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Lamp, broken circa 1988

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Posts posted by Lamp, broken circa 1988

  1. What's funny is, I suspected that's why you nominated it and almost skipped it because of that, but I couldn't prove it and asking you to show your work would've given you an out and made me look bad. Instead you outed yourself after I gave you the benefit of the doubt for two hours. So, good job, you got me. Don't worry about submitting records anymore.

  2. Obligatory reminder that there's no guarantee I'm gonna write something positive about what you submit.

    1. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple
    2. "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol
    3. "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree
    4. "The End of Everything" by Noah Cyrus
    5. "Eons" by Neptunian Maximalism

    Googles of Neptunian Maximalism revealed a bunch of Belgians in dreadlocks calling themselves a Drone Metal Arkestra. The bandcamp describes the band as a community of "cultural engineers." I've never seen a band I'd be less surprised to learn that they are racists. also this thing is two hours so this is a really long review.

    Spoiler

    I can't get on an album's case for starting with a simple repetitive phase, since one of the best albums I've listened to in the last two years is a 90s record where the first 20 minutes are identical with occasional bursts of noise. It does mean I don't have a lot to write about for a few minutes though. Whenever this record drops off into doing jazz attempts, I'll also not have terribly much to say as I am not earth's greatest jazz appreciator aside from Charles Mingus. That intro was ok.

    This song really reminds me of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum with the driven 5 string bass over drums that are attempting to sound primitivist but give away too much technique in the application, betraying the conscious effort to sound simple. I wonder if they've been approached to do soundtrack work. I imagine a Samurai Jack episode sounding like this. This ends like the show's about to cut to commercial anyways.

    This is starting in a interesting way. It's unique in where it's placed in the album, as the last two tracks have been a lot of studio musicians pretending to get in tune with nature, where as this actually sounds like ominous weather. I suspect this band started as a drone metal band and then had this experience that I've found happens to a lot of metal musicians, where temporarily they wish they made afrobeat or jazz or calypso or something. Something less excessively white. Usually those musicians never act on this impulse except to talk about it while drinking and then go back to being in really boring metal bands. This band seems to have acted on their impulse to be Sun Ra, despite having actual talent at drone metal and its construction. Beats having regrets, I guess.

    Ok now we're blending the drone metal and the junior high drum circle. For as much of a hard time as I'm giving them, I can't call the music bad per se. I think it's misguided and self-important, but that's millions of bands. "Your band is bland ambition." As this song has been going I've been looking at how many physical copies of this thing they've sold at what must be at least 30 euros and hey fair play to them. This wasn't one of the more interesting songs. I find when they're playing at length, that's where their drone metal roots are betraying them. The songs don't meaningfully escalate.

    make a jazz noise here

    Wow ok this song has a really fascinating setup, like mixing in 70s tv sci-fi background sounds, psych rock guitar, the baritone sax (do they have another one) and the rhythm section starting in a jazz place before progressing to something actually different. This actually sounds like a band that would call themselves Maximalists. From the tracklist, this seems to be the end of the first vinyl and it's does a phenominal job of building intrigue of where this record is going just in time for where you need to switch records over, and then the ending is a for real crescendo. It feels like the end of an Act 1, and if you're gonna stage your record like it's got acts, you need to close the first one strongest to get that conceit over. This is the best song on here so far.

    For as much as they needed a departure to start the second record, they have not achieved it. This song sounds like tracks 1, 2, and 4, the same bland ambition sound. I again wonder if they get offered soundtrack work. I think they'd OK at it.

    Oh alright we're transitioning between tracks now! There's also a drum noise at the start of this song that made it sound like someone just broke into my house so thanks for making me jump lol. They are making jazz noises while one guitar makes drone noises and another makes psych noises. When the chanting starts it feels like this is a noise bed for a D&D live play podcast.

    This is another brief instrumental break but this time they use a bunch of major intervals to create a different feeling from the last few tracks, which makes a clean seperation...

    ...that carries into the next song. It feels comparatively uplifting in comparison to the rest of the record. The layers of that uplift start slowly peeling away with the saxophone and the incantation (I can't find any lyrics for this record but I think that's a net positive). This is an ok tune all told. I would rate this one Third best so far (behind the track immediately before it and the end of the To The Earth section)

    more jazz noises. It's not an ill-fitting followup for what that's worth.

