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User
Reviews 7
Approval 98%
Soundoffs 239
Album Ratings 3544
Objectivity 84%
Last Active 12-19-21 9:42 pm
Joined 02-09-17
Review Comments 5,056
| cyl's favorite sounds/subgenres
Not ranked, just my seven favorites. I had to break the descriptions up into separate entries because I forgot how to change the character limit. I think it was for the best though; now the blurbs are broken up a little bit. | | 1 |  | Atrofia Cerebral
Matanza Extrema
1. Noisecore:
Discovering noisecore felt like a culmination of sorts for me. I grew up listening to metal, hardcore, and metalcore, exclusively for a period, so at this point, the intense, aggressive, and cathartic aspects of these styles are part of my DNA. But there’s another part of me who’s always longing for something novel. I may have taken an odd path to get here: before discovering noisecore, I was already well-versed in styles even more arcane, such as harsh noise, EAI, and musique concrete. Discovering these styles introduced to me a whole new world, a world virtually without tropes, where the world of the music is constructed around you sound-by-sound, where you never know what’s coming next, always on the edge of your seat: a complete opposite of genres that rely on songwriting formulas. But eventually, I discovered that one could grow fatigued of this too, the exact same way I grew fatigued of its opposite. | | 2 |  | Death Basket
Death Basket
So, you can imagine how refreshing and exciting it was for me to discover noisecore: proof that I can indeed have the best of both worlds! It has the same wild, pissed-off, and cathartic energy as hardcore and metalcore, initially created by the same timeless arrangement of guitar, bass, drums, and screaming, but with virtually zero of the songwriting tropes. And it rewards different listening methods: you can simply put it on as a background soundtrack for jumping around and punching walls, and it will definitely give you all the fuel you need for that, or you can listen closer and feast your mind on all the bizarre, incidental textures that arise from so many elements being thrown together in such a comically haphazard fashion – because there are the main instruments, to be sure, but who knows what else might find its way into the mix? The clang of pots and pans, voicemail recordings, car alarms, toilets flushing, cats meowing, fucking anything, man. | | 3 |  | Living Room (USA-OH)
Shitting Gold
It’s like being a guest at what was supposed to be a house party, but as the night went on, became something more like a senseless and violent group therapy session: a mysterious energy in the air that drives everyone in the room to bleed their insecurities and take out all their frustrations on the surrounding house. It’s ugly, but it’s magic. | | 4 |  | Off Cells
60/40
2. Onkyokei, 'onkyo' for short:
‘Onkyokei’ is a Japanese term that basically translates to ‘reverberation of sound.’ The style is also often described as ‘quiet noise,’ which is definitely apt. I don’t think I’ve encountered another style that is so soothing and stimulating at the very same time. Usually, ‘soothing’ implies an emphasized softness and simplicity, does it not? But there is nothing ‘simple’ about an onkyo session. It is actually incredibly deep. It is virtually always improvised, but with its emphasis on quiet and restraint, what the players create isn’t something that resounds like a prog jam or a sweaty free jazz session – it’s more like a disarmingly polite conversation between the players’ very quietest impulses. By only filling the space when the players feel it is absolutely needed, it magnifies what’s at the heart. | | 5 |  | Mongoose
At Penguin House
To my knowledge, it is the only style where something like three minutes of a lone acoustic guitar being plucked one note per measure will then be followed by a playful burst of feedback that is then quickly stopped as if it was a mistake. And to my knowledge, it is also the only style where silence is such an important character, as if it was another instrument. It is not uncommon for an onkyo session to contain and present to the listener multiple-minute-long periods of silence. There was just no other impulse yet. But here’s the thing: it’s never really ‘silent.’ Even in these moments, you can still hear breaths, coughs, the setting down of guitar picks on tables, the creaking of chairs, the sounds of the city seeping in through windows. Nothing is ever completely silent, and I think that’s the lesson. | | 6 |  | Alienation Mental
Ball Spouter
3. Sloppy and unhinged brutal death metal and slam:
Brutal death metal is a subgenre known for its tightness and density. When it’s played precisely, the band sounds like a well-oiled machine – nay, not well-oiled, well-programmed. It’s always impressive how the players maintain such complex compositions without missing a beat – hypertechnical riffs, predictably unpredictable tempo changes, and climactic breakdowns all arranged in a way that anticipates the listener. But it can also be a bit suffocating, and in its virtuosic display, tends not to leave much room for, well… emotion. I was drawn to the musicianship, songwriting, and schlocky aesthetic, and yet, many albums from the genre I was listening to were leaving me curiously unsatisfied and fatigued. Then I started finding other bands who take a looser, more natural, and less rehearsed-sounding approach to the style, and it felt like I’d finally found my calling. | | 7 |  | Digested Flesh
The Answer to Infection
The core aesthetic is still there: the decided dive into utter depravity, the scalping and disemboweling of we humans’ very darkest vocations, and there was always something liberating and cathartic about that, which is why death metal appealed to me in the first place. But now it felt even more real, because now I could truly hear the inhuman physical effort needed to propel these kinds of compositions. Filthier, sloppier, sweatier. The individual notes that made up those hypertechnical verses were now starting to blur together into a comically distorted slop, the drummer now sounded like they were pushing themselves to their very limit just to stay on time (judging from that they are often not on time), and the vocals didn’t sound like someone imitating the OGs anymore so much as a new kind of alien throat-magic that in any other style, would sound ludicrous. | | 8 |  | Mindly Rotten
The Most Exquisite Agonies
It’s an expansion on the death metal lore that I believe was always implied; a logical conclusion, as illogical as it may be to push oneself to these kinds of limits. Add to this mixture a production that sounds like it was designed in a barn, a drier-than-bone snare drum, and an even more devious approach to language than the OGs could have anticipated, and you have something so utterly demonic that once the album is over, the only way to feel is cleansed. | | 9 |  | Natural Snow Buildings
The Dance of the Moon and the Sun
4. Drone folk, or folk-drone, however you'd prefer to phrase it:
I love both drone and ambient. I listen to both frequently. So of course I’ve noticed the pattern of both styles being, at least in the contemporary era, generally synthesized. When you put on a contemporary drone or ambient album, 9 times out of 10, it’s going to be an arrangement of synthesized layers blurred together to where you can’t hear where one layer ends and another begins. And that’s all well and good, but after so much of that, hearing that same effect – that lulling, droning effect that takes you somewhere far in your mind – achieved with mainly organic instruments opened a whole new neural pathway. Suddenly, a feeling I once thought only possible in just the right setting with just the right assortment of gear was now something you could bring with you wherever you go, since now I knew that all you really need is one instrument, like a guitar or even a lone drum. | | 10 |  | David Thomas Broughton
Crippling Lack
Drone folk taught me that drone doesn’t really need layers – all you need is a simple note progression and a devotion to staying there until the effect is achieved. But of course, layering other organic elements along with it will only make it all the more enchanting. There’s something so primal and sacred about the sound of it, like what might be played by a gifted shaman around the bonfire on your ayahuasca journey, or like what the angels might sit around and play on their days off. It can be delicately precious and tender, but as the momentum builds, it can become something so dramatic and consuming that it makes your muscles tighten and stomach sink, all without needing a single note of anything synthesized; a sorcery one can conjure on the spot if they simply have the gift. | | 11 |  | AL-90
CODE-915913
5. Outsider house:
House is a subgenre that appealed to me for its rigidity. Not that I enjoy rigidity in itself – I really don’t – but more that I’m curious about the possibilities when it comes to expanding on something with such a rigid foundation (you’re probably starting to see a pattern here). The first few house albums I encountered were enough to maintain my intrigue, but none of them were albums I kept with me. For a time, I began to wonder if my interest in this style was more of a performative experiment than a genuine interest. But when I found outsider house, that’s when I knew the interest was indeed genuine. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard an outsider house album described as something like “the sound of a nightclub from outside,” I would have a lot of nickels, because that’s exactly what it sounds like. Why is that so appealing? | | 12 |  | Actress
