It's February (but free jazz is better than girls, so you need not worry)
The point of these threads is to encourage people to look for new and interesting music. We do this by listening to and ideally discussing albums we've never heard before. Many of us already listen to new music daily, these people are in it to venture "out of their comfort zone" by listening to albums they otherwise wouldn't have, or just to have a good time.
Did y'all miss that time I posted the results btw? Only homie trip up replied haha
Dylan Howard
welcome back!
i can't even deny it, it's smart and cool as hell conceptually, and it's executed well, but i can't for the life of me get into that sound/style fully. i'll check out yer album tonight btw.
David Rivera
>high schoolers doing dumb shit Stop the presses.
Matthew Richardson
haha
Gavin Hall
The media will eat this shit up given our current political climate
Hudson Edwards
ya boy gotta bus a nut and get six milli baka -_-
I'm gonna get u ;))
I guess I did. My rec is Dark Was the Night - Cold Was the Ground
Jacob Gomez
That's more like it. A little communication
Ian Foster
Gil-Scott Heron - Winter In America
Great album, though it’s much mellower than the other albums I’ve heard from GSH. Brian Jackson is a huge influence on here, with some really great jams on what sounds like a Wurlitzer. It adds a nice atmospheric touch which is quite different than what I remember from Pieces of a Man. At first, I found it to be boring - I was expecting some upbeat funk but instead I got the opposite. I should’ve done some research before.
As an album, it’s surprisingly consistent. “Peace Go With You Brother” is a great way to kick off the album - and it’s similar to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Happening Brother”. I also recognized the opening piano riff from a Kendrick Lamar track and I always love hearing that. “Rivers of My Fathers” and “The Bottle” are both nice political cuts. And “A Very Precious Time” and “Back Home” are nice little nostalgic ones. I think my favorite track might actually be “H20 Gate Blues”, which tackles a lot of the political and social issues that were happening in the mid 70s. It’s more spoken word and probably the least interesting instrumentally but I really liked the approach. Though I think GSH has an awesome, soothing voice, I do love when he goes the spoken word route. It works better than most I’ve heard.
Anyway, pretty damn good.
4/5
Joshua Nguyen
thanks. John Zobele is one of the smartest people vaporwave has ever come in contact with. it helps that he's done a lot of work in real, catchy plunderphonics before getting into the scene. check out his work with the group Stab Something. might be more up your alley. tell me how you like the ep btw. who else /comfy in the mostly neutral mid east coast/ here?
Gabriel Nguyen
birthday is coming up in like half a year someone get me the merzbox
Jayden Harris
sent :^)
Ryan Martin
jersey bois sounds like a lot of HOOPLA
Anthony Bennett
>I'm gonna get u ;)) False, already graduated
Dominic Peterson
i'm comin over ;))))
Mason Reyes
>tfw longcat's owner got married
/socal/ here. Not exactly neutral but San Diego seems to be surprisingly moderate.
Adrian Long
...
Hunter Foster
Wew economics midterm was only 1 hour long, shit was like a 100m sprint. Made a shitty math error that cost me a lot of marks but I did pretty good overall methinks.
>i'm back Never heard of you.
Holy fuck I miss this meme.
ya boy gotta bus a nut and get six milli baka -_- Can you take the next hiatus pls
Nicholas Jones
be right there ;))))))))))))))))
idk last time I took a hiatus /daily/ exploded
Bentley Williams
>be right there ;)))))))))))))))) :0
Nathaniel Gomez
>>be right there ;)))))))))))))))) >:0 :0
James Barnes
sounds nice >Made a shit gj
Cooper Baker
Hey /daily/, what's the last album you heard where the following happened: you gave it a listen, liked it a bit, but only one or two songs really got your attention. but you kept listening, and more and more songs got your attention on subsequent listens, your favorite constantly changing? it's pic related for me. I used to only like the opener, now I like the whole thing
Ryan Kelly
Kamasi Washington's The Epic is currently the easiest and funniest album to troll with on Sup Forums. Prove me wrong.
Aaron Scott
...
