ASS: Find A Partner!

[TommyWiseau24]

count me

edit: in

[乳头的早餐谷物]

fo sho

[mediate]

I'm in. Oh right. Still got a review to do from last season. Eh, might as well do it now.

------------------------------BEGIN REVIEW HERE-------------------------------------

"Instrumentals" by Clams Casino [via xwd]

Last time on mediate reviews rap, I stated that I'm not a fan of it. Since then, I HAVE made an effort to listen to more of it to ... understand the music better. Sadly, that goes right out the window with this album. This is instrumental hip hop. This is my first listen to anything instrumental in hip hop. I don't really know how to feel about this. On the one hand, there are some pretty okay/cool sounding beats in the album. On the other, I find this album completely pointless. The problem, as I see it is, the cool beats are missing the vocal parts (and I sure as hell aren't gonna supply that) whereas the more boring/annoying/ohgodmakethisstop beats REALLY were missing vocal parts to mask the hideous beats. As a result, this album made me feel very indifferent to it. I couldn't care less about the music, the musicians who made it, or anything. I'm just very ... meh about it. I guess an arbitrary rating for this is 5/10. It's just very mediocre ...

mediate

[aids]

Round 1

Aidiera >> xwd >> ortsz >> mediate >> TW >> flag >> mintnut >> Tunco >> miasmata >> trance >> gloomp >> Sen >> Aidiera

[otters~1]

mintnut! The Drones - I See Seaweed

Here on grooveshark. Presumably also on what and waffles. Don't have those tabs open, too lazy to link.

[mintnut]

roger that!

could've done with a pm or something about this, just dropped by on a whim.

[otters~1]

HAHA

[乳头的早餐谷物]

I didn't consent to this

[Seneschal]

I think we ought to stage an intervention regarding maestro's signature

[miasmata]

Review: Struggle For Pleasure by Wim Mertens (recommended by Tunc)

The first thing I noticed about this album was how the instruments sounded a bit thin compared to other minimalist/contemporary classic albums I have listened to (Mostly Arvo Pärt's Alina and Terry Riley's In C). This proved to not matter too much though, as the album is quite good regardless. It starts off slowly with Tourtour, but the title track is fairly fast in comparison, introducing sixteenth note scales which bring to my mind a certain passage in Vivaldi's Winter (it's actually probably just the same scale, but whatever). Salemes is an interesting track which starts off with pulsation of what must be some string instrument (which sounds modulated as opposed to natural), with layers of string, brass, and woodwind slowly added on top throughout the song. Close Cover, I find to be a fairly boring piano and string track, while Bresque, on the other hand, is certainly the most interesting song on the album, with some weird effects and cacophony throughout. Gentleman of Leisure struck me for its contradiction, as it is anything but leisurely, with pulsing similar to that on Salemes along with high-pitched woodwinds. I would actually say this track is the busiest and loudest track on the album, even more so than the title track.

So I didn't really care for Close Cover, but Struggle For Pleasure, Bresque, and Gentleman of Leisure definitely made up for it. The album is perhaps a little too short for my liking, at only 20 minutes, but it is definitely a good album, and I will be looking into more of Wim Merten's work in the future.

[mintnut]

I See Seaweed, by The Drones (recommended by flag)

I See Seaweed is, for sure, a consistent record. Song following song of the same sounds, the same emotions, the same rasping emptiness and anger. I'll be frank, this album doesn't come close to pressing my buttons. I'm sure given the right audience it could be wonderfully resonant, but I cannot for the life of me engage with this music. Long, rambling diatribes presented by a particularly discontent antipodean, set to whispered, inharmonic passages, followed inexorably by harsh, aggressive blasts of sound, neither reaching any level of warmth or associability, for me at least.

That's not to say that there aren't moments here that I enjoyed, A Moat You Can Stand In was probably my favourite track, the album finally finding some purpose and direction coupled with some genuinely engaging music and actually exercising some much-needed brevity, if 4 minutes and 23 seconds can be considered such.

I'm uncomfortably aware that this review paints me as a dismissive and impatient critic, but I just couldn't find anything here to love.

