More like this?

more like this?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=KCyA1KdPQ1I
youtube.com/watch?v=4f3d5ZdE4vY
youtube.com/watch?v=AWEpzs_Birk
verandaliv.bandcamp.com/
paintedfruit.bandcamp.com/album/pf-ii
youtube.com/watch?v=L3zjz6EpWQI&t=607s
youtube.com/watch?v=mACtVI7xCyc
corridormtl.bandcamp.com/album/supermercado
youtube.com/watch?v=-5_4XIYBKwE
desmoines.bandcamp.com/album/des-moines
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

You would like palm. But there's not much that reaches the height of this album. You might also like candy claws- sound of Ceres.

I got palm under my belt but anything with similar sound. It doesnt have to even be godly just decent.

couple of obvious influences;

youtube.com/watch?v=KCyA1KdPQ1I

youtube.com/watch?v=4f3d5ZdE4vY

frontman pat flegel's most recent project:
youtube.com/watch?v=AWEpzs_Birk

Hmmm its tough, I know they have a bunch of side projects but they don't really have that similar of a sound. Tbh ive been looking for stuff similar to this for ages and there's not much like it. What aspects of their sound are you looking for? The shoegazey drone, the lofi pop, the angular guitars, or the combination of all that?

my man. already have a good number of these bands in library. thank you for this.

lofi pop, and mostly angular guitars.
verandaliv.bandcamp.com/
these guys are pretty good. great live too.

check pic related (jock gang)
these guys also cop a similar sound, sorta like preoccupations
paintedfruit.bandcamp.com/album/pf-ii

what would you label this music under?

no-wave

indie rock

The "height" of this album is "China Steps", which is barely on the same level as an average track from Preoccupations. I've never seen such a grossly overrated album on this board.

@78450535

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You almost got me. Nobody is this retarded.

You have to be joking Public Strain is the best thing any of these groups have produced, nothing else they have is that consistent and well rounded

>melodies are flat
>drone elements lack depth or atmosphere
>vocals are grating, and lyrics are impossible to take seriously
>over-reliance on time signature fuckery, in a way that makes it obvious they're grasping for experimental credentials
It's a rough album.

>melodies are flat

I genuinely feel bad for you

wew lad

>melodies are flat
>vocals are grating
>drone elements lack depth or atmosphere

I was totally open to having a discussion with you about this album but...you have to be baiting, right? Or is your brain broken?

The opening track - "Can't You See" - is sort of the perfect example of the album's numerous problems when it comes to incorporating even basic songwriting components. It has a hard open on metallic droning that Neu! or This Heat might have incorporated on their self-titled albums all the way back in the '70s, has a bassline placidly thumping out an ascending melody that really doesn't match the tone of those sounds, and to top it off we're given a maudlin chant with high school poetry. It does everything it can to impress upon the listener that what they're experiencing is dark, brooding, ugly, and visceral; but it's tedious and meanders to the point where the sound design (which I genuinely love) begins boring me to tears very quickly. They waste the good elements by trying to branch out to other areas. The ugly droning had potential, but they drown that out with Syd Barrett chord progressions/vocals in attempt to do something a little more than just drone. "Heat Distraction" follows that up with one of the most annoying attempts at a 7-beat measure I've ever heard. It's jarring how wrong it all is.

Telstar Drugs
youtube.com/watch?v=L3zjz6EpWQI&t=607s

Hellier Ulysses
youtube.com/watch?v=mACtVI7xCyc

pretty clear that its bait

looks like nobody can refute this.

I'm not joking. Every time people compliment this album, it's always a series of platitudes about how it sounds so unique. But the songs are written clumsily and performed as if all the members have overdosed on ambien. Sharp, spry guitar riffs are played with all of the passion of an asexual man being forced to copulate for reproductive reasons. The drums feel like a funeral march dirge in every track; that's appropriate for a song like "Penal Colony" (which has its own problems in terms of melody and harmonising), but on nearly every other track there's the impression of a bored man banging out beats because he's been ordered to. "Drag Open", in the hands of any other band (including Viet Cong/Preoccupations) would be a brutal experience. But this album manages to make it flat and dull. I can't possibly reconcile that with the album being "dreary" or "miserable", as a lot of people have told me, because it's not an excuse for performing in a fundamentally counter-productive way.

>all the passion of an asexual man being forced to copulate for reproductive reasons

I thought you wanted people to seriously consider your argument...?

this

thank you! i've been scouting for this /chart/ forever

>I can't handle somebody using a silly analogy to express his feelings for an album he dislikes
You aren't even trying to refute the shit I'm saying. The fundamental problem is the album lacks passion even when it direly NEEDS it. It would be like Silence Yourself being lifeless the entire time. It's an inappropriate use of style.

this is the most tryhard review ive read

and yet you still cant refute any of his points.