    I looked back and was surprised to learn that not only was this a different song but that this is the end of Part 2 happening. That's kind of a drag given how neat the break between part 1 and 2 was, but not uncommon for 3 act structures I guess? It's more improv stuff.

    oh good god the songs are getting slower and longer. They should be doing soundtracks because this is not working in just sound alone. I've made some indulgent things in my time, and it's sounded like this. Says here this part of the record is meant to be a "solar drone opera," which is an interesting understanding of what makes an opera I guess. Or they were just grasping for a word with import and heft and chose that one. Here's a quote from the bandcamp page about it: “We worked on the power of frequencies and tonality, chthonian deep vibrations and iridescent high lights by using huge amplified baritone sax and guitars, spectral soundscapes, antic cinematographic views and tribal percussions.” I had to look up antic. I'm excited for this word to be the new Liminal.

    I just realized I have 30 minutes left and I'm out of things to say unless something interesting happens. This is a band of good players making really indulgent music and occasionally having killer ideas, but not enough for 2 hours worth of record. I assume the main way people experience this is as background music to something else. I can't imagine anyone listening to this and having their life changed in some appreciable way, other than people who were already aspiring to make prog rock or other aforementioned metal musicians looking for the strength to not cling to a genre their whole lives. If I write anything else it'll be because I liked something that happened on the remaining now-25 minutes.

    not on this one

    I do like the climbing bass line on the back half of the last track. It feels like it's trying to pull the song into ending on a major chord but it can't, which creates a weary & sad tension. That's probably the emotional crescendo they're going for so congrats, they did it.

    ===

    I give this the Most Music prize. It's got three songs that I think are genuinely good and here are their names.

    Track 6: TO THE EARTH : ENŪMA ELIŠ - La Mondialisation ou la Création du Monde : Éon Protérozoïque
    Track 9: TO THE MOON : VAJRABHAIRAVA Part II - The Rising
    Track 10: TO THE MOON : VAJRABHAIRAVA Part III - The Great Wars of Quaternary Era Against Ego

    The run time of those songs I liked adds up to 17:49. The run time of the complete record is 2:08:21. While it does have the apt name of Eons (I do appreciate an album that does what it says on the tin), a record I only enjoy 14% of has to be last.

     

  3. OK after dealing with a metric ton of trauma and realizing I wanted to do the Listen To The Albums thing for 2021 (which has been a GREAT music year), I remembered I didn't finish this year's, so, let's do that first!

    1. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple
    2. "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol
    3. "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree
    4. "The End of Everything" by Noah Cyrus

    A cursory google confirmed to me that Noah Cyrus is related to Miley Cyrus. I assumed that was the person who got caught lipsyncing on SNL but that was in fact Ashlee Simpson, literally 17 years ago. Time is ruthless. Let's listen to this EP!
     

    Spoiler

    Ballad intro is infinitely more pallatable than ending ballad. Structurally though it's a little rote, though well performed and produced. It's always going to be weird to me to hear like pianos and drum machines sequenced to sound like rock ballad drums.

    Cyrus gotta country, I guess! It's not a bad premise for a song at all, a modern doomer croon, but the drum production still sticks out. I'm not saying there's no way to run drum machines under songs like this to modernize them, but the way they land here sticks out and is going to date this song very harshly. Not a bad tune otherwise.

    Ok that's three ballads now, I'm getting the sense that's all that's here. Noah's vocal performance is pretty good but it's not exactly carrying the instrumentation here. It's all very industry standard sound. Structurally it does me a favor of being brief, a thing that a lot of ballads have no interest in being. I appreciate a song that hits it'ss point and gets out of town.

    Yes Ok Ballad #4. A few weeks ago I went and listened to k.d. lang's "Ingenue" (I'm doing a Best Albums of the 90s thing somewhere else) and that's an album with a whole bunch of slow crooning. The structural difference is that all those songs have dense and interesting instrumentation, like there's people playing songs on it. This "me and a piano" shit is comparatively shallow, especially with the way that it's being coded as gospel-like here with the chorale.

    Ok this is immediately an improvement just through the threat of speed. The traditional information run in such a specific way as to sound like it's coming through a phone speaker is a REALLY clever touch. It creates the atmosphere of laying in bed trying to find stuff to make you feel better. When the instrumentation breaks through, it creates a mini-soar and that's whatever but the emergence through the speaker sound was inevitable. This is far and away the best song on here so far.

    Ok the vocal range deepening here is great for the pacing of the record and it felt really remarkably fresh. The brief run time also works in favor again here, as the single instrument and vocal overdubs would've worn out but the novelty of the different range and the speed of the song keep it moving. Also shout out for making a song called July that's not some "4th of July has Emotions" thing. Over that.

    What the fuck is this lmao ok uh this feels like a cartoon explosion compared to the rest of the record. First, the changing of singing patter from country to something more hip-hop and soul, then the Little Help From My Friends reinterpolation, then the autotune, then the drum kit that's half acoustic and half 808? This feels like it was from a completely different record, which sure is an interesting way to break up an album's pacing.

    Doomer Ending Ballad, but, ENDING BALLAD.

