack in a way. The lyrics of the songs themselves are quite abstract though noticeably emotional and a bit dramatic but in a good honest manner. As my listening manner is often leaning more on the sound and vibe of the music itself however, I’ll focus on the vocal performances and music itself which is definitely good. J. Ka Ching’s vocals are, while being noticeably auto-tuned, quite good with the emotions within the lyrics coming through clearly even with all the vocal effect processing. But what I noticed in particular, besides the vocals is that J. Ka Ching has quite a wild way of creating his music, mixing recognisable Deconstructed Club, PC Music synths and Asian influences together but in a way that jumps around in unpredictable enjoyable ways. You’re never quite sure what’s going to happen next and besides the songs the melodies on Another Vanishing City are quite aleatoric and abstract at times. The chaotic edge of J. Ka Ching’s music does make the music a notch disjointed at times, with the instruments and sound effects being on the edge of falling out of the tracks’ structures but this is definitely saved by J. Ka Ching’s excellent feel for refined production in his music, always letting the layers of sound and instruments interlock with each other in a pleasant way that’s not overly noisy. Looking at the separate tracks on Another Vanishing City, starting with See No Faces, which features a calm first half and an energetic explosive second half. The first half of this track features J. Ka Ching’s vocals over a mixture of Asian mallet instruments, liquid sound effects, choir samples, modulated synth chords and punchy sub bass. The melancholic sad music of the first half follows a nice polyrhythm in its melodies which leads directly into the more active second half. The second half has quite an explosive Deconstructed Club sound to it, with plenty of thunderous stuttering compressed drums and explosion sounds, squeaky PC music synth leads as well as a mixture of Asian mallet instruments and synth sounds. This then follows into second track plurrRealityz, Tio’tia:ke. Definitely one of the stronger tracks on this album plurrRealityz, Tio’tia:ke features a melodic and rhythmic abstract made up of a variety of sources, Asian instruments, vocal sample chops, quirky synth stabs, EDM bass kick samples and manipulated percussion and sound effects, in its organic wildly evolving shape it wonderfully describes what could be a calm mountain landscape in Japan, sunlight overflowing the trees and a lake nearby. Afterwards Yearning 4 The Ideal follows which has a more straight song form with more upbeat vocals and plenty of PC Music elements in the synth, beat but again there’s also plenty of sweet Asian instruments in the mix and the wild vocal manipulations add a great layer of quirkiness to the piece. Details like the ever shifting click Trap hi hat patterns and chopped up guitar give the music that bit extra that elevates it above other PC music related music. The melodies are simple but the execution of sound play, composition and of course J. Ka Ching’s energetic vocals make this a great fun track to jam to but its layering also rewards deeper listening into the soundscape of the piece. Afterwards we have two short pieces, the first of which is 客家 Guest Families, which is practically an a capella piece (not counting the segue interlude), there are some sweet harmonies in this one which are overdubbed by J. Ka Ching himself and the melodies are very catchy and well written. A great little song. Afterwards we have the instrumental track All Ghost’s Fear the Rooster’s Crow, which has a sweet early morning ambience to it, emitted through the warm tones of a mixture of Eastern instruments, honky tonk piano and funky drum hit samples, which do give the piece a playful abstract edge. The honky tonk piano recording in the background seems to be delayed a bit, its microtonal shifts in tone sounding a bit like distant car klaxons, a great subtle touch the music which enhances that early morning vibe. The Smell of Boiling Rice starts with a really lush melodic soundscape continuing that early morning ambience featuring a great guzheng performance by Xing Ru Zhong backed by vocal drones, explosive drum hits and squelchy synth effects which morphs into a rather bizarre circus like jumpy waltz rhythm melody which much poppies and full of PC music sounds particularly in the synths. The drum patterns are really wild and quirky, very nice, but it’s good that this bit is not longer as it contrast quite a lot with the lush ambience of the first half. Nexopias of Our Forgotten Ancestors follows with once again plenty of craziness in the composition and sound work but it’s one of the tracks where the organised chaos of elements works the best. The noisy groove mixing heavily percussive drum patterns, squeaky PWM synth, vocal chops is both catchy and energetic and has a clear focus in its progression and melodies. The guitar solo by Inland Island (which is a band, but there’s no specific credit for who plays the guitar in the credits text file) also adds a surprising Rock element to the piece which works well moving to the last part of the track in which the music strips itself back to the jumpy percussion and a bit crushed marimba melody. Then on Skid Swan Song we have a Vocaloid like voice singing the song over abstract metallic Asian style staccato synth melodies which leads to final track I’m Trying to Remember the Hue of the Sunlight. This is again a song with J. Ka Ching’s vocals, very PC Music like in this case with the poppy instrumental backing and squeaky energetic fat synth leads, the quirky layering of sound effects and guzheng performance definitely do give it that extra element of originality that I like about J. Ka Ching’s stronger tracks on Another Vanishing City. Indeed when he’s connecting his wildly maximalist approach to electronic music with a smoothly flowing composition and some restraint that keeps the music from going overboard with ideas that distract and disrupt the continuity of his music J. Ka Ching delivers a great mixture of atmospheric soundscapes, PC Music influenced songs that feature some great inspired compositional and sonic ideas that give the music a great conceptual coherency, especially on this album.

To conclude this review I would say that with Another Vanishing City, J. Ka Ching is on the way of shaping a personal style through his music that combines the best influences of pop inspired experimental music styles and Asian themed soundscapes with his excellent attitude to going all out with his quirky imagination in the rich production of the music. While I do feel that J. Ka Ching can work a bit on keeping the flow of his music consistent in its structure, Another Vanishing City is definitely a great enjoyable album as it is. I am definitely looking forward to seeing J. Ka Ching’s music grow even more on future releases but for now I recommend you to check out this album for some varied good creative vibes radiated through J. Ka Ching’s colourful music.

You can get the Quantum Natives free download version of this album via this Mediafire link here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/65u338hskidedi6/J.Ka_Ching-_Another_Vanishing_City__%2528QNR026%2529.zip/file

#mp3 download #album #quantum natives #2019 #ambient #deconstructed club #pc music #soundscapes #pop #vocaloid #japanese #atmospheric #warm #J. Ka Ching #Another Vanishing City #fluid label focus #underground music #experimental music #album review #Xing Ru Zhong #inland island #awe ix #chinese

[happymetalgirl]

Sermon - Birth of the Marvelous

Since starting this blog I have really fallen in love with Bandcamp as a primary source of new music to try out (alongside adventures through the links of YouTube, iTunes, and reputed record label’s rosters), which is how I found this band/project here, Sermon. Even though Prothetic Records is one of the labels I follow, it took me forging through a series of Bandcamp links to find this one, but it has become another one of those stumble-upon bands that I'm so glad came my way. Prosthetic has labeled them an “anonymous musical force” perhaps to preserve privacy, perhaps to direct focus to the music itself, perhaps to conceal what wealth of experience is possessed by this brand new project’s mastermind(s) to maintain an aura of mystique around how a debut such as this could be so masterfully crafted.

When I saw the cover of Birth of the Marvelous, I thought I was probably in for some proggy, Tool-esque, Soen-ish, alternative metal project of some sort. And while that is indeed what this album ended up being, to reduce it to simply a comparison to Tool or Soen would be criminal, because this album certainly offers such a special experience that those two bands do not and that I have been utterly mesmerized with since first hearing. Birth of the Marvelous is such a tremendously masterful release that it’s hard to believe it’s a debut.

While the album’s mystique penetrates from its anonymous creation into its abstractly liturgical lyrics, its label-given status as a religiously themed concept album with a message of “theological balance” is not as far-fetched or hyperbolic as so many flowery album descriptions tend to be. And the album’s sonic pallet definitely reinforces the aura the lyrics seek to conjure.

So while I’m definitely already making it rather clear how I feel about this album, what makes a debut progressive alternative metal album that treads much of the same ground as the aforementioned contemporaries with such an abstract and variably interpretable lyrical concept so compelling is definitely worth delving into.

