ITT: Post an album you don't understand, but you want to understand, and other people point out great things about it

ITT: Post an album you don't understand, but you want to understand, and other people point out great things about it.

Other urls found in this thread:

pitchfork.com/thepitch/822-inside-the-recording-sessions-for-sufjan-stevens-illinois/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

First off, what don't you like about it?

just listen to it a couple times at the loudest volume you can

Took 2 years to make and the band jumped from studio to studio trying to get everything just right. They went into massive debt to make their album a masterpiece.

>Trout mask replica
I actually really like this album but I'd like to know more about why it's so special.

kevin did everything. there was almost no collaboration with the other 3

I just don't want to listen to it as much as I want to listen to Channel Orange.

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lol i was just about to make a thread for this

what am i missing? it's repetitive as fuck

>Want to understand

Oh fuck off. If you don't like it it's not for you. Stop trying to force yourself to like shit to fit in.

This album is sound focused, just plug your headphones and set trebles and bass at max (in whatever player you have) and it will blow your mind

I have to be angry to listen to the Swans. They are my go to angry band.

Maybe people would prefer to like things as opposed to not like things?

a real fucking challenge

show me the light user

this. this album is a 6/10 for me. nothing special.

imagine being an alien who is perfectly disguised as a human and is always lonely
also you have anxiety and fall in love with everyone but nobody likes you

Or maybe, some stuff isn't for you and trying to like everything makes you lose all taste.

You can still appreciate the talent and creativity in an album without liking it, as most musicians do. Just flat out "liking" everything just means you're a tasteless idiot. Stop trying to justify trying to be a poseur

>I had never seen a shooting star..

this kind of response is my favorite kind of response

ok i'm being me
now what

Saved for a cringe thread

>25 years of rotations...

lol same thoughts

Yeah I don't get this either

Please... I like all of his other albums but I just can't get into this one. I tried listening to it on and off but nothing's changed

Same here.

amnesiac crushes kid a, in my opinion.

thank god they weren't released as a double album

It took me a long time to get this. I feel like once you can understand To Here Knows When you can understand the album as a whole.
Imagine the repetition as being good. Idk, I got this the first time I listened to it back when I listened to nothing but Radiohead.
be a sadboi

taking anything away from it would make it worse and adding anything to it would diminish it

I appreciate hollindagain a little and definitely HTCI but I need major redpilling on DM

He took every style of American music he could think of and brought it into one album. By today's standards its transitions are awkward, but for its day it was super unique and well-done. Enjoying this album is about individual moments, like the super melodic lyrics in Palm Desert, the "I left academia amid sixty-two" in Public Domain, and my favorite part of the album, the military march near the end of The All Golden.

The fact that people unironically beg others to help them "like" an album shows the sad state of mu now

oh, you mean being a teenager?

you get over it

It was so much better when we just hated everything

Some people understand albums better and others ask for advice & knowledge

It's kind of just comfy. It's a good album to curl up in a ball in your bed and cry like a faggot.

Ever had a panic attack brought on by anxiety? The weak tired feeling after that - this album is like a soundtrack to that feeling, with the odd exception of course.

>unironically beg

"Hey anons, I know this album is enjoyed by a lot of my peers, users on this board, and music critics, but I just don't like it very much. Am I missing something? Can you explain what's so great about it? Maybe your explanation will show me why I don't like it, or will make me see the album in a new light."

This is how I understand the thread. There is no begging being done, just the intention of intelligent discussion.

Shifting your reference frame for judging an album can be tough, and sometimes the style of music as a whole needs to be explained. After all, judging a post-rock album from the frame of hip-hop would lead to a misunderstanding.

I fucking hated this crap, why do people think of this as a masterpiece?

no. u r wrong. you need flat frequency everything and loud as possible without changing the flatness

its a wolf. dog, it rocks. also try to be kind or the glowing man. try it all in one sitting. as a matter of fact. I couldn't get into swnas 2.0 until to be kind dropped. I couldn't get through the album like 3 times in a row until I realized how perfect "screen shot" is. "screen shot" is the access point of swans 2.0 it is the closest to a short accessible version of what they do jesus and once you get that down theres so much to explore.