Easton Murphy
>mfw :0 :0
Alexander Flores
>Lowercase - The Going Away Present I liked it. Nice music. >Karate - Unsolved I liked it, but the lounge jazz style and stop start vocal delivery got a bit tiresome.
It's been a long time since I've done that; seems like a phenomenon that occurs exclusively with rock music, which I haven't listened to much in the past few months.
Jose Adams
i agree w jangle that this is a thing that happens in rock/pop music and i'd say for me its happened with most albums that i love in those genres
Charles Cooper
HATED this album years ago, but it's a pretty rewarding relisten. The fact that there is zero synths and just guitar blows my mind. Like, how? The tones Robin Guthrie makes on that album are amazing. I didn't care for Black Saint and the Sinner Lady first time around but coming back to it it's fantastic.
either or Good Morning Good Night but The Epic is really high up there anyways. It's literally called the EPIC lmao.
Luis Phillips
What reason would there be for it being a solely pop phenomenon?
Kayden Wilson
It's too predictable to illicit genuine reaction. Definitely deserves the highest meme status though.
Nathaniel Scott
Idk about the last album this happened to me on, but i only liked 3 or so of the songs on this after the first listen. Now i think damn near every song is amazing and i always find new things to like about it every listen.
Kevin Roberts
i just think vocal melodies have the highest potential to be a "slow burn" for someone
Jacob Lee
Comme à la radio
Evan Thompson
I didn't say pop but I definitely should have. Rock/pop are usually more singles-oriented which leads to filler tracks supplemented in to market as a whole album.
Michael Rogers
stab something looks cool, and i'll tell ya later tonight or tomorrow.
>who else /comfy in the mostly neutral mid east coast/ here? central new york is quite nice
either/or didn't grab me at all when i listened to it at first, i thought it was a shittier pop version of elliott's s/t album. now it's by far my favorite of his, and one of my favorite albums of all time.
and to be perfectly honest i only revisited it because a quick clip of speed trials was used in a what's in my bag video and i thought it was the most gorgeous sounding thing i've ever heard
Isaac Brown
Which one should I listen to right now?
Isaiah Williams
Duchamp
Isaiah Mitchell
Will do, thanks.
Adam Jackson
Cool review, I dl'ed this earlier today Very hype for it now
>This Heat - Horizontal Hold (theSound) This Heat are really out-of-this-world good. It just blows me away the music they’re hearing in their heads that they can translate. 8.5/10
>Hudjan Mas - Golden Rain (!) This is what you all were flipping out over? It was nice, I wasn’t blown away. 7/10
theSound moves on.
>Rod Stewart - Maggie May (nyarlathotep) You’ll all think I’m kidding. I’ve always thought this song was great. It just captures this feeling of being young and frivolous but heartbroken so specifically and well, I think. You can hear so much emotion. 8/10
>King Creosote - You Just Want (Anca) This was also great. Really drone-y and psychedelic, almost krautrock in a hypnotic way. Unexpectedly good, but I don’t feel they put much work into the melody.
nyarlathotep scrapes by.
>Neuromancer - Pennywise (Shamepai) I don’t think anyone could call this breakbeat lazy. Damn, this is pretty good. Just feels so loud and layered. Can’t say I’m into dance music, but this feels so uplifting in a way you’d want. 7/10
>Temptations - Cloud Nine (Triangle) Yeah, this was good and fun. I know these are The Temptations, but I wish they took vocals down a notch and brought up the guitars and made it just a little more instrumental, you know? 7/10
Triangle moves on.
>Disillusion - Alea (Raziel) Very well done for what it is. Great production, drums sound loud and nice. This kind of stuff just feels a little too formulaic though, that vocal melody feels lazy, the tones feel overused. I had to check to make sure this wasn’t made like 15 years ago. 6/10
>tirestirestires - After Sex Under Parents (drgp) Wow, what exactly did they do to get it to sound like that? That effect is beyond cool. The melody wasn’t otherwise. 7/10
drgp moves on.
