3rd Place
SoundscapeMN - "SoundscapeMN's MPAR (Modern progressive Art Rock) Sampler aka allmediareviews-core mix"1: The Family Crest - "Beneath the Brine"
2: Fjokra - "Infinite Loops"
3: Jeff Buckley - "Last Goodbye"
4: Oceansize - "Unfamiliar"
5: Kimbra - "Cameo Lover"
6: Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears - "The Purple Rocket"
7: Kiss Kiss - "Through the Day"
8: Cloud Cult - "Sleepwalker"
9: The River Empires - "Three Tigers"
10: Bend Sinister - "Quest For Love"
Early Impressions -
"This has one of the best "Christmas songs" I've ever heard." - "This has some of the most fascinating instrumental parts of the round, though some of the vocals are kind of odd."Favorite - Kimbra - "Cameo Lover"
Least Favorite - The Family Crest - "Beneath the Brine"
Final Summary:It's fascinating how this broad style, older progressive rock, and the indie rock scene (a la Tomi's EP) often have such creative songwriting and instrumentation, but I suppose sometimes it's a bit
too much creativity vocally for my palate. But also like Tomi's EP, but even more so, the strong material overpowers the weaker, with half of the songs having much appeal to me in a variety of ways.
Details:So I don't know if it hit you which song my impression refers to, but it's Kimbra's "Cameo Lover". It's hidden a bit in the verse, but it has some tambourine accents, that bell patch, and once the chorus hits the reverb widens a fair amount, the tambourine becomes more prominent on the half-time backbeat, then constant on the normal second half of the chorus, and there's that Motown-styled snare on every beat propulsion, all with these icy high piano stab ornaments. I love this song, and even though lyrically it has nothing to do with Christmas, it's going on my "I wish stores would play this instead of the same old tired and worn-out tunes they always do" list for that time of the year. It puts me in the mood for that time of the year.
Even the less Christmas-y details on it are radiant, like the pizzicato strings in the first half of the first chorus, the backing harmony vocals in the second verse that scoop into the notes from right below them, the horn arrangement in the chorus with the alternation between punctuations and volume swells, or the interaction of the clean guitar and piano in the bridge. This was definitely the risk of the round, and apparently you almost didn't send it. The one album I'd heard from her prior to the roulette disappointed me, but I'd heard a few other scattered songs that were auspicious enough that I still wanted to give her other music a shot. So this one really paid off.
A lot of the rest of the songs I suppose are somewhere in the ballpark of the alt-prog scene, which I know you've talked about at various points, here, on Rate Your Music and on your Youtube channel. There are a lot of branches of it, and historically I've tended to go more for the Tool and/or Porcupine Tree-esque versions of it. I'm much less familiar with other facets of it, some of which I suppose derive from The Mars Volta, and probably some other artists depending upon how you slice it up. I often find a lot of artists in this musical orbit fascinating instrumentally, but the vocal styles are often less to my taste. But I want to dig further into them to find ones that connect with me more.
The strength of "Beneath the Brine" from The Family Crest is the cello and string arrangements individually, as well as the choral integration. The vocals aren't particularly vexing, but are a bit out of my wheelhouse though. But somehow the different elements don't fully congeal for me. It's interesting that you just mentioned The Dear Hunter as a reference here, as in my initial notes for this track I had one that there's a slight instrumental clash reminiscent of "A Night On the Town". Generally I do often like a lot of heavily-layered music, but sometimes the individual components seem to fight each other a bit much, which is what seems to have happened here.
Fjokra's "Infinite Loops" is a similar story, though with a different mixture of elements. A lot of the synth work is quite splendid, particularly the pads in the verses and the piano and sparkling textures around 3:05. It also has a vivacious energy with the bass lines and doubling of them with guitar riffs in the choruses. The vocals don't do as much for me though, that sort of talk-singing style is one that often doesn't work that well for me.
Then we get to Jeff Buckley, who I already talked about a bit in the writeup for Puppies' EP. He is clearly a talent that I've been ignoring for far too long. You'd think Katatonia covering "Nightmares By the Sea" from him would have turned me onto him earlier, but for whatever reason it didn't happen. He's really fantastic at what he does though, and I'm going to have to explore more of his music. That central bass-driven riff at 0:36 is quite intoxicating especially, as well as that piquant doubled riff at 2:34. Apparently you and Puppies must have subconsciously collaborated on your EPs with each other, because then we have a different song from Oceansize, making you the only two participants to share two separate artists in your EPs. Fortunately, they're one that increasingly appeals to me, so I'll certainly be looking into them more. Those kind of gamelan/King Crimson-ish ping-ponging clean guitars at 3:15 are especially tantalizing. And their vocals are fine.
Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears' "The Purple Rocket" took a bit of time to wrap my head around. The transitions between the surf/Beach Boys-esque parts and the fusion-esque unison bits seemed a little jarring for awhile, but they're kind of fun, and with some dazzling bass lines. It's actually somewhat like a more coherent version of Mr. Bungle's "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" from a few rounds ago, though I'm not particularly crazy about the vocals here either. That also goes for Kiss Kiss' "Through the Day", where the vocals aren't really up my alley, but the crazy string riffs and bursts of dissonance are rather intriguing.
