Cryptowen's Sexy Reviewing Thread

[Cryptowen]

Okay, time for Friend(s) of magnetandsteel & Kaini. I feel bad about skipping past all the people waiting like this, but I don't want to commit to another 20+ minute thing until I've got Aces squared away (Friday, hopefully). Anyway...

 

Celestial Shore - One of the tags on this album's Bandcamp page is "indecisive", and it does sorta feel like that. Each of the four songs jumps abruptly from one riff to another as if it can't quite make up its mind how it wants to sound. Most of these riffs are pretty good in themselves, but it does feel quite jarring have so much going on in the space of 7 minutes. Maybe I'm just not used to hearing so much variation in the context of a poppy surf rock song (I'm going with surf rock because that's what the falsetto reminds me of).

 

As I said, most of the riffs work pretty well. There were a few elements that didn't really do much for me - the march-like two-tone guitar riff on the opening track, the synth wobbles around 0:55 on Lost. Actually, speaking of which, that latter moment is probably the most jarring of the aforementioned jarring transitions. After a quiet opening, we start to enter a very nice groove at 0:54, only to have it snatched away by a not really memorable guitar bit less than ten seconds later. We then return to the initial groove (for a little bit), but I feel it loses a bit of momentum from the interplay.

 

The vocals are probably my favourite part of the album. The wandering falsettos casts a very mellow summery feel over the whole thing, and holds things together whenever a song goes off onto a new tangent. The synths can be a bit hit or miss (I'm generally not a fan of pitch wheel wobbling), but when they work (for example, the arpeggios on Pals), they work quite well, adding just the right amount of electronic gameboy noise.

 

Kaini - good timing

uileann pipers at the gates of acid - The first few minutes are all quite good (and not in the WATMM sense of the phrase), with the percussive bits drifting into the ambient drone in such a way that they're definitely felt, but you aren't really aware of them individually until the pad drops away, at which point you realize "hey, there's beats here". Anyway, that opening does a good job of locking one into the rhythm, which is then carried for the next several minutes by various blips, bloops, and scary Terminator soundtrack horn growls. Usually I complain about a lack of focus on things, but here it does seem to work in the creation of a synthesizer soup full of...I dunno, Yamaha Bacteria (guys who pretend to see stuff when they listen to IDM, help me out here). The track pretty much craps the bed at 8:15 or so, but that sounds like a technical glitch that you are already aware of. It soon gets back on the rails, but I can't help feeling that the earlier parts were a bit stronger & maybe it should have started wrapping things up before that abrupt halt. Pretty good track, though.

 

clean ALL the things - Good gravy, that autopan. I'm a fan of autopan, use it all the time, but what you've got going on here pretty much dominates the track. Or at least it did when I listened with headphones. On speakers it's still pretty noticeable, but not quite a track killer. The main guitar bit (or guitar-like noise bit, one can never quite tell on tracks like these) is pretty good, but at four repeating notes it is rather repetitive, until you start playing around with it in the last quarter (turns into a pretty decent riff, actually. I would have liked to hear more of it). Also the mix seems fairly noisy to me, as if there is some wonky effect or distracting elements in there. This track sort of strikes me as a demo that could be pretty nice with a little more development & cleaning up.

[Cryptowen]

And now time for Aces.

 

More of a (very large) collection than a cohesive album, 672 is one of those "make a track every day for x number of days" deals. In this case x refers to the 28 days of February, AKA 672 hours. As one might expect, the tracks mostly seem to be standalone entities, sketches of ideas rather than a body of work reworked for ages. But that's okay, because most of the tracks here do present a distinct/interesting concept even in their rather rough forms, to the point where I actually wanted to listen to what must be at least three hours of material (though not all in one sitting). Seeing as there's so much here I won't make a comment on every track, but I will talk about a few that stood out to me on first listen...

 

Let them ring on - I admit, I don't listen to a great deal of drone. When this track started up, my initial reaction was "I am not listening to eleven & a half minutes of meat freezer noise". But, the more I listened, the more I began to pick up on the subtle variances in pitch & tone. As is the case with most highly subtle music, small details quickly began to seem amplified. Maybe I should listen to more drone.