Jace Wright
Thanks dude! Definitely give it a listen and lemme know what you think
Vocals on that song are pretty great imo but to each his own
Next rec is Michael Hurley - Sweedeedee
Juan Cruz
Indeterminacy penned in 1913? Is there anything more patrician? In all seriousness, this is a very captivating and enjoyable listen, even when stripping it's historical context. It's incredibly arty music, and it's clear that it was not influenced by other musical pieces, but rather from other forms and styles of art. Given that the artist was a successful painter, sculptor and conceptual artist, this seems a reasonable conclusion.
The first piece is an airy and spacious 25-minute indeterminacy piece consisting of celeste, flute, glockenspiel and trombone. While instrumentation seems largely independent, occasional facets of harmony present themselves, giving the piece a kind of converging unity. Certainly an interesting and enjoyable piece.
The next song, 3 voices, consists of single syllables sung in alternating scales with notes apparently picked at random. A little after the halfway point, two additional singers accompany the first, one echoing the note of the first and the second singing a random note in the alternate key. It's an interesting concept, and the short track time makes it a forgivable experiment.
The third track sounds like a piano interpretation of 3 voices, with alternating notes from seperate keys, but allotting the musician more freedom to apply chords and intermediate notes. It's certainly not a surprise at this point that the track abandons melody and harmony, but it still manages to sound methodical and precise enough to remain interesting throughout.
The final track ends the album beautifully, with a music-box esque composition with sparse echoes of toys squeaking and falling on the floor. Also of course, a very loud horn blow without warning in case the melody lulled you to sleep. This leaves such a peculiar impression that I can forsee raising the score a lot in the future. For now:
Great album. 7.5 /10
Ryder Thompson
Aloof Proof - Piano Text (2007) >ambient
Pretty standard ambient, derivative and not the best ambient in the world but comfy and well done. The tone and texture of the pieces definitely outweighs how good the actual compositions are, but the sound of the record is very warm and engrossing, it's like a warm, fuzzy blanket in musical form. Gets uninteresting after a while, and it's too long, but it's nice.
2.5+
Flow Dan - Original Dan (2009) >grime
There are some absolute bangers on this thing. I actually really like grime when it's done well, and the best tracks here, mostly found at the front of the record, are some of the best grime I've heard. The dubstep-esque production is hard-hitting, Flow Dan himself is on fire, and the pace just never lets up. Sadly, that same song gets repeated sixteen times. I really do like the sound here, the production is nice and I like Flow Dan as an MC, it's just far too long to warrant how little variation there is, musically, vocally, and lyrically.
2.5
Hunter Martin
real quick bump i've gotta say some things about rod's record
Sebastian James
If you have never liked a midwest emo album you have never had a happy thought in your life it is as simple as that
Carter Carter
Jorge - True Friendship (2017) >ambient
If you could all stop being so talented, I'd really appreciate it. I love the concept of this thing, taking samples from ultra-energetic, high-pitched nightcore and completely transforming them into a tranquil, meditative ambient album. The sampling is wonderful, there are a few awkward, choppy loops here and there but most of them all flow seamlessly into each other, and they're all completely different from their source material, they seem completely organic. Musically, it's good ambient. It's not anything insanely special, but it's very enveloping and the more melodic segments are very pretty. Nice work! From what I've heard from 2017, this is my favorite so far.
3.0+
James Sullivan
midwest emo is a lovely genre
it makes me nostalgic for my teenage years and i'm still a teenager
Asher Barnes
Rainbow - Rising (1976) >hard rock, heavy metal
If I'd have known about Rainbow back when I was in middle school, they'd have probably been my favorite band. They're heavy, I still admittedly love Dio as a vocalist, and they're classic rock! But as I've grown apart with this style, I can really only see a generic album in a style that's been done to death. Blackmore's guitar is of course great, but the only thing here that has any real personality is Dio's vocals, and even they are sometimes a bit too over the top. The shorter songs make absolutely no lasting impressions, but the last two tracks are actually pretty good. "Stargazer" is overblown as shit, but "A Light in the Black" is a pretty cool rocker with some nice riffs and operatic vocals. Worth a listen for the last two tracks, as spotty as they may be, but all in all pretty bland.