Cloud Cult's "Sleepwalker" has my favorite instrumental moment of the whole EP, with what sounds like a tongue drum similar to one I have, mixed with glockenspiel. The writing there is quite enrapturing. The heavier guitars that come in later with the grinding synth augmentation are potent as well. But again, I'm not sure what to do with the vocals, lol. They're not really overtly offputting per se, I just find myself wishing they were different. They're a bit better later on when they're more aggressive and layered. The vocal cadence of that "I know you're on it" line keeps reminding me of Steely Dan's "Peg" with the "I know I love you better" line.
"Three Tigers" from The River Empires might be my second favorite song here, pretty much everything works on this tune. A fun rhythmic groove, lively bass lines, piano, organ, and even the vocals work this time. The interplay in the a cappella section is particularly ravishing. Apparently this is a Dear Hunter-affiliated band - I'm not sure I realized he did production for other bands, though I suppose it makes more sense in retrospect. Then we close with Bend Sinister's "Quest For Love". This might have the strongest duality of what I like and dislike. The instrumentation is superb with all of the guitar, organ, synth, and bass soloing and unisons, but what bugs me about it? You guessed it, the vocals. The more they remind me of The Mars Volta or Coheed & Cambria the more likely they are to vex me.
Score: 24.5/30
Final Cumulative Score: 8 + 8.75 + 8.75 + 8.5 + 8.75 + 7 + 8 + 8 + 8.75 + 8 + 8.75 + 7.25 + 7.75 + 24.5 =
130.75Final Overall Thoughts:You were one of the other few people I recalled from the forum a decade and a half or so ago, though I believe our tastes were further apart then. I think some combination of your posts and lists here, on RYM and your Youtube videos convinced me that you were much more versed in some areas of music I wanted to get more into, kind of a more eclectic mix of things in a similar way to HOF. Convincing you to join even though you're not a roulette regular has proven to be a great decision. Prog metal of sorts has been such a home base historically that when I've branched out in various other genres I've often neglected to pay attention to the less-metallic artists under the prog umbrella. I guess it often felt too obvious, but meant I missed out on a great many artists.
So I have a ton to check out more music from, from Pepe Deluxé to Kevin Gilbert to Timbre to Greg Herriges to Eldren to the Barock Project, or even somewhat less connected artists like Ours and The Warning, or In Vain. I'm still nervous about The Dear Hunter, but they're such a favorite of some people that I'll certainly have to give them more chances as well. I was kind of astonished that you were leading the roulette for a good chunk of it in the middle, I was not expecting us to have quite that many things in common musically. Some strong performances from a couple others in the second half eroded and overcame your lead eventually, but it's still clear that there's more overlap than I anticipated, and even a number of artists that you didn't send but I've noticed you discussing more than most did well, like Dirt Poor Robins and The Rein of Kindo.
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2nd Place
Evermind - "Le Roi Est Mort, Vive La Reine!"1: Mono Inc. - "Nemesis"
2: Diablo Swing Orchestra - "Kevlar Sweethearts"
3: The Foreshadowing - "The Wandering"
4: Diablo Swing Orchestra - "Justice For Saint Mary"
5: Winona Oak - "SHE"
6: Genus Ordinis Dei - "The Flemish Obituary"
7: J2 - "Stay Alive"
8: Röyksopp - "Running To the Sea" - with Susanne Sundfør
9: Aviators - "Requiem For the King"
Early Impressions -
"This might be the best batch of songs, but with the least comprehensible flow." - "Here we have more bands and songs that I probably should know well enough to ban, but I don't."Favorite - Röyksopp - "Running To the Sea"
Least Favorite - Genus Ordinis Dei - "The Flemish Obituary"
Final Summary:This EP is all over the place stylistically, but, so is my taste, and this touches on many different musical elements I like.
Details:The first couple paragraphs coming up here are triggered by your structure making me consciously aware of flow more than most other EPs, though I'm going to generalize a bit so that I can have people refer back to this if questions arise about my thought process on incorporating flow in these EPs. So when I knew that I wanted to have an EP round in this roulette I realized that they're a bit of an eagerly-anticipated tradition by some of the roulette regulars. But I was less sure of how exactly I wanted to handle the execution of them, and part of why I put off laying down too many specific rules until towards the end of the roulette. I think some people are definitely more album-oriented listeners than I am. While I listen to them a decent amount, it's just as often for the sake of convenience. I probably have less of a defined sense of how an album should flow than other participants probably do, particularly ones like ariich who weigh flow as an entire third of an EP's score.
