#rym album cover reviews

[pinemountainobservations]

Observation: RYM Top 100 Album Cover Review #7

Kid A by Radiohead

And we return once again to the internet’s favorite band, Radiohead. While I remain staunchly ignorant of most of Radiohead’s music, Kid A is the album from them that I have the most experience with it. I’ve listened to it multiple times and can actually pick out tracks I like and return to every once in a while. I have a lot of respect for this project and Radiohead’s decision to continue to expand their scope and incorporate new influences.

That being said, the more time I spend looking at this cover the less I like it. I do think it matches the vibe of the music pretty well. Both are cold, angular, experimental and futuristic. However this is not a cover that I really enjoy looking at. It feels like a somewhat lazy attempt to create something unsettling and alien. I would’ve preferred a more abstract approach personally, and I’m not really a fan of the way edited photographs were mixed into this.

It isn’t bad by any means, but something about it brings up critical thoughts, so I really can’t say I love it. I do think it fits very well and I wouldn’t necessarily change it, it’s just a kind of middling piece of artwork. 7/10

[riseofthecommonwoodpile]

how do you find so much music to listen to? i don't have any friends who like music as much as i do, so i end up getting all my recs from tumblr, but i feel like i'm perpetually lagging behind all my cool mutuals. also, i feel like it takes me a long time to listen to an album and form a conclusive opinion on it, but you seem like you can knock that shit out super fast (remembering that music rating project u did). any tips for broadening my library? thank u and have a great day

This has been in here forever but i never took the time to answer it, i'm sorry! Hopefully belated is better than not at all

Long story short, it's one of those things where the more music you listen to, the more you find to listen to, so once you get to a certain point it's a bit of a self-perpetuating thing. That said, i do have some tips, and a lot of them will be really basic but i'm writing this more as a general thing for people who want to listen to more / different music but don't know where to start:

something that really helps (and especially helped when i was first getting suuuuuper into music listening and criticism as a main hobby of mine (i used to write actual full length reviews instead of the tiny capsules i do on twitter lol)) is just lists! As bullshit as stuff like Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" or the p4k decade lists are, they're undoubtably great overviews of things from the perspective of each outlet that puts them out, and i definitely only got into certain bands or albums because they were canonized in some way or another. plus, if one outlet's lists seem to vibe with you consistently well (for example, Tiny Mix Tapes' decade and year end lists are so very much my shit that i'd listen to almost everything on them) you can follow that site and see what they're reviewing and liking now (RIP TMT for many reasons but losing this especially from them was a bummer for me)

in addition, more narrow lists are great for if you want to get into something specific but don't know where to start. a lot of times, if i want to check out a specific genre but don't know anything about it, i'll check out the RYM "top 5" of whatever that genre is (RYM has its own clear biases and limitations, but especially for smaller microgenres i find it a super helpful starting point) or i'll literally just google "best reggaton albums of all time" or something similar and check out the albums everyone is recommending. canonization is problematic, but by looking into what the majority of people have come to call the best of a certain style or genre or period of time can give you an idea of what the tropes and characteristics of something are, and you can branch out from there if you see yourself digging at least parts of it.

from there, once i have a good starting point, i will both look up smaller / more personal lists (individual people's "best of" lists are always way more interesting than ones multiple people voted on because there's nearly always a curveball or two) and dive deep on both "suggested" similar bands as well as looking into the label or people they made music with, other projects by the same creators, etc., and that can get you quickly off the mainstream road and into fun little sidestreets.

then, last but not least, i will literally just search bandcamp or a music torrent site (by which of course i mean a place where you completely legally buy music and never pirate it) for a specific tag or genre or year and download the ones with covers i like lol. this is way more likely to lead you to mediocre or bad music, but like, that fairy pop album by diana starshine i loved last year i found exactly by searching for i think "hyperpop" on bandcamp. i saw the cover, liked it, checked out a few tracks, and voila. it's shallow and doesn't pay off all the time, but honestly it's been surprisingly successful for me in the past (except when it comes to post 00's j-pop, for some reason many of the best j-pop album covers contain some of its blandest music).

idk if any of that helps but yeah

[midianarchist]

Hello! I really love your music reviews. I was wondering, what albums would recommend for someone new going into doujin music? I’m a fan of visual novels, and also Drum ‘n’ Bass if that helps! 💕

hi! thank you!

it’s hard to recommend something specific because doujin isn’t a genre. you could basically equate it to indie. usually self-published and fandom-y (like touhou or various vn stuff.)

doujin covers so much. metal, pop, edm, hardcore, breakbeat, denpa, anything.

what id recommend doing is going on doujinstyle and hitting the ‘discover’ button. you could also check out the comiket master list and this list both on rym. there’s also a group on vk to browse through as well. just download whatever looks cool. if you want more resources lmk!

and since i don’t know a lot about dnb i can’t be much help to you in particular lol. maybe check out cycheouts.

but if i had to pick some generally accessible starter albums for anyone:

sound online - machinery (ragnarok online) download

COOL&CREATE - beat鍵 (kanon/air) download youtube

guna - 秋分紀行 (touhou) download

sun3 - 久遠の記憶 (touhou) download youtube

少女病 - Seiren 彼方に謡う哀憐の姫 (original) youtube

[zolozeuhlzowie]

