Enough playing with my food! Here we are with the final breakdowns:
I – The Opener: Puppies' song is the perfect introduction to the dystopian crapsack hopeless world he's setting our tale in, illustrating in a couple of minutes the horrific predictment our hero is forced to overcome. If the function is setting the stage (and it is), I'd say mission coincisely and effectively accomplished. In TAC's case – not a tale, but stages of self-knowledge – the starting scenery is the whole of our creative potential, as chaotic and violently optimistic as it can be. Every choice and consequence laid down at the same time in the same place, the exhilarating core of possibilities and will inside our head. The super convoluted and dense tentacular instrumental is the best possible choice this side of atonal or aleatory music.
Edge: Draw
II – The Firestarter: The play's real beginning, amazingly the best musical offering from both contestants. Theatrically speaking, it needs to be both “I am song” (what I feel and where I find myself) and “I want song” (a transformative act or intent of will). Puppies' song is a great reflection of rebellious suffering's energies, continously going back and forth from gloomy hope to beautiful sadness. The musical contrasts I wrote about before are a great portrait of the crossroads between revolution and desperation. TAC gives us the most enpowering and uplifting tune in order to describe the inhebriated state of human choice (or artistic creation, because I read the whole concept in that key). The exagerated high coming from results and validation, the self-aggrandising satisfaction in overcoming the blank page.
Edge: Draw
III – The Emotional Centerpiece: The key moment of great enlightment/enterprise with no turning back. The “moment of betrayal”, if you will. Amazingly – again – the weakest offering from both our contestants. Puppies went with the (almost) instrumental atmospheric crescendo, our hero's mounting desperation leading him to the brink of suicide, one second before finally turning the tide. The emotional strenght is there, but the tune lacks a proper climax to such a long descent. TAC shows us the man (the artist) facing the loneliness and sterility of control, the delusional hope his work will live forever, the emptiness you feel when you find out you're back to the start after reaching the stars. Even though the song could have done a lot of things better, it fills that function to the hilt, both musically and lyrically.
Edge: TAC
IV – The 11 o'Clock Number: If you think a good play's big payoff depends on its finale, you don't know your theatre. You need to wake your audience's senses with a sudden spark/twist in order to properly prepare it for the end. Puppies' hero finds his answers inside a fever dream, he knows his way out now. The tune, if not great per se, does a good job shifting the mood from depression to action leaving intact a certain feeling of discomfort, thus avoiding to spoil the happy ending. TAC's philosophical voyage goes where the man (artist, dammit!) realises his creation can't be his life, but it can swallow his life's truth if believed so. The answers are still distant, but the necessary step to reach them is to tear everything down, as beautiful it may be, because there's no authentic life (art, dammit!) if marred by the delusion of being more than human. The song does this desperate act justice, but it's so glorious and gorgeous to usurp the finale's own function someway.
Edge: Puppies
V – The Grand Finale:Edge: Puppies' hero flies away from his sad destiny and reaches for the stars, and the song is nothing but a full adrenalising arsekicking space voyage at warp speed, full of both hope and fear. What I absolutely love is the story is left open. We'll never know whether our protagonist has found salvation, we just need to witness his beautiful act of taking flight. TAC gives us one of those finals that leave you awake for hours. Nothing ends, no one wins. The artist knows (and he's able to forgive himself for being) human. He discovers he can't go on living as either the best thing since sliced bread or the worst shit who ever lived (i.e. my ex-wife's disease). Life/art is light and dark, constant compromise. Endless sacrifice. The tune is thus both joyous and dark, full of subtle mystery, taking us through winding turns, never giving resolutive pompous final bangs, but leaving a small musical open window: the rest of your life.