I mentioned the similarities to Tool and Soen, but I think this would lean a little more closely to the style of Soen for the vocal similarity and for not leaning much on eccentricity the way Tool have. What aspect of Tool's sound Sermon does accomplish is the cinematic experience of their music, but they do so much more subtly and less long-windedly than Tool often tend to. The songs on Birth of the Marvelous are really not all that long, and even though they're rather spacious and aren't jam-packed with thick instrumentation to give them a sense of grandeur, they manage to achieve such a great sense of grandiosity through the classic prog metal method of intricate structural dynamics and making the most of the subtle accents they incorporate, allowing the choral sections or chants or whatever they include to bolster rather than over-blow the album's religious experience. In fact, I would say the shorter songs here actually do a little more for the album than the lengthier ones.

With only 7 tracks ranging from just under 4 minutes to just over 8 minutes, the 40-minute-and-change album doesn't look like a lot for a prog metal album on paper, but once into the music itself, the specs are the last thing beckoning any concern.

"The Descend" opens the album with a brooding, ominous ritualistic vibe made all the more harrowing by the chants of "rise, rise" that accent the lyrics detailing of the shift from adoration to condemnation of a one true savior and the scornful adorning of a crown of thorns. At just 4 minutes, it rather efficiently opens the album's energetically dynamic ritualistic atmosphere as it ebbs and flows from the more boisterous chanting sections to the subdued eerieness of the verses and the simple yet cathartic climax of the vocal high near the end, showing immediately how well Sermon can take a relatively small serving of ingredients from the prog metal bar and do so much with it.

The eerily-named "Festival" continues the saga of the opening track as "the crowd rejoiced as the the savior suffered without choice" as the "clap their hands" mantra resounds throughout the track. Perhaps even more ominous and gradual in its build than the previous song, “Festival” is definitely a big part of the religious experience the album conjures. The stoic mantra repetition over the subdued rolls of the snare and subtly mixed and slightly distorted guitar provide the suspense the songs builds upon to reach its climax, which the dynamic shifts and choral accents along the way do so well to bring it toward.

"The Drift" is a little smoother and more atmospherically open than the two songs before it, by no means sleepy, still working in some busy tom drumming and guitar distortion amid the more swooning and occasionally falsetto vocals of the song, allowing the later ambient section in the middle to both actually feel like a breather and build into an ethereal post-metal crescendo of tremolo picking and increased cymbal crashes. Being one of the most serene cuts of the album, it doesn't really continue the tenseness that the first two songs, but it helps the overall energetic arc of album by not spending all the suspense it built up so quickly, resting in the pleasure of the previous two songs’ stimulation to build the anticipation and set up the intensity the the eventual climax, a phase of which comes up next. Lyrically, the song enters more abstract and similarly spacious territory revolving around the connection of the speaker (whoever it is) to the savior and to the bleeding Earth. It’s definitely more meditative where the previous two songs were more ceremonial and direct, a needed draft from the heat of the procession, which resumes in full force on the next track.

The album reaches its midpoint with the gritty double-bass-bolstered distortion grooves and overt metallic heaviness of "Contrition", which is the most straightforward modern blackened groove metal track on the album, but still makes interesting use of a few unforeseen musical twists: howling death growls, pinch harmonics, low-tuned guitar grooves, an apocalyptic choir/layered-vocal  even some varied blast beats. The song’s subject matter takes the subject of contrition itself to an extreme with the lines “curse the sin in me / grant me the end I desire / watch me march into the fire” a frank and open expression of the speaker’s remorse and wish to be purified by hellfire. It’s as upfront lyrically as it is aggressive musically, providing a thrilling piece to join either halves of the album together.

Following the fire of “Contrition” the album moves into its last cool-down track of sorts: "Chasm". The song is another bit of an abstractly hopeful contrast to the more direct religious tumult of the album’s more energetic cuts, the speaker putting faith in prayer and a father’s hand to brave the falling of stars from the sky. While the waves of ambient guitar echoes of the intro do eventually crash upon the shores in with the cymbals that reel in the tides of greater instrumental fullness, the song remains rather spacious and contemplative amid the angelic choir voices as opposed to the cathartic self-condemnation of “Contrition”. It's not the most blood-pumping song on the album, rather another bit of a breather (which is needed) before the final two songs on the album.

The album comes through with perhaps the best representative of Sermon’s compositional strengths with "The Preacher". It’s a progressive metal masterpiece of a song not for any oversaturated mashing together of musical ideas it does in its mix or any overblown sense of grandiosity through easy means. Rather, the song accomplishes the thrilling journey and the grand sense of majesty of songs far more overblown by making all the dynamic shifts, motif changes, and accenting bursts of vocal energy Sermon incorporates count and making them as effective as they can be. It’s very much a comprehensive overview of everything Sermon has done so magnificently with prog metal’s most humble toolbox so far on the album. It also finds the album back at a more sinister thematic tone with the speaker most liker being a titular preacher of sorts claiming to offer the light of a savior through their insight. It’s not very specific about how the preacher is making this claim to the “children of sin”, but the subtle sense of underlying manipulation and malice at the lyrical level is made all the more overt with the dark musical delivery, and it is the dynamic of the instrumentation that makes it one of the album’s best pieces all around.

For it’s final piece, the album revisits the ominous scene set by the opening track with the expounding reprise of the patient and utterly beautifully climactic "The Rise of Desiderata". Invoking the famous poem about striving to create one’s own happiness, the song wraps up the wild ride of condemnation, abandonment, contrition, manipulation, and restoration of faith by coming full circle to the first-referenced savior. Musically, the album’s longest track does reach for and accomplish that slow build that prog does so well, taking its sweet time through an ethereal ambient section that does so gradually build up with layers of vocals, snare rolls, guitar distortion grooves and atmospheric layers, eventually reaching the denser and more metallic section just before the end and finishing in tremendously climactic fashion with the same chants of “rise, rise” that began the album, this time, summoning one’s own savior rather than the jeers of the cursing crowd. Honestly, as climactic as it is, it could have easily gone longer and pulled off even more musical explosion, but given the aspect of the album’s strength stemming from withholding from going too obnoxiously bombastic in typical prog metal fashion, it is perhaps more fittingly tempered as it is rather than as a classically overdone prog finale. And it is indeed still a satisfying and conclusively complete closing song that provides the right tonal and lyrical closure without spelling everything out too obviously or strictly.

Birth of the Marvelous is an album that is rewarding and thrilling to unpack and whose details and nuances are a joy to become more and more familiar with. It’s spiritual concept, while abstract and not necessarily the most complex, is well-arranged and ultimately proverbially valuable nonetheless. If there's one major standout feature of this album that takes it above the rest of the prog metal crop, it's very much Sermon's seemingly veteran expertise (despite this being the project's first album) with the dynamics that go into prog metal. It is an album with meticulously placed and effective accents all over that all feel to be in their right and natural places. It's very much in line with the type of clean, artisan progressive alternative metal that Soen has made their name on, but this is honestly far more thrilling than anything Soen have made, and considering that band's progress with Lykaia, it's the masterpiece the new Soen album this year should have at least tried to be. But this is not the time to get on about how Soen disappointed this year, rather how miraculously Sermon has risen from nothingness to spiritual prog metal’s highest peaks.

I love this album, and I have not been able to stop listening to it since hearing it; this is the one to beat for everything else coming out this year.

Awestruck and mesmerized/10

#sermon #birth of the marvelous #alternative metal #progressive metal #metal #heavy metal #new music #new album #album review #great album #sermon band

[black-metallic]

Album Review: The Neal Morse Band - The Great Adventure

Neal Morse is a progressive rock artist from the US who released his first album in 1999 and has released 22 studio albums in total, including 10 progressive rock albums, the last three of which were released under the name The Neal Morse Band, which formed in 2014, eight Christian rock albums, and four standard rock albums. Mike Portnoy, the former drummer for Dream Theater, features on the majority of his prog albums, alongside a revolving door of other progressive musicians. Morse was also the original lead vocalist for Spock’s Beard, as well as the founding and current lead vocalist and keyboardist for Transatlantic. Considering the sheer magnitude of progressive music Morse has been a part of since the formation of Spock’s Beard in 1992, it should come as no surprise that Morse is one of the most recognized and celebrated figures in modern prog. He’s also certainly the most interesting musician to have associated himself with the Christian rock genre, with a number of his prog albums revolving around Christian lyrical themes and concepts as well. His music, while rooted in rather simple rock structures, very often reaches levels of bright progressive intensity that rivals even Dream Theater’s most energetic moments, and his lyrics are consistently moving and well thought-out, with the majority of his albums being full-blown concept albums.