This is the opposite for me, this is his only album I like.

really? ideoteque and everything in its right place just move me, make me melt and rage at the same time. nothing sounds calm or depressive to me

The lyricism and performance are very impressive. It's also got a timely message, if that's what you're into.

bc they r cucks.
desu.
castrated cucks.

carseatheadrest is like tumblr the album,

tpab is like tumblr the album the movie. oh my fucking god I can't stand this like "elevated" hip hop shit what the actual fuck it sounds so gaudy. THIS DICK AINT FAREEE. people listen to this shit?

>Hey guys! I don't like this album but I am desperate to fit in and be a generic Sup Forumstant, and also bought into a meme of "patrician good" that was pushed as a joke by a tripfag. So, please give me worded opinions that will change my taste somehow, and will magically alter my predetermined tastes to where I can like the album now!

I have to leave mu, this place isn't for independent taste makers anymore but a literal hivemind

>Inb4

No, you cannot magically change your your tastes off some shitty opinion or "perspective". Claim you do and you're a hopeless poseur I never want to talk with about subjective music taste again. You can appreciate the artistry of an album without having to manically alter your unique taste to like it. Jfc you guys, wow this is pathetic.

personally, i strongly prefer good kid maad city, but this shows how much of a boundary breaker kendrick really is; he combines so many genres, so many rythms, so many points of view in a single album, that everything makes sense once you really start listening to what is said.

I'm not a master of explanations but first of all it was part of his ambitious half-seriously planned "50 state albums" project after Michigan

For me, it's looking at Illinois through a musical windowpane. I learn about a lot of history of the state through creative songwriting from lots of perspectives. It's also really amazing that Suf orchestrated all of this from just ideas in his head (see article below) with the musical aid of musicians he got together. Definitely a lot more grand of a scale than his previous albums

pitchfork.com/thepitch/822-inside-the-recording-sessions-for-sufjan-stevens-illinois/

It's also an incredibly varied album, and he had thoughts of making it a double-album too (which he later released the rest as The Avalanche). Personally very relistenable because of the length and track uniqueness

But I haven't listened to his stuff much pre-Illinois

It's a gorgeous album that continues Spirit They're Gone's magical aesthetic while removing almost all of the pop sensibilities. The album is really centered around textures, beautiful sounds, and tension, and for that reason I'd strongly recommend listening to it in bed with your eyes closed. The beauty of the music is always rippling beneath the surface, and I tend to picture underwater imagery when I enjoy it.

I think RYM circlejerking might be more (you)'re speed buddy

This is a place for kind people who enjoy sharing music.

You do realize 90% of mu core overlaps with rym core right?

Not that I use that site. Its even worse

have you tried reddit then?

I'm running out of options of place for huge pricks

holy fucking shit

Idioteque was the "odd exception" for me.

That's weird, I always thought of EIIRP as more of a calming song.

so why did he attribute "his magic band"?

this is pretty funny. kid a is a album for the people who think they have depression, but are just whiny pussies.

>prick

Then you will turn around and justify flavor of the month mu fanaticism over shit like classical as having "standards"

This place is a joke,
>"Guise give me four sentences that will alter my brain chemistry and allow for me to magically like stuff I don't like"
>That's retarded
>Stop being such a prick many cX

Better subject matter than CO

>This place is a joke
And yet you still shitpost here

Also, I know of plenty of instances of people changing their mind about an album due to a new perspective or additional context

please do this. Getting really high helps a lot too. Most importantly, listen to it on max volume. It needs to be extremely loud that your ears hurt.

just keep listening man I literally do everyday and can't get enough

?

Kek

Too bare imho fambam

thanks pal I'll try at home sometime

It's actually Madlib wearing the mask.

Not sure if you were around in 2011 when it came out, but it was a huge change of pace

This is the guy who was releasing bloops EP after EP and suddenly he had a voice and pretty much coined "post-dubstep"

It's a more minimal album, has to be heard on headphones

s/t set the standard for each of his successing albums

Not memeing

I've listened to it all the way through twice. I have a couple friends who love it. But I can't fucking stand this album.

