The Metanet Weekly Music Trading Thread

[乳头的早餐谷物]

Artist: ミドリ
Album: あらためまして、はじめまして、ミドリです。
Genre: noise rock
Rec'd by: maestro
Rating: 6/10
Review: ミドリ or Midori practice a brand of audio violence similar to Melt-Banana, but instead of stitching together dissonant metal riffs Midori layers honky tonk piano over noisy punk rock. The results end up being much more listenable than Melt-Banana ever are, especially the longer songs where more emphasis is put on the bass and piano, but it's still not something most people would enjoy. I'm sure seeing these guys live would be a blast though. All in all not something I'd listen to very often, but good when I'm in the mood for it.

Ahah, I rec'd that album to r_t!

Hahaha, wow.

[Stephen]

Why do people keep giving me long albums?

This from the guy who gave me Earth 2...

Artist: Earth
Album: Earth 2
Genre: Drone/doom
Rec'd by: gloomp
Review:
In a way, I really wanted to like Earth 2. I got into drone/doom via Boris a few years ago, but found their most appealing work was that which channeled their drone influences into monolithic songs, using the atmosphere as a bed from which to progress. Earth 2, the pioneering drone/doom record, has proved to be very influential, but my problem is that I knew what it would sound like before I listened to it.

If anything it's actually less dense than I imagined: that sound is largely manipulated amplifier feedback, stemming from just a guitar and bass. It's low, and so slow and grungy that you barely notice the riffs happening. Some drums come in in the final track, low in the mix and sounding like bodies hitting the ground (and then there's the terrifying closing minutes where stuff actually starts HAPPENING). It's a difficult thing to digest and when I listened to it I really wasn't in the mood for it, but I can imagine it serving a purpose - right now I can't get past the fact that I am listening to a band who stretch one or two chords into 18-30 minute compositions.

I think that if I ever do feel in the mood to listen to it again, I'd just stick to thirty-minute closer 'Like Gold and Faceted', which had more depth, and a much more powerful impact on me than the other two tracks.

[SlappyMcGee]

Tsukatu never PM'd me last week, nor did I he, and now this new week has come and I don't know what is what.

Anyway, suffice it to say, if you get me, please initiate the trade process via PM so I can respond.

[yungerkid]

I just now received Universezero's pm, and it had a broken link, so I listened to all the songs, in order, on Youtube. In one sitting.

Artist: Deadmau5
Album: 4x4=12
Genre: dance/dubstep/house
Rec'd by: Universezero

I had never before listened to this strain of dance music - some Basshunter had been the furthest that I had listened to this genre before (besides Trance, which is a bit different). The album started and ended very well. The middle became boring and unimpressive. It was all very hit-and-miss, though - I liked Animal Rights somewhat, didn't like One Trick Pony as much, and can't decide whether I like the album as a whole or not. My favourites were the first three, and Right This Second. Deadmau5 seems very good at weaving sounds together, and as the sound gets less complicated through the middle it gets more boring, except for Animal Rights. I thought the vocals detracted from both tracks they were used in, too. Overall this album left me with mixed impressions. Some of it I liked quite a bit, and some of it I went to sleep on. I'm glad I gave it a try though. The whole album has a distinctly legitimate feel, if you know what I mean. Heavy is a good word, but it's not literally heavy, in the same way that Sunn O))) and Mayhem are. Having said that, I do have a kind of headache right now.

Tanner, sign me up for next week and all future weeks.

[PALEMOON]

this is for last week. I'M NOT SORRY

Artist: Mike Patton
Album: A Perfect Place
Genre: Soundtrack
Rec'd by: RandomDigits
Rating: 8/10
Review: Not gonna lie, i read 'soundtrack' and immediately thought of just another sweeping orchestral boring thing, but i was delightfully surprised by this album. The songs are wildly jazzy and the crazy twists and turns they bring make for a fantastic listen. I found myself enjoying the first half more than the second, as it is more upbeat, but the second half provides a good listen as well. fun stuff!