    ===

    The last four songs kick the first four songs ass, pretty much. It's hard to make an album be better the longer it goes so that gets credit. That's uh pretty much all I have to say about it? Oh, uh, if you like this, you should check out the first Daughn Gibson record, All Hell.

     

    • Like 1
  4. hello i do not post very often anymore but I felt like writing some game reviews and this is the only place I've put them for years

    scale reminder: 1 = hate it, 2 = regret it, 3 = don't regret it, 4 = love it

    CHILDREN OF MORTA [3]
    Not usually a roguelike guy, and definitely not a save-the-world guy anymore, but I've been playing this in a co-op setting and the actual gameplay loop once you get more characters is pretty fun. I have fallen off of it as I have sworn off games with exposed numbers for the forseeable future, but I'd recommend this for anyone looking to do co-op RPG things. No netplay though, so, that'll be a hamper on that.

    JUDGMENT [4]
    If you like Yakuza games, this one's good and fun and different. If you don't like Yakuza games, this one isn't going to sell you.

    PAPER MARIO: THE ORIGAMI KING [3]
    Started this because I have taken on a role in my friend groups of The Nintendo Streamer since they don't mess with Nintendo stuff at all but I do. Often great, but I'm in the home stretch and my main thought is that I can't wait to be done with it. This is also the most interesting way that Nintendo has ever enforced its "take breaks damn you" mantra because the puzzle element of the combat system is mentally taxing enough that I literally can't play it for long stretches. Also I got to hit Kamek with a hammer as many times as I wanted, which is hundreds.

    SAMURAI GUNN 2 EARLY ACCESS [4]
    Samurai Gunn was a game I wanted to play but didn't because of a lack of netplay and a... let's say tendency among my friends to be super toxic competitors. Samurai Gunn 2 not only has netplay, but it has an adventure mode. It's stylish and heavy and impactful.

    CRUELTY SQUAD [4]
    Game of the year. Not close. The single best FPS since Titanfall 2, in literally the complete opposite way since Titanfall 2. It's like Deus Ex by way of the tv show Xavier: Renegade Angel, with the shooter gameplay of the original Rainbow Six games and a story that is Actual Cyber Punk.

    An example: my last mission required me to go attack three people who were working with the goofood startup G-TECH, as my employer had invested $5 Billion into them and they turned around and started selling trade secrets. Well, some of them. The third guy used their part of the money to stock up on chunkopop figures. Anyways, the first kill was easy as I was able to walk right onto their compound, only really encountering resistance from the guard dogs. I took them and my target inside and harvested their organs, which is my most profitable side hustle (I can't fish and I dont have enough money for the stock market to be worthwhile).

    The second and third targets were next door neighbors, with much more active guards. However, I propped myself upon a fence and had to choose between the two. One was on the top floor, the other was in a basement bunker. I figured it'd be harder to get the guy in the bunker so I did him first. After another round of firefights and organ harvesting, I reached the bunker. I saw him running around on the lower floor, but as I started going downstairs, the lights began to dim and the enormous computer console's eyes- a terminal panel more comparable to half a modern TV in size- opened and turned red. I decided I did not need to go down stairs, waited from him to walk in front of the staircase, and shot him in the ear. I left those organs behind, but I had no enthusiasm to learn what the computer was trying to do.

    Without an easy way back onto the fence- I'm saving up for Gunkboosters- I left the bunker and went to the local pizza restaurant to get something to eat before fighting my way to my third target. The man behind the counter opened fire immediately. He lost. I helped myself to his organs (hey, a stomach! Nice, those sell for a lot) and every slice of pizza on every table of the restaurant. They probably lost their appetite. That's why they didn't fight back. That and the part where I was walking around with a submachine gun in one hand, shoveling their food into my mouth with the other.

    The third target was the easiest of the three, though I still almost ate shit from someone hiding around the corner. The third target was also the braver of the three, as despite clearly hearing his guards being shot and torn apart, he wasn't running in fear. In fact, he thought I was like him: an appreciator of delightful chunkopops. Coming into the room, I saw a tower of the toys starting on my left, floor to ceiling, three boxes wide, that wrapped around the entire room except for the doorways and windows. He turned away from me to look at them. While the others died in fear, he died looking at what he loved. I could only salvage his pancreas. Upstairs in the attic, a similar terminal to the second man's bunker sentinel hummed peacefully, its own terminal eyes closed. The panel was a soothing purple. I let them sleep and made my way to the extraction point. On the way back, I noticed a house in this neighborhood had an enormous pentagram carved into the front of the house. Not my problem tho.

    This is a literal description of how I played one mission in Cruelty Squad.

    Game of the year. Not close.

  5. I bought an x-box series s because I'm not going to have a 4K TV any time soon and here's some things I've been playing on it, with brief reviews.