I did want people to put some thought into it and see what resulted from it, but ultimately what I've settled on is mostly using it as a ceiling raiser for participant's scores rather than a floor lowerer. I've noticed as I wrote the writeups that I mostly stuck to my usual method of commenting primarily on artists and songs, and had to keep occasionally reminding myself to think about the transitions between everything as well. Still, there's relatively little commentary on that compared to everything else, so I've factored it in mostly when it was conspicuous or particularly exemplary. My primary goal was still to receive the best possible set of songs, and I didn't want people fussing too much over not including songs just because they didn't fit an ideal perfectly-flowing EP.
Now, more specifically onto your EP, this actually felt more targeted to me than many of the other EPs, enjoyable as some of them are. I'm not entirely sure how much of it is you managing to start figuring out my tastes towards the end of the roulette (though the more average scores for Thrice and Dire Straits might belie that) vs. us just having a decent overlap of musical taste, but I guess it doesn't particularly matter for the moment. Diablo Swing Orchestra, The Foreshadowing, and Röyksopp were all artists I've heard more music from beforehand, the others were much less familiar.
I've heard most of The Foreshadowing's output and have told myself I needed to listen to them more, but it hasn't seemed to happen enough yet, though that may start changing now with you nudging me in that direction. The clean guitar swells, flowing melodic leads, octave doubled vocals - it's such a comfortable feeling sound, that I suspect they're in the Soen category of bands I should be a bigger fan of, but needed some external prompting to realize. That melancholic, slightly dramatic bass/baritone vocal is right in the sweet spot for my tastes. Diablo Swing Orchestra is a band I've heard at least an album from and a few scattered songs from, and have been intrigued by, but just never got around to spending much time with them.
And then I'm familiar with Röyksopp's collaborations with Kate Havnevik, and had heard the Susanne Sundfør tunes she'd guested on with them once or twice, but since she's a relatively newer artist to me I hadn't really gotten that acquainted with them yet. So you caught me in the right place in the cycle there. The other artists are all new to me (other than a cursory listen to the J2 track you sent recently in another roulette), but seem promising.
Mono Inc.'s "Nemesis" is right in my wheelhouse. The moody vibe, the acoustic fingerpicking, great lead vocals, the choral backing vocals, the piano accents, even the melodica soloing is unexpectedly delightful. It would fit well on Green Carnation's
The Acoustic Verses. Both Diablo Swing Orchestra tracks are quite enjoyable, I don't seem to remember the string arrangements being as prominent on what I had previously heard from them, but they work quite well. I remembered them having horns, which are a gratifying inclusion, as well as the bass lines and acoustic guitar work. "Justice For Saint Mary" was especially quite a ride, I sensed something bigger was coming, and it definitely paid off, almost too much. The dubstep elements at the end kind of took me out of it at first, though I've gotten used to them now. The way they build up towards the conclusion is quite breathtaking though, with the acoustic hits panning back and forth, the deep pizzicato strings, the horn swells, it's a great application of compositional panache.
Winona Oak's "SHE" is just the perfect sort of darker pop song I like, that was certainly an excellent choice. J2's "Stay Alive" is a much more cinematic version of that, and another fantastic song. Röyksopp's "Running To the Sea" is also quite straightforward, and the steady four-on-the-floor drive seems like a format that much of DTF shies away from, but with the right vocalist and melodies, I can't resist them, and that's exactly what we have here.
Aviators' "Requiem For the King" is a brilliant marriage of elements, I love how seamlessly the acoustic guitars and harp-like textures fit with the glitchy and industrial-ish percussion. Swinging back to the hardest song to evaluate, Genus Ordinis Dei's "The Flemish Obituary", I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it. The overall darker vibe is nice, with the contrast between the choral vocals, pipe organ, piano, and the heavier riffing. It's pleasant enough when I'm listening to it, but for whatever reason none of it really sticks with me melodically afterwards. And the harsh vocals are kind of unusual, though I don't mind them per se. I see that Lacuna Coil's drummer was a member for awhile, and Cristina guests on a different track, so I will have to check that one out though.
Score: 26.5/30
Final Cumulative Score: 7.75 + 7.5 + 8.25 + 7.75 + 8.75 + 8.25 + 8 + 8.5 + 8 + 9 + 7.75 + 7.25 + 8.75 + 26.5 =
132Final Overall Thoughts:Well, you've probably been the most serendipitous contestant of the roulette. You were understandably away from the forum for awhile for half the time I'd rejoined before starting this roulette, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect from your submissions. They tended to either significantly boost my interest in an artist I'd heard a bit from before, like Soen, Thrice, Kalandra, and Peter Heppner - or be alluring music from artists I knew very little about, like Black Peaks, Marketa Irglova, Árstíðir, Skein, Hypno5e, Amadeus Awad's Eon, Evan Carson, or So Hideous. You started out in the middle, slowly worked your way up the standings, seemed to be slipping towards the end, and then pulled this surprise upset second place finish over Soundscape at the last minute with two extremely strong last rounds. It's been nine months, so you can finally take that well-needed and deserved vacation now. :-p
Topic: LithoJazzoSphere Roulette V1: Variety & Reciprocity (Post-Roulette Playlist) (Read 114850 times)