Number Thirteen: Armin van Buuren - A State of Trance #136, 137, 142, 145, 148, 149, 150 & 152

For the record these were each two hours long.  16 hours total.

16 hours.

Number Twelve: Younger Brother - A Flock of Beeps

I see this face in my nightmares.

So how about that?  I fully expected this to be more psytrance but what do ya know, it's not!  In fact what it turned out to be was another vehicle for brainchild Simon Posford's own brand of downtempo not completely unlike this other act of his that has undeniable similarities.  While this isn't completely dissimilar from Shpongle it's close enough that I have a hard time telling the difference.  

Downtempo really isn't my music.  I can get down to it for a little while but then tend to drift some.  This album did to a number of good things, chief among them switching things up often enough that I remained engaged, but it wasn't enough to pull me in completely.  Album wasn't bad, album wasn't great but I can't help but keep staring at the eyelashes on the cover art.  I keep looking at it like it's a staring contest.  Just blink already!

Number Eleven: Rostetta - A Determinism of Morality

Great album art.  Enough said. 

I'd hazard the guess that every music fan has that one artist who made that one album that is held to a standard higher than all else.  That one album that despite how many time you spin it never gets old, and yet no matter how quality their subsequent releases you'll judge everything they do to that absurdly fantastic album.  It's an unrealistic expectation to keep for any artist, but I had unquestionably fell in to that trap with Rosetta, thankfully though A Determinism of Reality broke me out.  

If you've never listened to Rosetta I'd have a hard time accurately pinpointing their sound.  Their earlier albums cribbed quite a bit from bands like Neurosis and Isis (and they'll admit as much) in their song writing and sludge-y undertones to the point that they were one of only a could bands you could really classify as space metal.  Their past couple albums though have them going in to more Explosions in the Sky territory.  I still think they're too sludge-y to be post rock, but too post-rock to be sludge so they're (as far as I'm concerned) out there in their own space.  

Of course the question now is "what broke me out of said trap?"  The best answer I can honestly manage is "I don't know, but I think a flip switched."  Rosetta has always inhabited a place for me as a sonically massive, deeply emotional band.  Rosetta's music is the sound of solitude amongst everything.  They've never been a band I can put on at the drop of a hat and start working or doing whatever, listening idly but when I'm in the mood for Rosetta I know I'm in the mood for Rosetta.  That  being said despite owning all their albums I continually come back to their first album, The Galilean Satellites, which is a hugely powerful album and possibly my favorite album of all time so that may skew my perception.  

I think what A Determinism of Morality may have done for me is detach my connection with Rosetta as Big Emotional Music Time music to more terrestrial Great Band I Love Listening To music.  This is still immensely powerful music, but I think I've found my place with.  I can sit down with A Determinism of Morality and get work done and I'm more excited than ever to go through their older albums again.  

Making a Judgement Call

A couple conclusions I've come to.

• I'm invariably going to skip some of these psytrance albums.  This isn't a quality judgement but I'm quickly realizing for the sheer magnitude of psytrance that I have there's a lot of it I just don't have much to say about.  In these cases I'm going to still post but label them has Just Another Psytrance Album.  I may have a sentence or two to say about any given release, but if you see that it means that I've just nothing to add.

• I had already decided that I was going to skip over the 40some hours of recordings from my radio show.  What I hadn't made up my mind up on was the studio mixes I've done.  I feel like I could write some things about them but in the end that's not why I started this project.  That being said I'm skipping the next two albums and moving straight to Rosetta - A Determinism Of Morality.  (Fan-fucking-tastic album BTW.)
  

Number Ten: Arsis - A Celebration of Guilt

Fucking FANTASTIC album art as always provided by Mark Riddick.

Alright now we're talkin'.  A favorite album by one of my favorite bands is always a good way to cleanse the pallet. A Celebration of Guilt was Arsis' debut album at to this day stands head and shoulders above everything else they've released.  

The opening song to end all opening songs.

A Celebration of Guilt is one of those albums that when someone puts together a Top 100 Death Metal Albums of All Time lists they are obliged to include.  Top to bottom the musicianship is unmatched.  Anchored by their lead guitarist, singer, and Berklee College of Music graduate James Malone A Celebration of Guilt is a lesson in how to do shred guitar properly.  I'm 99% sure that there's not a arpeggio that this man didn't like, and unlike the bulk of tech death guitarists I fully support him in this endeavor.  


The album rips in to a relentless pace that I want to compare to any amount of thrash albums, but doing so would cheapen how brilliantly these songs were written.  The Face of My Innocence is a perfect opening shot to let you know what to expect from the rest of the album.  It's 5:33 of intricate, blistering, riffs that are ultimately catchy as hell (without going in to riff salad territory).  This is also easily Arsis' most well produced album.  I mean, you can hear the bass guitar.  Post this album they spend years ignoring that.  


Arsis has gone through a few drummers since this album and while I appreciate the hell out of Mike Van Dyne's work here it has a hard time standing up to some of their later albums.  He's without question on the ball enough to keep up with the pace that the music sets, but really the only time he opens up and exhibits a style of his own is when he's working his cymbal.  This could be a symptom of the way the music is written. I could definitely see how it could be hard to find time to make yourself noticed as a drummer on most of these tracks but still, a solid fill now and again versus flat out speed would go a long way.  

Number Nine: Beethoven - 5 Piano Sonatas

I'm not 100% sure this is the cover art, but the shoe fits; we're wearing it.

As a self-admitted non-music critic/reviewer there's really nothing I can bring to the table that will bring you as a reader a deeper appriciation for Bethoven so I'm not going to try.  If you haven't listened to any of his compositions at this point in your life you either a) made a decision not to or b) have been procrastinating for way too long.  If you're part of the latter group I'd recommend this set as a good primer.  Beyond that though I don't have much to add. So instead of writing about the music itself I'm going to throw out a few random thoughts I had over the course of listening to this.

• Third grade was my first exposure to Bethoven.  When I would sit down and to homework my mom would put some on and amazingly enough I was able to focus and get my work done.  We eventually petitioned my school to allow me to do the same in class.  This made my classmates very jealous.  Not too surprisingly while listening to these albums at work it had the same effect.  Lesson learned is that sometimes what worked in elementary school works in adulthood.  

• One thing this listen did remind me of is how compressed as hell modern music is.  When you listen to classical it's almost striking the difference in volume between the loud and soft sections and that's exactly how it should be.  Now we listen to so much music where every instrument is just as loud as every other, where the interludes are just as loud as the peaks that it tires out the listeners ear.  I'm afraid it's probably too late for us to turn back from this trend but next time you get Listener Fatigue I'd suggest throwing some classical on. 

• I'm fairly confident when I say that if Beethoven was alive today he'd be a DJ List Top 100 DJ and vying for the title against Armen Van Buuren.  No joke this album had more drops than a blind man on rollerskates.  

Up Next!

Five CDs of Beethoven piano concertos!  Expect one post about these.  Not five.  :|