    MLB THE SHOW 21 [3] As good as you'd expect.
    NHL 94 REWIND [3] Also as good as you'd expect.
    CASTLEVANIA SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT [2] Redownloaded thru X360 backwards compat. I have learned in the last few years that repetition causes deep dread in me, and hitting the upside down castle made me want to run away from civilization so I tried some other stuff.
    ORI AND THE BLIND FOREST [1] This didn't work for me at all.
    HOLLOW KNIGHT [4] This did. It might be the single best action game I have seen in my life, I will keep you posted as I play through it.
    CROSSCODE [3] On recommendation from my brother. I like parts of it very much. The action loop involves plotting encounters in a line in order to increase the rarity of the drop rating. Neat! Except the game expects some amount of grinding and that hits the repetition thing.
    JUDGMENT [4] As someone who is completely done with stories about saving the world, a competently written crime drama works alright. I've already been rewatching a lot of Columbo so I'm in this mindset already.
     

  6. Hi! I did not forget about this. I've just been busy and didn't want to post a single thing in here until I had a review done. And so here we are.

    1. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple
    2. "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol
    3. "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree

    I know nothing about Richard Youngs or Raül Refree. Google searching Richard Youngs brings up him playing with Jandek. Raül Refree's first listing under his discography on wikipedia is a collaboration with Lee Ranaldo. I am now adequately prepared for what I am about to listen to.

    Also this came out December 2019 but I went radio silent for months and opening up with "THIS DONT COUNT" is a dick move so I'll let this slide just this once.

    Spoiler

     

    A dizzying start, which is fun! I'm having trouble tracking the downbeat but everything sounds beautiful and clear. Structurally unpredictable harmony is REALLY hard. I have crass comparisons to make that come from the wake of post-rock and related songwriting that this is trafficking in. btw, brief aside about post-rock: all mogwai's kids ugly. Anyways, this is really really pretty and sophisticated, so it's hard for me to write about it because this is something I would need to listen to a LOT of times to pin down what's working about it. The mantra approach to the song title is fantastic, as someone who's spending a lot of time thinking about alternate ways around hooks that aren't verse-chorus structure. In a weird way, the vocals are kind of in the rhythm section since everything else structurally is free floating. Hell of a first impression.

    Much more rhythmically basic, which is a good relief from how broad the motifs of the last track were. By the way, I can't find the lyrics transcribed anywhere so I'm not going to speak on the content of the record since I feel like I can't do it accurately. What I'll say is that so far, no lines have pulled me out of the song and the mood it's setting. The soloing and such that's happening under the basic song is well placed. It creates landmarks as the rest of the song passes by, so in repeated listens it wont sound like it'll drag or be too samey- the terrible fate of many a long song.

    Also rhythmically basic, but brighter tonally. A less dismal key. This record is paced excellently so far. At the same time, this is the point where the lyricism is kind of taking me out of the mood. It feels like platitudes, talking about "people's appetite for silence" and offering ethereal advice. The song is still laid out in an interesting way, at least. I'm trying to focus on that here. The appearance of a drum is a welcome distraction, but it's not overweighing how much I find the repetition of the lyrics draining right now. There's something about the idea of positioning learning a language as a brave thing that bothers me but I'm running out of song so I can't quite put together why in time.

    I was kind of hoping the ending would return to the formlessness of the intro, but on the other hand I don't understand to write one song like that first one so I don't know why I'd expect anyone else does. The engineering on the bass and low end on this whole record has been superb, as when it barges in, it's to signify something different is happening. Unfortunately the last track kind of took me out of the atmosphere and I'm struggling to return to it. It's a nice enough song, but I think the feelings of sadness and remorse I'm feeling are not being created by the song the way they expected to. This is also the first time that one of the instruments has felt more like it's just noodling than contributing, and it's sadly the bass guitar. It's sticking out in the ending in an unfavorable way. Fortunately it gets out of the way for the dismount, which... they fuck up by cutting on the low piano note like it's some kind of mic drop. Unfortunate.

    = = =

    Well the first half is really great! The second half is not bad but at it's lowest it's frustrating, and at its highest it's just ok. I will probably listen to the first song a few dozen times because I'm just enamored with it's construction. So that's something!

     

    • Haha 1
  7. I BOUGHT DAN IN STREET FIGHTER 5 AND HAVE SINCE GOTTEN BACK INTO STREET FIGHTER 5 [2]
    this game fuckin sux but you cant choose your coping mechanisms sometimes lol

    LOOP HERO [4]
    Early front runner for game of the year. I remember watching trailers of it and thinking "this looks awful." I  remember hearing it described (poorly) and thinking "this sounds awful." Eventually I just gave up and picked it up because I needed to see it for myself and OH BUDDY. I won't try to explain it because I don't rightly know how, but honestly it should be enough that it's a game that defies description while also being REALLY well written with an extremely metal premise.

