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Looking for a good listen? Here's the album review thread.

Luigitoilet

Luigitoilet

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ORBS - Asleep Next to Science

An eclectic but immaculately constructed amalgam of 60s psychedelia, 70s prog rock, modern heavy metal, 90s alt-rock, synth-pop, and neo-classical, Asleep Next to Science is befuddingly easy to pick up and casually listen to and for all its different clashing styles is one of the most cohesive pieces of progressive rock of the past ten years.
ORBS is a supergroup comprised of Adam Fischer and Clayton Holyoak of Fear Before the March of Flames fame on vocals and drums, Dan Briggs of Between the Buried and Me on guitar, Ashley Ellylon of Abigail Williams on keyboards and piano, and Chuck Johnson of Torch Runner on bass. I'm sure some of the more elitist and metal-aversive listeners here saw those bands I just listed and immediately disregarded ORBS as a modern metal/core supergroup project. For their sake, I hope they didn't, because ORBS is certainly not metal, and Asleep Next to Science showcases a passion and sincere emotional openness that is often missing from many metal acts today (especially prog metal). In the most simplest terms, I'd call ORBS a prog rock band, but even that is a disservice to this album which is as catchy and melodically addictive as it is complex and ambitious. Listening to some of these songs makes me feel like I'm watching a bizarro-world sci-fi musical.

Because it is the first thing everybody I introduce this band to remarks about, I'll talk a little about the vocals first. To describe them in a word, I would say that Fischer's performance here is "childlike". That is not pejorative in the least. He sounds like a twisted evil child version of Billy Corgan, and at a turn he busts out his gnarly scream that is heard on Fear Before's heavier albums. on top of this, throughout the albums he assumes different characters, with different inflections and affectations and different quirks to their singing and while it can be a little offputting at first, it is the glue that holds this album firmly together. The choruses in songs like "Kid Cancer" and "A Man of Science" are retardedly catchy and just fantastically written in a pop-music sensibility. They also weave the chaotic structures of the song into more cohesive feeling songs. And that's not even to mention the lyrics quite yet.

Musically, this album is so far up my alley that almost every song feels written and composed specifically for me. The weakest song on the album is the opener- "Sayer of the Law", and even that is a fantastic introduction for the album as it introduces and sets up many of the musical motifs that will return again and again in different manners throughout the rest of it. It also is a good medium to first experience the sheer virtuosity of Ashley Ellylon's synthesizer and piano playing, which is simply put, exceptional. It might be a little show-offy to some, but I'm a sucker for Romantic influenced piano cadenzas in the middle of rock and hardcore music. The piano piece near the end of "Sayer" is similar to the interlude in Muse's "Butterflies and Hurricanes" or the sampling of Prokofiev's 2nd Piano cadenza into HORSE the band's "**** Escape". In other words, it's a bit superfluous but the playing and intensity of the passage is so impressive and breathtaking in itself that idgaf.
It's impossible for me to pick a single favorite song, but there are four songs that to me are especially phenomenal: A Man of Science, Kid Cancer, Megablolastic Madness, and Something Beautiful. I just want to talk about the latter one, as it nicely exemplifies everything I love about this album in a concise package.

The lyrical content of the album is fantastic, a vaguely connected series of vignettes that play out like suburban angst and family troubles in a bizarro dystopian world of tongue-in-cheek metaphors and whimsical imagery that is inspired equally by sci-fi and nerd culture as by nature and existentialism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_HZjTINzds (song isn't really 9 minutes, it's like 5 and a half)

Something Beautiful tells a story of a vivisectionist mad scientist character who creates mutilated atrocities out of people in a twisted effort to both spite and gain acceptance of a father figure. The lyrics are ironic and subversive, and cartoonishly morbid. A particular ghoulish bridge has Fischer taunting in a harsh teenage yell

"HEY! while you were out there serving wine I was up here in the balcony, turning faces white," I said,
"HEY! while you were out there kissing babies I was luring kids with lollypops, and NOW THEYRE PUSHIN DAISIES!"

This section flows into what I call the chorus of the song, an even more childish chant over a dreamy piano progression, where the Fischer describes a particular human experiment;

"You will not be heard from for a long time.
You will not be found with your rightful hands or eyes.
When your mother finds you, you won't believe her cries.
She'll wish the child gone missing had been the child who died."

That's the album in a nutshell. It's just so fun, clever, relatively accessible and whimsically misanthropic. My kind of art!

Highlight Tracks:

Man of Science http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6XCVIgbbC4

Kid Cancer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS_GxFdgbj0

Megaloblastic Madness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzt-Sg8NQOM

Something Beautiful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_HZjTINzds
 
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Yodery

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sdkckjsdkj omfg i just noticed he/she was from india. im sorry :((
 
Luigitoilet

Luigitoilet

shattering perfection
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boo hoo

listener- wooden heart

http://listener.bandcamp.com/album/wooden-heart



Talk music like Being as an Ocean and Mewithoutyou. I like Listener the best though. This album rips my heart up and makes me full of love at the same time. its very sincere music. I don't really care to talk about it because the music talks for itself. because it's talk music.