Yeezus was cool tho

Listen with good quality speakers/headphones. When I played this in my car on CD, I was surprised how much wub I missed with earphones. It has minimal dubstep influence, but mainly singer/songwriter style. Some of it relies on the beat and time signature and what he throws in.
Try to listen to each instrument/note/element he adds as the song progresses, if that makes sense.
I wish I could listen to I Never Learnt to Share for the first time again.

I consider myself a Zappa fan, too, but I really dunno how to approach this monstrosity.

noted. not sure if you're familiar headphones but i got a pair of bose qc25 somewhere that ill give it a listen on

think of it as a storybook when listening, which it basically is. don't take it too seriously, but it's not completely void of seriousness. focus on everything behind the vocals from time to time. he uses samples on that album pretty damn well. i feel like he accidentally made a masterpiece with this. it's like when people understand art, without learning much about art. it's pretty raw lyrically, but in such modern language and his music reflects the concepts of the songs.

its kind of a visual album, where it leaves certain images in your heads. Whole thing makes me think of a haunted swamp/forest. ITs by no stretch their best album, but it is good although it takes alot of time to grow compared to their other albums

ah, so i have to be a faggot with self-importance issues to get it. pass

why is everyone on this board so gay and sad all the time, like fuck

Because depression affects a larger portion of people who post on Sup Forums?

Anything by Aphex Twin or Autechre.

Most of the stuff in pic doesn't have the nuances found in most western art music, nor does it have any sort of otherwise unconventional nuance to it either (like for example...Stockhausen's total serialism on Kontakte.) Most of it is pretty poppy sounding, relatively uninteresting (compared to its peers) piano stuff.

Is there something I am missing here?

This album has very simple conventional songwriting on it so the listener can focus on the two main things that make it work, the production and the overtones. The studio production done on this album is absurd to the extent where I think its large group of record engineers are just as responsible for the genius as Shields himself is. There's all sorts of weird stuff like sampling a BBC interview and making a bassline out of that, and this weird feeling where it feels like the music is moving around in the space even though it's not actually moving melodically nor harmonically. Each track has a very different kind of mixing done to it. As for the overtones (the tones that exist from an instrument as sort of an after effect of playing something on it), the guitars are raw as fuck for that very purpose, but to be able to hear them more clearly, like everyone else said, raise the volume to the highest you possibly can. Having a relatively high volume is imperative for music that relies on overtones like Glenn Branca, Swans, Sonic Youth, and MBV.

Read up on its history and influence on shit like wikipedia and the Beefheart fansite. Personally I love how the record actually has straightforward song structures so none of it ever feels like pointless wank as it's all part of actual songwriting. The same can't be said for Zappa, prog, and experimental rock which often takes pointless detours.

Play it loud, pay attention to every single little sound that comes in, and the illusion of sounds that sometimes forms cuz overtones plus the combo of sounds being used.

Continued in next post

You just named like three possible genres of music so you're gonna have to narrow it down a little

Alright, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and Tri Repetae

It's a comfy record with a lot going on in it at once. Would recommend repeated listens if you're not used to having to actively listen to music to find subtleties like say...stuff by Beatles. While all the tracks are cohesive in its "Aphex Twin meets Can" brand of downtempo, there's a lot of variety like the first things whether it's the "downtempo with singing" Bjork+Radiohead thing going on in the opening track, the constant entering of free jazz improvisations on The National Anthem, Treefingers' complete total legit almost dark ambient feel, Idioteque's techno dance track that somehow manages to work a 5/4 beat instead of the standard 4/4, etc.

Okay, lets forget the lyrics. The record without the lyrics still sounds very cohesive with how one track goes into the next. Kendrick's flow is very technical, incorporating a wide variety of rhythms which allows for very interesting rhythmic interplay between backing production that goes from funk to free jazz to more typical modern hip hop. Kendrick's delivery on this record changes as well (ex. the screams, fluctuations, and crying on the track "u"). There are even a couple jazzy sound collages that serve as interludes on this. It's all a lot to take in being very polyrhythmic and sometimes even polyphonic on the jazzier tracks as a result.