[toasters]

Artist: Brian Eno & David Byrne
Album: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
Genre: folk
Rec'd by: SlappyMcGee
Rating: 7/10
Review: I wasn't expecting such straightforward folk, but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Most of the tracks consist of acoustic strumming set against a background of electronic sounds, but the electronic parts are pretty understated. The odd left field pop of "I Feel My Stuff" comes closest to what I was expecting before I listened to this album, but it's actually my least favorite song. It feels out of place and breaks up the mood set by the first two tracks. My favorites were the title track and "Life Is Long" which has a bit of swing in the bass and the brass.

[kamikaze3000]

No list of trades for this week yet?

[Tanner]

Week 4 Trades:
SlappyMcGee <-> skyline
gloomp <-> maestro
Aphex <-> toasters
PALEMOON <-> kamikaze3000
squibbles <-> yungerkid
rocket_thumped <-> RandomDigits
Stephen <-> Tanner
entwilight <-> Donfuy

Signed up for next week as of this post: SlappyMcGee, gloomp, Aphex, PALEMOON, oughts, squibbles, rocket_thumped, Stephen, entwilight, Donfuy, toasters, skyline, yungerkid

[Stephen]

Artist: The Blood of Heroes
Album: The Blood of Heroes
Genre: Drum n Bass (ish)
Rec'd by: PALEMOON

The first thing I noticed about this album was that it was tagged as both "drum n bass" and "Justin Broadrick" (of industrial metal band Godflesh and post-metallers Jesu). Also involved is breakcore producer Enduser, as well as a bunch of other people - their collective influences are merged with astonishing cohesivity; the album manages to merge heavy electro beats with Broadrick's sludge guitar as if it were natural. It's more accessible than you'd expect - the album still has an alternately brutal/chilling aesthetic, but it sounds more like videogame music (and I actually mean that in a good way). This is a perfect album to just stick on, play some Unreal Tournament, and feel like a motherfucker.

[unoriginal name]

Artist: Terrestrial Tones
Album: Dead Drunk
Genre: Electronic, Rock
Rec'd by: Donfuy (of course)
Review: This is stupid. I'm pretty ambivalent about Black Dice as is, but adding Avey Tare to the mix is just too much. Tribal electronic avant-psych-folk in the worst way possible. "Future Train" is kind of cool, though.

[RandomDigits]

My goodness!! A proper review!

Album: Treats
Artist: Sleigh Bells
Recommended by: rocket_thwumped
Reviewed by: RandomDigits
Silly parts: None save this

This week I am going to review Treats by Sleigh Bells. This is the noise pop duo's debut album, released in May 2010.

Album opener Tell 'em starts with a loud beat and a mid-high guitar riff a man screams "look out" and fairly generic female pop vocals come in shortly thereafter. The album has a lo-fi compressed sound. This is especially noticeable in the louder songs with lots of would be dynamics such as A/B Machines. Most of the songs are either based on noisy techno, or they have mid to high pitched guitars to support the female vocals. The distortion makes both have quite a similar sound. An exception to this is in the song Rill Rill, which has a bluesy acoustic guitar sample, as well as church bells. The noisiest and heaviest track is Straight A's, the third last track. With the title track, the album ends as abruptly as it started.

While I'm not generally much a fan of pop, I did like listening to this. My favourite parts were when the guitar got to play rockier riffs, like near the end Run The Heart. Despite the short album length I found a few of the longer songs dragged on for longer than I would have liked. I'm not sure how it will stand the test of time, but right now I can tell I'm gonna listen to Treats some more.

~ardee~

In for the week that just started.

[PALEMOON]

Artist: Nedry
Album: Condors
Genre: dubstep flavored electronic
Rec'd by: Stephen

Nedry combines haunting guitars and masterfully done dubsteppy flavors and blends them together into a trip-hop-slash-rock-hybrid that shimmers and emanates icy cool in every track. The female vocalist and ominous basslines make me melt into a lovely little puddle. A+!

