Alright, I feel that I've given all of the songs plenty of listens, and I've managed to type out a whole lot more than I had planned to or thought that I would want to. Although my writeups still kind of suck. So, here are the results for Round 1.
Shadow Ninja 2.0 vs SaculShadow Ninja 2.0- Steam Powered Giraffe - Brass Goggles
Before I started listening to the songs, I thought I'd do a bit of reading about what I'd already been sent while I waited for more people to submit. Being the first to do so, the band of your submission was unsurprisingly the first that I looked into. Upon loading up the band's Last.fm page and noticing that the most popular tags for this artist were things like
steampunk and
fedoracore, my initial reaction was along the lines of
"I don't know what that means. What the hell has he sent me?" Photos of the band didn't really help much, either. I definitely knew it would be strange, I knew it would probably be fun to listen to, and I had an idea of what vaudeville is - but beyond that, I was not really sure what to expect.
And that's pretty much what I got - it's perhaps not as strange as I was expecting (that could be a good thing, though), but it's certainly a fun song. That musical theatricality is quite strong, and I think the piano especially invokes the 1800's in both its style and that honky-tonk sound. I think where the song shines the most though is in its vocal performances. Besides being fond of their voices, I'm a fan of good harmonies, I'm definitely a fan of well-constructed counterpoint, I'm a fan of acapella sections - and this song has plenty of all of those things, done well.
I still don't really know what the fuck
fedoracore is supposed to mean, but I think I might like it.
SaculI have to be honest, I had a hard time with this song. While I do listen to some electronic music, I am generally
much harder to please when listening to those genres. Unfortunately, this song epitomises a lot of the things I don't like about most electronic music. It's quite repetitive, it has only one drum beat which, while not too dull, is not all that interesting, and the song is lazily produced - the hi-hats (I did notice there are several) for example are very plain, they have identical velocity every time and there is no pattern to them so they are basically a metronome. I'm not sure what the crackling was meant to do - I don't mind that sort of thing, but in this song it seemed a little overbearing. I find it especially disappointing that the song was released in 2007 because the production sounds like a subpar 90's electronic track at best.
So that this isn't completely negative (sorry about that
), the lo-fi, almost mellotron-like strings weren't too bad, and the various sound effects I thought were utilised well, which is rarely the case when there's a lot of different ones popping up all throughout the song. But overall, I'm afraid that this song has failed to hit the mark...big time.
jingle.boy vs Elitejingle.boy- Duran Duran - The Reflex
First off, I just have to say that this isn't at all the kind of thing I expected you to send.
I'm familiar with a couple of Duran Duran songs (like probably everyone is), but to the best of my recollection, this isn't one that I know. I probably would have heard it before - I used to listen to the radio and watch music videos on TV when I was a kid, and this song was a #1 hit only a year before I was born. I'm actually surprised that I didn't recognise it to be honest, but I guess it was a really long time ago that I was listening to this kind of stuff. I'm still familiar with songs such as Hungry Like The Wolf and Come Undone - which would have been banned had you sent them, along with a couple of other Duran Duran songs.
You need not have been concerned about my reaction to something like this, either - I listened to this stuff when I was younger because I liked it. This kind of thing might sound foreign and strange and could be a little hard to swallow for some of the people on this forum younger than yourself (which is a hell of a lot of people
), but to me it's none of those things. I get that feeling of nostalgia from music like this too, as it's what I grew up with.
Unsurprisingly, this song screams 80's. It has that bouncy bassline, the funky electric guitars, and some soft keys fleshing out the sound. The first half of each verse and the chorus all plays to these strengths and vocally it's great. The vox in the second half of each verse (starting with the line
"Why don't you use it") and in a couple of other parts of the song I didn't like so much, due to the whiney, almost nasal timbre the singer's voice takes on, which I found a little grating. But I'm probably just nitpicking at this point, really. The production is outstanding aswell, like a lot of stuff was back in the 80's.
All in all, a good submission. I should at the very least buy a compilation album of these guys.
Elite- Lesoir - Flawless Chemistry
As you so keenly deduced, I do infact like heavy music and female voices. So this appears as though it was a rather strategic choice by the looks of it, no doubt due to who you were up against for this particular round.
Instrumentally, I liked what was going on. The combination of the drone-like organ playing in the lower register and the fast-paced string samples worked, and I liked the slightly minimalist approach to the drums throughout the song, which I think helped to give it more of an orchestral feel than a rock or metal one. There's some good stripping away of elements and building the song back up aswell. Criticisms include a pretty average production (fair warning, I can be a bit of a production-whore at times) and the vocalist, while good enough most of the time was not great - she lacked any real power in her voice (which I felt could have really added a lot to the song) and there were a few notes here and there where she flubbed it a bit.
Overall I'd say this song was good, but not great; I liked it, but nothing blew me away. You're in the right ballpark though.
Big Hath vs ParamaBig Hath- Devin Townsend Project - Supercrush!
I probably heard something from Devin Townsend long before this, but I do know that I recently (as of last year) listened to some of his music when the discography thread was started. I listened to and did not mind Ocean Machine (which is why you had to resubmit), but I never even got around to listening to it a second time. I followed up that album with his next, Infinity, but I didn't really like that one at all. I think someone posted in the discography thread that people new to Devin's music should continue listening after Infinity, and I was going to, but I didn't bother for some reason.