    OUTRIDERS DEMO [3]
    There's a cutscene early on where you knock on a door and the slide in the door opens and someone talks to you (I want a door like this) and says you cant come in, and so you knock again and they stick their fingers through to make a gesture and your character grabs their arm and then breaks it and then uses magic powers to explode the door, and then they mismatched the timing of the fade up from the cutscene so every time you come up from it you're getting shot by like 8 people.

    anyways it's gears of war but destiny with no live team and no games as a service aspiration but the demo is one of the most on-fire games I've played in years so maybe don't get it at launch

  8. Man this last week.

    So like, on the last tuesday in January I accidentially apneate while laying on my side and have a massive panic attack about it. Kind of a come to jesus moment about my health. That wednesday I talk to my therapist and I'm like "ok we're back on this calorie counting starting immediately cuz this can't happen."

    Last sunday, my sister expresses disappointment that I'm not trying harder to lose weight because she doesn't want to outlive me. Like... men in our family die early anyways so like I'm only so much in control of that, but regardless I'm already counting calories. This is not good enough. She proceeds to clash with me, over and over, for three days about this, saying tons of unfair and untrue and cruel things, doubling down every time I try to express "I'm already working on it and this thing you are doing is hurting me." The last day, I plead with her to understand that what she is doing is hurting me, and she insists I'm "addicted" (i don't know to what, that wasn't specified) and just continued to double down. At a point, I set the phone down and walk away, since the last text I saw had "Let me just say this and then you'll never have to worry about me again."

    I didn't read whatever came next. After three days of being hurt over and over again, I'd had enough. She's blocked me on everything, and I don't think I'll ever read that stuff. I have theories as to what happened to her but they don't matter. No one in my life has ever been closer to me. She spent three days ripping me across every vital line I had over something I was already doing. I don't think I can let her be that close again.

    I'm lucky that I have a broad and amazing friend group, one I've developed over the course of the pandemic and one that's done a lot to help me this week. There's a time in my life this would have devastated me, and instead they put out the fires by hearing me out. Now I just have bewilderment, and work to do to keep myself from internalizing any of what was said. I have good memories of my sister. I don't know who that person I talked to this week was.

    • Sad 9
  9. If you don't mess with pop or electronic music, I don't know how to begin to explain the impact SOPHIE has had on music in the last decade, or how that influence fucking exploded across the world of electronic and marginalized artists after this record, but if you'd like to start to understand then spin this today.

    RIP SOPHIE

  10. DISCO ELYSIUM [4]
    It's a winter of backlog clearing and first on the plate was that I never finished my playthrough of this game. When I came back to my save, I discovered that the state I had left the game in was, uh, Catastrophic. I got a very bad set of ending circumstances, but in the skeleton of what I did I saw the amazing nature of everything I could have done and how much space there was for things to change. It's a 20 hour RPG that upon completion I immediately wanted to play again. This is, retroactively, the best game of 2019, and in totality, one of the finer things I've seen in my time playing games.

    DONUT COUNTY [1]
    And this is not. While i was tempted to play it at release, something kept me from it. Namely, a slowly increasing pit in my stomach over "indie games" and the homogenization of a codified style, where they become these pastel gelatin molds with googly eyes and they're trusting writing and "charm" to get the rest of the way. The success of the style only succeeds in making me feel really fucking insane. I made it three levels into this before the concept of doing more of it caused me to immediately stop and uninstall it. Game Pass is good because it gives me a chance to play an old game and be like "welp turns out I was right to never try this." I'm glad other people liked it, even if it makes my life harder to know that.

    MARS MATRIX [3]
    I briefly entertained becoming a Shmup guy again in my desire to have an action game I could play. This is one of them. Unfortunately, repetition makes me feel really bad so I can't become a true shmup high score chasing sort.

    MONSTER HUNTER RISE DEMO [3]
    A quick moment to re-establish what my scale means: 3 = "I don't regret playing this." The phrasing is purposefully nebulous to allow for situations like this: I am so glad they put out a demo so I could have a chance to see what they did to the Hunting Horn and that I could find out before I bought it. If I had learned it through buying it, it would be the end of me playing Monster Hunter games and you would be reading a screed. But since it didn't cost me anything to find out my weapon is no longer in the game and therefore I have nothing I enjoy doing in the game, I'm free! That's $60 I get to put somewhere else! Thanks Monster Hunter Rise Demo!

    I wrote this a day after I played it because if I wrote it in the middle of mourning the death of my sweet beautiful Hunting Horn, I'd lack the hindsight to understand that the people who worked on The Least Popular Weapon In The Game probably see that as a problem and would rather see it get played more. I hope for their sake it works.

