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!
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Despite what you think, this is NOT one of those Magic Eye images.
Label comps can tend to be difficult to think about when you're trying to take a single album for what it is. They're inherently flawed by the number of artists they represent and how frequent that pendulum can swing from great to no care ever. I remember in high school being stoked when I'd see a new Victory Records compilation come out. I'd read the track list and think "rad, EC, Strife, and Integrity on the same CD!" only to completely miss over the Cast Iron Hike, Baby Gopal, and Hi Fi and the Roadburners' of the world filling out the rest of the album.
Of course the whole point of a label comp is exactly the point I'm bemoaning. They're not supposed to showcase a single sound (unless that's what the label does). The whole point is to give a diverse look in a label's roster in a convenient, easy to digest jewel case.
The sound of raining in the dark.
With that in mind 5 Years of Hyperdub more or less falls in line with my expectations. I jock, and have bought plenty of stuff on Hyperdub but the fact still remains. They press such a diverse sound when it comes to bass music that there will always be an equal amount of stuff that I love and that I can do without.
The opening track Meltdown sounds exactly like Seattle, raining at 2 AM. A bit dreary, completely solitary but still comforting. Mala's tune Level Nine was an unexpected yet welcome addition. Though really when isn't Mala welcome? I want to say that I found it odd that he was included here since he's never released on Hyperdub but I guess Flying Lotus and Martyn haven't either so that throws that out the window.
For much of this album I found myself thinking that the album was good but not always my cup of tea and I shouldn't have been unexpected. This is just one of those labels that gets the credit they deserve, but finds me on the outside looking in most of the time.
This album reminded me of what I like about psytrance. Good, fast music that's just spooky enough, but not so much that you think you're in a acid drenched haunted house. It's without a doubt full of the trappings that make full-on what it is. 1/16th note bassline, obscure samples ripped from sci fi, squeaky organic blipping sounds, builds on top of builds, it's all here. Maybe if I had been listening to more of this recently (we'll see where I'm at later in the project) I wouldn't have been as receptive to this album as I am know, but until I get to that point I'm happy to have spent the time to hear this one. After hitting Play and the hearing the album immediately launch in to a breakneck speed I couldn't help but give a little bit of a stomp up.
As psytrance albums tend to go with me I did start feeling a bit fatigued towards the end. However the closing track of this album really made me want to tough it out.
This track is the barometer by which all other uses of samples will be judged.
Part of me feels like if this track hadn't been at the end of the album I might have tuned it out however finishing with it has imprinted this tune in my mind forever. The track isn't all that different from most else on the album EXCEPT for the samples they use. In the course of this track you get...
Fighter pilot radio chatter
Obligitory drug talk sample
A wolf baying at the moon that only hits at the start of a phrase and I laugh my ass off every time I hear it.
I don't know if I can say if they're particularly effective samples (ok except the wolf, that was worth the price of admission alone) but the fact that they crammed all that in one track made me a happy camer.
6/10 on the album art. Could be better, but without question could be worse.
This, to put it mildly was a rough one and I really wasn't expecting that. I could have sworn Ticon put out an album I really enjoyed, and enjoyed enough to see them live and party my ass off. I can only assume now that either a) my tastes have drastically changed or b) this isn't the album I'm thinking of.
Despite being tagged as psytrance this is more progressive than anything. Progressive doesn't always have to equal unenjoyable but this particular album is progressive through the lens of Brittish New Wave. Every track has a very 80s vibe but to a 4/4 trance beat, and I'm sure that will garner them some fans but I can't count myself among them.
The album starts out with a track appropriately titled 1987, and not too surprisingly that's exactly what it sounds like. Clocking in at 8:30 the tune is wall to wall awful 80s retro synths backed by a thumping bassline. I badly wanted to skip to the next track but, as I found out later, I wouldn't find any solace. The rest of the album is pretty much a carbon copy of the opening track. Awful, awful synths, tracks run too long and me sitting idly by hoping for the end.
My least favorite song I've heard this year.
I can say without a doubt I've no reason to ever come back to this album and I'm hoping beyond belief that I actually run across another Tycon album that I do remember liking.
What do you have to do to get an entire remix album to yourself?
I started this album moments before stepping on the bus this morning and knowing what I know about Kindzadza and his brand of dark-psy I was worried. There's a reason this style of psytrance is coined trauma trance so I could only hope that I could keep it together long enough to disembark at my stop before having a complete mental freakout.
This isn't from the album but no kidding I must have dozens of albums that sound like this.
Oddly enough no mental freakouts happened and by the time I finished the album I have to say, I didn't completely hate it. Sure a lot of the music on the CD is pretty one note (that note being 150 BPM, balls to the wall, blow your mind into parallel dimensions psytrance) but maybe it's because these are collaborations with other producers but things never got completely out of hand. Sure the tunes were still hard, and still entirely too long for the most part but at 9 AM when I'm trying to get my body and mind ready to work this may have been what the doctor ordered. Granted, I don't think I'll be making any habits of throwing on Kindzadza in the morning (I have death metal for that) but for this one listen not only did I make it through the whole album but I really liked parts of it.
And seriously, what's the deal with psytrance songs just ending. Psytrance producers don't like winding things back down. It's just eight minutes on a sonic roller coaster and then a brick wall. Maybe that's the point?
Here we go, psytrance album number one, a remix album of a bunch of 1200 Micrograms tracks. I don't know a whole lot about 1200 Micrograms except that they wrote this huge tune that sampled Money for Nothing and Raja Ram is counted among their ranks.
