ariich - Borknagar - "The Rhymes of the Mountain", "The Fire That Burns"
Early Impression - "Memorability is going to be the question, but the sound and elements are there. I may have been sleeping on this band."
Final Summary:
So as it turns out, memorability was no issue at all - "The Fire That Burns" is still an earworm, and this roulette is rightfully starting to club me over the head with the idea that I need to pay more attention to the proggier Norwegian groups.
Details:
I'm feeling another shorter writeup coming, you somehow keep having that effect on me. I may have jinxed it by lampshading it, but we'll see. This round, and to a lesser extent the roulette, has been a bit of a hall of fame of black metal bands that tend to appeal to prog fans, between Agalloch, Enslaved, or in earlier rounds like Arcturus, Ne Obliviscaris, Solefald, Moonsorrow (or do they just appeal to Puppies?...), etc. So naturally it's time to reevaluate Borknagar, who as you've noticed, like Insomnium, I heard some of their earlier albums (possibly even more than I've rated, my memory is really fuzzy back that far), liked them moderately, but never really made an effort to keep up with them much after that.
Their status as a supergroup of sorts does seem to do them favors though, as we started discussing earlier in the thread, I do somewhat know the title track from Winter Thrice since it's a bit more famous for having a revisitation from Fiery G. to cool off ICS. But this duo of tracks is essentially similar to Enslaved, albeit a level up, with "Rhymes of the Mountain" being good, but "The Fire That Burns" being a bit more special. I don't understand how essentially a one-note chorus is so damn catchy, but it is. There's other tasty stuff from time to time, a solid production job, electric pianos, cool bass fills, guitar solos, some cleaner electric moments, a bit of synthesizer, and some violin (wouldn't have minded more). Kolstad doesn't stand out as much on "Rhymes" as I'd hoped he might, but he certainly doesn't hold it back either. The vocoder effect at 3:25 in "Rhymes" was also a serendipitous moment.
And since this has been a round of responding to specious band comparisons I've heard over the years, I'll proffer a questionable one of my own. Borknagar is black metal Soilwork. The earlier releases from both were a bit trver, but over the time they've become more melodic, polished, and proggier. But regardless, it's clear my Scandinavian axis of listening has been a bit too slanted towards Sweden over the years, and I need to tilt it at least slightly back in the direction of Norway. It seems that this came out slightly longer than I expected, but I suppose there's no direct correlation between writeup length and submission quality anyway.
Score: 8.25/10
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Crow - Intronaut - "Fast Worms", "The Unlikely Event of a Water Landing"
Early Impression - "This might be the second best thing you've sent me. As I had anticipated, the bass playing is a highlight."
Final Summary:
In actuality, the bass playing and the drumming are highlights, with "Fast Worms" having a cornucopia of delights, making this another band I'm at least a decade behind on, but it's never too late.
Details:
As I mentioned in my PM, I've seen these guys live when they opened up for Katatonia, along with TesseracT and Cult of Luna. I think I'd heard that they had a bit more flair in the bass department than normal, and I seem to recall that being the case during the show, but for whatever reason, I just never got around to following up on them. Well, I'm definitely glad I'm able to look into them now.
It's starting to get freaky with how common these submissions this round with a pair of songs will have one decent-good one, and one great one. And I don't know if they're always the ones people would expect. But in this case it's "The Unlikely Event of a Water Landing" that's pretty solid, but "Fast Worms" really steals the show. My memory of how they sounded was so fuzzy that I didn't know quite what to expect, but it certainly wasn't for it to have quite so many dazzling elements to it.
After a cool cliché but always effective lo-fi to full resolution explosion, the intro is a great mix of faster and slower heavy riffs, and the vocals are surprisingly decent, sounding a little like Threat Signal. The ping-ponging riff at 2:56 is just the delightful sort of studio mixing trick I love, and that whole instrumental section in the middle with the jazz chords and the fretless soloing is absolutely worth the price of admission. I play a little bit of fretless bass myself, so it's always a treat to hear players that are way better at it than I am. Obviously from the impression the bass playing was the initial standout, but from repeated listens and checking out some drum playthrough videos, the playing there is quite excellent as well.
And as if the world of this round isn't small enough already, one of their rehearsal videos shows them playing a stripped-down version of this song to Brent Hinds of Mastodon. Between the artists voluntarily associating with each other and me making some additional connections, this round has become a miniature nexus of the prog music community. Which might be better than the metal community, or at least some of it. The sole Metal-Archives review for this album gives it a 0%. I'm speechless.
Score: 8.5/10
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HOF - Big Big Train - "The Florentine", "Snowfalls"
Early Impression - "I was worried that this would be too overly simple and happy for me at first, but the way it builds is impressive and gradually becomes more to my taste."