  11. Okay.

    I don't know what part of me is the same if I don't hear DOOM. In small ways, looking at every day objects or words causes me to remember a bunch of DOOM lines. "Brita water filter juice." "Oh, my aching hands, from raking in grands and breaking in mic stands." "Disappear, reappear, disappear again." I've got all of Great Day Today memorized. In larger ways, he kicked doors open in my creativity and expression. I don't tell jokes the same way without DOOM teaching me how to use surprise. I don't see things the same way without him. I think that's why this didn't make me hurt so bad? Because the stuff he's put out has already affected me so deeply and the work that did come out after Born Like This has all felt like blessings from an old master, I guess I was ready. I hear him in my mind all the time anyways.

    RIP. and thanks.

    1. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple
    2. "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol

    Ok so obviously I know Fiona Apple. On top of that, I really liked Idler Wheel a whole lot when that came out. At the same time, my instincts as a former music critic and my general age meant that when Pitchfork gave the new record a 10, I was going to hold off on listening to it for as long as possible, because I had no interest in engaging with any kind of discussion with the zeitgeist of "OH MY GOD A 10" music listeners. I listened to it two months ago and found it fine but overblown. Now I will listen to it with my full attention.

    Spoiler

    I assume we've talked about the piano thing in the past? In case I have, here's the short version: I find the instrument largely silly since it's one of few musical instruments that has no natural counterpart. I also find that 90% of piano players have fuckin brain worms. Fiona Apple is excepted from this latter group because of the heat in her lyrics and singing voice, and that covers the distance of how silly I find the piano. This is a good intro, is what I'm saying.

    Now If I remember right, this record has a lot of showtunes vibes in the songwriting and this is refreshing me of that memory. The benefit is that Fiona's delivery helps make that feel less bad than that sounds on paper. The lyricism also works really well, even if it accidentally reminds me of a really sad time in my life that is such an impossible dart that it's not worth getting into.

    This song is really neat! A lot of times when you make a title track it seems like the expectation is that it's the biggest point of the entire record. I've been guilty of that on most of my records. To take the key statement and slow it down and focus on it is a really interesting approach and I really enjoyed this song. That's why this is written in a past tense, because it wasn't until the outro that I thought to write anything at all.

    This song is less interesting structurally to me. I can't put my finger on it. It might be the repition, that it feels like the most verse-chorus thing on here so far even though each record has had choruses so far. Maybe I see the work too much to disconnect? I spent the duration of the song trying to figure that out lol

    This is a really good and powerful digression from the sound of the last track, where it disconnects almost wholly from pop structure and just builds towards the verses with a droning rhythm. It sounds like storming down a stair case and then stopping to turn around to yell, which the lyrics fit this image to a tee. All the instrument choice is really interesting too. This'll probably end up being my favorite song on here.

    And we're back to the showtunes stuff. The performance on all this stuff is great, and the production of all of is outstanding. This just isn't a style that works for me.

    When the songs go this direction I'm a lot more into them. It just feels more furious and disconnected from traditional song structures and that's in general my thing. I feel the lyrics really hard through my history of relationship abuse and that's about the most I want to say about that.

    This is probably the best of the showtune-y songs on here, or at least the best to this point. The last time I listened to this it shook me for some reason that I don't remember and I really disliked it. That was then, and here in this listen I'm enjoying it. Probably same genre of "oops my abuse history" reaction formations. It didn't happen this time so I can't speak to it.

    The pacing of this record is really helping. No song transition has felt jarring (the transition between the first two tracks was maybe a bit too cute?) and has moved nicely. At the same time I had to start this song like three times to really sink into it. The shifting structure despite it being very verse centric helps it feel unpredictable and surprising whenever something develops sonically. The tonality of this also fits the theme, where the rhythm section is POUNDING while all the melodic work is distant and wiggling, as though suspended in the air by a string. I'm smrart.

    Sez here this was written for a soundtrack and I definitely feel that. It's the most pop sounding thing on here, which has it's place and I'm confident how it'll be followed. I really like the "Start it off" section because it subverts the soar, using the general principles of that development but making it a darker set of chords to make it more anxious and fearful than it usually sounds.

    Yeah see this is what I mean by the followup. Couldn't get further away from the pop song than this. It feels frantic like recollection, which is somewhat what she's talking about in this song so that works out. I feel like I should leave talking about this song here because of how it stands on its own.

    This is another one of the more fun pop songs on here. It has an R&B lilt to it in the swing of the rhythm section and the backing vocals. This is really immaculate songwriting here, and probably the song I'll return to most from this record.