2.0+
Nathaniel Powell
Good morning /daily/!
Picking up my car today! Excited!
Landon Thomas
I think I'm warming up towards Loren Connors a bit. Still not a big fan, but I can see where he's going.
I like the bits past the 10 minute mark where the broadcasts fall in with the recordings of horns.
I think the piece itself would benefit by having a single thread connecting all the sections like a fade in motif amidst the sections.
Otherwise I think it was entertaining.
Tyler Wood
>Flow Dan - Original Dan (2009) >>grime Tell me how this compares to London Zoo
Hudson Green
...
Henry Miller
wooah
SHSK'H vol 5 was mainly solo viola playing and solo instrument playing really doesn't captivate me at all so this is just a case of me having shit taste 4+
Wooden Ball, something the audio design gets tooo cheap past it's intended purpose but otherwise i like it though there's alot that could of been done, plenty of meandering but else its basic fun with a nice style, but did leave alot desired. 6 (will change the number on the image)
lamb advances
Evan Lee
not as inventive or sonically varied but more consistent and I like it more
Gabriel Gomez
>a generic album in a style that's been done to death. Complaining that an album is generic when it is among the progenitors of the entire genre of music seems a bit odd...
Like complaining that Death's "Scream Bloody Gore" is generic.
Matthew Wright
it's a completely valid complaint. you can't go back to when you haven't heard everyone who copied or expanded on it yet after all
Jaxon Bell
afternoon bois
>Fela Ransome Kuti & Africa 70 - Expensive Shit Is this really the Fela Kuti everyone talks about so much? It doesn't feel that funky, for parts it's just a bit boring, it's not repetitive enough to be groovy but at the same time it's too repetitive to be interesting for 10+ minutes. I can't say I didn't enjoy it but I am disappointed, I hope I like some of his other releases more but maybe I just don't like Afrobeat's mix of jazz and funk. 3/5
>John Fahey - The Yellow Princess Recommending Fahey really is cheating, the man's a genius, I've yet to rate a record I've heard from him lower than 8/10, it's going to be sad when I find one I don't like. He gets so much feeling into his music, I just instantly fall into the world he creates. And there is a nice amount variation on this record, the use of a band for a couple of songs works very well, Fahey's guitar over the military beat on March! For MLK is brilliant and the sound collage of The Singing Bridge is a nice little interlude. 4/5
Caleb Taylor
I went out of my comfort zone and listened to Transgod’s rec (How We Both Wondrously Perish by Being as an Ocean), and after two listens I think I’m well enough equipped to completely tear this album apart. No, I did not entirely hate it – it actually had some pretty spectacular moments – but it’s a great case study of how a good idea can be completely run into the ground by terrible – and I repeat TERRIBLE – execution. I guess it was somewhat of a learning experience for me in that sense. In the next couple of posts I’m going to rip this album a new one, bit by bit.
So let’s start off with the vocals, as they’re quite obviously the focal point of this record. This band uses the pretty typical harsh/core vocals vs. sterilized, “emotional” clean vocals, sometimes using the harsher vocals in an almost spoken-word like context with a preachy inflection quite obviously ripped from bands like La Dispute and Listener. I could kinda dig the core vocals here, as they’re pretty raw and feel really emotive most of the time and the spoken word vocals are ripped off well enough that they sound almost as convincing as those from the bands I mentioned earlier. The clean vocals though, are a special brand of terrible. I really don’t have to explain this, but using sterilized, nasal, pop-punk-but-without-attitude vocals in every single (yes, every single one of them!) chorus to contrast the demented bellowing of the harsh vocalist severely dampens their effect. These clean vocals always seem to play the role of throwing in a more personal, emotional aspect into the song, as most of the harsh vocals sound very aggressive, but when they’re used so formulaically they come off sounding more as an obligated part of the song. They’re thrown in even when clean vocals do not add anything to the song’s narrative or message or flow.
(1/5)
Jaxon Johnson
They’ve become such a metalcore/post-hardcore trope that bands are throwing them in out of sheer obligation or convention and not because they actually work. They just feel out of place most of the time.