This song makes a really good first impression. The crunchy single-chord introduction reminds me a little of The Mirror. Vocally the song starts off strong aswell, with a juxtaposition of high-pitched aaah's and subtle, slightly aggressive yelling in the background. This prevails throughout the song, but with Devin and her alternating between being lead and backing each other up. I wasn't expecting female vox at all, but I liked the combination of hers and Devin's vocals in the song, besides just having Devin himself alternate between cleaner and screamier vocals (which he still does anyway). Also it's Anneke.
One thing I consistently have liked about what little of Devin's music I have heard, is the vocals. My very first introduction to him was The Human Experiment and I like his performance on that album aswell. This song is varied sufficiently, too - while it mostly conforms to the verse-chorus-verse structure, the song breaks free of this in places and introduces new things. I also liked the drumming, in particular the little cymbal bursts in the section after the three minute mark.
Parama- Bodies Of Water - Under The Pines
Like Elite's song, this was not bad, but I wasn't blown away, and you had some stiff competition this round. The introduction with the repetitive organ jumping up and down reminded me of...something, but I could never quite put my finger on what. There's a lot in this song that reminds me of a 70's rock style - the bass and vocals especially, but also the guitar a bit - but it doesn't mimic the style too much to the point that I think the band is trying too hard to achieve the sound or that I think the song sounds unoriginal. The drumming in particular has a more modern indie rock vibe to it I think, and so the song is more of a blend of modern indie rock with some older rock influence - which is good, because most of the indie rock I've heard (which admittedly is not all that much) is usually either one or the other. The bass was another highlight throughout the song, with some good basslines and I liked the synthyness of it in the intro and the slightly overdriven sound in the rest of the song. Vocally the chorus didn't appeal to me all that much, but I otherwise enjoyed the up and down scat parts and the unison between the two vocalists during the verses.
Scorpion vs EvermindScorpion- Amorphis - Sampo
As I mentioned, I have listened to these guys before, and I believe it was not long after I first signed up to DTF, back in 2011. Which song or songs I listened to or why I didn't move forward and listen to more, I don't even remember.
Listening to this song, I can't figure out what the problem was. Put simply, this song is pretty friggin' good, so maybe I listened to the wrong song or my tastes at the time had not expanded enough for this to make the cut.
Anyway, this song...It's heavy, but it isn't excessive in its heaviness. It also counterpoints the heavier sections with beautiful, melodic passages rife with pianos and strings, and a little bit of mellotron aswell. There was also a synth solo which I wasn't expecting, adding to the aural combinations the song provides. There's a lot those big, fuzzy guitar chords for depth and texture but some good riffage when it's needed, particularly in the latter half of the track. Overall this song is very Opeth-esque, but with more variety in the instrumentation and less emphasis on being heavy.
Vocally, I was a fan of everything although the harsh vocals towards the end were borderline. While I do listen to and like music with harsh vocals, I can be pretty hard (even almost impossible) to please where they are concerned. The harsh vocals in this song were more guttural which I generally don't like. But, they didn't detract from the song at all, which is a good indication of how strong a submission this was. So much so that you've managed to nab the first gold star of the roulette, infact.
Evermind- Pain of Salvation - Iter Impius
Pain of Salvation is a band I was 100% certain someone would send, and yet another band I have listened to several years ago. When I was first getting into progressive metal around 2003 or so, Pain of Salvation was one of the earliest examples of the genre that I listened to. At the time Remedy Lane was their latest album, so I listened to a few songs from that (no idea which ones). Whatever I listened to never clicked though, so I didn't bother exploring the band any further. Several years later, likely due to the influence of this forum, I sampled a track or two from one of the Road Salts (not sure which one) but again, nothing clicked. This is also why I opted to leave bands like Pain of Salvation out of my banned list; I might not have been in the right frame of mind back then, or my tastes have changed enough since that my opinion could today be completely different, or maybe I would like some albums and not others.
One thing that I really like about this song is the way it builds. Starting off with just piano and softly spoken vocals the song slowly creeps up in pace and dynamics, adding strings and cymbals before it gets to the 1:30 minute mark, where it all drops away sans the vocalist, before the instruments come back in one by one building to a great moment just before 2:00 where all the drums kick in, and the violins break free and take off in an ascending and then slowly descending run - probably my favourite part of the song right there. The song continues to become more aggressive after this, the vocals especially, which I wasn't too fond of towards the end of the track. But musically it remained strong, I dug the addition of a flute during the final minute or so of the band rocking out.
So, there we have the conclusion to Round 1. In all, it was a strong round and I'm impressed that submissions were so strong right from the beginning. A couple of the songs that weren't in a position to earn stars, I'm probably going to investigate further after the roulette anyway. I'm slightly optimistic about the rest of this roulette now - don't disappoint me.
I hadn't planned on doing this, but I thought a ranking of each round might be something you guys were interested in, so you can see how you did against all of the other players and not just your competitor for the round. Since this has no bearing on anything, there may be ties. Round 1 looked something like this:
Scorpion
Evermind / Big Hath
Shadow Ninja 2.0 / jingle.chad
Parama
Elite
Sacul
Finally, here are the scores so far. It'll be obvious for the first few rounds who is currently on top, but I'm hoping that as the roulette goes on and a bunch of different stars are earned by each of you, this becomes less clear. I have no intention of revealing the point values of each star before the end of the roulette, but feel free to speculate or argue amongst yourselves about who is performing better than who.
Round 2: En Garde!Here's who each of you is
fighting to the deathplaying against in the next round:
Shadow Ninja 2.0 vs
Elitejingle.boy vs
EvermindBig Hath vs
ScorpionParama vs
Sacul