Final Summary:
In truth, the way "The Florentine" builds is a microcosm of how the whole submission unfurled on me, continuing to prove to me that I've been too frequently ignoring bands of this type for too long.
Details:
This roulette has been really fascinating in exposing me to musical niches that I'm often aware of but have mostly neglected. A number of your submissions have certainly fallen into that category. When it comes to "prog" music, it seems that I've frequently had an often unconscious divide, that for more modern artists I generally lean into ones more on the metal side, and for prog artists in the 80s and before (even the 90s to an extent), I generally lean towards the rock side. It might just be the peculiarities of my taste, but advancements in learning to properly capture heavy downtuned guitars in the 90s and beyond is much noticeably greater than other technological improvements to record lighter styles.
So BBT is an artist that I hear about all the time, and I've seen D'Virgilio in some other contexts, but I think I'd only heard one proper album of theirs to this point, and as we briefly discussed over PM, their discography is a bit daunting to explore for a relatively modern group. It's interesting to try and recall exactly how I felt the first time I heard a song even a couple weeks ago now. I was worried I'd find them a bit insipid, but the song length gave some hope that "The Florentine" would at least go to some interesting places, and it most certainly did. Even now I think I actually even like the opening that had initially given me some pause, though it's hard to divorce it from the rest of the context now.
But it's really quite spellbinding how it slowly develops and moves through different passages, with the violin solos, the organ, the synth leads, guitar solos, the various combinations of harmony vocals, NDV's always exciting drumming. It kind of reminds me of more recent Anathema mixed with a more traditional prog band.
The opening of "Snowfalls" made me believe it was going to have a different feel than it ultimately did with the 12-string guitar, it took awhile longer to grow on me, and doesn't reach quite the heights of "The Florentine", but it is quite a nice piece as well, with the Mellotron, the slide guitar bits, and the post-rock-ish leads near the end. That fill NDV pulls off at 5:06 is bonkers. I also didn't realize that in their lineup they have Rikard Sjöblom from Beardfish, who I saw live awhile ago.
I've said in earlier rounds that it's generally safer to send me studio versions of songs and suggest live versions to listen to and/or watch on the side if they're particularly interesting, though this seems to be an example where it probably doesn't matter, they're both great and similar enough in production and quality that I don't mind. The studio version does have mandolin though, which is such an underused instrument. I also might actually like the version from The Boerderij in Zoetermeer just as much, which I believe has their current vocalist and violinist/backing vocalist.
I imagine you and Soundscape (and maybe seneca for that matter) already both are quite familiar with the Kevin Gilbert connections, but I'll leave those for that writeup. It's clear that I need to spend more time with the various neo-prog and modern prog rock bands, as there is evidently much I've been missing out on.
Score: 8.75/10
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Tomislav95 - Paramore - "Hard Times", "Rose-Colored Boy", "Fake Happy", "The News"
Early Impression - "This could be the best thing you've sent me, with an artist that has more range than I realized."
Final Summary:
I love to find out that a band I've been curious about for a long time, but never really explored, turns out to have multiple eras with a variety of different splendid sounds to explore.
Details:
I think I might have had them on an earlier draft list of my eligible artists for this round even when this roulete started, but you sending "The News" to TAC definitely piqued my interest, made me make sure they were on the list, and I was hoping someone would pick them. I only gave "The News" a single listen at the time, but it seemed interesting, and is a bit of a different side of them than the handful of songs I've heard before, essentially just from their first few albums. But then the other three songs show yet another facet of them that I was completely in the dark on. So it appears they might have at least three distinct eras that I might enjoy each for different reasons.
I still can't decide though whether I prefer "The News" or "Hard Times", though both are great, but in different ways. The latter starts out sounding like one of those phone notifications with the chromatic percussion ditty, but it turns it into a killer song that I can't get out of my head and don't want to either. There is some fantastic orchestration between the various layers of guitar and keyboards, playing off of each other in endlessly interesting ways. Even now, having heard this song many times at this point, I listen back more closely and every few seconds I notice another little detail and think, "was that there before?", which is one thing I really love when a song makes me do.
"Rose-Colored Boy" and "Fake Happy" are also good tunes, though they don't bring me quite as much joy as the other two. "Fake Happy" starts with a very narrowly mixed approach that soon after widens to the normal mix, which is a production trick used several other times in this round, but although that section is a tad long, the contrast is always fascinating to hear develop, no matter how many times I've heard it before. "Rose-Colored Boy" also is quite engaging in how it blends the drum patterns with some subtle layers of percussion, and is probably the third best song of the batch.
"The News" is fantastic throughout, but my favorite section of it is the pre-chorus ("So I, Turn, On...") with the melisma delivery drenched in delay and reverb. The rest of her vocals there are great as well, and she has a better version and balance of melody and character than a lot of similar vocalists.
