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Review Summary: Nokturnus: The Warm Up Waffles and ice cream; now there's a beautiful mess. It's an interesting phenomenon that artistic creation isn't always deliberate, in fact it rarely is entirely. Well-known visual artist Jackson Pollock, for example, pushed this idea by taking advantage of the random and the unstructured, labelling it expression. Many would consider life itself a slipshod mess of unpredictability and happenstance. So the concept behind Millicent Waffles latest release, as a coagulation of competing sounds, arguably isn't so ridiculous an idea. It's a commentary on life if you'd like. Defined by its lack of coherence, and a questionable set of goals which would be traditionally considered ‘anti-musical’ in the Western sense, this live recording features a collection of musicians performing together for the first time. It isn't, however, the deliciously messy example of waffles and ice cream it could've been. Instead, it settles for more of a food-fight, with ideas thrown in any and every direction, often clashing mid flight.
…Trinity is more jam band than improvisation. The keyboardist and director of this project was aiming for a sound of “raw and random nature”, and in this respect at least he has succeeded. The guitarist was instructed to play against the (often vague) drum beats, and anyone with any sense of timing could tell you that. But rather than feeling like a concentrated effort to be ‘different’ it unintentionally comes across as a by-product of shoddy playing. Curiously the instrumental recording is overlapped with nonsensical babble from young children in the background. Normally this would pose a problem but somehow this stream manages to fill a few of the many gaps in playing. There's little wonder that the jangly, overdriven guitar licks and staccato keyboard chords fail to mesh properly considering the percussion is quite unstable, but even as a whole the piece might as well have been recorded individually and thrown together for how unsuitably the parts fit together. If the instruments were wood and the album was a boat, she'd have sunk in port, and it's not far off doing just that as audio either. You might even expect an album like this to collapse under its own weight, as everyone vies for attention, but the opposite occurs on …Trinity. It's as if the members are apprehensive of participating, though it's not any more pleasing for the listener when they do step up. More often then not you're greeted with a bit of noodling from one member over a vacuous “backing track” of scattered crash symbols and giggling, until the baton is passed to the next member or the songs fall into quietude again.
Perhaps it's unfair to judge something like this critically when at the end of the day it was more intended as an experiment. But then, if the results it draws are as haphazard as this it feels somewhat deserved. When loud dissonance, false starts and lengths of spotted silence are all less welcomed than the voices of random children playing in the background, something needs to change. Regardless, credit must be given to these musicians for exploring a territory that yields only a handful of mildly interesting moments as its reward for their effort. Now it can safely be assumed that Nokturnus: Trinity’s style of creation is not a worthwhile pursuit, and the band, as well as its audience, can move forward onto better ones.
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Phew, well it's been about 2-3 months since my last review, Univeristy has kept me pretty busy. I'd definitley appreciate feedback guys  . No offence intended towards AAS either, just thought I'd voice my opinions on his most recent one because it's not often I find so much to write about albums that I rate poorly, and it was also the first 2016 album I jammed. Hopefully it brings attention to some of his earlier work too which is much better.
Here's a link to this album: http://millicentwaffles.bandcamp.com/album/nokturnus-trinity
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dude reviewing a serious user project and giving it an awful rating is just a douche move and thats all there is to it. if you don't like it just rate it and move on. or even better, dont rate it, and go talk to the dude directly and give him your personal feedback so he can learn to improve. this is just passive nonsense when the dude is on here every other day and you have all the means necessary to give him constructive criticism without shitting on his average and making a '1.5' review the center-piece of his sputnik page. i do not approve. you're just deterring other people from giving him a chance when you should be supporting members of our community regardless of whether or not you personally like their stuff instead of dissuading others.
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I understand where you're coming from Pots but I disagree. First of all, this is very different to what he's done before and I don't think he intended for this to be 'serious' - my understanding was that he just wanted to see what happened if they experimented a bit in a room and recorded it all in one take. My goals with this tbh were to practice writing lower rated reviews which I haven't done a lot of, and hopefully bringing some more attention to Millicent's earlier work - nothing more.
I really wasn't trying to be a douche or anything either, I'm simply reviewing it honestly. I'm not just slamming the people involved either y'know, I put thought into reasons why I subjectively didn't like it. AAS seemed like a good sport too and in his news article for this one he was very receptive to everyone's comments, so I reasoned he'd be alright with this. If he's not, I'll take it down at his request.
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i just think its a dick move man. especially to do to a dude as modest and receptive as AAS. of course he wont make a scene about it, hes the most humble dude on the entire site, all the more reason to practice writing extremely negative reviews on material that isnt personal to the community, you could have just told him all this stuff in his shoutbox or in an e-mail or some shit instead of permanently discrediting his new album when its already difficult enough as is to get people on this site to listen to user-made material.
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I don't think I was 'extremely negative' either, I mean I wasn't trying to be scathing or anything. But you do have a point, so if he shout boxes me or in any way indicated that he doesn't like it, I'll take it down. I've reviewed a bunch of usermade albums in the past because I want people to check them out, so I get what you're saying man but I'm not trying to turn people away at all. The opposite really, I want people to go through his back catalogue.
Or they'll check this out because of curiousity too, they mightn't like it or maybe they'll love it, I'm only one person and definitley no expert on this kind of music.
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dude its a 1.5 review thats inherently extremely negative, thats .5 away from flat-out 'awful' lol.
but fair enough. at least you arent intentionally being a dick and are actually writing honest thoughts and feelings i respect that, i just don't see the point personally.
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i appreciate the review, just wish you put this more into context of how it fit into the other three albums (a chaotic finale). however, with that not being obvious and the things said here being justified for the most part, no worries. i really appreciate this exposure hard; pots it'd be interesting to hear what u think of dis crap
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Pretty civil discourse/10
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Edited
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Edited indeed lol
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Haha, that's the least of the things I'd like to edit from last night
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Anyway, cheers Summit, I kinda feel shitty about doing this now but honestly at the time I didn't even really consider it, you make a lot of great music so I'm sorry I chose to focus on one I didn't like.
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this is actually written well, despite... u know. I'll give some advice or w/e later, but you use some good descriptions and diction here and there
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Thanks Johnny, I appreciate it
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yeah i guess if you didn't dig it than that's cool and i can't really ask for anything more than honest feedback and exposure and u got 2/2 covered here so no harm done. i do hope that the folks that decide to listen to this go back and listen to my other stuff as well
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I can see both sides. It is kind of..... well, at least in my opinion, pointless to spend so much time writing a review for a user-made album talking about how bad it is, but at the same time, it's up to you whether or not to write it in the first place, and no one is above getting a bit of criticism every once in a while (not saying AAS is bad at dealing with criticism, just that user-made projects deserve honest feedback). Review is well-written, though, so pos.
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Glad you thought it was well written at least so thankyou. As for the rest ¯_(ツ)_/¯. I should've picked something else.
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scuro you should check out nokturnus: excession and see if you dig that one at all. much more traditional improv set up and cohesion
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I definitely will do that
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Last album I heard from you before this was Son of Ra which has that cool Egyptian vibe, I don't think I've heard anything from the Nokturnus series yet though. Before that I jammed Under a Dark Blue Blanket and I remember digging that too.
I've gotta ask too, where do you get your artwork from? All of the ones I've seen have been really cool, the excession one especially is interesting.
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