(Warning! Part of this review is rewritten from my RYM account!) Vanilla Fudge is one of those bands I have a weird relationship with. Growing up my dad would play them a lot, but I basically had no memory of their music until I started listening to them a while ago. Their first album is notable for the gimmick of being souped up heavy organ rock covers of popular songs, and a lot of their sound you can hear influencing Deep Purple. I'll be completely honest here I am a sucker for the early hard rock or proto-metal driven sound with fuzztone guitars and organ. That being said, this album get's a little meandering at time with the lengthier songs but it's a great time capsule of psychedelia's transition into hard rock/metal and progressive rock. Anyway, Renaissance is their third album after their original (mentioned above) and their experimental second album. This one strikes a better balance of originals vs covers (compared to previous albums) in almost proto-gothic, moody atmosphere. The end of Faceless People even leans into "modal rock" territory. The highlights of these songs is the Fudge have an uncanny ability of knowing to really crescendo for maximum impact, and of course their version of Season Of The Witch is a classic.

[kankato]

Velocity : Design : Comfort turns 19 years old today... ...but you’d be forgiven for thinking it turned 9. Sweet Trip’s Magnum Opus was a decade ahead of its time, garnering most of it’s acclaim between 2013 and 2023. Of its 20k ratings on aggregator sites like rateyourmusic.com, only 81 ratings are from before 2010 (only one is from 2003, but RYM was an extremely small site back then). Most reviews floating around online were written within the past 10 years, coinciding with the album’s slowly growing popularity. Despite its initial reception the record proudly sits in RYM’s top 20 albums of the 2000s, holding the #1 spot for 2003. The album is a stylistic kaleidoscope, incorporating elements of 90s electronica and shoegaze into Dream Pop tapestries. This fusion is effortlessly realized by focusing on continuous melodies, allowing multiple elements of otherwise clashing ideas to compliment one another. For example, Sept opens with cascades of synthetic glitches set to a simple looping chord progression. The interplay between sounds is interesting enough, but it functions as a prelude to the looping refrain “This time maybe it’s true love” as the song starts proper. The pulse and chord progression march through the song’s melodic developments, unifying the Dream Pop vocal refrains and the staccato waves of synth fuzz. As it progresses the two styles meet in the middle, cascading into a shoegaze guitar solo. Every step of the journey is unified with what came before and after. This approach to songwriting results in some interesting theming as well. Many people have described this album as “Watching a human and a computer slowly fall in love”. While the lyrics are built around issues of love, identity, happiness and the joy of being together, there’s no binding messaging to any of it. Rather, Sweet Trip uses the lyrics to compliment the music, pointing at emotional experiences through the aesthetics of sound. It uses its vague abstractions to cover vast swaths of human experience. Listeners can project any number of evoked experiences onto the music and still find it wholly engaging. It’s one of music’s greatest strengths as a medium and I think Sweet Trip flawlessly evoke that sense of joy. The text is open to interpretation, but the album’s seamless fusion of the electronic and the human compounds with the lyric’s desire for emotional intimacy in a way few records create. I don’t think VDC has to have a unifying theme, but it’s hard to deny how compelling this one is.  

So what happened between 2003 and 2013? 

Three huge things changed between 2003 and 2013:

The rest of the music world caught up with Sweet Trip

Word of mouth found this album’s audience

It never stopped being available

For #1 the biggest change is environment. If you go and listen to this record right now it will sound like something released between 2013-2018. The sound design is immaculate front to back while the melodic sensibilities are reminiscent of indietronica from the 2010s. The 2010s were also obsessed with fusing the world of electronica with rock, which this album accomplishes effortlessly. I highly encourage you to test this yourself: Show a song to a friend and ask them when it came out. 4/5 times the answer is between 2012-2020. No one seems to believe me when I say 2003. For #2, the best advertising is the hardest to get: devoted fans. People who love your work on its own merits will share it organically to anyone who will listen (I’m doing that right now). This album slowly accumulated listeners and evangelists over 10 years whose collective recommendations snowballed into the steady, unshakable fandom it enjoys today. VDC is walking proof that works can transcend creative eras, touching the hearts and minds of generations to come. However, for any of those points to work you need availability. The third point is by far one of the most important pieces in VDC’s legacy. For people to enjoy your music they have to be able to find it. Through the low friction environment of streaming, VDC had a chance to be found. It inspired a well received reissue in 2014, 2020 and 2021, and inspired the band to reunite one more time for their last hurrah: A Tiny House, in Secret Speeches, Polar Equals. While that album is a story for another time, I’m proud to call Velocity : Design : Comfort a masterpiece, and one of the best albums of the 2000s. Maybe I Wouldn't mind To be graced by your Gentle smile

[db-reviews]

#109 - Fluid Existential Inversions - Intronaut (2020)

So I wanted to review an album, but I had no idea what album to review. So instead of thinking long and hard about it, I figured to have a little fun and do some randomness. I went to RYM recommendations and selected a random number between 1 and 200 and I had to listen to and review the album it chose. With that, this was the album that I ended up having to review, and from the cover alone I was pretty excited to check it out because it gave me some awesome black midi or Ashenspire vibes. However, what I got instead was also equally amazing.