[乳头的早餐谷物]

Foxy Shazam - Foxy Shazam (2010) [alternative rock]
Recommended by: Techno
"Reviewed" by: ortsz

Horrible band name. Horrible album cover. The music is okay. They're trying, which is good, but they're trying way too hard. The bombast and the Queen influences reminds me a little of the new Muse (which is also the bad Muse), but one key difference is that Matthew Bellamy (of Muse) does it with sincerity. He's clearly insane. With Foxy Shazam, I don't buy it. It feels like a bit of an act. That said, it was a pleasant listen, and towards the end of the album there are a few tracks that change the formula a bit. So yeah. Much like last week, I'm not sure what to say. I don't know if I can ever give this sort of alternative rock album a proper review, because I've basically had my fill of it. I've heard enough to last a lifetime. Apologies.

[toasters]

Foxy Shazam - Foxy Shazam (2010) [alternative rock]
Recommended by: Techno
"Reviewed" by: ortsz

Horrible band name. Horrible album cover. The music is okay. They're trying, which is good, but they're trying way too hard. The bombast and the Queen influences reminds me a little of the new Muse (which is also the bad Muse), but one key difference is that Matthew Bellamy (of Muse) does it with sincerity. He's clearly insane. With Foxy Shazam, I don't buy it. It feels like a bit of an act. That said, it was a pleasant listen, and towards the end of the album there are a few tracks that change the formula a bit. So yeah. Much like last week, I'm not sure what to say. I don't know if I can ever give this sort of alternative rock album a proper review, because I've basically had my fill of it. I've heard enough to last a lifetime. Apologies.

lol, what a coincidence, I just downloaded this.

[krusch]

Sorry for the lateness with this one. I also have a bit of a situation. I hit my cap today, rendering downloads pretty well impossible, and since I only got my rec from Donfuy tonight (Tuesday night for me), it doesn't look like I'll be able to grab it this week.

wat do

Artist: Atrium Carceri
Album: Phrenitis
Genre: Dark Ambient
Rec'd by: bobaganuesh_2
Rating: 2.5/5

I find dark ambient music, in general, to be very hit and miss for me. Sunn O))) & Boris' Altar: amazing. Most other dark ambient I've heard: mediocre. So it was with a "do not know if want" attitude that I opened and played "Phrenitis" by Atrium Carceri. It played through nicely, but I haven't been in the mood for it since. The album evoked a kind of industrial death-camp type feel for me; not something I generally go for. It was the drum sounds that did this to me. I am not sure how I can describe them, but the type of drum sounds used in "Phrenitis" are a real gripe of mine. Tacky, in my opinion. The tones used here are all dark, cinematic, and melancholy, whereas I'm more on the dark, wacky and psychedelic tip. There are some really nice melancholy ambient patches here and there though; the track "Sub Surface" being one of them, and my favourite from the album. As a pathetic monolingual English speaker, the foreign language film samples (as usual) served to alienate me. However, they were quite evocative, and I think they are what kept the album afloat, really. Somehow I'm rather glad that I couldn't understand the words.

[sept]

Hey, I'll join for next week. Yup.

[乳头的早餐谷物]

Choi Joonyong, Hong Chulki, Sachiko M, Otomo Yoshihide - Sweet Cuts, Distant Curves (2008) [ambient noise]
Recommended by: gloomp
"Reviewed" by: ortsz

If your attitude is that music is music and noise is noise and never shall the twain meet, don't listen to Sweet Cuts, Distant Curves. You won't get anything out of it. On the other hand, if you're prepared to be challenged, I recommend it wholeheartedly. This is a challenging album, not because it's loud or hard to listen to, but because it poses questions about the very nature of music itself, by eschewing all classical notions of pitch or rhythm and instead focusing on the ubiquitous background sounds of the recording studio, sounds that are usually silenced and supressed: the crackle of potentiometers and the noise of jiggered plugs, the drone of alternating current and the heterodyning of sine waves, bursts of static from a disturbed microphone or an errant stylus.