Now, I said I liked the spoken word vocals well enough because of their delivery, but when you actually start listening to what the dude has to say it goes from “pretty cool” to simply cringe worthy real quick. He tries so hard to describe the human condition (again, in a La Dispute-like way), but he forgets to actually weave the narratives that makes La Dispute’s lyrics at least slightly compelling. What’s left are some middle-school tier “dark” lyrics. Consider these lines (from a song titled Death’s Great Black Wings): >Now's the time for knowledge >Now's the time for Truth >Humanity has already suffered so much abuse >We must take responsibility, and do away with apathy >Unlearn society's teachings >To be blind and selfish >Because what you must learn >Is that the problem is us It’s such a simple, banal insight delivered in such an urgent, self-important way (spoken word, half-crying). It’s just…plain dumb, for lack of a better word. You see, if such a message were delivered through an interesting metaphor, or through a narrative, it would at least be a bit easier to swallow, but the entire song just seems like a meditation on this single thought, with some examples haphazardly splattered around without any sort of elaboration (We still defile and abuse the innocent / Like items to be sold or owned / Slavery and prostitution is no place for a nine year old).
(2/5)
Owen Myers
The lyrics are just so fucking flimsy. I mean, this song flat out presents its main theme in the first couple of lines (We shout up at the sky / Until our mouths are bloody and dry / Screaming out at a god that seems to be blind / To the suffering of us here below; those pushed aside) and never fleshes it out in any way. There’s just no fucking reason these lyrics should even exist beyond the first verse. I mean, I guess this is a personal preference of mine, but the lyrics on this record simply don’t bear any fucking substance bar their core message. They’re good for a good laugh though, with lines like Away from family and friends / But what they can't see / Is that every day I'm drowning in a sea / Of faces that I miss so desperately.
In terms of song structure and instrumentation this record seems to be unable to decide whether it wants to be artsy (with the generic electronic loops and ambient parts that inevitably come with that aspiration) or wants to be by-the-numbers post-hardcore. The thing is, they end up going for the latter, occasionally sprinkling in some artsy electronic touches in the most superficially possible way. There’s plenty of ambient intros and outros on this record, but there’s no electronics or experimentation to be found anywhere during the songs themselves. Every single song on this record (except the last two) is just simply a verse-chorus-verse song with either a short ambient intro or outro that does not, in any way, affect the rest of the song. As soon as the rock instrumentation kicks in, the ambience is nowhere to be found. Why incorporate electronic sounds if you’re not giving them any substantial role?
(3/5? 6? idk)
Jaxson Brown
Speaking of structure, one of the places where this muddled sense of artsiness grates me most is the penultimate track. After the second chorus they clumsily introduce (seriously, it sounds copy-pasted) this pretty beautiful laidback instrumental part that seems to fit in pretty well with the rest of the song. The trumpet solo actually made me pretty excited that they were actually gonna go anywhere with it – it’d work pretty great if they’d chosen to, for example, build that instrumental part into a last climax or chorus – but they just fucking let it linger for about 2 minutes and then just let it fade out. What was the point of even including the part? They could’ve done so much with it, but instead they treat it like just another outro that has little to no connection to the actual song. It’s like they have no idea whatsoever how to write a satisfying piece of music beyond the standard verse-chorus-verse structure that has so obviously been beaten into them by their contemporaries. Either you actually experiment with your song structure and soundcraft in a way that adds to your music or you stop pretending to give a fuck about experimentation and stop throwing in your half-assed attempts at being progressive. This mix of ideas just feels convoluted, forced and completely god damn unnecessary. It’s the epitome of “polishing a turd”.
But this isn’t even what irked me most about this album. The production is the final nail in its coffin. It’s so god damn disgustingly clean. It’s so god damn disgustingly compressed. It’s just a fucking disaster. The loud parts are loud as hell but the soft parts are just as loud so the loud parts don’t have any “oomph” whatsoever. The guitar sound is just plain boring, distorted but without any trace of filth. The bass is mixed loudly but doesn’t have any of the presence it ought to have because it cuts out every time the drummer uses his kick drum.