So, a little history about Intronaut. They are a California-based progressive metal band formed in 2004 with the lineup of Sacha Dunable, Leon del Muerte, Danny Walker, and Joe Lester. Throughout their career, they have released several albums with styles ranging from more sludge metal approaches to nearly post-metal acclaims, plus they went on tour with some notable acts such as Animals As Leaders and the great band Mastodon. This album is their 6th studio record after their 2015 release of The Direction of Last Things, released on February 28th, 2020. Before making this review I had never heard of this band, but after listening to this album I cannot deny that like a fisherman and their fish, I got hooked onto their boat with many other fishes, because this album is so freaking good.

For me, this album begins with a really strong prelude, that being Procurement of the Victuals. Now I do not particularly like talking about tracks that are more or less just small and quick openers for the album to begin with, but here I think I should because this one opening movement does bring to light the band’s more cacophony appeal to progressive metal. It doesn’t waste any time getting you into what the band wants you to hear, and what they want you to hear is some intensely immaculate metal. While not my favorite song here, I cannot deny that without this album it may be in an odd place for me.

Likewise, with the prelude, the first real track of Cubensis doesn’t waste any time and gets right into the freeway of some tightly knit metal. This band knows how to stir its flavors in its pot. I am getting stuff that harkens to the more technical side of metal, while also going deep into the more sludge metal approach that bands like Mastodon would set a stage for in the early 2000s. Not only does this song rock, but it is a headbanger, even in the later half where things are a tad more like post-metal and thus quieter. It is an impressive and great force of heavy metal that shouldn’t be underestimated.

However, that was merely an appetizer for the other great songs off this album, especially in retrospect to The Cull. If you really wanna hear that more sludge metal crossover between post-metal then this is the song for you. It gives a textural experience that a lot of post-rock music loves to do, but still retains that toxic waste like sludge in the mix, especially with the vocals. Sacha’s and Dave’s vocals on this album do give that good mix of that soft and clean metal appeal, and that grimey and sloppy appeal, similar to how the instrumentation has that divide of the mellow post-rock and the meaty sludge metal. I am a big fan of this approach because it mixes a ton of flavors so well that I cannot stop listening to it no matter what. There is always something new to expect and I love it.

One of the best things about this album is that it consistently delivers on what I have said before on The Cull. The next track of Contrapasso shows off more of that fun division of soft and hard metal, and not only do they deliver a ton with their music, blending a bit more ambiance with this song a bit more, they still retain that head bangy sound that I cannot help but fawn over. It is just that great.

Now while I would say that this consistency can be somewhat of a downfall for most albums, the band tries to spice things up by employing some more influences. Speaking Of Orbs is a great example of that. Not only do we get that same ol’ awesome sludge metal the band has established, we even get a mix with a more Between The Buried And Me sound, specifically with their softer moments like with Desert of Song or the beginning half of Monochrome. As a BTBAM head, this was a very pleasant surprise to hear from what I’d expect to be another track that takes the same notes as the last four, so the experimentation on here is much appreciated. It is also probably one of the prettiest tracks on here, with the softer vocals and the use of atmospheric guitar melodies rather than riffs and growls. It is the stand-out highlight of this album for me.

Tripolar goes back to the sludge metal aspects that the band posed at the start, but we get a tiny bit of thrash and death metal on here that I think adds some great use of that more experimental side of metal. However that is merely for the first half, the second half continues that atmospheric side of their music that I have been loving ever since the first track. This second half soon loops back around to where the first half ended off, with that more death metal approach. Amazing progression throughout that I cannot help but adore.

If you want some more of their more heavy stuff then Check Your Misfortune is a good one to look into. Unlike most songs here, the more atmospheric moments are just as heavy as the harder moments on this song which I think allows the band to stretch their legs in that heavier side of music that they have an affinity for. How the song keeps up with this headbanger style of music but still progresses towards a clear-cut movement is how I like my progressive metal. A clear-cut forwarded movement that builds up and changes throughout.

I think the grandest song off of here has to be Pangloss. It carries the last few songs of this album in such a way that I cannot help but love it. It goes into the sludge metal the band dabbles with a lot, getting deep and dirty with that style of music on here, almost to the point where they almost dabble in stoner metal. With this track, you still have that progression, but the heavier side of the coin getting a lot dirtier just adds another layer to this immaculate lasagna the band has cooked up for my ears.

Rounding everything off is Sour Everything. I think this track not only is a great closure for this amazing album, but it goes back to what the past songs did and utilizes those same techniques here, experimenting with a wide range of influences from sludge metal, to post-metal, to even the more heroic feeling technical metal they had on Speaking of Orbs. It all builds up into this wide range of sounds that then get cut off by this soothing keyboard melody that is dim compared to the light show that we just experienced on this record. While it ends differently than how the album began, I do see it fits well with the sound the band painted here, thus creating a proper finale to this album that I think is a clear, and focused masterpiece.