Score: 8.75/10
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SoundscapeMN - Kevin Gilbert - "Back in NYC", "Imagemaker", "Finally Over You"
Early Impression - "This is some of the most unusual and difficult to categorize of the accessible rock/pop I've heard, which could be its strength."
Final Summary:
All three songs have a quite unique blend of styles and influences in ways I don't believe I've heard anything else quite like, so I'm thrilled that this submission succeeded.
Details:
Kevin seems to have become one of those larger than life figures that sometimes happens for people who have untimely passings. I've heard him mentioned many times over the years, had some idea he was involved with Toy Matinee (sloppy reading years ago briefly had me thinking it was "Manitee" for a bit at first) and Giraffe (maybe it was the subconscious animal connection?), and had heard something about his work on a Sheryl Crow album. I didn't realize that it goes far deeper, with work for Michael Jackson, Madonna, Keith Emerson, Eddie Money, and especially that he unfortunately missed the Genesis audition to replace Phil Collins. It's morbidly fascinating when we also have Big Big Train in the round, of whom David Longdon was also strongly considered for that role by them. And then Nick D'Virgilio being involved with Kevin as well.
So Kevin is another artist that I tend to associate with you, and cautiously wondered whether he might come up at some point, and I guess my list for the round finalized the deal. And it looks like it has worked out, because he is clearly a quite rare type of artist that I can see why he would resonate with people. One of the most fascinating things is how timeless this music feels in a way. At any given moment I can pick out elements from numerous prior decades that he has synthesized into something that feels quite singular.
Like so many other artists you've sent, there's a quite riveting amount of layers in these songs that I'm sure I'll still be unpacking long after the roulette is over. It's a real art to have what would probably be dozens if not hundreds of individual elements in a DAW for each track, some that just punctuate the song periodically, and have it all feel cohesive, but that is some of the magic of the best pop production that I think some rock/metal fans miss out on.
"Back in NYC" is quite an intriguing cover. On a prog forum the standards are just way too high, but among general music fans I'd consider myself a reasonably large Genesis fan, though I admittedly gravitated towards their 80s work for various reasons, and have heard and enjoyed but am not deeply familiar with the first few albums (though the transition period between Gabriel and Collins is probably the most enduringly interesting).
Listening to both the original and Kevin's cover back to back, it's remarkable in how it transforms the song stylistically (ironically resembling some of Genesis' better moments in the 80s, which is perhaps why he was sought after for that position), yet retains some of the unique features, melodies, and motifs of it. Some of the heavy modulation effects on the guitars are rather enthralling. I think I even hear some mbira in spots, which is an instrument I've been fascinated by and wish more artists would utilize.
"Imagemaker" is quite unusual, it's almost like industrial blues rock/pop, which doesn't sound on paper like it should work at all, but somehow does. While all three songs are excellent, "Finally Over You" really takes the cake for me. The addicting melodies, exquisite vocal harmonies, that intoxicating horn/chromatic percussion unison riff, and the out of nowhere lo-fi ragtime ending that remarkably fits perfectly.
I've been a big Paul Gilbert fan for a long time, and have heard a bit of Bruce Gilbert, but I think it's time to start incorporating another Gilbert into my collection. And I think I actually own that Sheryl Crow album Kevin was involved with, but am not sure I ever got around to listening to it, so despite the mess that apparently came about after it, I'm quite curious to hear it.
Score: 8.75/10
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Buddyhunter1 - Riverside - "Left Out"
Early Impression - "Hmm, maybe the second time's (third time?) the charm."
Final Summary:
This is right in a sweet spot of prog rock/metal excellence, with all the right ingredients, simultaneously feeling both old-school and contemporary in the appropriate ways.
Details:
I already touched on a bit of my Riverside experience in the writeups for round 8, so it looks like I don't need as much room in this one. But yeah, so this is the sound I remembered?/hoped they were capable of, but wasn't quite there either in earlier rounds, or in their album from this year, which I listened to a few months ago. Maybe it is and I just overlooked it, but it's undeniable here.
This just has the perfect combination of elements to create a transcendent vibe. The spacious, melancholy feel, active bass lines, killer riffs, great guitar tones and soloing, tasty drumming (particularly the higher-pitched toms), magnificent Hammond organ, atmospheric piano, a bit of keyboard and electronic augmentation, and I think Mariusz' voice is gradually growing on me as well. 3:02 with the keyboard melody and the haunting backing vocals is especially intriguing. And then I also adore the sound of the piano and soon after the chorused clean guitar in the section at 6:48.
And there we have it, you, Tomi, and Crow in the top 5 for the round, just as I knew it would play out. :-)
Score: 9/10
Topic: LithoJazzoSphere Roulette V1: Variety & Reciprocity (Post-Roulette Playlist) (Read 119074 times)