The Metanet Weekly Music Trading Thread

Share and discuss music, artists, and the audiophile culture.
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Postby sept » 2011.02.12 (15:23)

Artist: Catch 22
Album: Keasbey Nights
Genre: Ska Punk
Rec'd by: toasters
Rating: 7.5/10
Review: Keasbey Nights is some classic late '90s ska from New Jersey. Definitely some good ess-ach-eye-tee for a first album. I've listened to some ska before, like Big D & the Kids Table, and The Planet Smashers. I've heard of Streetlight Manifesto, who the front man for this album went on to do. The songs are good, but not impressive. I don't want anyone to think this is a bad album. It is a very, very good album for what it does, it's just I am not really into ska anymore. So if you're in need of some good ska, check this out.
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Postby Skyling » 2011.02.13 (05:01)

I’m not sure why I didn’t write these reviews earlier because I listened to the albums when they were recommended to me. I’m sorry for my slacking and I’ll make this more of a priority in the future.

Artist: k-os
Album: Joyful Rebellion (2004)
Genre: hip hop
Recommended by: bobaganuesh_2

Immediately it’s easy to feel this album’s allure. It’s a rap album but heavy drum samples are strangely absent and instead there’s plenty of light acoustic guitar and this eclecticism is interesting at first. But the further I got in the album the less I enjoyed it; the rapping is average and a lot of the songs have a sappiness to them that I found boring. I think Joyful Rebellion definitely has both merit and a good audience but it was too light and polished to hold my interest.

Artist: Air Waves
Album: Dungeon Dots (2010)
Genre: lofi pop
Recommended by: SlappyMcGee

Really boring. Mediocre riffs and melodies barely fill out the pop structure of each song and the instrumentation is really uninspiring. Although the lead singer has a pleasant almost reedy voice, it quickly becomes monotonous and incessant. The track “Waters” was pleasant, though, breaking things up with a waltzy feel. As an album, though, this didn’t show me anything new—easily forgettable.

Artist: various
Album: θcomplex
Genre: techno
Recommended by: PALEMOON

This was my first experience with techno (not to mention Japanese anime-porn techno) save for the awful formulaic melodramatic kind that they play during gym class to try to motivate us to run around a bit faster. I wanted to find something different than that here, and I did, kinda. Some tracks off of this use some interesting samples, foreign percussion, etc. but for the most part it was the same 4-chord 4-measure phrasing and cheesy synth sounds that you’d expect to find in a record like this. It’s an aesthetic that’s so far away from my ideals in music that I’m not even sure what to make of it. This stuff is probably great in the context of some surreal Japanese dance club but it doesn’t stand on its own to me. There are far more interesting things in the world of electronica.
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Postby Tanner » 2011.02.13 (15:29)

Week 6 Trades:
SlappyMcGee <-> gloomp
Aphex <-> oughts
PALEMOON <-> skyline
Stephen <-> Tanner
entwilight <-> Donfuy
toasters <-> yungerkid

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

Thanks to everyone who got themselves up-to-date on their reviews this week. :D
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Postby unoriginal name » 2011.02.13 (18:21)

Artist: Loscil
Album: Endless Falls
Genre: Ambient
Rec'd by: Tanner
You know, I had a nice little review written up for this before I heard the last track, but what transpires in those last eight minutes so effectively turns the rest of the album on its head that the old review seems sort of silly now. Great album, though. Often very beautiful, always as liquid as the title implies.

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Postby toasters » 2011.02.13 (23:42)

Artist: Sun City Girls
Album: Uncle Jim's SUPERSTARS OF GREENWICH MEANTIME
Genre: experimental
Rec'd by: Sept
Rating: 7/10
Review: I had no idea what I was in for with this. The only Sun City Girls album I'd heard before was Torch of the Mystics. Given how wildly experimental they are anyway I doubt long time fans know what to expect when they listen to these guys. In any case, the first thing I heard was an acoustic guitar over some gentle percussion. It's a perfectly innocuous start, which makes what comes next all the more strange. A voice intones, "This is your Uncle Jim speaking, fellers" and then after a pause a sampled riff from Led Zeppelin's Achilles Last Stand comes in (coincidentally my favorite song of theirs). The frontman then proceeds to recite his surreal poetry. The delivery reminds me of Captain Beefheart at times, but he's a bit more coherent. His persona "Uncle Jim" is hilarious. He's biting and sarcastic, and continually spouts memorable lines like "people suck Hollywood cock for a living" and "sure your life has meaning, it means NOTHING". The music is rather secondary most of the time, although the cheap hip-hop beats in Graduation Day are pretty entertaining. Overall I had a fun time with this album, although it's not something I would listen to very often.
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Postby yungerkid » 2011.02.14 (02:12)

Artist: Comets on Fire
Album: Blue Cathedral
Genre: Noise
Rec'd by: SlappyMcGee

Having listened to almost 45 minutes of noise, if I now try to remember any small piece of what I just listened to, I can only come up blank. I remember the last notes of Blue Tomb, but nothing else from the album.