When I jumped into this I expected something wild and crazy, but what I got was a mix of beauty, grittiness, and awesomeness rolled into one package. This has become one of my favorite metal records, and it happened by chance. If you haven’t already then do yourself a favor and check this out. Run, don’t walk to it, because not only is it one of the best progressive metal albums that came out this decade, I bet it can stand the test of time and be regarded as an instant classic in the music community. Give it a shot, you won’t regret it.

5/5

[ephemeralityonline]

Beach Funeral (6/28/21; A review of Car Seat Headrest's EP "MADLO: Influences")

While I don’t think that the EP is as bad as people are making it out to be, what stings is that this is coming from Car Seat Headrest. Even though it’s not meant to be taken as anything more than a fun homage for MADLO’s one-year anniversary, I can't shake this feeling that this can't be Car Seat Headrest. While MADLO itself had some really exciting songs that pointed in a new direction for the band and I overall liked the album, it also left a bad taste in my mouth that they were losing the edge as well as the personality that made them special. There are definitely times on this EP where their magic shines through (Will singing "angels" on Golden Years, Substitute's slightly more lo-fi production, and Running Up That Hill's outro), but overall, this feels like the first non-live project from CSH to just feel like it brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Even exclusively comparing this to their previous covers of Frank Ocean's Ivy and The Cars' Just What I Needed which both feel like they could only be performed by CSH, this feels like it could come from any indie generic band. It's easy to just point and say "Once Will got a band his music started to get worse," but these are the exact same people who made Destroyed By Hippie Powers and Ballad of Costa Concordia. It feels like all of the yelling, distortion, overly personal lyrics (this point isn't applicable for this project but was for MADLO), and extra-long runtimes of the best CSH projects are being paved over to sound more like a standard indie band. In my opinion, Will's output from 2011 to 2014 was the best run in rock music excluding The Beatles so he really has nothing to prove for me. However, it is still a bit of a bummer that the band's new direction loses a lot of what made me fall in love with them in the first place. Still optimistic for their next full-length project though.

Originally posted on my RYM account.

[pinemountainobservations]

Observation: RYM Top 100 Album Cover Review #18

A Love Supreme by John Coltrane

RYM’s next choice for best Jazz album of all time is John Coltrane’s spiritually-inspired masterpiece, A Love Supreme. This record is very important for Trane’s story as well as the development of spiritual and modal jazz. And it’s a personal favorite too!

I’m a big fan of spiritual jazz, I think there’s an added element of personal connection and emotion that purely technical jazz just doesn’t have for me. While I can appreciate the skillful playing in other avant-garde jazz records, it’s players like John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, or Alice Coltrane that can really make me connect to the music. This is a great record, highly recommend to anyone trying to get into avant-garde jazz.

Now, deserved praise for the music aside, what about the cover? I’m not gonna lie, especially out of the context of the great albums lists this cover usually shows up, it’s pretty boring. When I’m looking through a Rolling Stones list or RYM’s top albums of all time, this is an interesting reprieve from the various colors and artistic visions. But on its own, it really does just look like a strangely cropped photo of John Coltrane.

There’s just so little going on. The entire thing is simple black-and-white, the text is nondescript, the division between artist’s name and album name being a “ / “ is odd, the background of the photo is blurry and indescribable, and there’s that weird white slash in the foreground bottom left corner. The only part I appreciate is John Coltrane himself, who has a serious expression and is somewhat interestingly posed, even if basically all of his body is cut off. But even then, he’s not playing the horn or anything, there’s literally nothing to tell something that this is an intentionally created album artwork other than the text. If you removed that, this could just be an oddly cropped photo of a very intense relative that you find on a shelf in your grandparent’s house. The version I have here also has the “impuse!” sticker in the top right, and not every version I could find on the internet had that. For my money this sticker, which I only included because the one on RYM’s chart has it, only makes the cover worse. It feels out of place and sits oddly above Trane’s head.

Overall this isn’t a bad cover, Coltrane himself is fascinating and I think has enough presence to carry the cover into the “fleeting glance and it looks fine” zone. But under scrutiny the whole thing kind of falls apart. Legendary record, very good, but the cover itself is a 3/10.

[rainydawgradioblog]

RDR Essentials - Experimental (4/13)

RDR Essentials is a weekly newsletter of alternating genres that outlines key releases of the past month, upcoming events around Seattle and happenings in the specified music genre.

Made in collaboration between Rainy Dawg DJs and the Music Director.