Despite occasional dalliances to the contrary, I wouldn't consider myself the obnoxiously postmodern type, and so I realise this review might seem insincere or pretentious: after all, I like fun, carefree pop, and I like loud, stupid rock. But I also like reflecting on the nature of art and music, and this is the perfect soundtrack.

[Tanner]

Week 5 Trades:
SlappyMcGee <-> yungerkid
gloomp <-> Tanner
Aphex <-> entwilight
PALEMOON <-> skyline
oughts <-> Donfuy
squibbles <-> toasters
rocket_thumped <-> Sept
Stephen <-> RandomDigits

Signed up for next week: SlappyMcGee, gloomp, Aphex, PALEMOON, oughts, squibbles, rocket_thumped, Stephen, entwilight, Donfuy, toasters, skyline, yungerkid


TO THE SLACKERS, there are some people who still haven't submitted reviews from two weeks ago. Your partners have listened to your albums, you owe them the courtesy of doing the same. If there are circumstances that are keeping you from reviewing, let me know and I will take you off the list. It's not fair to your partners if this only goes half way.

[SlappyMcGee]

Album: Oneida’s Each One Teach One.
Rec’d By: Toasters
Genre: Annoying Pretentious Modern Rock
Review: This album is a double album. The first disc is the same riff over and over again. It’s terrible and loud and annoying. It feels a bit punky but for the most part you are annoyed that somebody came up with an all right riff and then the need to be avant-garde kicked in and thus, this shit disc one exists. But then disc 2 is much better. While still a bit of wankfest, a few of the songs are truly great and it abandons repetition for actual music. Ultimately, I was pretty excited for this one and I ended up being a touch disappointed. The second disc would get like a 7/10, but that first disc is such shit. 4/10.

Album: Jim O’Rourke’s The Visitor.
Rec’d by: Skyline
Genre: Noodly Jazz-ish One-Track
Review: Pretty fucking grand. You really get the feeling of isolation; the kind of feeling usually reserved in my house for Joy Division CDs. The music manages to do so much without lyrics or a vocal part, and I was thoroughly impressed. It’s a bit short, but then, it’s only one song, so one can’t really complain. I recommend anybody who likes hearing instruments evoke emotion to check this one out. 8/10.

[yungerkid]

Just now received Squibbles' pm and, as last time, listened to the entire thing in one consecutive sweep. I like this system.

Artist: The xx
Album: Xx
Rec'd By: Squibbles
Genre: Post-punk?

The album felt listless. It would provide good background music while doing homework, but it didn't really connect with me. It didn't present any emotions to me, and it didn't have anything to say to me. Furthermore, its sound became repetitive, and the chord progressions were predictable from the start. The overall sound and style of the album was unique, clean, and pleasant. I thought that Oliver and Romy's voices fit the music very well, and sounded very good in general. By the last song, though, even their voices became somewhat of a hit to my ears, because I knew that they were coming, and I knew exactly what both voices would do. My favourite tracks were Islands and Fantasy. Islands was the most straightforward and the least predictable version of the xx formula on the album. I enjoyed Fantasy's discordant bass line and shorter length. It's probably the only track from the album that I'll listen to again. Overall the album had a good direction but was too stale for too long, and had too few notable moments in it to be re-listenable.

[Donfuy]

Artist: DJ Depath X M Project (?)
Album: Oxygen Destroyer
Rec'd by: sidke
Genre:

This was an awful experience. The whole album was just beats and occasionally some tacky synths and voices. I really disliked it. :<
-------------

Artist: Moss Icon
Album: Lyburnum
Rec'd by: Tanner
Genre:

Trashy rock is trashy. I always hated this kind of rock. Everything sounds cliché and more of the same.
-------------

Artist: Kaoru Abe
Album: A Night In Thursday
Rec'd by: gloomp
Genre:

Sounds like a dude with a lot of muscles on his mouth and lungs that when he got his first sax, proceeded to record his very first sounds and somehow managed to sell it to people. Every single fucking time some sounds were starting to make sense, he proceeded to ruin it in the most horrible way. But somehow I think this is better than Oxygen Destroyer. Maybe because at least it's different.
-------------

I haven't listened to krusch's rec yet. I'll listen to it this week together with oughts' rec, and will put both reviews together.