Neal Morse’s sound hasn’t developed much over the last 10 years or so and The Great Adventure is no exception to this. Pretty much every song on the album still has that safe, straightforward rock foundation with frequent explosions into lively instrumental showcases, with an overall joyous, modern atmosphere throughout. However, Morse has always had the ability to give his music an overall dynamic quality, making sure his music remains fresh and animated, and The Great Adventure continues with this trend as well. The album starts with its longest track, the 10-minute Overture, a song that begins with a slow, atmospheric section with Morse’s vocals predominating, before erupting not even three minutes in into a much busier section dominated by impressive instrumental performances for the entire remainder of its runtime. The vast majority of the album’s other songs are five minutes or shorter, and very often have a similar structure to Overture, albeit obviously more concise. Lyrically, The Great Adventure is a follow-up to Neal Morse’s previous album, The Similitude of a Dream, whose lyrical content was loosely based off the novel The Pilgrim’s Progress, a Christian allegory concerning the journey of a man from Earth to Heaven. Overall, The Great Adventure is the latest in a long line of musical achievements Neal Morse has been a part of over the last 25 years, featuring yet more spirited, contemporary prog that has made him so well received over those years.

Neal Morse’s prog material, along with Transatlantic, Dream Theater, Liquid Tension Experiment, and OSI, I consider to fall under the same musical umbrella. Because of how each of these bands have shared musicians among each other (Mike Portnoy has actually played with all five of these bands at some point or another), there are common musical threads that run through them all despite the somewhat different sonic cores each of these bands has. One only has to listen to a single Neal Morse album and a single Dream Theater album to understand the similarities the two groups have, and it goes far beyond Portnoy’s common presence on drums. And, to me at least, despite each of these bands having very talented musicians that are able to play technical, outlandishly proggy solos, they all tend to get boring very easily (some more so than others though, Transatlantic being the prime example and Liquid Tension Experiment on the other end of the spectrum). Neal Morse’s prog material in particular is like this, every album of his I’ve found to have plenty of amazing, complex sections right alongside mundane, obnoxiously Christian rock sections that are upbeat in way too shallow and one-dimensional of a way. And The Great Adventure is no exception to this contrast. When it comes to scoring the album, despite me really disliking the music in a number of areas, I honestly can’t rank it too low because there are also a number of parts that I did truly enjoy. The musicianship in those sections is too great without being too flashy for what it’s trying to achieve and is consistently the reason that I continue listening to Neal Morse’s new prog releases. Overall, many prog fans, and certainly any fans of Neal Morse, will get a lot of enjoyment out of The Great Adventure, it just isn’t the type of music, and specifically the type of progressive music, that aligns with my taste really.

Score: 6/10

#the neal morse band #neal morse #progressive rock #progressive #prog #rock #music review #my article

[chewbop]

Solange & the Celestial Flow State

By Chewy

March 2, 2019

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Solange is a lunar presence.

Scarcely explicit, endlessly subtle and graciously cryptic, Solange's evolution as an artist evokes a  mystique that continuously looms large. With When I Get Home, Solange's ambition casts a near avaricious shadow. Utterly singular and idiosyncratic, When I Get Home further ventures into Solange's creative deep end and shines as an experiment in fluidity and emulsion.

Solange's last record, A Seat at the Table, was a timely alternative soul capsule enveloping black resilience, socioeconomic documentary and personal anthems. It was a record with unshakable foundations and signposted structures that Solange wove in and out of.

By contrast, When I Get Home is a creamy, multidirectional project that emphasizes texture and flow state. “Things I imagined” makes great use of droning lyrical repetition. As the galactic sparkles and dwindling synths of the song overtake her vocals, Solange establishes Get Home's cadence. Emphasis on inflection and words as sonic texture, are  key elements of this album's musical impetus.

Solange bets on minimal layers stacked together to create cohesion over glut. With 19 songs at 39 minutes, Solange joins the likes of Earl Sweatshirt and Vince Staples in course-correcting hip-hop/R&B's wrongheaded false equivalency with more content equaling a better package. Solange makes incredibly efficient use of sparing lyrics and elaborate cosmic production. Paired with her pursuit of decentering herself from the lyrical center, Solange creates a diffuse puzzle box.

Deciphering Solange's world reveals odes to Houston car culture in on “Way to the Show”, the revelry of black beauty and form on the soaring “Almeda” and total female agency on “Stay Flo”. These themes loop around Solange's murky universe. Complete orbits of this record only strengthen its vision. Solange's waking dream demands meditation and invokes curiosity, “getting it” is less important than feeling it.

When I Get Home is a spectral odyssey. Existing in its own reality, at its own pace, Solange blends Houston southern smoke with far-reaching cosmic soul. Seat at the Table unleashed the full force of Solange's creative power, When I Get Home has yet again showed us the depth of that force and from an entirely different angle. Solange is a goddamn time traveller, and right now, she's bringing us sounds from the future and the past, ahead of everyone and everything.

#solange #music #review

[hcmj]

HCMJ’s Favorite Albums of 2018!

Listen to a mix featuring these albums here: HCMJ’s 2018 End Of Year Mix

Honorable Mentions: 

LLLL - Chains Phase 4: Resemblance

Various - 慕情 in da tracks

Endurance - Shade Terrarium

Farragol x dropp - 楽感 / optimo

pool$ide - aquarius

FUJII - EUPHORIA

Andrew W.K. - You’re Not Alone

Stardazer - Vacation Dreams

Alex Crispin - Open Submission

Foodman - Aru Otoko No Densetsu

20) TUPPERWΛVE - To you baby, with love

As the years go by, sometimes I still crave that classic-style (or as Tech Honors once described SEAWRLDハートブレーク, “trash-ass”) vaporwave sound. It’s the usual fare of slowed down antiquated R&B with filter sweeps and side-chained kicks, but TUPPERWΛVE’s sample choices and looped snippets stay inspired throughout, building emotionally impactful arrangements and proving the artist has what 90% of contemporary vaporwave is missing: a sense of taste and purpose. NUWRLD vibes.

STREAM/DOWNLOAD

19) The Caretaker - Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 4 & 5

Leyland Kirby released stages 4 and 5 of his six part, multi-year epic simulating a mind falling into dementia. It’s said the last memories someone suffering from dementia retains are the melodies heard in their youth, and on this year’s installments we find melodies from the first stages lost in a haze of static and noise. While not as easy to listen to as the first three stages, these 8 tracks lose the poetic titles of the previous installments and present an absolutely horrifying interpretation of the confusion that comes with a mind breaking down.

STREAM/DOWNLOAD

18) Kate NV - для FOR

I won’t lie, I went into the new Kate NV hoping for at least a few heart-melting rib-cage exploding pop masterpieces like what she showed us on Binasu (my favorite album of 2016). However, the absence of conventional songwriting on для FOR ends up being its defining characteristic. The album delivers a set of impressionistic synth sculptures that slowly develop an album that blossoms into blissful organic structures with brushstrokes of vocals before skipping off into a brightly lit horizon.

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17) 忘れた頃に手紙をよこさないで - Tamao Ninomiya

There is an air of surreality drifting through the new crop of Tokyo underground post-pop. Tamao Ninomiya’s “lo-fi bedroom pop” is always performed in PJs and has a playful gloominess with a thousand-yard-stare kind of shyness that exudes a special kind of emotional resonance. Everything is gentle, subtly “off” - it’s an inventive and delicate pop sketchbook. 

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16) Kero Kero Bonito - Time 'n' Place

The same way Pokémon Yellow was a video game based on an anime that was based on a video game, Kero Kero Bonito is a British group that has arrived at a sound closer to early 2000′s jrock than the British rock that crop of Japanese musicians were imitating. While the final 1/3rd of the album drags, there’s no denying the pop perfection of “Time Today,” the Blue-Album-Weezer thunder of “Only Acting,” the Parklife-era Blur artschool bounce of “If I’d Known,” the whimsical bubblegum of “Make Believe,” or the saccharin yet heartfelt “Dear Future Self,” a pop meditation complete with "Mr. Blue Sky” charm and melodramatic chamber orchestra arrangements.