 

Purple and yellow - This track works particularly well when contrasted with the previous track's droney electronics - two minutes of energetic, constantly progressing clean guitar sounds. The drums seem rather flatly mixed to me (which was how I felt about most of the drums on 672), but that can be forgiven when one considers the production schedule.

 

Uninspiring Sunday - The bass sort of drowns this one out, & not much happens (to be expected, given the title), but I would like to say that is one large sounding pad.

 

Upon a fucking star - to me this was one of the more immediately memorable tracks on the album, with the almost creepy deep space synth line accompanied by a shuffling, downtempo beat. Builds a strong atmosphere out of a seemingly small amount of parts, which is always impressive to me.

 

Which blue do you like? - The short melodic pieces like these seem to be the ones I recall most, although I do enjoy the ten minute long weird noise stuff & see how it builds a mood when you listen in sequence. Probably tracks like these would work best on a conventional album. ANYWAY, good piano solo here. Has a sort of contemplative feel to it.

 

...? - Nice use of a dripping faucet as a metronome.

 

*untitled Feb 15th track* - You've got a few pieces like this one that sound like longform noise experiments (in this case super-distorted guitar noodling). I usually have to be in the mood for that sort of stuff, & I don't think they gel well with the more normal sounding tracks (or even the long drone/ambient ones), but they do sort of work in the context of a track-a-day mystery bag album.

 

Endlessly - Another track kinda like Upon a fucking star, in which you manage to build a big weird spacey atmosphere while at the same time sounding like free-style synth riffing being recorded in a bedroom. Interesting how those two states manage to coexist.

 

All roads lead in the same direction - One of the more compelling beat tracks, I think. Has a sort of Roman colosseum feel, with the two note pattern sitting somewhere between caveman pounding & an imperial march.

 

I probably owe Tim a quid or two - the warbling textures really carry this one, lending the two repeating notes a feeling of off-balance ominousness, like an abandoned funhouse full of alien spiders. You should probably give Tim his quid back.

 

Strange day - I mostly mention this track to again speak favorably of the mood swings on this album, going from that nightmarish clownscape to another very earthy sounding guitar composition. The balance between warm humanistic tracks & weird alien ones is what keeps 672 interesting for me.

 

Maybe somewhere over there? - one of the few tracks that actually kinda sounds like beaty electronic music played straight, & a pretty good one at that. I'm sort of happy that this track falls on my birthday & not one of the scary moon noise tracks.

 

Where did I go this time? - this track feels like it's on the verge of being really good, but it's missing some sort of killer beat or bassline to really make it groove.

 

The show is nearly over - You know, this album sort of reminds me of Ghosts oh no another NIN comparison what sort of reviewer am I another long, collage-like album that featured an array of moods presented by guitars tracks, noise tracks, beat tracks, droning ambient tracks, & a general sketchy lo-fi feel. It's really obscure & you've probably never heard of it :hipster:

 

 

 

Anyway, sorry about the rather insubstantial commentary. I like the album but there is so much here I'd have to spend weeks with it to really get a good picture of each track in my mind, & I should probably be getting moving on the next entry on the waiting list.

[Guest Aces]

Anyway, sorry about the rather insubstantial commentary. I like the album but there is so much here I'd have to spend weeks with it to really get a good picture of each track in my mind, & I should probably be getting moving on the next entry on the waiting list.

 

Not to worry, i'm very happy you took the time to give it a listen. I am very appreciative. It's very kind of you ro rake the time to do this not just for me but for everyone so far. I know i'm certainly not the only one who is either.

[kaini]

this is a really great thread, and something that someone should have thought of sooner, btw. your feedback is very much appreciated.

[Root5]

Here are two new tracks you could have a look at:

 

http://mostlyambient.bandcamp.com/album/a-different-place

[sneaksta303]

I can't wait to hear what you have to say about Wahrk's releases.

[Cryptowen]

^I liked them http://forum.watmm.com/topic/66611-cryptowens-sexy-reviewing-thread/page__view__findpost__p__1609788

 

Anyway, hopefully I'll have something done tonight, weekends are pretty busy for me lately so haven't had quite as many chances to do active listening.

[acidphakist]

Do me! Do me!