I pieced it together in the span of about 3 to 4 minutes after listening to the track (as well as the album in general, I've been listening to it again recently) and just simply posted the problems I have with it. "China Steps" is excellent and shows some really great things for what they would have in store, but it's an anomaly.

what points? it reads like he listened to it once and given the task of "write about this as if you don't like it"

"owwieeee its BORING and it hurts my ears :((("

not that it matters anyway, as if the opinion wasnt immediately discarded after the suggestion that preoccupations wrote anything half as good

I've listened to it several times over, and ascertaining why something is bad requires subjective perspective. Writing your thoughts about the merits and faults of an album from a robotic, pseudo-objective framing like Pitchfork would do is disingenuous and every bit as lifeless as this album is.

The problem isn't that it's just boring, the problem is that it has nothing substantial to offer in the way of layering, songwriting, melody, timbre, or utilising its impressive sound design towards a greater creative whole. Boring, slow, deliberate songs can be good if well-crafted, and if they offer something challenging. But there's fundamentally nothing challenging here. They're TRYING to be challenging by switching between time signatures, and by incorporating lots of noise. But there's no intrigue, and at no point do I feel like I'm being pushed back in a confrontational way. It's the worst type of album in that it is neither entertaining nor is it intellectually stimulating. The songs are predictable in the way pop songs are, and they don't even have melodic strength of emotional performances to make me care about how little is going on.

And everything on Viet Cong is far better than this piece of shit. Preoccupations is worse than Viet Cong, but it mostly still rises above Public Strain because they started focusing their ideas about sound design and became much better at writing melodies between then and now.

>it has nothing substantial to offer in the way of layering, songwriting, melody, timbre, or utilising its impressive sound design towards a greater creative whole

just wrong. and that you'd not feel the same about viet cong is just baffling

>They're TRYING to be challenging by switching between time signatures, and by incorporating lots of noise

this is just a bizarre criticism seeing as the album is hardly noisy and barely contains that many shocking time signatures / switches. Pretty sure most of it is in 4/4. If anything one of their most obvious strengths is how much they hold back on flexing, especially compared to their self titled album. And when they do go all out, it never feels like a pointless headfuck. Heat Distraction is the perfect disturbance to follow the simplicity of Can't You See.

>The songs are predictable in the way pop songs are

woah its almost like they write pop songs

>And everything on Viet Cong is far better than this piece of shit. Preoccupations is worse than Viet Cong,

yeah i preferred them when they were babbies first This Heat rather than vanilla Joy Division too lol

This Heat

>just wrong. and that you'd not feel the same about viet cong is just baffling
Through and through that album takes those people's previous concepts of sound design and applies better sense of layering and timbre to them. "Pointless Experience" is one of the more obvious examples, because it incorporates tape loops and a syncopated drum beat that actually compliment the vocals and guitar work in a way that makes it a colorful amalgamation of ideas instead of a singular tedious one being repeated with plugged-in elements added in a bid for variety. Everything is fused in a cohesive way that makes the elements of Public Strain seem strewn about and confused.

>this is just a bizarre criticism seeing as the album is hardly noisy and barely contains that many shocking time signatures / switches. Pretty sure most of it is in 4/4. If anything one of their most obvious strengths is how much they hold back on flexing, especially compared to their self titled album. And when they do go all out, it never feels like a pointless headfuck. Heat Distraction is the perfect disturbance to follow the simplicity of Can't You See.
I didn't say LOUD, I said NOISY. It has lots of noise. Tape loops, synths, and sound design flourishes that constantly give it a scratchy, screechy sound. This is easily understood as noisy in the context of it being there to provide texture. And the problem is that there are certain songs on the album that rely on those time signature shifts, as if that provides experimental or challenging elements in themselves. Most of the album is in 4/4, but pay attention to the songs that aren't. They're hard looped, performed awkwardly, and the shifts from section to section are unruly in a way that doesn't at all match the mannered tone of the album. "Heat Distraction" is complexity for the sake of it, the way so many hackneyed math and prog bands thought it made them seem more intellectual by merely being complex. These guys aren't Battles, or Hella.

>woah its almost like they write pop songs
This isn't a pop album though (or at least it isn't understood as a pop album by the vast majority of people who listen to it), and this seems like a lazy fallback for simplistic songwriting. But this type of songwriting generally only works in environments where a strong emphasis is placed on melody, energy, and timbre. Those elements aren't focused on, and everything is blended and flattened until it's a bland, uniformly structured paste, like flavourless flan produced in a factory and shipped out to people without anybody telling them it lacks taste or aesthetic flair.

>yeah i preferred them when they were babbies first This Heat rather than vanilla Joy Division too lol
What does that even mean? Public Strain is babby's first This Heat.

...

And instead of shitting on Public Strain some more I'll just link an album like it that I really love.

corridormtl.bandcamp.com/album/supermercado

youtube.com/watch?v=-5_4XIYBKwE

It's a noisy album yes but not confrontational enough for one to assume that it's noisy for noises sake. I would just outright disagree that heat distraction is complex for the sake of it. It does sound janky and awkward, but certainly not in a bad, forced, way. I don't think they have any interest in sounding like battles or hella. The meaningless wank of a lot of prog/math is something I loathe also, I just don't hear it in Women.