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15) we could die here - we could die here

While “brooding ambient” is a genre I have drifted away from these past years, ‘we could die here’ reminded me of why I was once drawn to it. It’s all about creating atmospheres, and while so much of genre these days seems to be producing the same, boring, smoke-filled neon/black room, ‘we could die here’s lush sound succeeds in building a sprawling, haunting world with enough depth that it’s worth returning to.

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14) poemme - Moments in Golden Light

Similar in scope to ‘we could die here,’ Moments in Golden Light is as advertised - warm and soft. Blissful pillows of ambience constructed in the old style, poemme pulses and drones with the silkiness of Hakobune and the breadth of Steve Roach, featuring a track that even unabashedly layers in bird samples.

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13) Machine Girl - The Ugly Art

The Ugly Art is special, as it’s the first Machine Girl album that begins to capture the raw energy and power of their live shows by showcasing live drums. The insane breaks are intact and the blistering Dreamcast punk is more hardcore. It’s dense, unrelenting in its shredding, and culminates in the epic “A Decent Man,” a 10 minute violent rave masterpiece with more content than all 3 Matrix movies combined.

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12) Oneohtrix Point Never - Age Of

Age Of is a complex concept album more convoluted than a Roger Waters solo project. The music itself makes the trip one worth taking, through 13 immaculately produced tracks painting a post-apocalyptic machine world. It has an ability to turn pop tricks on tracks like “Black Snow” and “Same,” while the sound remains distant from any of comfortable paradigm. Bits of static, broken samples, and walls of noise develop into larger-than-life ballads that seem eerily familiar despite being so alien. The arrangements are complex and the production is deep, it’s a cyber-western soundtrack that always commands full attention. 

SPOTIFY / APPLE MUSIC

11) Seth Graham - Gasp

Gasp has a charm and complexity that sets it apart from a lot of experimental composition. The tape cut samples of “Whisper - Slap” sound impossibly worked on, while the ASMR freakouts of “Binary Tapioca” and the restrained playfulness of “Flower Cheese” make the process sound like an artist working effortlessly. Deeply emotive and loudly expressive, Gasp has a sound that digs in its hooks and burrows deep.

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10) Equip - Synthetic Core 88

The long awaited followup to the seminal faux-ost I Dreamed Of A Palace In The Sky, Synthetic Core 88 delivers on the promise of Equip’s earlier work and brings it to a new realm of legitimacy. This is a 32-bit RPG I wish I could play - with all the themes of interwoven technology and magic revealing themselves in the clever score. The conflict between the cold steel and floral lushness emerges in the sound somewhere between Uematsu and a “Tales of” game. This album could only be made by someone who truly understands how music supports the worldbuilding an RPG needs to be a successful narrative platform.

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9) Utsuro Spark - Static Electricity

Utsuro Spark is a miracle. One of the highlights from the impressive output of the Japanese label, Local Visions, this mini-album is a collection of beautifully crafted metropolitan electro pop. Sharp instrumentals including studio-perfect guitar and on-point synth work lay a foundation for blissfully creamy vocals - pop music that is full of desperate longing and unpretentious charm. The katakana titles recall the old Japanese pop it draws inspiration from, but in many ways the soul of this music at the very least meets the bar set by the old masters. 

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8) Tsudio Studio - Port Island

I was lucky to play a show in Kobe with Tsudio Studio, whose brilliant songwriting and iconic vocal delivery completely won over my heart and soul. The jazzy coolness and gorgeous chord structure for tracks like “Azur” and “Snowfall Seaside” are absolutely intoxicating, while the hooky R&B in “Mikage” and the Phantasy Star Online space-shredding of the opener “Tor” make Port Island a mini-album where every single track is a stand out.

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7) Dinosaur On Fire - Populous Romantique

After a 6 year gap, dds cohort Tech Honors unleashed the second Dinosaur On Fire album in a maelstrom of prog rock and laser beams. It’s an ultra hi-fi production that bounces from stoner prog to krautrock to synthwave to operatic video game symphonies to Ray Lynch arp fountains and back again effortlessly. Populous Romantique showcases the expansive reach of Tech’s abilities both as a visionary artist and producer.

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6) Monari Wakita - Ahead!

While so much jpop has become aggressively intense and fast-tempo, Ahead! provides a soulful contrast. Monari Wakita is an ex-idol and alumni of Especia, a group known for capitalizing on 80′s/90′s nostalgia. Ahead! mostly pulls from the 90′s, with new jack swing aping and hyper-produced city pop so technically perfect that the instrumentals would sound at home on the soundtrack of a 90′s Sonic Team video game. It’s that FM bass, synthetic swing, and plastic instrumentation against Monari’s powerful and soulful voice that gives Ahead! its irresistible charm and made it one of the most addictive albums of the year.

VIDEO 1 / VIDEO 2

5) Ventla - Plugged-Matic/Sublingual Odyssey

After years of silence, Ventla returned in 2018 with 10 (!) new albums on his quest to release 100. Ventla’s music continues to be eclectic vignettes of scratchy pop music, utilizing a seemingly endless variety of instruments and synths. Of the 10, the “classic Ventla” sound of Plugged-Matic and the playful exoticism explored on Sublingual Odyssey were my favorites - but with an artist whose entire catalog of 477 songs is easily played on loop for days on end, picking only 2 albums is almost an act of futility.

STREAM/DOWNLOAD: Plugged-Matic/Sublingual Odyssey

4) emamouse - Pigeon’s Point

emamouse’s genius visual art and surreal identity are accented by her equally forward thinking music. The iconic opener “01_PP2″ is a brilliant statement of purpose; a homicidal vocaloid squeaking words you can’t quite understand but frighten you nonetheless over a synth organ jamming out hypnotic post-pop you can’t help but dance to. This is music written by a true artist with a powerful vision of reality and instrumental chops informed by video game music deep cuts. “08_Pigeon’s Swipe” is another great showcase of emamouse’s ability to skew Dragon Quest baroque synths and contort them into the brilliant, unsettling world of her boundless imagination.

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3) TWICE - What Is Love?

Kpop can be a divisive genre, but its meteoric rise in the US is no fluke. The Korean pop machine has mastered the art of the pop song, and nowhere is it more evident than in TWICE’s “What Is Love?” Perfect structure, heart-tugging hook, surprising turns, and a chorus that sounds like 1000 girls yelling the lyrics from the bottom of the grand canyon, “What Is Love?” is technically perfect and sweetly endearing. It’s truly the most perfect pop song I’ve ever heard.

VIDEO

2) Mid-Air Thief - Crumbling

Crumbling is an album so in tune with my personal taste it’s hard to believe it exists. With a foundation of Lamp-esque dreamy pop labyrinths, Mid-Air Thief weaves complex arrangements peppered with ELO synths, chiptune fireworks, lo-fi indie folk revery, underwater voices and Elliott Smith whispers, even some Merriweather Post Pavilion electro-hippy clouds. It’s all the right flavors and textures coming together in a perfectly balanced, romantic masterpiece.

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1) Lamp - Her Watch / 彼女の時計

I discovered Lamp through a vaporwave album back in 2014 that sampled them heavily, and while those short samples of cooing vocals and breezy guitar looped with their heads underwater certainly worked in a satisfying way on that album, discovering the source material was a revelation. Lamp is the result of an algorithm to determine music that would be most appealing to me, and they hit new ridiculous heights of personal appeal on Her Watch. Their signature labyrinthine hurricane of Beatle-esque chord changes under soft voices and bossa nova rhythms is re-fitted into a nostalgic frame, sometimes approaching an almost city pop revivalist sound. The tenderness of “Slow-Motion,” the romance of “A Train Window,” the pop genius of “1998,” the borage of melancholic brightness that rolls from the opening chords of “At The Night Party,” all of it falls into place on the most sublime 36 minutes I have heard in a long time. It was the soundtrack to my life this year and my favorite album of 2018!

