|
User
Reviews 26
Approval 87%
Soundoffs 145
News Articles 2
Band Edits + Tags 1,003
Album Edits 1,197
Album Ratings 3666
Objectivity 90%
Last Active 08-04-22 7:10 am
Joined 08-07-13
Review Comments 47,231
| | 10 dumb things I've heard about music | | 1 |  | Overdubs
Under Review
"Is this even an album?" is the question that I ask myself as I write this review. When your very existence is predicated on a convolution of your own identity... it's a sign you've made something uniquely remarkable. | | 2 |  | DJ Sharpnel
悩殺! ハードブレイク (Bewitching! Hard Break)
hard to believe someone actually put the thought into their brain that this could potentially be a good idea | | 3 |  | Mastodon
Blood Mountain
Sludgy, Proggy, intense and one hell of a ride. I'm not surprised that Mastodon is becoming more popular; their discography is too damn awesome to not be recognized. | | 4 |  | Radiohead
Kid a
never been one for electronic music but this is a swell album. Motion Picture Soundtrack is gorgeous | | 5 |  | Sachiko M
Bar Sachiko
| | 6 |  | Apator
Masturbate in Praise of Black Satan
Repeats the word "Satan" every 2 seconds in a rather disturbing and even vulgar fashion. Stay away. | | 7 |  | Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Clear Spot
holy shit, a listenable Beefheart album! | | 8 |  | boards of canada
geogaddi
The best electronic record ever released, Aphex Twin and Burial are good but don't have shit on this. Very few records make me feel as bad for skipping a track as this one does. Music Has is also incredible but doesn't have the same level of cohesion for me. | | 9 |  | Autechre
Tri Repetae
“Tri Repetae” is the spirit of Radiohead’s “Kid A” and “OK Computer” (despite obviously preceding them both) taken to its most extreme conclusions and where as Thom Yorke loves to deal with the soullessness of modern life and separation from reality as lyrical themes, Autechre have created it in an unabridged musical form. | | 10 |  | Sly and The Family Stone
There's A Riot Goin' On
The music within There's A Riot Goin' On reflects this. For such a unique album, this can be described in a way that - hopefully - everybody will understand. If Radiohead's Kid A was re-made by Andre 3000 (The Love Below half of OutKast), this would be the result. It's utterly bewildering, bleak, and possessed of an inspired murkiness not far removed from doom metal. It's still, however, unmistakeably 'soul'. There's a funkiness to it, but it's a lazy, unsettling one. You could conceivably dance to a few of these tracks, but that's doesn't stop them sounding like they were dragged from the recessess of a deeply troubled mind. It's as if the heart of soul music has been possessed. The amount of cocaine Sly Stone was taking at the time will tell you the culprit.
The choir on Africa Talks To You "The Asphalt Jungle" sings 'Timber! All falls down!', and it sounds like Satan's little helpers welcoming an unusually funky apocalypse. Even this album's 'happiest' track, Family Affair, is sung in a disturbingly bassy, bummed-out voice. Soul was never meant to be this way. Soul is music to be played in the bedroom, music to swing and dance to....not here, though. Sly completely ripped up the rulebook. It's a feat that has gone completely unmatched - Kid A is the only album that springs to mind for a comparison. They're borne of the same dark heart and the same spirit of shocking the audience, and both leave you with the same feeling. A feeling I'm not even going to attempt to put into words.
I wouldn't be able to tell you how good the lyrics to this album are. You can't hear them. You can hear a melody, you can hear what the voice is trying to convey, but you can only hear snippets of words, emerging from the swamp. Again, Kid A springs to mind. I'd bet my house on Thom Yorke owning and loving this record! The usual soul vocalist's trick of wailing like a preacher features here, but it suggests somebody trapped, desperate to escape a horrible prison. Every time it happens, and the music starts to peak (heard excellently on Time) you almost recoil, expecting something to happen. There are also several examples of double-tracked vocals singing out of time with each other, and at seperate pitches. If you've played System Shock and heard SHODAN, you'll know just how scary this can be!
The musicianship leaves you with a feeling of improvisation. Rather than each instrument having a definite melody, and role, you are confronted throughout with instruments seemingly appearing out of nowhere with little riffs. There's no instrument that you can focus on throughout a song to give it structure. That's not to say the songs do not have structure, because they do. It's organized chaos - often a meaningless phrase, but not so here. The drums are low in the mix, for this precise reason. Overall the effect of the musicianship comes more from the presentation and arrangement rather than the players themselves, but they are certainly a solid band. I'd single out the bassist as the best in the group - there's just something about the bass on this album that grabs me. The guitar is also very nice - it's always played clean, with a wah. Nothing especially taxing, but it does stand out and is perhaps the most disconcerting instrument, simply as it's the most normal!
The main fault with this album is it's more of a mood piece than a collection of songs. The album could easily be just one song, and it wouldn't change much. The quality is consistently high, and the mood doesn't diversify much (Runnin' Away is chirpier, but that's about it). As such, it's the feeling the music gives you, rather than the music itself, that stays with you. Some people, myself included, like impenetrable albums like this. Some don't, and if you're one of the latter, you probably won't like this. The production is also quite muddy, though this contributes to the music and is nowhere near as bad as St. Anger! Listening to it is certainly an experience though. It may not be one you'd like to repeat, but I'd certainly recommend it for that reason. | |
pizzamachine
09.03.23 | lol | JohnnyoftheWell
09.04.23 | goodness | alamo
09.04.23 | hiiii | pizzamachine
09.04.23 | 👇🏻
🦆 | alamo
09.04.23 | o.O | Sabrutin
09.04.23 | depends if rym says so | someone
09.04.23 | no, it's a record | someone
09.04.23 | https://theoverdubs.bandcamp.com/album/under-review | Sabrutin
09.04.23 | > Buy Album | Havey
09.04.23 | hidden gem? | YakNips
09.04.23 | is this actually good | Egarran
09.04.23 | That cover is like 1:1 Parks. | Minortimbo12
09.04.23 | omg this is actually good
listen to it ong | parksungjoon
03.18.24 | wow | JohnnyoftheWell
03.18.24 | 10 based inclusion, fuck that guy man
can you add that one comment from the Boards thread yesterday to 4 | parksungjoon
03.18.24 | sorry you'll have to choose between 6, 8 or 9 instead | JohnnyoftheWell
03.18.24 | Hmm 8 isn't that much dumber than your standard prog rev, so that one maybe
also get that Shamus Ariana Grande rev in here | parksungjoon
03.18.24 | i feel like recent stuff is easier to construe as personal somehow
ive also never read any ariana grande review in my life so it would be hypocritical of me
but man im even starting to forget a lot of the old funny moments | botb
03.19.24 | Waiting for one of these to just be all tundra quotes | Havey
03.19.24 | latest comment in tundra's shoutbox is funnier than any soundoff | parksungjoon
03.19.24 | ive been bested | parksungjoon
03.19.24 | >Waiting for one of these to just be all tundra quotes
be the change you wanna see etc | JohnnyoftheWell
03.19.24 | we do need a new tundra list, but i expended all my energies on the last one | parksungjoon
03.20.24 | man i just want to add another image to my favorite bands section but it keeps refusing to save smh | JohnnyoftheWell
03.20.24 | yeah that feature is fucked lol | parksungjoon
03.20.24 | at least i didnt lose the boomer in trying to do so | parksungjoon
03.21.24 | up dated |
|