"you can live inside of me there's a home for you inside of me inside of me there's a fire inside that fire there is more fire and in that fire is truth"
rec tracks
Building Better Bridges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld6E5hvvD6U
Seatbelt Hands
I dont want to live forever
Falling in love with glaciers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puqf-O6N4pM
you were a house on fire
 
cannedbread

cannedbread

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at this point i like to think he's just making fun of us

like oh yeah it'll be out in two days (lmao look at these nerds two days lol more like two DECADES haha)
 
Luigitoilet

Luigitoilet

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true. it's pretty crazy how much that band has been riding on the success of one album for like 30 years now xD

maybe it will come out, but i have more faith in Detox coming before new MBV!
 
Y

Yodery

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If it doesn't come in two-three days, I say we find Shields and torture him.
 
z00ted

z00ted

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Good album, Luigitoilet! I love the lyrics on it. Listener is such a talented artist. This thread must live on.

And the new mbv album was ehhhhh. I'd love if we all discussed it here, cause I'm sure a few people probably agree with me and I want to see other sides as well.
 
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Thisisnotthespot69

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The new MBV album was so mediocre tho lol. Ten bucks says the whole album was actually made in 1993, and Shields decided to release it in 2013. Like a time capsule.
 
#HBC | Dark Horse

#HBC | Dark Horse

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mbv was ehh. There was some good stuff, but it doesn't flow together at all. It's like Kevin just picked the songs out of a hat.

Also Wonder 2 sucks
 
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Thisisnotthespot69

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man and i gave into the hype, too. i ***** the refresh button that night on Facebook when MBV's site crashed hahahaha..
 
z00ted

z00ted

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agreeeeeed hard
was kind upset that so many people went crazy over it.. especially the ones who loved loveless

not saying that i don't want everyone to have their own opinion and i'm discrediting their enjoyment, but when i heard things like "maybe better than loveless? " "equal to Say Anything and the EPs???" i was just like....what
 
#HBC | Dark Horse

#HBC | Dark Horse

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Also, can this be changed to a "substantiated recommendations" thread or something like that? There's tons of stuff that I want to recommend (see my status thing) but I don't have the time and/or motivation to **** out a review.

And I think people were just happy that there was more MBV
 
z00ted

z00ted

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i do and lots more but nothing will ever compare to what loveless did to my heart <3~
 
Luigitoilet

Luigitoilet

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actually, whirr is incredible. such dense and heavy production especially on Pipe Dreams. i love the vocal modulation they use a lot too. that album is one of the biggest highlights for me last year.

i will never understand the incredible acclaim for Loveless. i don't like to trot out the "overrated" label much but that is one album where it applies to my life. it's a listenable, if not a bit boring and/or irritating shoegaze album to me. i was so ready to love it too!
 
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Thisisnotthespot69

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nah, kid a by radiohead is overrated. i mean, i guess it's a cool album... if you've never heard of aphex twin, brian eno, tim hecker, can, etc. heh, lol.
 
z00ted

z00ted

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i think it's an album you need to listen to early on in your music life due to how abrasive and different it is but at the same time really simple
i heard it when i was like 14.. around the time i found OK Computer, maudlin of the Well, and Godspeed and it was just SOOOOO good

also i think a lot of people misinterpret the kind of emotions it tries to get across.. i've heard a lot of people say it's a hazy/depressing or dark album when they don't like it and that's probably part of the reason

anyways, i was addicted to it hard. i showed it to literally EVERYONE i knew but they would just dismiss it as crap right away and never listen to it again. no joke, i would sit in my room all day and listen to the album on repeat. my parents stole my ipod from me, i stole it back. i would skip classes to just listen to the album and a ton of other really immature but amazing memories. i thought i was going crazy at the time because of multiple things related to music and how much i loved it, but nahh i just found more brilliant albums and then i was like ohhhhh **** so people actually DO know what they're doing when it comes to making music

edit: Kid A may be a tad overrated, but it's still a masterpiece/classic - especially considering the effect it had on music at the time
 
Luigitoilet

Luigitoilet

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Kid A is a thousand times more interesting than Loveless to me. Saying an album is somehow not good because it has influences is...well...really really dumb. Everything sounds like something. Is Kraftwerk "overrated" because Can already existed? Is Brad Mehldau irrelevant because Thelonius Monk and Nat King Cole also played jazz piano? i don't think so. you can't switch out a Radiohead record for an Aphex Twin or a Alice Coltrane record and have the same experience, as much as those artists influenced the sound of Kid A. they are all different worlds.
 
T

Thisisnotthespot69

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eh, im talking about the radiohead fans that are like "OMFG KID A WAS SO #REVOLUTIONARY AND #GROUNDBREAKING" and ****. and it's like, no, **** you, eno did it first. And a hell of a lot better, too.
 