STREAM/DOWNLOAD / SPOTIFY / APPLE MUSIC

[bensaundersfcp-blog]

BeSaunders’ Final Composition Project Blog

Submission 01

For the first part of the portfolio our brief was to "undertake an independently organised collaborative project with an artist and devise/plan and produce an artefact." For this, I decided to record an indie-pop song with my longtime vocalist collaborator Mark Shankland. We got together over the course of a number of weeks and studio sessions in Glasgow during which we wrote and honed our piece. She’s Walking began life after I was playing around with the MIDI repeater delay effect in Logic following one week's lecture. I came up with a rhythm which delayed in a very interesting way, and started inputting notes purely naturally where I felt like they should go, with no thought as to time signature or any real structure. I ended up with some slightly obscure time signature like 15/16 or 17/16, which I felt worked pretty well on its own but found difficult to develop into a full section. Through some amount of trial and error I eventually settled on alternating 7/8 and 4/4. I then decided to let this build and act as a introduction to a song/EP, in the vein of Neighbors by Now, Now, with its slow crescendo and chopped vocals. I stuck with guitars and synth for my composition, and initially this section was a lot longer and more intricate, however I didn’t want to spent too much time on it out of fear of it becoming a bit stale, and once we got to adding vocals to it it took on a much more traditional structure. I played off how the delay effect operated, doubling parts of it with extra guitar tracks and letting it dictate the rhythm of the drums and the space left for the vocal, which I attempted to bury in a similar way to another Now, Now track by slathering it in some extremely wet reverb, eventually having to dial in more of the dry signal in order to make things more distinct and less of a total sonic mess. The B section of the song was a total change of style again similar to how Now, Now’s Neighbors EP transitions from the slow, open and building title track into the much more upbeat and in-your-face Giants. Stylistically this works because it grabs the attention of the listener and I felt like the song needed to become more interesting and direct after the moody and atmospheric intro. I seem to recall being inspired by a pop-punk song from the Burnout Paradise soundtrack for the B section, but I cannot remember which, exactly. Initially the chord progression for this section was a strictly diatonic D-Em7-Bm-A, but eventually I decided to replace the A chord with a C major borrowed from the Mixolydian mode, which serves a similar tension-release purpose but is a little more harmonically interesting. Layering a few guitar parts on top of each other again for interest, I simply repeated this section four times as a sort of chorus with differing lyrics, before deciding to switch things up slightly for a bridge section. I used my ear over theory here and just decided on a whim to go from C major to Cm-Am-Bm, which I thought sounded nice and dark in relation to the upbeat chorus, so stuck with it. I’m not sure how to analyse this section harmonically, but I noticed if I changed the B minor to B7 on the last repeat of the bridge progression I could modulate up a step from D to E major, which would be more interesting than just going back to D again. I then decided to go for one more and just keep repeating the chorus section in yet another key, changing the final chord of this ‘new’ E-F#m7-C#m-D progression into a D7 and modulating up a minor third to G major. Also in the bridge, I played about with the timing and made the the second bar of every four into a bar of 2/4 because I thought it sounded good and helped keep up the energy of the song. On the last time ‘round I made this a bar of 3/4 to subvert the expectation set up by the previous repetitions and to add to the surprise of the new flavour of B7 instead of B minor in this instance. Logic’s Drummer AI kept up with the changes and really helped save the moment, and I threw in a final bar of 5/4 at the end of the bridge to delay the gratification of the key change just a little longer. At this point I thought we were required by the brief to make one song of a 5 minute length, and so I was stuck at around four minutes and needed to add a new section. I decided to pull a Jesus of Suburbia and radically change up the style for another differing section, inspired by the fact that the song had already pretty radically switched up between the existing sections. I made this next part slower and full of major seventh chords for a more reserved, introspective feeling, a time to pause and reflect, and to contrast the upbeat and in-your-face chorus you were just barraged with. It is harmonically pretty simple with a nice I-IV and a couple of relative minors and slight alterations for emotional impact and colour.

Submission 02

​For the second part of the portfolio, our brief was: "Students will undertake an individual composition project according to an agreed idea, this may include devising the idea and project scope. Students are required in composition,  to explore a theme, concept or aesthetic ideal." I decided to change style pretty radically and do an EP of dark, noisy punk music with my band Skellys. We write music that is intended to sound “spooky”, and all of our lyrics have to do with skeletons, zombies, goblins and the like. We use as many minor chords and tritones as possible, with lots of chromatic movement and many non-functional progressions, although we’ve found that even outside the world of diatonicism, music still wants to go to places, and we’ve sort of established our own vocabulary for how to properly utilise these sounds. We all got together for weekly band practices over the course of several months, crafting and perfecting our songs together, then booked studio time with a local professional whose work we admired and whom we felt would be a good fit for us, and got to recording. Our influences include ska bands such as Reel Big Fish and Suburban Legends, black metal acts like Mayhem and Burzum, and punk bands including Misfits and Suicidal Tendencies.

For Zombie Massacre, decided to start the EP off on a relatively quick burst of pure noise, slowly building in pitch and dissonance before going into a sort of EDM “drop” where we play a hardcore punk riff based on the harmonic minor scale, with power chords built from the root, leading tone, minor third and flat sixth of the scale. We then have a little break where we expand the power chords into full minor chords with just one guitar playing, a moment of slight respite, before we all join in with a brief fast ska-punk section followed by the first hardcore punk riff again. After that, we decided not to repeat ourselves and to go into a different but similar ska section, again based on the harmonic minor scale and using all minor chords, but utilising a different progression and rhythm. After this we went into a sort of thrash-metal-into-black-metal riff, with palm-muted triplets followed by tremolo picking. Here I add a little bit of melody and do some diminished stuff aiming for the minor thirds of some of the power chords, to give things a little more tension. Next, we go into a fast reggae section again a different completely minor, harmonic minor progression, this time with minor add9 chords built off of the natural sixth and minor sixth one after the other to create some very interesting colour. This is followed by the trash metal section again with the formerly black metal second half of every repeat this time played in a ska style, before ending the song with another, much slower thrash-y riff where me and the other guitarists, accidentally at first, play different chords. I thought the progression was Ab5-D5-F#5, but it was actually Ab5-D5-B5, meaning that together we ended up playing a Bsus2 for the final chord, which I actually really liked and decided to keep.

Brush Your Teeth was an attempt to write a “big, dirty, stinking riff” with some real groove while maintaining our dissonance-laden sound, and as such it is slow and punishing and full of power chords based off of the sharp four and the leading tone. It is a very deliberately one-riff based song, with a short break for a “chorus” which only happens once, as we repeat the riff in different styles - open and groovy, ska followed by noisier double-time ska, palm-muted and cocky, and finally with a solo on top, before ending with the “brush your teeth” mantra from the chorus repeated over the intro chords. The solo is interesting because it actually starts on the flat second degree of the first chord, bending up and down to and from the natural two, which becomes the fifth and then the second of the next two chords, before accentuating the minor thirds of the rest of the chords. On the final repeat, I aim for the minor third of the second chord into the root of the chord after, and do a sort of bluesy trill here, essentially ignoring the changes before landing on the fifth of the one chord of the progression. Starting on the minor ninth and largely ignoring the changes was an attempt to be as dissonant as I could, and the cocky bends were a sort of half-parody of the machismo rock acts who would go for such a sound unironically. The overall shape of the solo was inspired by Jess Abbot’s work on Tancred’s Out of the Garden, specifically on The Glow.

Graverobber was again an exploration of chromaticism in the context of punk, with another riff based on just the root and the two semitones surrounding it. Next we have another little thrash/black metal section, before the intro riff is repeated again, this time with my guitar part bending the root notes of the chords up and down in a deliberately out-of-key fashion. The black metal section repeats and we go into another fast reggae part, again based around those same three semitones. I wanted an interesting chord to punctuate the end of every repeat of this section, and found by playing the D minor shape I landed on at that point anyway with the first and fifth strings left open, I got an interesting Ab5sus4 with an added sharp five, more easily notated as Dbmadd9/A. On every second repeat of the progression here I decided to occasionally play minor shapes in the same position but up a fourth, inspired by the soundtrack to the videogame Doom. With the bass still playing the same three semitones as before, these are heard as more interesting colours of the established chords. I also threw in some triplet-y rhythms here to keep things interesting. After the reggae section we go back into the original progression played in a fast ska style, before going back into the power chord riff with my tremolo-picked octave melody on top. Here I am just using the harmonic minor scale to create a catchy kind of melody, aiming for the root, minor third, second and leading tone of the first chord and the fifth of the last chord. On a whim I decided to aim for the minor sixth of the last chord on one repeat just to see what it sounded like, and I thought it sounded great. I ended this section with a minor ninth interval of both the fifth and minor sixth degrees of the final chord, an attempt to be as dissonant as I could. After this, we quieten down and let the bass introduce another section just as you think it’s all over, and go into an incredible slow, punishing and chromatic arpeggiated, doom metal sort of ending.