[aids]

http://albumswapping.tumblr.com/post/47731729589

[otters~1]

not sure what the hell there is to say about music for airports that hasn't been said already

but it makes me feel like a much better person than i actually am, especially that heavenly choir bit midway through track 2. album wasn't made for airports, it was made for the bit of the movie where you find out everything is much worse than you thought it was. and you want to say 'fuck' and throw your sword/towel/coke nail/pet dog down and just leave everything behind like jack kerouac or into the wild, but instead you stand really still and listen to music for airports for 47 minutes. and then you move on to different places and things but you never really forget the haunting scenery of ondine, god that movie was gorgeous :(

[TommyWiseau24]

Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark (mediate)


One of those albums that seems to be created so that its highlights are more exciting when set against the stasis of the rest of the material. Equimanthorn's fringes into the outer territory of noise particularly pop; as does the genuinely creepy Enter the Eternal Fire, which is one of the few competent uses of church paraphernalia (I lie, it's synth) that I've ever heard in a metal song. I don't know if it's a good thing that 13 Candles is kind of catchy, but then again this album doesn't seem to be pretentiously ascetic or anything. These songs are contextualized within a collection that blends within itself, a particularly undesirable quality; but this is of course from a modern-day, non-metalhead perspective, so credit due etc.

[乳头的早餐谷物]

aivi & surasshu - The Black Box [via xwd]

It's chip! It's piano! It's quite lovely. And nuanced. The piano tends to be at the forefront as it deserves to be, combining with the chip sounds to evoke a very particular mood. It's sophisticated, varied, and very organic.

[Seneschal]

I'm going to have to drop out of this, I'm afraid, so don't include me next time round. I'll get round to reviewing gloomp's rec at some point, though, however late it may be.

[xwd]

Running on Air by Bliss n Eso [via Aidsy]

Bliss and Eso are Australian MCs. Bliss used to be American. Eso isn't, and consequentially his accent makes him sound awesome when he says things like "motherfucker." (Seriously, it's awesome the way he says it.) Unless I have them mixed up, in which case I don't know. It doesn't matter. They're both pretty good. Good flow, good rhymes, pretty cool imagery, even if they're more or less hard street thugs. That's what rap music is basically all about, right? They also do regular trade-offs. The third guy (who is not the 'n') is DJ Izm, who is Moroccan. He's probably responsible for the incredibly catchy hooks and infection beats that most of the songs have.

And wow, this album is catchy and infectious. First three songs have crazy amounts of power behind them. Flying Through the City, Addicted, and Down by the River. All songs you can blast while driving way too fast. When things get slowed down, there's still plenty of good points. I'm partial to Coastal Kids, because it's more or less them rapping over Scuba by Bonobo. No, really, listen to them at the same time. Even with that, there's still some good flow to it. Also, there's actually scratching on this album. They don't need to give shoutouts to the DJ. You can hear how hard he's working in the background, and especially when he gets the foreground on bridges on songs like The Children of the Night.

Downside. Well. All the songs kind of have similar gimmicks to them. Get some old soul records, use them as the basis for your beat, borrow the hook. It's a time-tested proven formula, it's what a lot of early hip hop was based on (and the ones that weren't used disco). I know, my attention always wanes when things get slower, but that just means they need to push harder to get me to perk up. Also they really like that trick where you have one guy rapping and then at the end of the line the other guy comes in or there's a chorus effect to put big empahasis on the rhymes. It's cheesy and it gets old after a while. It's cool while it lasts.

Oh, and on an aside, this album went platinum in Australia. These guys are apparently a big deal? I don't know. I just know that hearing people with accents rap about how their grandma is a badass motherfucker (Family Affair) is funny. Fun times.

[mediate]

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook by Ella Fitzgerald [via ortz/oughts/chiffonade]

I'll keep this short. This album is relaxing, music is great. I listened to both sides of the album, fully worth it. Just go grab it, do yourself a favor. Good smooth jazz never fails. 10/10. Loved it, will listen again. Thanks oughts!

[aids]

aids > ortsz > tunco > flag > mintnut > trance > gloomp > xwd > mediate > tw > aids

[otters~1]

oh no

ps: nice review, xwd -- listening to that album right now and it's pretty solid. will add it to my repertoire

[mintnut]

:s hmmm

how come flag is rec'ing me again, is that supposed to happen?

also, tunco still hasn't reviewed the one I sent him :(

[aids]

:s hmmm

how come flag is rec'ing me again, is that supposed to happen?

also, tunco still hasn't reviewed the one I sent him :(

It's not, I fucked up the string. Here's the right one:

aids > mintnut > ortsz > tunco > flag > trance > gloomp > xwd > mediate > tw > aids

I tried not to fuck up last night, but I was tired.

Also, oh well. As long as the majority of people submit reviews, I think it's fair to keep going.

[Losttortuga]

I'd like to do this next time.

[aids]

I'd like to do this next time.

I will include you. Also, I figured out what my problem was. When I was making the spreadsheet for the last round, I mixed up the string. So I've re-organized it, and I think the next round will be properly coordinated.

[Tunco]

:s hmmm

also, tunco still hasn't reviewed the one I sent him :(

i will listen and review it sometime this week