Qwertyy's Journal of Music Reviews and Other Assorted Ramblings

Tristan_Geoff · 12-12-2016, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qwertyy

no clue. i'm guessing from either here, rym, or a music publication. maybe even spotify?

Seems likely. I don't think they get much exposure out of the state though, since the album only has like 50-60 ratings on RYM, most of them being from around here.

Trollheart · 12-12-2016, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mordor

Feels is my favorite Animal Collective album but probably because I was threshold the first time I heard it, so...anchoring etc.

I don't understand this..

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard · 12-12-2016, 03:18 PM

Jute Gyte - Ship of Theseus
Recommended by Frownland

Looks like I'm in for some avant-garde black metal with this album. This could go either way honestly. I think everyone knows how into black metal I am and while avant-garde black metal isn't necessarily my favourite under the black metal umbrella, there's definitely some good **** within the scene.

Lugubrious Games (Sans Frontières): Wait, so this is... microtonal black metal? This is uh... well. It's definitely unique to say the least. Unfortunately it's not unique in the way I would want it to be. It sounds like black metal played poorly on an out of tune guitar. This really isn't going to be my thing, is it? Things get pretty heavy near the end of the track, but as a whole this is just a great big no thank you.

Forces of Self-Shedding: I like the intensity but the guitar work ****ing sucks big time. It's weird because outside of the guitar it's not even really avant-garde is it? It feels very business as usual for a black metal album but just all microtonal and sloppy or w/e. Not really anything even remotely exciting.

Grief of New Desire: I'm reading RYM reviews and it seems that the common consensus is that the sound takes a little getting used to. That's all fine and dandy but when judging off of one listen it makes for a pretty horrid experience. The guitar notes just feel so flat and the album lacks that wall of sound that I so desperately was looking for.

Ship of Theseus: This track is a fair bit better than the 3 that came before it. It's not amazing... far from it actually. It's just remotely better. There's also some cool ambient passages here and there that I can respect. As a whole I'm just patiently waiting for this god damn thing to be over with. Someone should submit this to TH for the torture chamber.

Machinery That Renders Debt Infinite: If not for the integrity of this thread I probably would have already shut this thing off. There's some relatively cool sampling done in this one that remind me a jack in the box but aside from that **** this track too!

Pain and Wrath Are the Singers: Annnnd we're on the home stretch. Let's wrap this mother****er up ASAP. This is just like, more of the same. Not really worth writing about if I'm being honest. Oh my god this is 12 minutes long? Seriously? Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts...

Final Verdict I tried to come in with an open mind but this album just did not do anything for me. Like I said, avant black metal is usually fairly hit or miss with me, and this album was definitely a miss. I think this RYM user said it best (although he exaggerated a lil):

Quote:

Doctor_Pym Aug 21 2015 0.50 stars

I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I've got to say that this album is one of the most offensive works I have ever heard. I wasn't unsure whether to laugh or barf when I first heard what I can only describe as a cacophony of randomly bashed instruments and the vocalist getting ill in the background.

I have absolutely no idea what the **** happened here and I don't even want to know. I'm just very thankful that this album only features six songs, because I would not have survived through more of them.

FAIL

**Frownland** · 12-12-2016, 03:24 PM

I thought maybe the microtonal element might be a bit much for you. I guess I'm pretty used to ultra atonal music because it rocks my socks. I really dig the layers and general the weird shape shifty animal it becomes that's sort of similar to WISSK. Check out his description of the album, it's pretty pretentious

Quote:

Elaborating on the themes of continuity of consciousness, identity and change, there is a lot of imitative polyphony on this album. The title track opens with a two-voice canon (A), followed by a riff derived from that canon, itself joined halfway through by a second guitar in an inversion canon. After this riff, a new two-voice canon (B) appears which is joined at its midpoint by a return of the first canon, creating a four-voice double canon. The inversion canon riff recurs, followed by another inversion canon riff, derived from canon B, that ends the track,. "Grief of New Desire" opens with a four-voice, four-note canon. The note sequence D-half flat, C-half sharp, D flat, C natural is repeated on four guitars, each in a different octave, each starting on a different note in the sequence. Because all four pitches are in constant circulation the effect is harmonic stasis, though the shifting registers create an illusion of cyclical movement like a sound-object being rotated. The slow riff which follows becomes a canon. "Lugubrious Games (Sans Frontières)" opens with a canon backed by delayed (hence canonic) drums; "Machinery That Renders Debt Infinite" includes inversion canons.