Recreational Activities was intended to be a more straightforward punk song, featuring a verse which holds one power chord which is bent up to the flat second degree at the end of every line, before moving down to the leading tone, giving us a very chromatic progression, the roots of the chords only spanning three semitones in total. The song also utilises noise not only at the ending, but also before the reggae section, where Liam holds one chord while I climb up the scale before landing on a minor ninth interval based off of the flat fifth of the underlying chord, a sound I was aiming to make as disgusting as possible, to generate great tension before going into the release of the reggae section (in a rather similar way to Graverobber).

Looking back on my work, I think for the first song I definitely should have read the brief more carefully or asked about it, as I think stretching the song out to five minutes had a negative impact on it, and it sounds a little bit stitched together, because in all actuality it is just that. I think more work could have gone into making the transitions more natural and in making the production in general smoother and more professional. I didn’t know how to achieve the buried-in-reverb vocal effect I was going for in the A section, so the results are a bit iffy, and the vocals were recorded in two different environments with two different microphones over the course of two different days, and it really shows with the character and base volume of the individual lines fluctuating wildly. Perhaps this could have been fixed with more EQ and compression, but I had neither the time nor the skill to patch it all up. We were really late to record for that song, and I should have timetabled things better and been more organised, setting things in motion much earlier than I did, in order to be able to leave myself the time to fix or even re-record the issues that cropped up in mixing. Disaster struck towards the end of the song when I somehow lost one of the vocal lines and had to hastily replace it with a MIDI horn section. It almost sounds deliberate but to me it really just sounds like we didn’t have a line to put there. I also rushed the notation aspect of the work and had to botch it all together in photoshop because I couldn’t get Sibelius to work and had to do it in the less-than-ideal Guitar Pro, and I was doing it all the night before which I really shouldn’t have done.

With the EP, I think it sounds pretty great overall, with a few criticisms of the mixing and one or two little things I would maybe like to fix. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to hand in the unfinished pre-mixes of all of the tracks. Everything was booked well in advance and we left plenty of time to have everything ready for the deadline, but due to the renovation that was going on at Glasgow Queen Street Station, across from the studio we were recording at, as well as the engineer falling ill, we had to reschedule the mixing date for our EP, to a full month after the hand-in deadline for this module. Because of this, the mix is lacking high end, punch, clarity etc and has a few issues which we will be fixing in time. One comment I received from my lecturer was that we change up style very often and very suddenly, and we could work on the transitions between different musical sections more. However, this is an intentional effect designed to keep the listener on their toes and constantly throw curveballs at them that keep things interesting and occasionally throw you off. We actually were complimented on this aspect by an ecstatic and appreciative fan after a show, and started to deliberately incorporate it more and more into our “sound”. We go from rockabilly to hardcore punk to reggae to noise all within the space of three minutes, and we think it is a very interesting mix. It is a criticism I will take on board going forward, though, and we did work on one or two little sections in light of it, for example extending a couple of sections which were so short and so different to what surrounded them that they really did feel a little tacked on and stop-start, making them longer made them feel more like they belonged.

I think we work together very well as a band and each bring our own influences and unique aspects to our music, Liam (the guitarist) loves speed and noise and fast solos, Jack (the bassists) has quite a grimy sound and adds a lot of interest to the rhythm section, Jake (the drummer) is exceptional and always comes up with really creative and effective beats, and I’m much more of a songwriter than the rest and can help in the crafting and arrangement of the tunes, while me and Liam’s guitar playing and tones work off of each other very well. I am also very well-versed in the ska and reggae aspects of our music while Liam is well-versed in the punk and hardcore and black metal etc.

[thesunlounge]

Reviews 245: Visible Cloaks, Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano

I owe much of my interest in modern Japanese music to the duo of Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile, otherwise known as Visible Cloaks. Valve / Valve Revisted introduced me to dip in the pool, who have since become a beloved favorite, and the far-out sounds and forward thinking production techniques of Japan have long informed the duo’s approach. As well, Spencer Doran spent years diving into the country’s environmental, new age, fourth-world, and future-pop landscapes and issued a couple of essential mixes for Root Strata in this direction, with his work eventually leading to the breathtaking Kankyō Ongaku collection on Light in the Attic…all of which have had a massive impact on my own musical journey. So it’s entirely fitting, if not fated, that Visible Cloaks’ first contribution to RVNG Intl.’s longstanding FRKWYS series sees Doran and Carlile joining together with Satsuki Shibano and Yoshio Ojima, two masters of innovative sound design and visual art that were highly influential on Japan’s cultural landscape during the 80s and 90s and whose work continues to resonate today: Shibano through her immersive piano dreamscapes inspired by Satie and Debussy and Ojima via his explorations of computerized composition and in scoring artistic and public spaces such as Wacoal’s famous Spiral building. And like all FRKWYS pairings, it completes a circle of influence and inspiration, with elder artists stirring the creativity of younger generations, whose novel approaches then inform and are folded back into the work of the original source…a sort of eternal conversation between past and present about the sonic landscapes of the future.

In the write up for serenitatem, RVNG discuss the group’s interests in aleatoric music, the British avant grade, pre-classical composition, and Lovely Music, Ltd, as well as Ojima’s and Satsuki’s groundbreaking work with the St. Giga radio installation…a free-form and continuously broadcasted collage of field recordings, poetry, and audio experimentation that looms large over the approach and vision of serenitatem. As for the process, Doran and Carlile recorded sketches while on tour and sent them to Ojima, who added his own sounds and edits before returning the recordings to the duo. So it continued for months, with the trio trading ideas and building on each others’ manipulations until a studio session in Tokyo brought all four musicians together, allowing them to further enhance their preliminary experiments and create new compositions on the spot. And the results are truly beguiling…a spellbinding coalescence of futuristic sonic exploration and deeply human emotion that features cloudforms of orchestral gas shattering into crystalline vapor; funereal organs playing ancient hymns to the sun; tropical new age textures surrounded by spectral space foam; mermaid choirs singing through overtone resonances; and marbles vibrating within tunnels of morphing glass. And though the sensibilities of Visible Cloaks and Ojima are almost entirely indistinguishable, the artistic identity of Shibano is uniquely discernible, with her effected voice and majestic piano themes standing out amidst the rainbow energy fields and fractal orchestrations while also feeding generative MIDI software, in turn creating new and ever-evolving paths of exploration.

Visible Cloaks, Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano - FRKWYS Vol. 15: serenitatem (RVNG Intl., 2019) In “Toi,” liquids drip over aquatic swells while gong drone overtones hover in place before rapidly vaporizing. Vocals awash in a haze of euphoria flow into the mix on layers of aquamarine synthesis, ringing feedback tones weave pastoral melodies, and disjointed piano chords splash through crystalline tide pools while swirling noise clouds move chaotically before being sucked out of existence. The mix is repeatedly intercut by globules of bouncing glass that wash the stereo field clean and after a false ending and a fade to silence, oceanic orchestrations diffuse into the mix with swelling string reveries and long glorious bow strokes calling out to the dawn. Sometimes breathy choirs join in with these etheric chamber incantations while liquiying metals flow throughout the spectrum. And as the track ends, mystical electronics create starry-eyed sound swirls and decaying bodies of spectral mist. “Anata” follows with a shimmering world of tonal mesmerism where voices and machines blur together…like mermaid choirs coalescing with the droning hum of an industrial machine. Bleary-eyed orchestrations intermingle with textures of brass as Shibano delivers a strangely effected spoken work performance, with her voice morphing and modulating discontinuously while fracturing across the spectrum. Then, as futuristic whispers transmute into bleeping static amidst insectoid oscillations, a heavenly streak of soprano calls out from the void.