Releases: 

Tuluum Shimmering - Bird Song

The newest release from the one man band with the new age/drone/free folk plan, Bird Song clocks in at a brief (for his standards) 68 minute runtime. If any of you are already familiar with our Welsh friend Tuluum Shimmering, you’ll know pretty much exactly what to expect- the man may have many great aspects to his art, diversity of sound is not one of them. For those of you who’ve not yet had the pleasure of knowing him, I’ll lay it out more plainly. Tuluum Shimmering loves to start pieces with a nice repeating piano or synth riff that is eventually engulfed by a cascade of acoustic guitars and various drone instruments, which will continue for a bit before being punctuated by hand drums (never a drum kit, for drum kits aren’t new age, and breaking new age would be scandalous for him). Then the piece will reverse itself in approximately the same order, except maybe the percussion will stay in, before resolving with the same piano or synth riff that started the piece. You may be saying to yourself, “Gee, this sounds a whole lot like classical minimalism with the phasing and whatnot, isn’t that kind of old-hat?” and you’d be correct. Tuluum Shimmering is a musician whose obsession with nostalgia verges on becoming hauntological, but that isn’t to say there’s nothing interesting or fresh with his music. His exploration of layers, texture, and timbre in music is very rewarding for the attentive listener. Even for those who don’t want to tunnel vision on the minutiae, his music is pleasant to a fault and is as easily enjoyed with a warm cup of coffee as it is with an ice cold beer when you want to relax.

FFO: Natural Snow Buildings, Pelt, Alice Coltrane’s new age stuff

- Cameron Molyneux

Horse Lords - The Common Task

Apologies for turning back time to last month for this one, but we have what many on the internet are considering the breakout album for maybe classical maybe rock probably just fans of Glenn Branca quartet Horse Lords. It’s got everything baby- microtones, polyrhythms, grooves, bagpipes, an extended ambient passage. What more could you ask for? And unlike the criticism lobbed at a certain adventurous Australian Oh Sees cover band, none of it feels contrived or gimmicky. These are quality compositions with a lot of depth to them. Multiple listens reveal more and more about them, so it’s worth being patient. The second track, “Against Gravity,” has the extremely sick microtones. The fourth, “People’s Park,” has the aforementioned bagpipes. Did I also mention that the last song is 19 minutes long? All in all, a very exciting release that has the band sounding at times like Storm & Stress and at others like This Heat. Check it out.

*We regret to inform you that Anthony Fantano gave this album an 8/10 and it is therefore uncool to like it now. Cameron regrets the error*

FFO: Storm & Stress, This Heat, Don Caballero, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham

- Cameron Molyneux

Sharks - Skies Look After Us

After my humiliating brush with meloncore in the last blurb, I decided I needed to go with something much lower profile to avoid my past mistakes. And so I bring you the second album released this year by Sharks, a bright young artist who popped onto my radar after a RYM friend gave his first album a glowing review. Much of experimental music is very long, sometimes to the point of belaboring whatever point it was trying to make in the first point. This is why I hold a special fondness for brevity, and also why I took a chance on Sharks’ work in the first place. The first album was a sleek 32 minutes, this one an even more aerodynamic 28. What could I lose from spending that time listening to new music instead of watching an episode of Frasier? Well, the answer is nothing. This is a very promising foray into the more lush ambient side of psych folk. It’s got moments of field recordings, dark ambient, and even a bit of drone. Definitely a cool artistic progression to see happening in real time. Give it a listen n sound off in the comments below on what you think about it. Until next month gamers.

FFO: Grouper, Inca Ore, Paavoharju

- Cameron Molyneux

The Breathing Effect - Photosynthesis

The full effect of this record can only be felt while sitting next to a plant (I recommend a fern). The drums and syncopation in their sound have only grown since 2015’s Mars is the Only Place for Love. The bubbling soundscape their ambience creates is held together by brilliant drum composition and delightfully melodic basslines. The evolving organs make it feel like I’m a small fern being fed by the sun that is The Breathing Effect. Heliotrope is my favorite track off this record; it’s so easy to get lost in the lightness and depth of the instrumentation this one has that I forgot I was writing this and just dissociated for a quick second. Listen to this outside in the sun if you are able to. 

FFO: Keifer, Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, Nick Hakim

- Chris Carroll

Upcoming Releases:

4/17: Sir Richard Bishop - Oneiric Formulary

4/17: Mako Sica & Hamid Drake - Balancing Tear

4/17: Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin kynsi

4/24: Mark Kozelek - All the Best, Isaac Hayes

[heavilyrotated]

A very well worn copy of “Stairway to Hell - The 500 best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe”.

You can tell by the state of the cover (notice how most of my books are pretty much pristine?) how much I’ve flipped through this bad boy... but it doesn’t have much to do with the list itself (which, as you can tell by the fact that this edition has an addendum for 90s albums, is incomplete at best) but more to do with the quality of the writing.  This fucking guy (Chuck Eddy) fucking gets it.  I hope to one day love music half as much as Chuck and gain an ability to write about it with even a modicum of the enthusiasm, depth and unadulterated snark that he spews here on every page and in every blurb.  He’s a pretty acerbic dude, no doubt about it.  You even sort of get to wondering if he even likes the bands and albums he writes about (including those in the top 10 entries). HERE is a spot on review from Vice. HERE is a convenient way to read the list (it’s a guy on RYM [Rate Your Music] who has undertaken to listen to each of these albums and re-rate them while drunk...).  Here’s his top five:

1. IV - Led Zeppelin

2. Appetite for Destruction - Guns `n Roses

3. Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits - Alice Cooper

4. Toys in the Attic - Aerosmith

5. Kix - Kix      

Neil Young makes an appearance at 11, Kix somehow comes up a few more times, every Zeppelin album finds a notch somewhere, The Stooges and MC5 rate well, as do The Sex Pistols (?), Cheap Trick and Pere Ubu.  What the actual fuck?  I use it to build my want lists...