Usually, if an album does not incite a particular feeling in me, it at least leaves an impression, or has some notable quality that I can define it by. Even music that puts me to sleep usually has some quality, such as discordance or bounciness, that represents a main feature of the music to me. This music, though, had none of that. I can say that it was bland, but that's about it. It was just noise. It wasn't particularly unpleasant; it wasn't pleasant either; I can't call its melodies either uncreative or creative; I had about as much opinion of it as music as I would have of the fan in my computer next to me. I can't say anything about that fan other than describe its pitch, and say that it is bland background noise. Blue Cathedral wasn't bad, it just had no voice to me, and no character. It's like listening to generic music radio in the car - you hear it and immediately filter it out. My mind heard this and said "meh, ok", and then I remembered five minutes later that there was music on.

Looking back at the beginning of this review, I now can't even remember the last notes of Blue Tomb.

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Postby 乳头的早餐谷物 » 2011.02.15 (13:43)

I'll do this week's trade (and last week's too) but I am henceforth dropping out because I already have too much frickin' music that I haven't listened to.
M E A T N E T 1 9 9 2

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Postby Tanner » 2011.02.15 (20:26)

Artist: Stéphane Rives
Album: Much Remains to Be Heard
Year: 2008
Genre: Experimental
Rec’d by: gloomp

I see this kind of album as a novelty more than anything. The artist apparently said, of this album, that it’s “neither an improvisation, nor a composition” so I imagine this as an exposition, an exploration. It’s a technical document in a world of poetry and prose. It has its value but I doubt if it’s meant to evoke or represent anything beyond what’s obvious on the surface of it. Well, it didn’t in me, in any case.
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Postby Aphex » 2011.02.18 (15:08)

Could you cross me out of the following weeks as well. Sorry, but school is becoming rather... daunting. Just don't have enough time to come on irc/forums, let alone participate. D:
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Postby unoriginal name » 2011.02.20 (22:53)

Artist: Led Zeppelin
Album: Led Zeppelin III
Genre: Rock Music
Rec'd by: SlappyMcGee
Review: Well, like, it's Led Zeppelin. You know, sort of a pinnacle of rock music. Of course I like it. How could I not? It has Immigrant Song on it.

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Postby Tanner » 2011.02.20 (23:19)

Week 7 Trades:
SlappyMcGee <-> PALEMOON
gloomp <-> Tanner
Stephen <-> yungerkid
entwilight <-> Donfuy
toasters <-> skyline

Currently signed up: SlappyMcGee, gloomp, PALEMOON, Stephen, entwilight, Donfuy, toasters, skyline, yungerkid
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Postby Rose » 2011.02.20 (23:50)

Put me down for this starting next week (and every week afterward).
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Postby yungerkid » 2011.02.21 (02:05)

Artist: Envy
Album: A Dead Sinking Story
Genre: Screamo
Rec'd by: Toasters

Partway through the song Evidence, which is at the beginning of this seemingly long album, I asked myself if I honestly expected to hear anything different in the rest of the album from what I had heard so far. I quite did not. It only seems like a minute ago since I asked myself that - my opinion has remained the exact same. The whole album droned on to my ears, the chord changes signifying nothing, the voice saying nothing, and the sounds all remaining more or less the same. In other words, it wasn't very expressive. A Conviction that Speeds somewhat got my interest, for parts, and the last song had some good ideas and would have been better if it weren't so long. Some songs I have to listen many times to to get; sometimes it takes knowing what's coming to fully appreciate a song's meaning. I don't think this album is one of those, though. I just could not keep my attention on it. It didn't have enough power to it.

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Postby toasters » 2011.02.21 (02:26)

Artist: Agalloch
Album: Ashes Against The Grain
Genre: metal
Rec'd by: yungerkid
Rating: 7/10
Review: Agalloch is an American black metal band, but on this album they sound a lot more like Alcest. It's less about blastbeats and tremolo picking and more about creating soundscapes. One issue I had was with the vocals. The singer has this kind of black metal gargle which, mixed as high as it is, can't help but come across as corny. Fortunately most of the album is focused on the instrumentals, all of which are top notch. Fire Above, Ice Below is a particular stand out, starting out sounding like Les Discrets with the acoustic guitars it moves through a thrilling series of peaks and valleys over the course of its ten minutes.
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Postby Stephen » 2011.02.21 (10:52)