The MIDI-generated idiophone melodies of “You” are sourced from the words of “Anata” using Intermorphics’s Wotja software and the result is a paradise of gleaming gamelan starlight. Shibano’s piano merges perfectly with the vibraphone dream weavings while heartbeat pulses, blasts of white noise, and plucked string tones fade in from shadowy depths. Amorphous pad hazes swell in strength then dissolve into ether as siren pulses generate machine rhythms at odds with the free form idiophone tapestries. Feminine whispers pan wildly while throbbing bass currents flow in from all directions and there’s a strange moment where the mallet instruments recede, leaving the soul afloat in a delirious landscape of morphing sonic magic. “Atelier” revels in microtonal vibrations, industrial droning, and layers of humid resonance, which all eventually set the stage for a gorgeous melody played out on synthesized woodwinds. The mind is enchanted by longform oboe and bassoon lullabies while the background is painted over by glimmering wavefronts and smoldering vibrations that never rise above a spiritual hum. Tibetan bowls sing over tapped gongs while the lonely ping of a vibratube calls out periodically and deep within the spectral fog, timpani drums can be heard pounding away. The meditative woodwind spells eventually feature several layers intertwining, while chittering lizard fx and slithering psychedelics contrast the beatific mood. And if you listen closely, you can hear Shibano alighting on free jazz cloudbursts and atonal fantasias deep within the radiant miasma.

“Lapis Lazuli” sees mirage drone atmospherics suffused with flute and birdsong tones while waves of some nacreous and opalescent fluid crash against an unfamiliar shore. Shibano moves through the wavering landscape with further spoken spells which are this time bare and unaffected…just pure and expressive vocalisms surround by skittering static washes, glowing ghost melodies, and universal string vibrations divorced from any source of attack. At some point, electrified gemstones start raining down upon the mix…these crystalline structures of every possible color bouncing and vibrating in ways that defy logic, which are perhaps sourced by an electric piano...only one obscured by infinite layers of sonic manipulation. As the song progresses, Shibano’s voice becomes increasingly shrouded in robotic strangeness, eventually leaving humanity behind altogether in favor of cyborg sizzle and free flowing android poetry. Chime tones are stretched and smeared into a feedback haze above the soft pitter-patter of dripping water, heatwave vapors wash across the mix, and chaotic bell alarm oscillations seem to spin at the speed of light before swelling into solar flare sound spirals. All the while, the landscape is increasingly colored by the calls of alien jungle fauna as the flowing water takes on the appearance of a mystical stream surrounded by dense layers of extra-terrestrial vegetation.

The beads of bouncing glass from “Toi” return in “Stratum”, here splattering over ring-modulated steel-drum tones. It’s a tropical lullaby accented by towering piano chords and swirled around by angelic choral hazes and rainbow fog refractions. Starshine modulations cut through the air as the island melodies recede, leaving behind an expanse of new age celestial shimmer. Then comes one of the most breathtaking and hard to describe sonic effects I have ever heard, generated by using Shibano’s piano improvisation to source reactive idiophone and voice cascades in Ableton. Imagine a choir of angels and the bars of a marimba as if transformed into a field of colorful flowers, such that each time an oceanic piano chord cluster or radiant ivory lead drops, it’s like a cyclonic wind disturbs the field, causing the individual flowers to sway drunkenly out of phase. But eventually, the harmonious drone currents and pastoral sonic breezes cause the marimbas and voices to lock together into a loose rhythm….as if all the flowers of the field are flowing in unison beneath a bright shining sun. And going further, Shibano’s spontaneous melodies are discernible amidst the synthetic mallet and dreamworld voice motions, leading to an ever-evolving and deeply moving interplay between improvised human beauty and aleatoric computer magic.

Though most of the album explores cutting edge spaces and forward thinking sonic languages, Doran, Carlile, Shibano, and Ojima reserve the final track on each side for immersive excursions into the musics of the distant past. The A-side houses “S’amours ne fait par sa grace adoucir (Ballade 1),” originally written in the 12th century by the ars nova poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut. Ecclesiastical organs reach across centuries with polyphonic wonderment, first flying solo, then joined by bell tones and chiming vibrations of medieval metal. And at some point, the organ fades away and is replaced by effervescent fluids and wispy string synthesis…like a chamber orchestra playing through gentle distortions of space and time. Closing the album is “Canzona per sonare no. 4” by famed sacred music composer and organist Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1612). Sonar tones revolve in long arcs before giving way to spacious stretches of silence while morphing bass pulsations underly Shibano’s baroque piano incantations. It’s a repeated refrain…childlike, naive, beautiful…backed by swelling pads, dreamworld atmospheres, and subtle hints of choral majesty. All the while, shards of ivory are caught up in fractal webs and reflected across the spectrum as overlapping feedback currents generate calming seascape motions that float the soul away.

(images from my personal copy)

#visible cloaks #yoshio ojima #satsuki shibano #spencer doran #ryan carlile #rvng #rvng intl. #frkwys #vol. 15 #serenitatem #kankyō ongaku #environmental music #new age #ambient #experimental #avant-garde #generative software #aleatoric music #pre-classical compisition #improvisation #chance #midi #debussy #satie #piano #poetry #st. giga #japan #wotja #ken hidaka

[jefferyryanlong]

Fresh Listen - Medeski Martin & Wood, End of the World Party (Just in Case) (Blue Note Records, 2004)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a periodic review of recently and not so recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

 I was gifted a copy of Medeski Martin & Wood’s End of the World Party (Just in Case) right after Christmas. I spent and hour or so on New Year’s Day 2019 absorbing the album onto my brain material, synching the regulated rhythms of my circulations to its beats, while taking a run up the Valley of the Temples in Kaneohe. In those green hills, where gravestones in the short grass reflected dull sunlight and sepulchers and tombs stood forlorn behind gates and at the end of paved walkways, I felt that the record, through its instrumental soul-funk numbers, sought to reiterate the impending collective mortality that all of us, including the animal life and vegetation that propagate just on the periphery of our attention, must embrace--the covering over of eyes and mouths with rust and dust, the withering of appendages into basic molecular structures to float forever. Running past cars and families and graves and flowers on plastic stands stuck into the ground, I was surrounded by the living and the dead. 

On that New Year's Day I was moved, as I had been in New Year’s past, by the pitiless sweep of existence, that wave that pushes spirits out from bodies and transforms bodies into useless, dumb matter. I like to think that I caught just the edge of that wave, some brush of it against my calf as I ran, but I know such awareness is only granted to those who have linked hands with the Death Angel and allowed themselves to be led away. I stopped for a moment at the edge of Ocean View Terrace, an elevated monument to the dead a the foothills of the majestically ridged Ko’olaus, from which, through the trees far beyond, sightless, buried eyes might look upon the distant water. I put my hands on my knees and breathed as if I’d never tasted the air before.

“Anonymous Skulls” is all we can expect to be when our ruins are discovered by subsequent civilizations, those peoples or beings who will undoubtedly be bewildered by out bizarre ways--our preoccupation with money and status, our obsession with youth, our language that is communicated with such a degree of subjectivity as to be meaningless from occasion to occasion. Medeski Martin & Wood’s first track from End of the World Party throws vocoder-ized synths, layered as grieving voices of women, over a backbeat of marked time pushing forward into that narrowing portal of the future. End of the World Party is a more cleanly produced record, overall, than the group’s 2006 release with John Scofield, Out Louder, most of the smeared textures of Scofield’s electric work absent. “Toxic,” the Britney Spears hit that released a year prior to End of the World Party, informs the opening to the album’s title track, maybe a reference to the commercial music of the period, which would seemingly soundtrack the inevitable armageddon. With its drenched keyboards evoking guitar tones, I thought “Reflector” more accurately fit the mold of a party track--a mirror image of our wasted time in oblivion rendered in sound, all of it without the benefit of a memento mori to foretell our doom.

In order to fully understand the context of “Bloody Oil”, the rumbling stand-up bass dirge led by Chris Wood, you have to transport your consciousness back to 2004. The Bush/Cheney era, the disruption of the Middle East, Halliburton, Black Water, oil fields on fire in the deserts of Iraq. In 2004, much like the present moment, it seemed we were near the end of a polluted world, its core honey-combed by ceaseless drilling, its air and water saturated with the by-products of oil consumption. All of us then were acutely aware of the visible symptoms of a sick environment, over-peopled by bad actors.