    And we're leaving on the tonal shift, and most importantly not an ending ballad! Which, for the record, Idler Wheel didn't end that way either, so Fiona Apple's on my side on this campaign of mine against the ending of ballad. There are so many more interesting feelings to leave someone with than deflating. And this leaves the record with real, palpable tension, an old car with a flat tire wheeling away from a setup.
    = = =
    A good time! Not the songwriting revolution critics ran to call it, but, hey. A good time. Now in one sense, this is an alarmingly hard choice between these two records so far. They have a lot of the same strengths- pacing, development, unorthodoxy amidst incredible technical performance, and ideal production. However, this is my ranking system, and in this process we've made clear how I feel about Rock Lyrics, so Fiona Apple gets the edge pretty much on that alone. It's otherwise a much tougher conversation to have than I ever would've expected.

     

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  12. @Casey EPs are totally in play.

    As you may expect, I know basically nothing about this band! A google reveals to me that they're from southern California, and they've been around since the 70s. It also invokes "power metal" in the descriptor on wikipedia and if I'm going to be honest it's one of my least favorite kinds of metal (blame my ex's blind guardian/iced earth collection), but the thread isn't "I judge whether or not I want to listen to your album of the year" so here we go!

    Spoiler

    There's a small part of me that's disappointed that guitars started after that noise at the start, because I was like "oh man let me get an all brass power metal album" for a second.

    Alright! I'm into it! The jogging on roots sound still works for me sometimes and this is one of those times. I was expecting more traditional power metal vocals, but this stands right along the edge of black metal vocals to me? Like, I know he's not shrieking or whatever but there's an atonality to it that makes it sound like all that stuff and hey, grab me however you can. I don't mind. Also we've done this for enough time by now that I'm pretty sure I dont have to say this, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have anything to say about the lyrics for this record. This is really stable songcraft. Can't complain.

    This intro guitar line is more the kind of stuff I'm expecting out of a power metal record. Oh man, if the vocals are like this the whole way through I'm probably gonna have a decent time. This is full on hypocritical but the chorale to provoke crowd response doesn't bother me here. The groove under the solo is good enough, and the solos so far are working for me because of one thing: Restraint. Like, we (the band and I) both understand this is a metal record. So these first solos have been middle-ish in pitch and sort of slow. I'm assuming by the end we're going to have at least one full on top of the neck hellstorm shred thing, but it will have earned it.

    This is the single, isn't it? Anyways this singer is still great and it's carrying songs I'd find kind of dull otherwise I think. I don't have a lot to say about this one structurally. It's got simple goals and accomplishes them. I wonder if this being a genuine article Old Metal Band helps?

    Ok the next song started and it's a ballad so while it takes it's time to be interesting I'm going to keep going on that last point. So on a discord I run, I've also been running a Best Of The 2010s thing for music and WOAH OK GET LOUD. Thank god it's not just gonna be quiet for the duration, and that the howling is back because the clean vocals weren't doing anything from me. Anyways during the Best of 2010s thing someone put up a Greta Van Fleet record and I fucking hated it, and I wonder if I'd find it as easy to loathe if they were like 40 somethings instead of 20 somethings? Is youth an audible quality in rock? Anyways this song got good so that's nice of them. See, this solo is higher in pitch than the others, because they're building to something! Man, albums can be such a cool art form because they allow for the development of ideas along several pieces, and SO FEW bands actually take advantage of that. It's so simple, too.

    This intro is the first time I've noticed the bass playing, so I'm assuming this is the start of Side B on the vinyl release. We're going lower with the solo (admittedly, high licks through wah pedals is treacherous ground) because we're building back up. I'm having a good time with this record so far! Maybe the trick to making rock lyrics not make me want to hit something is to make the vocals double ostentatious to cover the ground left behind in anything being reasonable. Okay, third lick starts high and then retreats, and the song transitions into a more bridge-like version of the verse. This band is professionals, following formulas without wearing out the welcome of anything. This solo is one of the things this record's been building too, as it feels like the guitar is much more active all of a sudden, and it works really well. The only knock I'd have on this is that the broken glass noise at the end is maybe a little quiet? It's definitely meant to eat the accent there, but instead it feels like something breaking across the house from the song instead of glass getting smashed.

    This is some music video-core metal right here. I can like visualize the haircuts shaking in the half fps twisting camera shots. This is not a negative, because man that's the environment this shit came up in. That's ideal to this sound. It's maybe the simplest song on here, but it does break the pace up from how fast the last song was. So of course, this is when they keep accelerating the range of the soloing, on the song I've found the least interesting. Fading out on the outro is an option I guess?

    This has a similar speed to the last track, but it starts WAY more interestingly, first with a high pitched lick and then the vocals pushed further forward than they were last time- or at least further forward than I noticed last time. I just figured out why these vocals are working for me, outside of the black metal thing. My favorite metal album of all time (everyone get ready to get mad at me) is "Willpower" by Today Is The Day. The shrieking reminds me a lot of that record, and I'll honestly probably put it on after this. This is an ok song. I like it better than the last one.