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Thisisnotthespot69

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Look at this review I found:


So here lies Kid A (1991-1997, RIP), the 16th greatest album ever released. Radiohead abandon Britpop, rewriting Nirvana songs, and music entirely to make an album without genre, direction, modesty, passion, wit, inspiration, or purpose. Here's 50 minutes of malfunctioning click tracks and overdubs for the time capsule. I'll be brief: I don't like Kid A because it sucks, and because it's an unthinking harvester of souls.

With regards to Radiohead in general, I can understand writing your thesis on Creep, or The Bends, or OK Computer, because they all had some, you know, actual human emotion and psychology to connect with. We all remember the convict-angsty teenager fan letter phenomenon around Creep. We all remember how sad Thom was that Kurt Cobain decided not to make a fourth album. We all remember the psychosis and megalomania of OK Computer. Those records, even without the music, provide merit in their sheer cultural impact and exploration of the psyche. But hundreds of gushing reviews of this? Kid A is the pasture of those locked inside their own egos, delusions, abusive relationships, and 15-year-old selves. Kid A cannot survive on music alone; his "cultural impact" is his feeding tube and the only psychology to be explored is on this bloody review page. This record is the ultimate bait for spongey damaged human. I don't deny that the band might be these tortured souls trying to gain some solace by making and releasing their art, but Kid A smacks of craft and not heart. What a disingenuous and fake album. It's like the violins were phoned in directly from a Spielberg film, the jazz parts from Oogie Boogie's Lair, the guitars and keyboards and beats from every influential and good album ever. Could they be any more manipulative, obvious, or lazy? This is a violin-it is mournful. This is a horn-it is swinging. This is something Brian Eno did-it is evocative. Computer! Make me Kid A! You're telling me that if you put together identical couplets with less depth and intellectual stimulation than a nursery rhyme (ice age coming, ice age coming, you're living in a fantasy world, you're living in a fantasy world, morning bell, morning bell), have them sung by a vocalist who sounds like he's either in pain or expects his keening to somehow make bad amazing (The U2 Syndrome), throw in some horns and strings to make everyone think you're a witty avantgarde composer (when you're really papering over the cracks), and then set this whole mess to keyboards and beats and a pop format in disguise that everyone else has done before or better, your human centipede of an album will be the 16th greatest thing to grace the ears of man? This album is a lab concoction and not music. This was not made by composers or musicians but by stylists and egotists and a band at the end of being a band. Kid A is other people's music in collage form and either the lyricist is braindead and talentless or they're playing us for a fool. You can't throw strings and an ethereal wail and some angsty 15-year-old's poetry together and call it emotion. That's like a robot trying to imitate human emotion! On top of that, the music sounds like Baby's First Panning Samples Across Different Channels in Pro Tools. You can't take shiny new technology and make good music if you barely know how to use the technology. All they've done with this "new direction" is find a novel way to process angst, only this "angst" is now an obligation. Kid A is boring, annoying, soulless, and poorly crafted. Were this album made by humans it would be the result of Nigel Godrich forcing Oasis into the studio and saying, "****ers, make me some musique concrète!"

Kid A is a great album because (a) it's a Radiohead album, (b) people project themselves into it way too deeply, (c) people who get paid to review music fall prey to categories (a) and (b), and (d) because the standard for a great album by people who couldn't name 20 bands that sing in a language other than English...is Kid A. It's time to crawl back into the test tube from whence you came, 16th most exceptional recorded human masterpiece of all time.

Radiohead deserve to be drowned in the rivers of ink wasted on them. Oh. Wait.
 
z00ted

z00ted

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Worst review I've ever read.
Almost stopped midway through but I promised myself a long time ago I would finish everything I ever started reading.

That guy doesn't understand music or art at all.
 
z00ted

z00ted

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Thisisnotthespot69 said:
This album is a lab concoction and not music.
Click to expand...
mu·sic

/ˈmyo͞ozik/
Noun
  1. The art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.
  2. The vocal or instrumental sound produced in this way.
Also: Hi, Yodery.
 
Luigitoilet

Luigitoilet

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that's the dumbest thing i ever read.

anyways. here's what my year has looked like so far

Zygoma Disposal - the Forgotten



my favorite thing from 2013 so far. really awesome german mathcore with dark jazz spaghetti western interludes with saxophone and all. i know sax in metal is pretty played out in 2013 but its usage here is so tasteful. songs i recommend "The Lost" "Father Sodomy", "Grim Haven" and "Black Lung"

http://totaldeathcore.bandcamp.com/album/the-forgotten

recently caught up on School of Seven Bells. they still haven't made anything that is better than Alpinisms


new wave, synthpop, dreampop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw_WcaZZj0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYlsvkIVIas

Shalabi Effect - s/t


dark ambient, post rock, psychedelic

very abstract and minimalistic ambient/industrial post-rock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLTWubgmMEI

Police Academy 6 - s/t


new wave, dance pop, synthpop

this album is sexy as **** and really addictive. "Crushin" is super catchy and "Fill in the Blanks" makes me wanna breed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf8Op604rTo

i have more, but i want to make sure the new swf isnt butchering my post
 
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