Buy this book if you love (or hate) metal, music, rock writing, tight pants, big hair, loud guitars, devil horns... Although I did start to fill in some blanks after I got my first taste of Lester Bangs; Eddy borrows liberally from his play book. 

[exaltist]

THE POWER STATION - THE POWER STATION

Half of Duran Duran, the drummer from Chic, and Robert Palmer. What could go wrong?

The Power Station is a mid-80's band that is composed of the guitar bros from Duran Duran, the drummer from Chic, and vocalist and lyricist Robert Palmer. On a related note, a lot of people compare The Police to Sting, and how most feel about that I feel about The Power Station to Robert Palmer. I listened to Riptide awhile ago, and felt like the instruments were lacking, despite many of the same people working on both projects. The Power Station is named after the recording studio they recorded the album in, in New York City. Personally I feel this name fits the band perfectly. It's edgy, hard 80's rock with Robert Palmer's soulful, strong vocals and lyrics. This supergroup should have done a lot more, but after getting his recognition Palmer decided to go solo again with his massive successes in Riptide and Heavy Nova. A mild complaint of mine that the while some songs are too short, others run on too long. Singles include: 'Some Like it Hot' (written by every member of the band), 'Get It On' (cover of T-Rex), and 'Communication', but 'Go to Zero' should have been the third single. Instead, 'Go to Zero' was a b-side on 'Get It On' and is also featured after that song on the album.

Best Song: 'Get It On' easily. Not to say they don't have impact on their original songs, but they mastered this one. Great song to start side B. Worst Song: 'Still in Your Heart'. I felt like they needed a closer but they picked a song that songs like a Robert Palmer solo. Slower, less edgy than any other song off the album.

Overall Rating: 4 1/2 stars out of 5 stars

Entire review, including track reviews available at RYM (Rate Your Music).

Tag: Powerhouse

[db-reviews]

Roman - Sound Horizon (2006)

Japanese Progressive Rock is sort of obscure for me in a lot of ways. The only bands I know in that sort of range is Koenjihyakkei and Ruins. I am way more familiar with the Japanese Zuehl scene than any other sub genre of Prog with only a bit of a few exceptions such as OOIOO and Sigh, however I haven’t really gotten in depth with those bands yet. It is something I definitely want to invest more time to, and I decided to search for some good Japanese Prog bands. So I found a list on RYM that showcased some amazing Japanese Prog bands. Le Silo, Flower Travellin’ Band, Yuka & Chronoship, all bands I definitely will check out someday, however, one band caught my eye. There was an album cover of 5 people behind a colorful background, with cat ears. This cover, intrigued me to say the least. And then one thing lead to another, and now I am reviewing this album, Roman by Sound Horizon.

So after hearing the album I knew what the band was going for in terms of style. It was a more symphonic sound mixed with traditional rock elements, and it’s a really great sound. The beat is on point a lot of the times and it also gives way to more slower and somber songs and interludes in the songs themselves. It has loud bombastic moments that intensifies what is going on in the album, and some mellow moments which gives a good blend of diversity. I especially love track 4, Norowareshi Hōseki. That beginning violin riff (is that even a thing?) is so good, plus the sound effects of what appears to be two kingdoms fighting is super good. I also love how it feels and sounds like a medieval fantasy anime, if that makes sense. Like I can envision this sort of music in a opening to animes like The Heroic Legend of Arslan, Black Clover, or Claymore, especially since this album released in the mid 2000s, and I just really dig it, it sounds fun and it sounds like the band was having fun making this.

However with all the praise I am giving, there should at least be some critique on this album, and that sometimes it feels like things aren’t going much anywhere. A lot of times I expect some big thing that gets lead up in the song and it never really comes out. For example, track 7, Tenshi no Chōzō. It is a admittedly pretty piano piece, however I feel like it just never goes anywhere, since it doesn’t have some big lead up or at least some lead up to a drum beat or a change in instrumentation or a new singer, and it kinda goes a bit too long being nearly 7 minutes, so I am just kinda looking at a watch waiting for the time to pass. While it could work in it’s favor, I think this has a detriment on the album a bit to where I can say I love when the album hits hard and goes in a right direction, however I cannot say I like when it feels like it has no direction whatsoever.

So overall, I really liked this album. It was really cool, had a nice sound and it just felt fun, however I cannot say I fully love this album, due to at times it feels like they are kinda hitting a few walls and do not know where to go. I’ll definitely check more of their albums out, and this feels like a good introductory to their sound. So yeah, good album, good experience, I definitely recommend checking it.