    YAY NO ENDING BALLAD! One day I'm afraid people are going to figure out how to game my rating system and just nominate their favorite record of the year that doesn't have an ending ballad. Regardless! I'm excited for this thing to explode at the end. The marching rhythm is working for me during the verses. The bass fills sneaking in during the bridges and choruses is a fun little twist on their sound. This first solo is good, but I feel pretty confident that it's a fake out and there's a bigger one coming. If you're reading this and knowing there's not, I bet that feels terrible, but we've not had a single moment of a guitar solo going while the vocalist screams. And then the song speeds up and I'm like bracing. The lick is building up aaaand we're off. Perfect. It's maybe done sooner than I'd like it to be, but they get credit for not fading out either, just letting the gong play them off.

    = = =
    That was a good time! Usually I'm against rote genre stuff but it feels different here. Maybe it's because they're the genuine article. Maybe it's because in the process of that Best of the 2010s thing I was talking about I listened to some real stinkers and so a record with any amount of long term vision throughout the duration is manna from heaven. Either way, a good time, and I could see how this would be the album of someone's year.

     

     

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  13. Hey! Thank y'all for the kind words! Here's an update!

    The immediate news is that the next time I post in here, it'll be to review a record. As a result of how long this took, I'm gonna play a little fast and loose with how late I'll accept submissions, probably until some point in January.

    As for my sister, she's one of the people with that Long Haul shit going on. It's not a terrible surprise to any of us, really. If bodies are machines, hers is a lemon. Of course this is how this would go. So, she's not better, but it's stopped getting worse.

    Also to update my original post: while I think the new Avalanches record is delightful in a brand new way than they've ever been, I still say "What's Tonight To Eternity" is my #1. So there's that.

  14. Here’s my Steam Autumn Sale Haul!

    NAMCO MUSEUM ARCHIVES VOL. 1 [4]
    Purchased after the release of the Action Button Review of Pac-Man, after I learned it included an NES demake of Pac-Man Championship Edition (the original is not available on PC in any way). Had to. It’s glorious action. Maybe playing it after a 3 hour dissertation on Pac-Man heightened the experience for me, but, still.

    The rest of the games in it are of middling quality- they’re all NES ports of arcade games, with the exception of one really interesting game called Dragon Spirit: The New Legend. It’s a shootemup that is exactly as fair as “NES shmup” sounds like it’ll be, but it’s not a straight arcade port. Rather, it expands on the original in ways that are super ambitious for the time. It starts with the last bossfight of the arcade cabinet, and depending on how the player does it will change the story and difficulty of the game ahead. A death means Gold Dragon (easy) mode, which has a different setup and a different level order (mainly a shorter one). Success puts you in Blue Dragon (normal) mode. From there it’s a hard shootemup on a remake compilation that includes rewinds and save states, but for an NES game it tries a lot of very ambitious things. So I’m glad I saw that and tried it out.

    SUPER MEGA BASEBALL 3 [4]
    A very good baseball game, but I dont know how much I have to actually say about it. I’ve got friends to play it with. I recommend that. The music is bad. If you like baseball but don’t plan on buying any more playstations, This’ll Do.

    UMURANGI GENERATION [4]
    One of the best games of the year.

    I’m starting there because the next part is that I beat it in about 3 hours. It does however have a DLC addon for $10 that I’ll be getting in a week or two for sure.

    It’s a genuine delight because it’s the kind of game I’ve been hoping to see someday in some form or another. The player character is not a hero, only an observer of Interesting Times. A photographer trying to make ends meet. The gameplay loop is a bit like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, where you’re dropped into a level with tasks to accomplish- get two boomboxes in the same shot, find a union jack somewhere and snap a picture of it, things like this. The aesthetic is a bit like Jet Set Radio, of a highly stylized cyberpunk future.

    They take these two identifiable things, and mix in the boldest realization of Environmental Storytelling I’ve ever seen. Where big developers have turned that into “pick up chunks of radio play during the down periods,” that storytelling is all the storytelling you get in this game. For the people around you, it’s fundamental truths of the world so there’s no reason for exposition. It’s all around you in graffiti, in terse signs, in strewn newspapers and dance parties. The way they use the environment in the game to tell the story is just genius. Simple words on everyday items set my mind on fire drawing connections, and the game demands this in order to complete your tasks, to witness this world pivoting and make a memorable record of it.

    An absolute delight, and without question one of the best games of the year. Shit, it might be my #1. If you're prone to gloom and doom this won't help. If you have a PC, I can think of no other reason to miss this.

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