Contrasted to “Bloody Oil” is “New Planet,” an optimistic, upbeat number that counters the dour gravitas of the preceding track. For a few minutes sonic space textures and synth beeps engage the listener in the excitement of an undiscovered frontier, a place to populate with our imaginations. Toward the end, though, the grows somber, desolate, as if the planet we found to inhabit grows small in our vision as we pull away from it, its crust collapsing upon itself, its resources all sucked out, a lifeless husk.

The second half of End of the World Part (Just in Case) veers away from the themes implied by its title, though the band carries forward the continuity of the overall sound. “Mami Gato” is a technically proficient exercise on piano, a workout lacking in the aural sweatiness of Out Louder. Like many other songs on the record, the song’s coda over the last few minutes is a departure--in this case, the song transitions to a kind of nouveau old-world cocktail jazz, that sound that arises behind your head when you think upon cigarettes in holders and women in hats and carefully parted and combed hair and spats and absinthe fountains. “Shine It” is boilerplate blues-funk, while “Curtis” is refreshingly the dirtiest sounding the band gets, all distorted wah-wah's and uptight bass. “Sasa” could be a Beastie Boys instrumental from The In Sound from Way Out!, except Medeski Martin & Wood are less nasty in the pocket, and really know how to hang int there. With its dreamy, noir-ish beginnings, “Midnight Poppies/Crooked Birds” emerges from an electric slumber to an askew melody with backwards bass loops and sqauwkbox keyboards.

Cool virtuosity defines End of the World Party (Just in Case). It is the sound of polished musicians playing polished music. As instrumentalists, Medeski Martin & Wood don’t struggle against one another; rather, they impeccably complement one another, from note to note, rhythm to rhythm. As affirming as the music is, I had to wonder--what would the end of the world really sound like? The implosion of hundreds of bunkers and bases and factories? The sustained pained creak of splitting wood as a tree slowly collapses? The cry of a shambling animal? When the end of the world truly does come, will we have time to put to use what we’ve practiced, will we have the fortitude to help each other, or will we kill our neighbors lest we die ourselves, and rend our clothes and weep? What will that sound like?  

#freshlisten #medeskimartin&wood #endoftheworldparty

[passionate-reply]

This week on Great Albums: the first hint that Cabaret Voltaire had a future on the dance floor, and weren’t meant to make hissing tape noises forever. Find out how The Crackdown took them from the industrial underground and into the (relative) spotlight. Full transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’m taking a look at Cabaret Voltaire, one of the most important acts in the development of “industrial music” in the late 70s and early 80s. They came up right alongside groups like Throbbing Gristle and Clock DVA, and their earlier work is strident and subversive, full of harsh, hissing textures, and dense compositions that almost dare you to make sense of them. This era of their career came to a head with 1981’s Red Mecca, an album inspired by political turmoil in Western Asia, and often considered their great masterpiece.

Music: “Spread the Virus”

While this earlier work was extremely influential, sowing the seeds of all manner of noise and industrial music to come, Cabaret Voltaire didn’t stick with this sound forever. That’s where their 1983 album The Crackdown comes into the picture. After founding member Chris Watson left the group to pursue a career in sound engineering for television, Cabaret Voltaire were reduced to a duo of Richard H. Kirk and Stephen Mallinder, and on this album, the two of them would push their sound into significantly poppier territory.

Music: “Animation”

Listening to the surprisingly bright synth effects on “Animation,” you can start to see why Cabaret Voltaire are sometimes remembered as more of a New Wave act, in spite of those rough beginnings. Much more focused on digestible hooks and melodies, The Crackdown saw significantly more mainstream success and appeal than anything they had done before. Still, it’s selling this album a bit short to position it as a straight-up pop record. It’s really kind of a transition point between their more avant-garde work and their more dancefloor-oriented output later in the 1980s. “Animation” is definitely a bit of an outlier, sonically speaking, and it’s also a bit buried in the tracklisting, only appearing at the end of the first side. By contrast, the album opens with “24-24.”

Music: “24-24”

“24-24,” and other tracks on The Crackdown, really lay out what I’d consider the “classic” Cabaret Voltaire compositional structure: they center around these repetitive grooves, which are quite funky, and catchy in a dark way, but also somewhat unsatisfying to listen to, never quite resolving like a pop song, but smoldering in the back of your mind. They’re just oppressive, smothering, lingering around like pestilent miasmas, weighing you down like something you’ve got to haul on your back. While a lot of the lyricism of Cabaret Voltaire tracks is pretty inscrutable, I’ve always thought of “24-24” as a representation of the withering grind of working life--where there once was “the old 9-5,” here we have the all-consuming “24-24,” a shift with no room for rest. There’s a similar theme of inescapable, constant pressure on the album’s title track.

Music: “Crackdown”

The title track of The Crackdown is also its closing track, and it’s yet another in the fine tradition of closing tracks that get to bask in a substantive runtime and spin an almost cinematic narrative. While “24-24” wears the listener down with its cyclical, repetitive, hamster-wheel structure, the title track is jumpy and uneven, giving it an unpredictable quality. Its theme appears to be that of the surveillance state, and the stress of living in a world of tension and paranoia, where the punishment of the titular “crackdown” could be lurking around any corner. Not only are individuals watched from above, by the force of authority, but also by each other, among themselves, enforcing conformity by ratting out their peers. But perhaps the most effective take the album has on that “oppressive” song structure is “Just Fascination.”

Music: “Just Fascination”

While tracks like “24-24” and the title track pit individuals against the larger mechanisms of society, “Just Fascination” translates that sense of struggle to something completely internal, portraying a battle between the superego and the id. The “private fascination” described by the song could be deviant sexual urges, morbid curiosity, or, really, any sort of vaguely heretical thoughtcrime you can think of. It’s pointing to a universal experience of nagging thoughts that hunt you down and refuse to leave your mind, and I think that deep relatability gives it a lot of power.

On the cover of The Crackdown, we see Kirk and Mallinder portrayed as photographers, and their lens is turned, quite defiantly, to look at *us.* This image plays with the roles of the observer and the observed, giving us a vision of artists who are not simply here to be seen and serve as entertainment, but rather choose to gaze back. When combined with the title, “The Crackdown,” and the theme of surveillance, one can read the tripod-mounted camera as an icon of the Panopticon, the classic symbol of authority’s watchful eye. The image appears both off-center, and washed over in lurid, unnatural colours, reminiscent of a photographer’s colour test printing. This effect adds a lot of general visual interest to the cover, and makes it stand out quite a bit more than it would otherwise, but it also casts Cabaret Voltaire back into the role of being observed, as the subject of photography themselves. It also hints at the way mechanical reproduction can fail, or be inadequate--the world doesn’t really appear in this colour palette, after all. Or at least not to human eyes.

Another bit of symbolism on this cover I find quite interesting is the compass, which appears on the right-hand side. While the compass visually rhymes with the tripod, it’s worth noting that it also has a long history as a symbol of God as the creator and architect of the universe, and divine order and symmetry. It’s also sometimes invoked as a representation of the need for proper conduct, and staying within the rules of good behaviour. Because of these associations, compass imagery has often been used by various ritual societies, most notably the Freemasons. Cabaret Voltaire’s usage of this symbol is probably as subversive and tongue-in-cheek as their use of the “all-seeing eye” of the camera.

Earlier, I mentioned that The Crackdown serves as a transition point for Cabaret Voltaire, and that their later works would see them push further into making dance music. If you’re in the market for more of that, and this album is still a bit rough around the edges for your taste, I’d recommend their 1984 follow-up, Micro-Phonies. Featuring tracks like their arguable greatest hit, “Sensoria,” Micro-Phonies puts more emphasis on that bouncy, funky, bass-heavy groove, and in many cases starts pushing closer to something like verse/chorus structure.

Music: “Sensoria”

My favourite track on The Crackdown is “Talking Time.” Between its whispering hook, “don’t touch,” a sample asking us to wait “five minutes,” and the fact that it ends in another sample that’s apparently clipped off mid-word, “Talking Time” really feels like a track that’s aware of the fact that it’s dragging us along as listeners, and toying with our expectations. It also has one of the bounciest synth sequences anywhere on the album, surprisingly enough. That’s all for today--thanks for listening!

Music: “Talking Time”

#music #album review #album reviews #cabaret voltaire #industrial #industrial music