There's the obvious wordplay from DOOM. Madlib messes a lot with the song structure (most obvious being the song that's part of Accordion and Meat Grinder), adds a lot of interesting timbres relative to hip hop, and has a very organic approach to how it's all put together (it's J Dilla's "live" approach rather than the more strict clinical approach one usually does when working with a sampler.) To go with all this, DOOM's rhyme patterns are not standard at all. Where he starts a measure vs when Madlib starts a measure are often in two different spots, allowing for a unique kind of rhythmic interaction.

>Selected Ambient Works 85-92
The interesting parts are in the actual synth work and the beautiful melodies and atmospheres he creates. The beats are just sort of in addition to all that.

The style has sort of been done to death since its release so it sounds a little dated and generic but SAW 85-92 holds up on the strength of its songwriting imo. Richard could write some nice goddamn ambient music.

>Tri Repetae
Oh boy. Autechre are one of my favorite groups and I think this album gets unfairly hailed by Pitchfork and RYM and other sites as their best work when they've done so much more interesting music besides this (not that Tri Rep isn't still GOAT).

Autechre's first two albums are, much like SAW 85-92, for the most part made up of great ambient work with the beats becoming secondary to the melodies and atmosphere. Tri Repetae is where they started to experiment with the interesting glitchy production that defines their later work, but as a result they took the melancholy evocative soundscapes of Amber and went dark with it. The result is an album that's almost industrial with how mechanical and cold it is - which is precisely the point. People often criticize it or find it hard to get into for that reason but I like it.

I do think it suffers a little because it sort of straddles a middle ground between their two halves. If you want something more ambient go one album back to Amber and if you want something with more crunchy beats go one album forwards to Chiastic Slide.

Also - try listening to Global Communication's album 76:14, which is ambient techno just like those two. If you don't like that either then maybe you should put it all down and come back to it at some point in the future. I definitely think Autechre in particular is a band that takes a little more than the average band to appreciate and there's no shame in admitting that you're not really feeling a particular style or genre.

It's by far Kanye's most cohesive record. Yet despite that, each track is so different from each other. Each track is mixed/mastered very differently, giving them their own unique feel. Each track is also nowhere near as straightforward as anything else he has every made, usually a shift in structure somewhere in between. There's always so much going on in each track here compared to stuff like Yeezus or TLOP which are far more sparse. It's Kanye's Pet Sounds whereas Yeezus is more his Smiley Smile.

Do one side at a time. This is an old school double album, and meant to be taken in as one. It was made in a time period where it wasn't uncommon for someone to go through side 1 of a double album, go have lunch or something, THEN get to side 2.

I guess I just don't understand the meaning behind it, or the concept, or then how those relate to the way the album sounds.

???

Leave if you don't like it. Believe me there's nothing to be missed. This board is mostly about stroking egos anyway.

Channel Orange anyone? I just started to listen to Ocean and I listened to all of blonde and it really clicked. But I really don't understand Channel Orange..what is the message to it? Is it something I'm missing?

Thanks famalam ill try again

Or Aphex Twin in general. I mean I like a few of his songs but for me he just mostly produces sub-par electronic beats with not much depth. I can get into stuff like Boards of Canada and OPN though. What am I not seeing?

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Don't worry about the meaning behind it, just close your eyes and listen to all of the sounds in the opening track. Let it wash over you and get really really into it so that that one high pitched sound that goes from the left to the right moves your entire world and it feels like Avey Tare is literally saving your life.
Now that you are wholly at peace and feel as though you have transcended into another plane of existence, enjoy the rest of the album, it's quite nice.

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i listen to white light from the mouth of infinity when i'm feeling elaborately angry

Satie is quite the meme. He was quite innovative in his time (like Debussy), but his "innovations" was composing extremely simplistic, by Romantic standards, music.

Basically, imagine that you are listening to Grimes.

It's just boring noise my dude. How do people listen to this in their daily lives?

found this in my sons room

this better be a fucking joke
cringe thread material

delet this

xD

fucking ancofags

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pretty shit desu