Also, sorry for the shitty reviews, but I'm awful at describing music with words.

[Stephen]

Artist: DJ Spooky (various artists)
Album: Under the Influence
Genre: Trip-hop/dub/downtempo
Rec'd by: Tanner

This is a mix intended to shed light on DJ Spooky's creative influences, and seeing as I haven't heard any of his work (other than a couple of original tracks included here), I'm not sure what to make of it. There's a nicely diverse range of genres here, and it's actually introduced me to some new artists I mean to check out (as all the best mixtapes should!) Spooky shifts between genres from hip-hop to breakbeat to jazz, mixing it together to fit his trip-hop style. He adds some dubby effects/samples to Moby's 'Sound', and does a great remix of the Anti-Pop Consortium, but leaves a lot of tracks as they are. It flows ok, but the seams are mostly obvious. While I love to hear Saul Williams back-to-back with Sonic Youth, it's really not the best transition. While at times the record seems hastily-assembled, it nonetheless has a lot of depth, and I'd like to see how Spooky channels these influences on full-lengths he's worked harder on.

[toasters]

Artist: The Arrogant Sons of Bitches
Album: This Is What You Get
Genre: ska
Rec'd by: aphex
Rating: 6/10
Review: Just as a disclaimer, I am not a huge Radiohead fan, which is probably a good thing when it comes to this album. This is a live recording consisting of irreverent covers of Radiohead material from The Bends, OK Computer, Hail to the Thief, and Kid A. I haven't listened to Kid A or Hail to the Thief, so I don't know how much (in)justice they do to those songs, but judging from the others I'm sure maestro would not be pleased. In between songs the band yells at the sound guy and cracks bad jokes about Radiohead and English culture in fake British accents. Good for a chuckle the first couple of times, by the end they get pretty old. Highlights include the peppy ska guitars and gang shouts that completely defuse the menace of "Paranoid Android", and the thrashy Descendents take on "Fitter Happier".

[Aphex]

Artist: Kaede
Album: Symposion Of Showgirls
Genre: Alternative dance (closest match I could think of >.>)
Rec'd by: Sidke
Rating: 9/10
Review: When I heard the opening "boots and cats" sampled (or maybe electronic) drums, I sighed, thanking the fact that the album only consisted of three songs. However what I was greeted with was an extremely interesting "building block" style of songs which gained more depth each passing second; the delayed guitars bursting forward and retreating back, a whole range of synth styles (from cute melodic to harmonic ambient). Really this album just oozes with happiness, every element of the song making me want to dance, I'd love to play this at a party just to see everyone start dancing :3

Anyway enough about the first track! The second track again is layered over a "boots and cats" drum loop (I usually find this boring, but in this album it feels so natural). Oh some bongos just appeared! Sweet!
Yeah this track is a lot more.. mellow. I don't mean it's slow, actually it might be faster, but it just feels really relaxed. It feels like one of those songs if you heard at a club you'd look round at your friends with a big grin on your face as if to say "man I love life".

The third track is my favourite, full of twirling guitars and background synths. Again brings a smile to my face. I love the piano chords hopping in between the delayed guitar picking. This is just beautiful! Seriously, amazing!

Overall this album was fun. It brought a big grin to my face. Will definitely be listening to again :D



(sorry toasters, I haven't had a chance to listen to your album yet, I'll get on it ASAP)

[unoriginal name]

Artist: Syzygys
Album: The Complete Studio Recordings
Genre: Microtonal Art Pop
Rec'd by: oughts/TELESYNC/bok_choy/clothed_female_naked_maestro/qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq/ortsz
Review: It was neat, I guess. I've never really gotten into Tzadik stuff or J-Pop, so it's hardly surprising I wasn't that impressed with this. None of the songs stick out very much and it's really too long. Interesting for a bit, but no staying power.