>and this seems like a lazy fallback for simplistic songwriting

are we listening to the same album? Untogether, Drag Open, Locust Valley, Eyesore? Lazy / simplistic songwriting?

>What does that even mean? Public Strain is babby's first This Heat.

public strain isnt even remotely similar except in that they incorporate drones and odd time signatures

viet cong just takes Deceit and presents it in an easier to digest way. March of Progress borders on plagiarism. The frontman himself literally said he was "aping" This Heat. I like viet cong's music btw but their music doesn't come across as nearly as laboured over as Women's

saw them in montreal couple weeks back. really great players.

I have no idea how you can think that Public Strain is uninteresting, it's so deliciously subtle with the influences and ideas it wants to approach, it has so many gentle melodic turns to keep anyone happy.

that's literally why it's good
>I paid to go to music school and I'm mad that everyone hasn't had the same standards forced on them
OK
>they opt to deconstruct tropes in a hazy ambiguous way instead of sounding like the ACME Math Rock i think is good
ok
this album isn't for nerds that fawn over the "specificity, control, and detail" acquired through menial detail-worship in the studio. sorry it wasn't made to please your sub-par sensibilities.

desmoines.bandcamp.com/album/des-moines

I don't really bring up Battles or Hella because I think they're trying to sound like those bands specifically, but because I think those bands fuck around with time in a much stronger way. This flags on the seventh beat, which is the most important beat in a 7/4, and rushes past the finish line as if it's something they needed to attain for the song to work or be taken seriously. Then later when they fit in the 5/4, it feels abrupt and nonsensical. These are the things that make me think they're doing different time signatures not because it's coming naturally to them or they think the song would only work with it, but because it's jarring and that somehow gives them artistic brownie points. Rarely does a band using an odd signature make me pause and question their motives, but like with a band I was in during high school, I detect a forced implementation of it.

I didn't call the songwriting lazy by the way, just simple. I said that calling these songs pop is a lazy excuse for the songwriting. "Untogether" and "Drag Open" are absolutely simplistic, by the way. They cycle the same way pop songs do and feature bare instrumentation or harmonising. I don't think that's bad, but the problem is there's not much to it all. And that's a good chunk of the album: repetitive, simple melodies and droning elements. And then you have sharp contrasts that go directly into top-heavy, over-complicated shit.

I'll definitely give you "March of Progress" (it's very similar to "Paper Hats" in parts), but those close vocal harmonies, octave-jumping basslines, spidery guitars, and droning noises are all over Public Strain. If Viet Cong is the result of This Heat, then Public Strain definitely is too. And generally even something like "March of Progress" has large sections that don't really sound like This Heat. Its just that middle section with the arpeggiated guitar and close vocal harmony. The other two parts are very different.

>>I paid to go to music school and I'm mad that everyone hasn't had the same standards forced on them
This is projection.

>>they opt to deconstruct tropes in a hazy ambiguous way instead of sounding like the ACME Math Rock i think is good
This is even more projection. Refute my actual points like the other person is doing (who I respect, because he/she is explaining their position in a very compelling way), or I'll just ignore you.

you don't have any points. this isn't an argument. you're doing the anthony fantano adjective-vomit style of music description and adding "that's why it's bad... uhhh i don't like it"
I'm not going to read your post about time signatures as a drummer who doesn't pay attention to that kind of dumb stuff :)

Examining the core components of music is not an exercise of overusing adjectives. This is basic shit that people have used to promote or degrade music since the idea of criticism in music began. If jazz focuses on emotional expression and experimentation but fails at evoking a visceral response or in challenging the listener, then it can be considered to have failed in its goal. This is part of music theory.

How did they make the guitar sound of the opening track?

Is it even a guitar?

adding words on top of music is linguistics for the sake of linguistics, don't delude yourself with the idea that there's a direct connection between music theory and sound lmao. music criticism is a hack profession for failed artists.

It's a little hard to say, but like with "Negativland" it sounds like they might be feeding a guitar through an amp with a distortion pedal, and then further distorting it in post with a tape. It's just a lot of feedback crafted in a particular way.

>look at all my adjectives
your "voice" is dreck. get strunk/white or get fucked.

>this mad

>he knows a maximum of 50 words

bump

i dont want to refute his point nor do i need to

This was fucking sick

This deteriorated super hard into poo poo

...

Chad VanGaalen

...

Bump

Imagine the state of the pathetic virgin who can't see how beautiful the album is. Sad!

new Cindy Lee when

man i try to be as open-minded as possible when it comes to other people's opinions on music but you have genuinely awful taste

jesus.stunningly awful opinion.

Can't You See is one of my favourite songs of all time