3.5/5

[ephemeralityonline]

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (10/20/21; a review of the Ratking album "So It Goes")

After listening to this album for a year or so, I have no idea why this album isn't talked about a lot in the current musical landscape. The production from Sporting Life throughout the entirety of this album is some of the best I've heard this decade. It is repetitive, highly engaging, chaotic, and has a certain punk energy to it. Especially on the mind-numbing disorder of tracks like "Canal" and "Snow Beach", the number of layers within the instrumentals feels almost like a beautiful wall of samples where with every listen you can find a new part to the beat. With beats these unequivocally phenomenal, you wouldn't even need to have good rappers to make this album great. However, what elevates this album is that the rapping fits perfectly with the beats. Wiki and Hak pull through in spades giving some of their best work in their respective careers. While I have always really liked Wiki's music, his delivery can become grating if you’re new to him. This is barely a problem here as Hak is able to break up Wiki’s higher-pitched verses with more melodic and laid back flows. This dynamic between the two prevents either of the two’s voices from getting repetitive or annoying. On top of the dynamic between Hak and Wiki, Sporting Life couldn’t be a better fit for both of their styles. Before SLUMS or Standing on the Corner, Sporting Life was pioneering the new lo-fi hip hop scene in NYC. The production is grimy and strikes a nice balance between experimental and accessible. While I can certainly cite some production similarities with El-P and even a little Madlib, Sporting Life’s production doesn’t feel like an imitation of the two, it feels like a natural evolution. On songs like the title track and “Remove Ya” the instrumentals perfectly emulate the feeling of the lyrics. Specifically, on the former, I felt like the soaring vocal samples on the track were a sonic representation of the “six million trains to ride” that Wiki talks about in the chorus. The only track that falls a bit short relative to the rest of the album would be the sluggish “Take”. The beat is a bit basic compared to the rest of the album and Salomon Faye has a surprisingly weak feature especially compared to King Krule or Princess Nokia who both add a lot to their respective songs. However, the album ends on a sweet note with “Cocoa ‘88” cutting through the relatively lighter second half with piercing blade samples, a catchy "day's work for day's pay" refrain, and one of Wiki’s best flows yet. A chaotic closer for a chaotic album. The album can make you feel like you’re either flying through the skyscrapers or running through the sewers. This album is New York to its very core. The New York references can range from subways, Wallabees, bodegas, and every staple you can think of. Even the album cover is based on the MTA transit map. As someone who grew up in Queens as a child but moved down south early on, this album is almost like nostalgic soul food for me. Regardless of your connection to the city, I would highly recommend listening to this album. One of the definitive rap albums in my life.

Originally posted on my RYM account.

[pinemountainobservations]

Observation: RYM Top 100 Album Cover Review #17

Revolver by The Beatles

In the time since my Abbey Road review I have, as promised, done a bit of a Beatles deep dive. I definitely have more to explore, but for now I have at least listened to the first couple Beatles records in this list. And out of the ones I have listened to so far, Revolver is definitely my favorite. It’s once again an older record that I just don’t have the full context for, and so will probably never love it the same way so many people do. But it’s definitely good, and I can appreciate that even when The Beatles make a bad song (looking at you, Yellow Submarine), it manages to at least be very interesting.

This album also used to have my favorite cover from The Beatles. I say used to because for a while, I just saw its shrunk-down version on streaming services or websites, and thought it was cool. It was only when I actually pulled up a larger image and looked at it closer that things changed a bit.

I know psychedelia and trippy imagery are The Beatles forté, but this one is kind of a lot for me. I do like it better than the Sgt. Pepper’s cover, the monotone palette makes Revolver leagues better in my opinion. But I’m still not a fan of this type of collage. And don’t get me wrong, I love a good collage. But for me a good collage feels a lot more seamless. That’s just a personal taste thing, I know plenty of people like this style. But I think the drawing parts are just so good and I wish that’s what the whole cover was. The photos just take a lot away from this for me, and even the ones that I kind of like, like the little guys sitting on top of George Harrison’s head, I would like better if they were in the same line art style.

Overall, this is one that I don’t hate, but I definitely don’t like looking at it for a while. It’s fine from a distance, and I think it’s impressive that psychedelic imagery was capturing so well in black-and-white, but I wish it was more consistent. 4/10

[pinemountainobservations]

Observation: RYM Top 100 Album Cover Review #16

The Velvet Underground & Nico by The Velvet Underground and Nico

PEEL SLOWLY AND SEE

Andy Warhol is one of my top picks for most overrated creatives of all time. I know the whole point of pop art is to be ironic and criticize consumerist culture, but I really just can’t bring myself to care. His work is broadly uninteresting to me, and I’ve never really been a fan of the brand of criticism that says “what if I criticize something by doing… the exact same thing?!?”. That being said, I think sponsoring The Velvet Underground is one of the best things Warhol ever did. They were genuinely experimental for their time and very influential. Their music isn’t my favorite, but it's hard to deny the impact. Also, Nico was a pretty singular artist for her time, and her contributions to this record shouldn’t be overlooked. That’s about all I have to say on the music side of things, I honestly haven’t looked into the story of this record beyond the pretty basic surface level, so I’m not gonna try to give a half-assed opinion on one of the most-discussed albums of all time.