Yep, that's the one. I can't believe they cleared that sample.
So yeah they make big room psytrance. I'm really not sure what to say about this album. All these remixes are of tracks with either a) countries or b) drugs for names. That might be all I take away from this listening. Considering how big some of the originals are I was a bit surprised at how bored I was with this album. Nothing really picked me up and smacked me around and forced me to pay attention.
I love, love LOVE dub and reggae music. I don't know when I discovered this (I'm pretty sure the roots reggae station on di.fm is partially responsible) but if there's one truth in this world it's that there's always a good time for reggae. Feeling down? Put some Culture on. Feeling up? Spin some Abyssinians. Either situation ends up with awesome. I'll sit at work some days, queue up a half dozen King Tubby albums and get cracking.
The ironic part (ok maybe it's not irony) is that despite how highly I rate King Tubby I couldn't name more than two of any of his tunes and I DEFINITELY couldn't tell you what album any single tune came from. I suppose in a way that's cool since it give all of his music a timeless vibe to it but at the same time I've never been able to really take more away from his music than "this is great and am always game to listen to it." I'm pretty sure the only song of his I can pinpoint is Rasta Locks and it's only because of the trumpet he samples, and to this day I still don't know where it's originally from.
Love that trumpet, don't know the player. :(
That all being said this, like everything else King Tubby did is great. If you're a fan of Jamaican music at all and haven't dipped in to his massive discography I can't recommend him enough. Just don't expect to be able to answer when someone asks "hey what was the name of that track?"
One of the first bands to get me listening to death metal and still to this day one of the heaviest. Bolt Thrower have been around for-ever and play no bullshit straight up death metal. They stand as one of those rare bands that has a sound that they excel in. They've been doing that sound since the beginning and they'll be doing it until the bitter end.
What makes their sound stand out a bit is a combination of a) every instrument being right around the same pitch b) bass and guitar leads are almost always the exact same and c) Martin Kearnes' particular style of drumming. Instead of the balls to the wall, 4 minutes of blast beats and shredding Bolt Thrower takes a slightly slower, low slung, groove oriented approach. Their songwrighting is validated by the fact that almost every song on almost every album they've ever written is neck-breakingly killer.
(If this opening riff doesn't get you then you're probably dead.)
While listening to this album on my way to work today I realized something. Bolt Thrower has been doing Amon Amarth since before Amon Amarth was. Honestly, listen to ...For Victory and then listen to ANY Amon Amarth album (pick one, any one) and tell me they're not similar. Swap out Bolt Thrower's lyrics about the Civil War, World War I and the like, replace them with goofy lyrics about being a Viking and you've got Viking Metal.
...For Victory stands out to me as one of Both Thrower's better albums though this can be difficult to substantiate since they can tend to be pretty similar. I'm not sure when the next one will come up, but I can guarantee I'll launch in to three paragraphs about how BT are the true Viking Metal forefathers (and foremother).
Part of me wishes they all had swords in this picture.
I'd be hard pressed to find a better album to start this all off with. I first heard of Finsterforst right after their 2007 debut album, Weltencraft. Finsterforst has the distinction of being the band that convinced me that Folk Metal Can Be Awesome Too. The reason for the change of heart?
Cause they have an accordion player in their ranks. That's why. Countless metal bands try to include "non-metal" instruments with varying degrees of success. Pagan/folk metal bands are especially guilty of this but is one of those rare moments Finsterforst not only manage to blend the accordion in to their songs perfectly but manage to slay tune in tune out.
...Zum Tode Hin without question is an extension of what they did on their full length album from a couple years before so if this were a lesser band I could accuse the album of being same-y. But fuck it, Weltencraft is still a favorite of mine and I want more damn it. There's not a song on this album that clocks in under 10 minutes (the longest being over 21) but Finsterforst have a knack for changing up speeds on a regular basis so songs never feel like they run on too long.
There's a lot to this album that I'm skipping for the sake of brevity. Maybe once I get better at this writing thing I can look back and this and say "oh first entry, why can't you be more like entry #775."
Right after the first of the year I decided that it could be interesting to listen to my entire music collection, album by album, and write a little bit on each one. My \Music directory is currently at 110 GB which puts me right around 109,000 songs. Hence this blog's name. Despite the fact that I rate (almost) every artist in my collection I'd be a liar if I said that I've listened to all of the music I'm storing so therefore aim to fix that.
The Rules!
- I'm organizing my library by Album title, starting at A and working my way down. I was going to do this by Artist but realized I don't want the inevitable "Bathory Week" when I get to the Bs and end up face to face with their discography.
- Each time I finish an album I'll post a bit about it. Impressions, thoughts and so on. I'm not really interested in writing mini reviews for each album but I'm sure some of them will turn out that way.
- For the most part I'm skipping EPs and singles. Chances are that I've already listened to all of these so there's no need to rehash these later. This isn't a hard and fast rule but I'm reserving the right to make judgement calls here.
- I have what I could consider a fairly sizable collection of psytrance. I'm going to make a best effort here but don't be surprised if I start skipping over these because listening to all that psytrance can't be good for a person.
- When I get a new album it will almost definitely pop immediately next in line for listening. Thems the breaks.
The first couple reviews should be up shortly. But for now that's it! Oh and for now this is page should be considered pretty temporary. I want to move this to a domain of my own but haven't had the time yet.
