19th Place
romdrumsFinal Cumulative Score: 14.25 (DNF - completed two rounds)
Final Overall Thoughts:Well, you might not normally be reading this organically, but hopefully you caught my PM, so for my own sense of finality, here are a few brief thoughts. I wish you'd been able to stay in my roulette longer. I get the vibe from your submissions in other roulettes before and after mine that you're probably a bit more into djent-adjacent sounds than many on DTF are. We're both drummers, so maybe that sense of off-kilter rhythmic propulsion has an appeal that not all get. I imagine you could have had some hits at some point dipping into that, it's hard to say. But even as it is, though you didn't really have much time to test things out and score well, I still nevertheless hope to dip into both of your submissions more eventually.
I've long been interested in IQ, as the neo-prog scene is one in which I've been curious about for some of the keyboard-heavy sounds it has produced, and I know IQ is a favorite of other forum stalwarts like lonestar. So I'm sure I'll dig into an album or more from them later. And I've already listened to Gogo Penguin's '22 EP, which I enjoyed and found had some of what I liked in the song you sent in round 2, but with less of the not as melodic experimentalism that held it back. I'll probably listen to other works of theirs later on as well. So I was glad that you were part of the roulette for the brief time that you were actively participating, and hopefully you'll join again whenever I have my second one.
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18th Place
EliteFinal Cumulative Score: 88.5 (DNF - completed 12 rounds)
Final Overall Thoughts:I suppose things have probably gotten hectic for you in the past month or two, and that's ok. We all have those periods of life. If you come back to this thread at some point and want to send me a 20-minute batch of songs from one artist for round 13 and a 45-minute EP for the final round, I'll listen to them later, score and write them up like any other entry, and add them to the final standings.
But for now, you've certainly given me some music to look further into. Oranssi Pazuzu might be the most slowly and dramatically rising artist all roulette. I didn't really like them at all at first, but in the months since then I've found them strangely alluring, and even as recently as the last few weeks I've dipped back into the songs from the round and a few others I've stumbled upon. I even said at the time that I suspected this could happen, so they and you were kind of robbed score-wise back then. Avant-garde metal is a total crapshoot for me, which I'll get into even more later in Crow's writeup, but I could see them being one of the more compelling ones to me if I'm able to get further into their overall sound and check out additional albums later on.
Wilderun is one of the artists I'd been sleeping on the most prior to the roulette, so I'll definitely want to check out more from them later. I already owned the Ornette Coleman album you sent music from, but had clearly been neglecting it since I'd considered it out of my wheelhouse, but I've slowly warmed to certain avant-garde music over time. I was glad to get a bit deeper into Jeff Beck's music as well. Foscor was new to me, and I'll have to check out more from them. They didn't score quite as well in the roulette, but I imagine there's other music I'd like from Marina Ósk, Gilad Hekselman, and Avishai Cohen too. I'd already heard something from Cohen before the roulette, and enjoyed his '22 album after round 2, so he's already become a success.
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17th Place
Crow - "Avant-Metal Is Like Chicken Soup For the Soul, If the Noodles Were Snakes and the Soup Was Blood"1: Ashenspire - "The Law of Asbestos"
2: Cleric - "The Treme"
3: Dordeduh - "Pândarul"
4: A Forest of Stars - "Gatherer of the Pure"
5: Fleshvessel - "The Void Chamber"
Early Impressions - "This is what happens when the promoters screw up and book the Ringling Brothers and the local death metal act for the same venue at the same time." - "There are elements I like here, but the overall package might be a bit much."Favorite - Dordeduh - "Pândarul"
Least Favorite - Cleric - "The Treme"
Final Summary:I can feel these songs very slowly growing on me the more I listen to them, but everything is just a bit too outré for a higher placement at this point. The moments and elements I like are too few and far between to counter the more frequent discordance that occurs.
Details:Ultimately, this is along the lines of what I worried it would be. Avant-garde metal is one of my least favorite styles of metal, and this leans too heavily into what frustrates me about the style. There are many building blocks that I like scattered about this set of songs, but they just aren't common enough, and are too often dowsed in excessive noisiness and what feels like experimentation for the sake of experimentation. I don't mind a bit of it at times, but there's just way too much of it here. It's pretty random what music of that type will connect with me, and though I've learned over time to be a bit more receptive to it than I used to be, much of this just doesn't quite hit the mark. Your emporium has more good ideas than the sign would have you believe, though it's missing some of them here.
Ashenspire's "The Law of Asbestos" definitely has some of the better instrumental work on the EP. One thing that vexes me in avant-garde metal is that on one hand it seems more commonplace than most other styles of metal to feature less typical instrumentation, which on the surface of things is very appealing. But on the other, often those instruments are employed in too chaotic of ways for my taste. In this song, they fare a bit better. Most prominent are saxophone, violin, and hammered dulcimer, which provides for a much richer textural palette. Not a whole lot of it particularly sticks with me, but it's mostly pleasant enough to listen to. The talk-shouting vocal style doesn't really do much for me though.