The closing line of "Lugubrious Games", "the word always dies where the claim of some reality is total", is from Jean Amery's At the Mind's Limits, as are several other lines used in this album's lyrics. Much of the title track's lyric is drawn from Lucretius. The title "Pain and Wrath Are the Singers" is drawn from Robinson Jeffer's translation of Medea; that song's line "aimless years from nothingness to nothingness again " comes from Lovecraft. The wordplay "the afternoon's meshes" is D.F. Wallace's.

"Ship of Theseus’s lumbering compositions are calculated and ponderous, taking time away from their polyrhythmic antagonism to sojourn into prickly clean guitar passages and unsettling intervals of noise and samples.... Much like abstract art, Ship of Theseus is devoid of many of the things we normally find pleasurable in music, yet still might manage to generate significance and potentially even beauty for (some of) those who take the time to parse its inaccessible facade. I’m positive that I don’t understand much of what Kalmbach is doing here, and calling Jute Gyte “difficult to listen to” is putting it rather lightly (this stuff makes Paracletus sound like Sunbather, and this record is actually on the “mellower” side for Kalmbach), but Ship of Theseus is an inarguably impressive work in its vision, organization and execution." - Metalsucks.net

"Completely inhuman, microtonal black metal executed with machine-like precision and an extremely deep knowledge of 20th century/modern classical composition techniques. To put it in laymen’s terms, this sounds like an alien, spectral ship melting into a sea of disembodied, amorphous flesh. Try and wrap your head around this – it will take a bit." - Invisible Oranges

Next rec is
Carla dal Forno - You Know What It's Like

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard · 12-12-2016, 03:31 PM

My only exposure to microtonal music before this album was the new King Gizzard track, so I think my inexperience definitely contributed to my distaste for it.

New rec is added.

**Frownland** · 12-12-2016, 03:55 PM

Harry Partch's Delusion of the Fury is some good microtonos.

The Batlord · 12-12-2016, 04:03 PM

The Batlord · 12-12-2016, 04:04 PM

Quote:

Elaborating on the themes of continuity of consciousness, identity and change, there is a lot of imitative polyphony on this album. The title track opens with a two-voice canon (A), followed by a riff derived from that canon, itself joined halfway through by a second guitar in an inversion canon. After this riff, a new two-voice canon (B) appears which is joined at its midpoint by a return of the first canon, creating a four-voice double canon. The inversion canon riff recurs, followed by another inversion canon riff, derived from canon B, that ends the track,. "Grief of New Desire" opens with a four-voice, four-note canon. The note sequence D-half flat, C-half sharp, D flat, C natural is repeated on four guitars, each in a different octave, each starting on a different note in the sequence. Because all four pitches are in constant circulation the effect is harmonic stasis, though the shifting registers create an illusion of cyclical movement like a sound-object being rotated. The slow riff which follows becomes a canon. "Lugubrious Games (Sans Frontières)" opens with a canon backed by delayed (hence canonic) drums; "Machinery That Renders Debt Infinite" includes inversion canons.

The closing line of "Lugubrious Games", "the word always dies where the claim of some reality is total", is from Jean Amery's At the Mind's Limits, as are several other lines used in this album's lyrics. Much of the title track's lyric is drawn from Lucretius. The title "Pain and Wrath Are the Singers" is drawn from Robinson Jeffer's translation of Medea; that song's line "aimless years from nothingness to nothingness again " comes from Lovecraft. The wordplay "the afternoon's meshes" is D.F. Wallace's.

"Ship of Theseus’s lumbering compositions are calculated and ponderous, taking time away from their polyrhythmic antagonism to sojourn into prickly clean guitar passages and unsettling intervals of noise and samples.... Much like abstract art, Ship of Theseus is devoid of many of the things we normally find pleasurable in music, yet still might manage to generate significance and potentially even beauty for (some of) those who take the time to parse its inaccessible facade. I’m positive that I don’t understand much of what Kalmbach is doing here, and calling Jute Gyte “difficult to listen to” is putting it rather lightly (this stuff makes Paracletus sound like Sunbather, and this record is actually on the “mellower” side for Kalmbach), but Ship of Theseus is an inarguably impressive work in its vision, organization and execution." - Metalsucks.net

"Completely inhuman, microtonal black metal executed with machine-like precision and an extremely deep knowledge of 20th century/modern classical composition techniques. To put it in laymen’s terms, this sounds like an alien, spectral ship melting into a sea of disembodied, amorphous flesh. Try and wrap your head around this – it will take a bit." - Invisible Oranges

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard · 12-12-2016, 04:18 PM

i'm glad it took you two posts to say it correctly

The Batlord · 12-12-2016, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qwertyy

i'm glad it took you two posts to say it correctly

****ing ninjas made me have to quote.

12-12-2016, 03:55 PM	#286 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,548	Harry Partch's Delusion of the Fury is some good microtonos. __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x