Hazyville
Different listeners are going to have different answers to that, but for me, I think it’s because it adds a second side to the style, a shadow, that for me, it was previously lacking. It’s a balance of upbeat groove and detached cloudiness that is indeed a dance to maintain convincingly; if it’s so upbeat, then why is it so melancholy? And what explains that sinister edge seeping up from below the surface? And yet it’s there, pounding away quietly like a forgotten heartbeat, a party for the lonely souls. | | 13 |  | Toshiya Tsunoda
Somashikiba
6. Altered/manipulated field recordings:
I love listening to field recordings. They’re definitely something you have to be in a specific mood for, as they’re not music, but more just aural experiences that tell a story (of sorts) with the sounds of a specific place or places. It might sound like an odd thing to do, sitting down and listening to things like this, but think about the times you’ve been sitting around at home with nothing to do, inadvertently getting lost in the sounds of critters and traffic coming in through the window, or the times you’ve been out on a hike, sat down and basked in the chorus of woods and water around you. It’s the same thing. Now, my first encounter with a field recording that was altered from its original state in some way was actually a sort of red flag. It made me wonder what the point was; if it’s supposed to be an authentic document of this specific place, then how am I able to trust it once it’s been altered? | | 14 |  | Toshiya Tsunoda / Taku Unami
Wovenland 3
But with some more digging, I began to encounter albums that showed me there is indeed a point: experiences that became more than the sum of their parts because of the altering. It doesn’t have to be a document of a certain place; a whole place can become a mere instrument to a greater end, a richer work of art. One of the more straightforward examples of this is found on Toshiya Tsunoda’s Somashikiba, a massive, two-and-a-half-hour album that explores in depth the sounds of the Sugaryu and Hakkeibara regions of Japan. A technique he uses on this album is using two microphones, each placed on opposite sides of the area he’s recording. The result is something fuller and richer than you would hear if you were standing in only one place, but all the sounds you’re hearing are from the same plot of land. It’s like a way of gathering all that’s stirring in a certain perimeter and bringing it all to your ears in one helping. But this is only the beginning. | | 15 |  | Anne Guthrie
Perhaps a Favorable Organic Moment
Many other ways have since been found of transforming field recordings: inserting silences, panning frequencies in certain patterns, isolation, compression, elongating, shrinking. In capable hands, the sounds of the world become a fountain of stories, some so small or ingrained in the walls that they needed those capable hands to expose them to be heard. | | 16 |  | Calvaiire
Forceps
7. Blackened hardcore:
At this point, I’ve established my love for the heavy genres. This is a subgenre that took me aback at how gracefully it combines elements I never thought would even flirt with each other: the personal, confessional, and sometimes saccharine nature of hardcore backdropped by the oppositely ritualistic nature of black metal. It scratches a very specific itch for us blast addicts: it’s that thing that hits when you need something bleaker and heavier than hardcore, but without dipping into the trough of cheese that black metal often partakes in. To my ears, the devilish notes that black metal lends to it elevate
the hardcore composition; they seem to unlock and expose the shadow that without that blackened tinge, might’ve stayed more inconspicuous beneath all the reckless catharsis. It’s a marriage in hell; an unlikely whole that’s more than the sum of its parts precisely for combining two worlds that for a very long time remained stubbornly at odds. Not anymore. | |
cylinder
09.12.26 | I've had this idea gestating for a while now - nice to see it come to fruition. Very fun to write too. | Hyperion1001
09.13.26 | gonna read this when football isn’t on | arthropod
09.13.26 | Very fun to read. Most of these are entirely unknown to me, I was aware of blackened hardcore but only as far as Owls Woods Graves goes and 16 reads out way more brutal. |
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