Cleric's "The Treme" doesn't comport with me quite as well, and much of what's going on feels too random and dissonant. It does have a bit better guitar tone though, and sections like 10:46 feel like the start of something more intriguing happening with the heavier riffing, but it just doesn't really feel like it goes anywhere with it. 13:33 is probably my favorite section though - that riff is weird, but actually sounds pretty cool, and I like how it's punctuated with piano stabs in successive repetitions of it.
Dordeduh's "Pândarul" is probably the most consistently interesting song of the lot, with a rather mysterious atmosphere throughout, punctuated with the hammered dulcimer and various recorders. The synthesizers in the background give a lot of dimension as well, in addition to the variety of vocal styles. The section starting at 23:04 is easily the highlight. This is probably the artist I'm most likely to check out an album from at some point.
A Forest of Stars' "Gatherer of the Pure" is kind of all over the place. There are scattered sections and moments I enjoy (especially some of the violin and accordion bits, some of the former melodies being some of my favorite moments of the whole EP), which are occasionally nice in a funhouse mirror version of psychedelic/folk metal sort of way, but the overall feel is just a bit too disjointed and odd for me. Although I will certainly admit that part of this could be planting seeds that won't blossom until later on, perhaps after the roulette. As I mentioned in my overall final thoughts regarding Elite's roulette submissions, this has been happening with Oranssi Pazuzu. Music this dense and unusual can be especially challenging to get into in the context of a roulette, I think.
Fleshvessel's "The Void Chamber" is largely what one of my impressions was based off of. There are certainly a fair number of moments I like here, the wet guitars, the viola work, the darbuka, bits of acoustic guitar, and the muted trumpet, but they never seem to last long enough before it's back to circus madness. I'm kind of surprised that you presumably like the drum production here, those hyper-speed kicks are pretty out-front in the mix, which is especially noticeable given that apparently they're programmed rather than played.
Score: 19/30
Final Cumulative Score: 6 + 6.75 + 7 + 7.5 + 7 + 5 + 7 + 9.25 + 7.75 + 7 + 8.5 + 7.75 + 6.75 + 19 =
112.25Final Overall Thoughts:I suspect the difference in your placement in my roulette vs. my placement in yours is mostly more indicative of a difference in our roulette strategies, but also illuminates some things about our core tastes. Probably our -core tastes too, actually, lol. For the most part we seem to be into fairly different music of late - a lot of your central favorites are just not really in my wheelhouse, for now anyway. But a few are, and aside from a certain portion of the prog and metal canon that probably a decent chunk of the forum likes or might like if they'd heard it, it seems we may have more common in some electronic styles than in other genres. I'd clearly been overlooking "Dark All Day", for example, the highest scoring song of the entire roulette prior to this round. Intronaut and East of the Wall are on the proggier side of post-metal, which is a style I clearly need to pay more attention to. I suspect Shade Empire, Julia Holter, and 10cc have more material I would enjoy. Beyoncé is a powerhouse vocalist that had been hiding in plain sight, and I'm sure I'll find other songs from her I'll vibe with at some point (probably some Destiny's Child as well I imagine).
Even if a number of entries you sent didn't really connect with me at all, your submissions in general were easily some of the most unique and impossible to forget. There is an academic I occasionally follow that would note of most of his colleagues that when they'd present their latest research, his response would be, "eh, maybe", and then he'd forget about their research soon after. But when one of his other colleagues would discuss his latest research, he'd say "no way!" or "that can't be!", and then he'd think about it for years after. Your entries are sometimes the equivalent of that.
Even with probably my least favorite thing you sent, the pAper chAse, realizing that John Congleton produced and contributed to one of my favorite albums, Chelsea Wolfe's
Abyss, has made me think about it differently, which made it a worthwhile endeavor just for that. So whenever my next roulette is, I hope you'll be part of it. I'm sure it will be challenging and frustrating for both of us at times, but it's useful to have someone push you in directions you otherwise probably wouldn't go. That's where musical growth often comes from.
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16th Place
Sacul - "i just did the laundry, im no longer mentally ill"1: Viagra Boys - "Troglodyte"
2: Viagra Boys - "Punk Rock Loser"
3: Viagra Boys - "Ain't No Thief"
4: Viagra Boys - "ADD"
5: Against All Logic - "This Old House Is All I Have"
6: Odisea - "Casa Latina"
7: Odisea - "Cabros"
8: SIAMÉS - "The Wolf"
9: Jamie xx - "Girl"
10: Jamie xx - "Loud Places"
11: DARKSIDE - "Heart"
Early Impressions - "This is Goldilocks the EP. One third is too weird, one third is too bland, and the other third is just right." - "One song in particular stands out in unique ways, though the usage of samples makes me curious to hear how different it is from the source(s)."Favorite - SIAMÉS - "The Wolf"
Least Favorite - Jamie xx - "Girl"
Final Summary:This set of songs is something of a mixed bag, with the front and closing portions incorporating some vocal elements that didn't work that well for me, but even those sections have their strengths, and the middle batch of songs is quite good.