(4/6)
Angel Johnson
There is literally zero space in the mix for anything other than the base instrumentation. Even when they actually try to incorporate some additional instrumentation and electronics, 9 out of 10 times it’s either inaudible or it muddies up the mix to the point where it becomes even more of a mess than it already is. In the softer parts the drum hits audibly push the guitar and vocals back in the mix. There’s this point in the last track where the drums come in crescendoing with a crash and a kick drum and it’s so horribly compressed that you can’t even hear the crash hits themselves. It almost sounds like they intentionally went for an EDM-like sidechain effect but I think the only reason why it sounds considerably worse here is because it’s the only track slow enough to give the rest of the instrumentation the time to actually fade back in after the drum hits. I’m not a sound engineer in any sense of the word but even I could make this album sound better than the talentless fucking hack that mastered this record. Listening to this on anything other than phone speakers will make you want to kill yourself.
(5/6)
Carson Cruz
So yeah. There were some of the cleaner guitar parts in the verses that were honestly kinda cool, but the constant use of power chords in the loud parts just made it all blend together. The atmosphere overall was great and had a sort of ominous and mournful quality of it that reminded me, once again, of La Dispute, but the songs that conveyed these amtospheres were, without exception, so formulaic that I got bored by the third track. The drummer’s really good but the drums sound like total shit because of the cancerous mastering. The vocals are mostly well done and they fit in well but the lyrics are completely void of any sort of substance to the point where they’re just plain laughable. The ambient touches are really pretty but they sound like a mere afterthought. There’s a bunch of good ideas hidden in this record, but the result is so utterly, profoundly shit that I honestly don’t know how or why they even released this trainwreck. I’m generally not an extremely picky or critical listener but just about everything about this album pushed my buttons and I hope I’ve made sufficiently clear why. I'm not even mad, I'm just disappointed. Peace out.
Logan Walker
fokin demolished
Bentley Richardson
the question what's the big difference between listening to a song/band over and over, and to carbon copies of it could lead to some interesting points, on the other hand
Joshua Barnes
true enough, but there had already been a fair amount of heavy metal before 76, no?
Jeremiah Clark
vroom vroom
Kevin Martin
Can't believe I read a six post review of an album I was never going to listen to
Choice zingers: >The lyrics are just so fucking flimsy. >It’s the epitome of “polishing a turd”. >Listening to this on anything other than phone speakers will make you want to kill yourself. >I'm not even mad, I'm just disappointed.
Christopher Flores
>speaking of overproduction im wondering at what point can abundance of digital clipping be called "noise rock/industrial influence" and embraced as aesthetically desirable or like what happened with vinyl surface noise and tape hiss, ykno what i mean i already thought about that cuz of Mors Principium Est but pic related is insane senpai
Parker Gonzalez
>a fair amount of heavy metal before 76, no? Not in the style of Rising.
The closest things that compare are Uriah Heep & Budgie, which are both still more in the vein of Sabbath/Led Zeppelin/Deep Purple.
Heavy Metal as it developed through the 80s really began with Rising and Sad Wings of Destiny in '76. (Rainbow and JP's first albums didn't quite find this new style yet).
Angel Peterson
i've never thought of Rainbow of proto-speed/power metal but that really makes a lot of sense ty ty >at what point can abundance of digital clipping be called "noise rock/industrial influence" and embraced as aesthetically desirable never, unless it's in a lo-fi context
Henry Kelly
>never that's quitter talk
Daniel Green
>quitter yo i listened to your shitty scenecore record twice in its entirity i demand respect
Brayden Ortiz
Morning lads.
Damn, how much does it weigh?
Camden Walker
About 0.5 Americans
Gabriel Adams
Hey /blog/
Holy shit, I might just have gotten the opportunity to start doing real research and publish during my education. My tutor said the goal would be to publish four articles before I'm done with my studies, which is basically what you need to write your disputation and become a doctor. I'm not even gonna apply to become a physician anymore if this actually comes to fruition like intended.