Artist: Noneuclid
Album: The Crawling Chaos
Genre: Thrash metal / death metal (says last.fm)
Rec'd by: RandomDigits
Review:
This is a thrashy/death-metaly record and doesn't do much to deviate from the sound they establish in opener 'Worm' - a track that throws a few curveballs with some zany vocals. But the second track feels contrived - the lyrics are, well, metal 'RUINER OF MEMORY! THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE NOTHING LIVES!', the double kick drums relentless (there is not enough growth or release in these tracks), and a too-long guitar solo that breaks the mood by deviating from the song's modal key, detracting from the song's initial tension. There is, however, an interesting acoustic coda that shows the band do have a few nice ideas even if the rest of their act plays by the rules way too much for my tastes. They get their experimental on in 'Xenoglassy', but this sole ambient interlude shouldn't be the most interesting part of a record that mostly tries to be bombastic.

[I'm a week behind, I'll get on my review due yesterday asap!]

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Postby bobaganuesh_2 » 2011.02.22 (00:53)

Artist: Clark
Album: Body Riddle (2006)
Genre: Electronic
Recommended by: krusch
Reviewer: bobaganuesh_2

Clark's Body Riddle is certainly a piece of work. The first two songs right away established the dialectic between brash breakbeats and sullen droning that are nearly all-present in the entirety of the album. "Herr Bar" is the first showing the first glimpse at the lazy battle between the two above-mentioned agents to come and displays a technique used often throughout the album, that of starting the next song halfway through the current song. "Frau Wav" practically starts a minute before "Herr Bar"ends, taking up the heavy implementing of a string instrument and choppy analogue (I think), both of which evoke imageries of a tragic bandito sauntering off into the sunset and the imperturbability of a theoretical physicist's quest through alien realms, respectively.

The third track, "Herzog", a reference to the German film director of the same surname, starts a steady, melodic synthesizer rhythm that for a while becomes trapped in a crude cycle of "wipes" (can't find the appropriate adjective here...) that briefly cut off the rhythm before permitting it to pick up again. This anthem is suddenly severed by a pocket change jangle backed by what sounds like the groans of a ship-making factory. The rattle fades out for a bit, then fades back in to start off the next track, a somewhat-more jolly and determined beat. About halfway through it slips into a watered-down, but more swing (music)-esque rendition of itself, along with a timid breakbeat, that upholds the continually shifting "layers" of cymbal thrashing and groaning chimes until the whole shebang is finally broken with an abrupt strum of a guitar chord (pardon my ignorance of the technical parts of instruments here). The swing immediately starts again with the next song, pour favour door hinge creaks and the muffled babbling of a drunk person of indeterminate gender. Somewhere down the line the boom-bap is picked up by an ex-smoker who vainly attempts to beatbox alongside by forcing air out of the cancerous hole in his throat; this, the soft television station static, demented trumpet, and deformed wwwwoooooooorrrrrrrrmmmpppppp-wwwooooooorrrmmmppppps canvas this song's own personal cataclysm.

This pattern continues in the next "Vengeance Drools" which appears slightly more mournful and cold than all the previous tracks. This one ends with a shotgun-blast beat decomposing into a crepuscular tune that expresses child-like (innocent) sentiments.

Next up is an ill-willed piano piece being played by a malevolent mafioso performer across the room in a Prohibition Era charnel bar. This noiry atmosphere is inevitably nipped away by the booming multiculturalism of the onset of the nuclear age, expressed via those yearning string instruments and droning, before settling on a more solemn piano piece with an advancing breakbeat.

Onto the second last track, "Night Knuckles" with its hippity-hoppity, fippity-fappity jingling climbing around all over the place, never settling into one set course of direction or atmosphere. It always returns to dabble with new back-up sounds and instruments with a boundless glee that in the end sets it apart from the rest of this album. Despite all of that, it falls victim to the familiar decomposition into a solemn ringing, setting up the final song, "The Autumnal Crash". "The Autumnal Crash" frees itself from "the trap" and combines the dichotomy of abrasive breakbeat and mournful drone into a static "crash" until the latter wins the song and thrusts the listener into the dying, despair-filled wandering of a doomed lover into an abysmal womb, or something.


Overall, the cataclysms conveyed are well programmed and the abrasiveness works adequately with the faceless yet ever-present yearnings manifested throughout the album. By the ending lapse of the final song, it's feels like the work has half-heartedly accepted of it's wicked (i.e. malignant) schizophrenia. The rigged consistency that sets up this denoument, despite the subtle mood swings between songs, works against the collective work without detrimenting it entirely. There isn't really much of an emotional arc or progression, only slight meanderings from the main course. In any case, listening to Body Riddle provides some sort of insight into the capactity for experimentation in the electronic genre and allows listeners to find the dimension and depth that will persist in the artistic medium of music as long as artists such as Clark continue to push innovation forward.