Details:My thoughts on this EP have morphed a bit over time. To explain the impression, at first I considered the Viagra Boys songs to be too weird and by far my least favorite segment, the Jamie xx and DARKSIDE songs too bland, and the middle segment easily my favorite. Over time I've grown a bit more accustomed to the Viagra Boys section - there's an oddly charming infectiousness to them that kind of snuck up on me. I'm still a bit on the fence about them, with a few qualms I'll get into shortly, but they grew on me in a way that the last three songs didn't.
I guess dance-punk is a fairly unfamiliar style to me, RYM says I haven't even rated anything that has it as a primary genre. I can hear where some of the various influences are being drawn from, but I haven't really heard it packaged in quite that way very much. "Troglodyte" (someone needs to get this one to Glasser) has a nice post-punk-esque rhythmic propulsion to it, and "Ain't No Thief" has a really fat pulsating beat to it that is rather thrilling. The main thing that holds all of them back is that they're just a bit light on memorable melodies, and the vocal styles just don't quite connect with me. They vary from a kind of talk-sung approach that isn't quite tuneful enough, to pitch-shifted vocals that are always risky for me, to more of a Beastie Boys-esque not quite rapped delivery, none of which are particularly offputting, but just don't hit the mark. But overall, given their strange name, they were better than I expected and than I thought of them in the first listen. You can't always judge a band by their name (*coughDestinyPotatocough*). Apparently they have a saxophone player, though I didn't notice too much in that regard in this batch of tunes.
Hip-hop and electronic music that prominently use samples always present a dilemma, that sometimes you're unsure how much credit to give to the original songs that they draw from vs. what they do to recombine and expand them in various ways. In this case, the main guitar groove and some of the vocals in Against All Logic's "This Old House Is All I Have" are heavily taken from Mike James Kirkland's "Doin' It Right", mixed with the beat from his "Love Insurance", and then augmented less obviously with part of David Axelrod's "The Warnings Part II". I had heard of none of these before, but "Doin' It Right" is quite a snazzy old-school soul tune, so it's heavily piggybacking off the quality of that song. I do think the crisp hat work from "Love Insurance" does give a nice drive to it, plus the various other audio manipulation that's happening is fairly interesting. It's my second favorite song of the EP, so I suppose this winds up being a redemption tour for Nicolás Jaar. There are a number of attempts at that in other EPs as well - it's fascinating to reevaluate other music from artists I heard months earlier.
Both Odisea tracks are great. They're fairly straightforward but excellent tunes with enough engaging and quirky instrumentation going on in the background to keep them from feeling too generic, particularly with the horns, piano, and bass lines. "The Wolf" from SIAMÉS is even better, with a bit heavier beat and better vocals, and is easily my favorite song of the whole EP.
The last three tracks just didn't grow on me much. Jamie xx's "Girl" has a nice spacious feeling to it, but it relies way too on those abstract pitch-manipulated vocal samples. Apparently Erlend Øye of Kings of Convenience was involved with that song. I love KoC, but maybe his electronic work is spottier. "Loud Places" is the best of the three, with a more normal vocal delivery, plus the more choral-esque backing vocals, and some tasty percussive elements. It just didn't stick in my head like I wanted it to. And then with DARKSIDE's "Heart" we have more Jaar again, though it didn't hit as well. It's alright, but didn't really move me.
Score: 22.5/30
Final Cumulative Score: 7.25 + 8.75 + 6 + 7.75 + 7.25 + 6.75 + 8.25 + 9 + 7 + 4.75 + 8 + 8.25 + 6.5 + 22.5 =
118Final Overall Thoughts:While Luke might fancy himself as the biggest wildcard of the roulette, and Crow fought valiantly for it, nope, it's you. Yes, you've previously sent my least favorite music of the whole roulette with dreamcrusher, but you've also sent my favorite of the first thirteen rounds with The Black Queen's "Ice To Never". Talk Talk's "Living In Another World" was another mega-smash hit (and I'll give you indirect credit for helping me discover the Lights cover of it, which I somehow didn't realize existed). You've also sent other new music I certainly want to get further into, particularly Mammal Hands. My interest in Kate Bush's music is piqued even more than it already was. The Beth Gibbons/Rustin Man track only worked mildly, but you did put that album back on my radar, since I did already like her work with Portishead, and Rustin Man of course is part of Talk Talk, another artist that I'm more interested in now. You've gotten me to reevaluate Kayo Dot and Converge, and between The Black Queen and Luke sending Better Lovers, I'll have to look more into Greg Puciato's work as well. I'll probably even wind up finally checking out Kendrick Lamar's
To Pimp a Butterfly, maybe something on it will resonate more with me.
Topic: LithoJazzoSphere Roulette V1: Variety & Reciprocity (Post-Roulette Playlist) (Read 117016 times)