 

http://soundcloud.com/the-carrier-wave/smell-the-roses

http://soundcloud.com/the-carrier-wave/tears-of-joy

http://soundcloud.com/the-carrier-wave/not-invited

[foresense]

here have a listen to this one: http://zeitgeber.bandcamp.com/

[Cryptowen]

Again I've gotta divert to reviewing a couple of short things instead of reviewing the next on the list (sorry M&S! Review is coming), been busy working on film audio & my own album a lot lately, hopefully schedule frees up soon & I can go back to reviewing every other day. BUT UNTIL THEN...*note it is late & I'm writing this sort of stream of conscious*

 

Root5 - I'm gonna review these two tracks together because they seem fairly thematically similar to me.

Generally what I look for in ambient music is a really memorable atmospheric feel. If something can do that while being more detailed than "three chords with a ton of effects", all the better (for example, early Orb). But what I'm looking for first & foremost is some distinct sound texture. And these two tracks, while not poorly composed by any means (there is certainly more going on here than 3 spaced out chords), to me don't have a great deal of that. The synths are rather dry & "regular" sounding, and the percussive bits seem a bit too filtered to stand out from one another. You can build a pretty strong atmosphere on melody alone (one of my favourite ambient people on WATMM does that a lot http://soundcloud.com/shea-mcgilvray ), but generally I think that sort of thing works best when you cut out everything else & treat the piece like a piano solo, or whathaveyou.

 

I guess what I'm sort of getting at is that these two tracks aren't bad, but to me they're sort of sitting on the line between "memorable as a melodic piece" & "memorable as atmospheric electronic music".

 

acidphakist - I'm no audiophile, but I do think there's a clear gap in production quality between the average hobbyist bedroom producer & people doing techno music for a living. I'd say you've managed to jump that gap here. These tracks feel really slick to me, with each synth sounding full & sure of what itself. Whatever you're doing for a studio set-up, I think you're doing it right. Anyway, track specific comments.

 

1 - I like the general sort of melting summertime feel here (maybe it just sounds like that because it is summertime & I am melting). The synth lines at 0:43 & 1:47 sound particularly nice to my ears. The beat is nice, though generally I'm not a fan of synth claps (they fit this track well, I've just never much cared for how they sound). I'd have to say I prefer the first half a bit over the second, but that's mostly because all of the really gripping ideas are explored in the first half. The second half doesn't seem to have quite as much to say, but it keeps the groove going.

 

2 - Okay, this might be a bit nitpicky, buttttt....my personal stance on beats is when there isn't any noticeable syncopation going on, to keep them nice & steady for long stretches. So maybe boom - tish - boom - tish for a while, then something like boomboomtish - boom - tish. So when I hear things being toyed with like you do at the beginning (boomtishboomtishboomtishboomboomtish), it feels a bit awkward to me, like one has entered the uncanny valley between Pixar robot beats & human beats. That beat is The Polar Express. But maybe that's just me. In any case I didn't notice it any more after the first couple of repetitions & all was well. There's a really great bassline that comes in a couple of times, probably around where those SC guys commented.

 

3 - This one wasn't quite as memorable to me, probably because there seemed to be a bit of a preference here for wandering acid noodling instead of the catchy house riffs present on the other two tracks. Still, these are some nice sounding synth farts.

[acidphakist]

Thanks for the feedback dude!

[Braintree]

I've got one coming out next month. I'll look up the thread again if you're still interested by then.

 

I'm interested in hearing what you have to say:

 

http://williamsbraintree.bandcamp.com/album/house-of-meats

 

[modey]

Nice artwork!

[Cryptowen]

It is indeed a pretty spiff cover.

 

And I am planning on trying to get caught up on this stuff this week. A little bit anyway.

[Cryptowen]

BACK

 

Okay, so Magnet & Steel. I've been so slack with reviewing that he went & finished an album after his initial post in this thread, so I'll be reviewing that instead of the Soundcloud playlist he posted. Probably for the best, because I gotta admit I wasn't really feeling the SC tracks when I listened to them a month ago. The new stuff sounds a lot better to me.

