The Metanet Weekly Music Trading Thread

[Tanner]

I'll give it a shot if there's space.

We're down to less than half of the people we peaked at. There's definitely space.

[Seneschal]

Sounds like fun. Sign me up please!

[toasters]

Artist: Philip Glass
Album: Glassworks
Genre: minimalist
Rec'd by: Skyline
Rating: 8/10
Review: I hadn't listened to Philip Glass before, but I knew his music is usually described as "minimalist". This had me expecting something along the lines of ambient music, but that's not the case with Glassworks. He layers several instruments playing sparse, repetitive parts. Instruments fade in and out, and others change slowly over time to create movement in his pieces. It reminds me of Battles kind of in the way he builds up his songs, but even without vocals there's a more human aspect to this.

Artist: Symphony X
Album: Paradise Lost
Genre: prog metal
Rec'd by: eevee
Rating: 6/10
Review: There's a power metal kind of cheesiness to this album, but it's not too bad. Between the keyboard runs and orchestral interludes there's enough heavy riffing to keep things exciting. "The Sacrifice" is probably the best example of their softer side, going from a delicate piano intro to power ballad to a gently picked, flamenco outro all without sounding forced.

Artist: Belle and Sebastian
Album: If You're Feeling Sinister
Genre: indie pop
Rec'd by: spoon
Rating: 8/10
Review: Light, pleasant music that lifts heavily from 60's pop. The music is nice, but what really pulls this together is the songwriting. Murdoch has a clever sense of humor, and there's a subtle sardonic bent to his lyrics that make his character sketches that much more enjoyable.

[Rose]

Artist: The Mars Volta
Album: Frances the Mute
Genre: experimental/prog rock
Rec'd by toasters

I went into this expecting big things from Cygnus, since I had actually heard of that song before, but I turned out to not like it. The album got much better afterward, though; Cassandra Gemini felt just a little drawn-out to me as a whole, but the last 8 minutes or so were great. I liked all three of the songs in the middle and have nothing to criticize there. L'Via L'Viaquez was my favorite. I actually think that Cygnus did a good job of setting the tone for the album, even if I didn't like the track itself.

Rating: 7/10

[yungerkid]

Artist: Guilt Machine
Album: On This Perfect Day
Genre: Rock
Rec'd by: Maxson

If I wanted to create a Guilt Machine song, I'd first start out by creating a dark-sounding swirl of pitchless sound, maybe with a beat in the middle of it. I'd probably put a recording of a Japanese person talking over top of that. Then I'd fool around on my guitar a bit, until I found a melody that sounded coherent and at least somewhat pleasant. Then I'd put drums behind that melody, in whatever style fit the melody. For the sake of creating ten minutes of content, I'd repeat that process, until I had about four different patches of sound. I'd repeat those four patches three times, maybe insert an ambient remix of one of them in as a bridge, then repeat them all two more times.

I don't even know what kind of emotion Guilt Machine was trying to portray on this album. I literally can't say what general sort of atmosphere they were going for - I didn't get the impression of sadness or happiness, regret or hope, or even of a positive or negative mood. There were some good moments when the stuff they had sounded pleasant on its own, but they never came to anything more than that. I would say it sounded generic, and there was that element to it, but I think its larger problem was simply that it didn't have any style of its own. It's just like the Comets on Fire album that SlappyMcGee recommended to me - background noise, without any real voice for me.

[Tanner]

I think we're going to take this week off, participate. Partially to give those who haven't done their reviews a chance to catch up and partially because I'm left for a couple days without remembering to update the list.

See you next week, traders! :D

[Stephen]

Well I'd be sad if this thread died! A lot of my reviews haven't been reciprocated which is a shame. Although admittedly I'm only just about to catch up with this review...

Artist: Colin Stetson
Album: New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges
Genre: Avant-garde
Rec'd by: Slappy McGee

The only way to truly convey what's going on this album is to get you to listen to it because any description of this music really isn't going to convey what's going on. So here's a link to the title track from Judges.

Ok, and this is a SOLO. SAXOPHONE. record. No loops, no overdubs; just Colin Stetson, a huge fuck-off saxophone, and a shitload of microphones (positioned unconventionally to produce those extra pitches and guttural percussion). I'm still struggling to believe it. It's all about the engineering - those mics let you hear every single bit of the saxophone, from the reverberating metal to the thud of the keys (I can't figure out where some noises come from). The only embellishment appears to be the female voice over a few of the tracks.

He takes cues from the minimal structures of Philip Glass et al but what you tend to listen for is the detail. Because you can hear every bit, the notation and structure basically serves as a hypnotic bed for everything else that's going on. Stetson uses circular breathing - which is like listening to a didgeridoo if didgeridoos weren't super boring; he can play more than one note, while the hypnotic nature of the circular breathing technique remains, in addition to the consonants that Stetson appears to be spitting down the sax.

Browsing other reviews I've realised that this record is described variously as electronica, jazz, noise, experimental music... so it's going to resonate differently for different listeners and I don't know if I summed it up adequately. But no one seems to have found a precedent for this thing, and that's the most striking thing about it. Once you're past the concept of this record, though, it's an immersive, soulful listen, musically beautiful even if you'd known nothing about its recording process.