Instead I’ll be talking about the album cover, created by Mr. Warhol himself. Here he puts his signature style into an interesting space, this artwork feels more similar to the abstract and absurdist movements than it does to pop art. I appreciate that approach a lot, this cover is definitely intriguing. And, in its own way, it is very iconic. In terms of underground music and experimental rock, this album’s legendary status has helped it become very recognizable. It’s nowhere near the levels of iconic as Abbey Road or Dark Side of the Moon, but that’s more due to its somewhat underground (and gatekept) nature. But it has the same qualities as a lot of those famous album covers, it’s a very simple and replicable image that can be put on pretty much anything with a white background.

Honestly, this cover has a lot going for it visually and culturally. My one sticking point is, once again, Andy Warhol. He really just had to put his name smack dab on the cover, huh? Couldn’t be content with a credit on the back of the record, no he had to make this album even more confusing to the uninitiated. I’m of the opinion that any text on the cover of an album that isn’t the artist’s name or the title of the album really needs to have a good stylistic reason to be there, and in this case I don’t see a very good reason other than Andy Warhol’s ego. The other text though, “PEEL SLOWLY AND SEE” is great, it once again adds to the absurdist feeling of the art. The whole thing reminds me a lot of René Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images”.

Overall, this is a pretty great cover. Solid artwork, iconic status in the music nerd scene, and a decent usage of text. Andy Warhol’s dumb ass brings this one down a bit, but I’d still call this a 7.5/10

[pinemountainobservations]

Observation: RYM Top 100 Album Cover Review #15

Illmatic by Nas

Part of the reason I’m really enjoying doing this series so far is that I get to really evaluate classic album covers as more than just images attached to music. Ilmatic is a great example of a cover that I think gets overlooked because the music gets so much praise. Actually I think that’s the case for a lot of rap album cover arts, Drake and Kanye are some of the only artists I can think of that really get a lot of attention for what they put on the covers of their albums. Otherwise, I don’t see a lot of critical analysis of hip-hop visual art, which I think is kind of interesting.

Anyways, here I feel like I may get into my first straight up negative review of an album. Not of the music of course, 90s hip-hop may not be my thing, but it’s hard to deny this as one of the best-written rap albums ever made. But that cover art though...

Like realistically, what is going on here? This is Nas’ origin story, so he’s got the picture of himself as a kid, and the album is very much centered in his hometown of New York, so he has the urban landscape in the background. And there’s his name, and the name of the album. Everything important is here. But when all of those pieces are put together, I don’t know. I think I like this cover less the more I look at it.

I said it yesterday with the Mingus album, but part of my problem is always going to be that I have a modern sense of design. I can’t look at older design choices and not compare them to what current artists and designers are doing. And so I’ll just say straight up, I really don’t like a lot of older hip-hop imagery. If you do like, and there’s plenty of people that do, that’s totally fine and all power to you. I think there’s absolutely a huge market for it and it can be very meaningful to people. I’m not gonna come in here and tell people that this is objectively bad design, cause that’s just not true and I don’t have any place saying it. What I will say instead is that, in my opinion, I just don’t like the over-the-top, maximalist, goofy style of like 90s-2000s rap mixtape and album artwork. It’s too much for me, and while I might find it kind of funny sometimes, I don’t enjoy it for much else beyond that.

And Illmatic is not the worst offender in my eyes by any means. It’s definitely trying to be a lot more serious than say We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 by Clipse. It’s got a raw, dusty color palette (probably the best thing about it, and something I actually really like), it’s got a somewhat unsettling photo of a 7-year-old Nas, it’s got a dramatic flair to the font. It’s trying to create a mood, and I think it mostly succeeds. But to my eyes there are a couple of huge flops that really bring this cover down.

I’ll start with the text, which I think is definitely the worst part of this cover. The placement is alright, I’ve got a bad photo here that for some reason crops Nas’ name right up next to the border and I don’t think that’s normally how it looks. So I’m not bothered about that. What is an issue to me is the font, or rather fonts, that are used here. Why are there three of them? I had this same problem with The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, but it’s even worse here because not only are there three fonts that are each only used for between three and five letters, but all three are different colors and different sizes. And the fonts for “ill” and “nas” are similar enough that I don’t understand why a different one was used. “nas” has a black border around it because it was made a color that is very similar to the photo collage in the background, which bugs me because like, just make it black or white like the other text, then it would all fit together a bit more, right? I don’t know, the text really bothers me the more I look at it, I think it really takes away from what otherwise would be a decently striking superimposed collage. But put all together it just is not it.

The superimposed photos themselves are alright. I think the one of Nas is actually very good, it's really interesting and the most memorable part of the art (alongside the color palette) by far. But the background, the city street, it’s just very mediocre to me. Especially for how important the city is to the story of this album, it feels like more than half the photo is just the sky above and an empty street below. You get a glimpse of some nondescript buildings and cars in the middle section, but nothing about this is interesting. It doesn’t even look like New York to me, if I knew nothing about Nas this photo could be of any random city anywhere.

Also, while the placement of Nas’ portrait is definitely interesting, and I like the way the space in the middle of the street lines up with his forehead, I still feel like if a better urban landscape photo was chosen there could have been a much better and more interesting collage that could be made.

This album is a classic, one of the greatest rap albums ever made, but that doesn’t mean I have to like its art. In this case, I give Illmatic by Nas a 3/10