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Postby krusch » 2011.02.24 (02:10)

Hmm. I'm sorry, but I must opt out of this. It's a great idea, and I'd love to jump back in when I have more time. But right now I have bigger fish to fry such as unemployment, debt, and loneliness.

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Postby Tanner » 2011.02.28 (00:47)

Week 8 Trades:
SlappyMcGee <-> Stephen
gloomp <-> Donfuy
PALEMOON <-> yungerkid
toasters <-> eevee
skyline <-> Tanner

Currently signed up: SlappyMcGee, gloomp, PALEMOON, Stephen, Donfuy, toasters, skyline, yungerkid, eevee
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Postby unoriginal name » 2011.03.05 (07:17)

Artist: Beach Fossils
Album: Beach Fossils
Genre: Jangle Beach
Rec'd by: Donfuy
This album is boring and lazy, so lazy. Why should I put any effort into a review of it?

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Postby Stephen » 2011.03.06 (00:30)

Artist: Overmars
Album: Born Again
Genre: Drone/sludge/post-metal
Rec’d by: Tanner

When I realised that Born Again is one 39-minute long sludge composition, I expected some slow-burning, endlessly climaxing tower of a record (like Boris' early one-track albums), but Overmars get stuck right in with the loudest part coming right at the beginning. The shouted male vocals are overtaken by even more powerful female shouts, and as the walls of drums and noise ebb away, she keeps yelling as if from the bottom of a canyon. It is this section that impressed me most; the vocal performance is incredible, and is augmented by the haunting guitar riffs, until the sludge hits again. After those first ten minutes, the record can be roughly partitioned into four more cohesive sections (it still deserves to be a single-track piece), the middle part allows some room to breathe before swelling again, seething with tension until the searing finale.
There are subtly mathy rhythms amongst the driving sludgey chords, the textures are denser than I first thought, and the record as a whole is still growing on me (I just revised my initially ambivalent review!) Fans of doom/sludge will love it, and I reckon it's quite a good place to start for outsiders.

Artist: Angels & Airwaves
Album: I-Empire
Genre: "generic rock"
Rec’d by: yungerkid

Listening to this seriously pushes my ability to listen to these albums without prejudice: I cannot ignore the fact that this is a pointedly mainstream release from a former-member of Blink-182. Open-mindedness doesn't come into it, I would never consider listening to this album had it not been recommended - based on yungerkid assessing my last.fm page & determining that I mostly liked "generic rock", at that (I actually think he wasn't just trolling!) It's not that I resolved to dislike it, having taken offense, but that there were so many signs that it was awful that I KNEW I'd dislike it.

Still, I listened to it - some of it - quietly, on headphones, and with scrobbling disabled, of course - and yeah, it's terrible stuff. Overproduced vaguely proggy guitars atop electronic pulses and echoey vocals. DeLonge's weird, perhaps somewhat endearing voice sits uncomfortably at the front of the mix, weirdly angular against all the sparkling production. It doesn't really work but I could get behind that maybe - if it weren't for the utterly abysmal lyrics. The songs are so obviously contrived. It's the sort of thing where I'm sure, in the few months after I-Empire's release, the lyrics were quoted in a million twelve-year-olds' Facebook statuses. 'Breathe' doesn't even try; most of the song is the phrase "IIIIIIIII LOVE YOU... TILL THE END OF TIME" repeated ad infinitum. Show don't tell, Tom DeLonge - show don't tell. You can tell what the entire thing sounds like from the first song, so I pretty much quit after 4 tracks. It's not as bad as it could've been, though? I mean, I can sort of see the appeal - but reviewing it is useless as you'll probably already know if you'll like it or not - that cover says it all.

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Postby noops » 2011.03.06 (02:05)

I would quite enjoy taking part in this. I'll only try for the upcoming week, though. We'll see how things go from there.
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Postby Tanner » 2011.03.07 (03:45)

Week 9 Trades:
SlappyMcGee <-> Donfuy
gloomp <-> skyline
PALEMOON <-> Stephen
toasters <-> spuun
yungerkid <-> eevee

Currently signed up: SlappyMcGee, gloomp, PALEMOON, Stephen, Donfuy, toasters, skyline, yungerkid, eevee
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Postby Donfuy » 2011.03.07 (14:36)

This is my last week. I'll submit all the reviews at once when I listen to SlappyMcGee's album, if I ever get it.
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Postby Rose » 2011.03.07 (20:44)

This is my last week as well. Sorry D:
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Postby Amadeus » 2011.03.08 (02:57)

I'll give it a shot if there's space.
People write to me and say, "I’m giving up, you’re not talking to me." I just write them a simple message like, "Never give up," you know? And it changes their life
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