Edge: Draw
VI – Narration: Puppies' stage-setting and presentation sections are borderline perfect. A gloomy jingle opening courtains and the sudden kick in the balls. The central segment is unique enough to stop everything and force reflection. It's not that powerful, but combined to the rekindling and the epic flight it works pretty well. The amazing feat has been telling the less original hero tale towards an extremely original and satisfying not-conclusion. A great journey from a horrific cell to sideral infinity. TAC's concept lives on a beautiful lyrical symmetry, exploring profound themes without banal oversemplification, yet easily compartimentalising every stage with amazing clarity. The amazing thing is the music succeeds in keeping up with the same exact project.
Edge: Draw
VII – Flow: Puppies' tracks 1,2,3 and 5 are absolutely cohesive and organic. I would have cut song 3's vocals in order to keep the illusion of a common author. Song 4 is a definite jump sideways in terms of sound, which would have been perfect with song 5 following suit, marking our story's turning tide. Too bad song 5 too strongly belongs to the first three songs' family in order for that to work. Every song in TAC's EP sounds differently, but each one sounds as its relative concept's stage requires it to sound. That, my friends, is flow.
Edge: TAC
VIII – Transitions:Puppies:
. Between 1 and 2: from an ominous Em to a neoclassical Am explosion. Apparently clunky, but hold that thought.
. Between 2 and 3: flawless Gm sadness to Gm sadness
. Between 3 and 4: one tone up, borderline grating, BUT: song 4's hook does move exactly like song 3's verse, in a different key. Brilliant.
. Between 4 and 5: Ominous Am to Em fireworks. Apparently clunky, but read point 1 again and you discover the clever plan. Bonus points: song 5 finishes with a big Emajor, while the whole tale began with a bleak Em. Focking brilliant.
TAC:
. Between 1 and 2: From Bm to a Bbmajor in subdominat function. Possibly terrible, but that Rhodes sanitises everything
. Between 2 and 3: Flawless Dm to Dm by drumfill. Kudos to your editor, he rocks.
. Between 3 and 4: One key up, but very well disguised. Bonus points: song 4 shares subtle harmonic movements with both song 2 and 3. Brilliant.
. Between 4 and 5: From Em to Cm, brutal but at least mediated by one second of silence.
Edge: Puppies
IX – Musical Appreciation: Even though I completely like 5 songs in TAC's EP and 3 in Puppies', the latter's peaks are higher than the former's. Both collections are better than the sum of their parts and terrific as a whole, and that's what really matters at the end of the day. I honestly can't say which one is musically better, and that's basically the reason I'm writing a longarse breakdown post at midnight while my wife is calling the lawyer (whether for him to fock her or me is irrelevant at this point).
Edge: Draw
X – Emotional Appreciation: Puppies' hero's journey succeeded in making me feel for every step of the way, masterfully manipulating my mood at the precise required nodes. It kept me captive during the first 3 songs (best sequence in the round), lost me a bit during song 4, but I've never been able to not stand up and pump my fist for the whole last song. TAC just killed me. Listening to those lyrics on those melodies was an equally painful and healing look into everything I've been and done in the last twenty years. If you selected and elaborated that concept the same way I interpreted it, then you must have been inside an artist's mind for a very long time; if not, you still must be a scrupolous observer of human nature, 'cause you hit your marks with surgeonlike grace and precision. I never succeeded in escaping your EP untouched.
Edge: TAC
Tim, you won this crazy thing. Given my lunatic tastes and quirks, I really don't know whether I should congratulate or be worried for you. Nonetheless, I thank you for the great music you sent my way, and the way it always felt carefully tailored on my nature.
Puppies, honour to you. You started this roulette with the worst vote; from there you kept climbing up with great submission after great submission, climaxing with the undisputed best song of the tournament. Your EP is excellent, and you probably lost this round (by a smidge) only because your opponent follows my ramblings since 2011 and knows where to hit slightly better. Chapeau.
I can't believe I've been able to see this through.
Fin
Nah, not done yet. I will pay my homage to Parama's and Jingle's EPs soon. But first, there's a Scenes Thread I need to unbury.
Topic: Indiscipline's Roulette v. The Dirty Aftermath (Read 120758 times)