 

http://magnetandsteel.bandcamp.com/

 

"Lightning Noise" is a work composed primarily of fast-paced synth blips, occasional microsamples of rap songs, & at least one or two times there's a guitar sounding thing in there. It's just the kind of music for headphone listening, with all sorts of little details panning about, drifting off into reverb before snapping back to the forefront. I don't think I was listening to the SC tracks with headphones so maybe that's why they didn't connect. These things are important people

 

Most tracks have a rather collaged feel to them, where we tend to end up somewhere totally different from where we began, but at no point along the way does there seem to be a jarring transition. There's enough of a thread in each piece to keep it from turning into some kind of synth blip maelstrom of doom. A good example of this is the "talking" bassline on the title track (I try to avoid using "farting" as a descriptive adjective because I am a professional). "MAGIC BOOK" is noteworthy for doing this with a clean guitar tone, a sound that contrasts most of the other elements present.

 

I did feel that, in places, the album suffered from a bit of what I call Snares Syndrome. When I'm listening to a VSnares LP, generally speaking the first 15 minutes I'll be thinking "wow, this is awesome!". Then it slowly becomes sensory overload. By the end of the hour I want the Witness Protection Program to hide me from snares (the drum, that is) forever. It's not that the tracks are getting worse. It's just that at those sort of bpms, and with that little repetition, my mind gets filled up well before the 30 minute mark. It's like trying to eat an entire block of cheese in one go. Incidentally there's a man on Youtube who did that but that's a topic for another day

 

Getting back on topic, though, Snares Syndrome isn't as prevalent here because there are a number of slower tracks & overall things don't get quite that manic. The Wall O Crazy Synths never really goes away entirely, but sometimes it does get pushed to the background in favour of a more casually paced lead, making for a breather. That being said, there were times during the second half where I was feeling a bit of the old DnB OD. I would have perhaps liked fewer, longer tracks with more time dedicated to building a theme & that sort of thing, but that's just personal preference really.

 

Overall, I enjoyed the album. Just maybe not the kind of thing I'd listen to all in one sitting. Goes to show that a little extra development time can really help bring something together. Or maybe good listening headphones.

[Cryptowen]

http://danielclough.bandcamp.com/album/ramparts

Dan C. Gonna jump right into this one because it's three tracks. And because I don't listen to a great deal of noise albums so I'm not sure what sort of overall comment to give it.

 

Oceangoing - I found this track built up a very strong sense of unease as it went along. The descending-in-pitch noise. The occasional, unexpected bass tone. The way the drones suddenly cut to noise around the 3:43 mark. That bit managed to be startling without a sudden volume jump, which is a rare thing indeed. So overall I enjoyed the first four minutes quite well.

 

The last couple of minutes, haven't quite made my mind up on yet. The weird hovering noises that have drifted around thus far come together suddenly & unexpectedly to form something resembling a regular piece of music. Kinda. There's a beat in there. On its own it works well. It has the spooky sounds in it, & I would probably like to hear some entire tracks in this vein. But the first four minutes feel like more than a build-up to this. They were set in a very unusual place, and to snap it into the context of something a bit less unusual towards the end almost, I dunno, kills some of the mystery for me. But both sections work by themselves so I'm probably just being picky about structure.

 

Onshore - This one was actually sort of hard to listen to. The prolonged telephone tones become almost painful as they go on. Not to say it's a bad track. It produces a visceral reaction & works in the context of the EP, but I don't really see it as the kind of thing I'd listen to on its own.

 

Offshore - Here we're going back into the deeper atmosphere, with mechanical engine type noises rising from near inaudibility, slowly joined in by clicks & telephone sounds (which aren't as intense as they were previously). There's some more of that "airplane coming to a stop" pitch effect that was on the first track. I'm a fan of that effect.

 

The highlight of this track for me, possibly the whole EP, has gotta be the part slightly past the five minute mark where the dark tones morph into clean synthetic bubbles for a few seconds. It's a memorable piece of sound design that stands out from the general...droniness.

 

The last section, to me, almost feels a bit meandering. I didn't know noise tracks could feel meandering but that's the word I'm going with. The drones come back in, sounding like they're going to build to some big climax of creepy. They sort of do, but not to the extent I was anticipating. Then they keep going for a while before we come to a rather abrupt halt. But that's me looking at it in terms of conventional song structures & this is clearly more of an atmospheric thing so I probably shouldn't do that.

 

I recommend this music for Halloween displays/cruising around in a creepy houseboat.

[Guest Carlo1Brito]

Holy shit, good looking out Cryptowen. When you have time review my track.

 

 

http://soundcloud.com/barrio-colt/odt

[Cryptowen]

And now I am going to talk about Mr. 3hat. http://www.ricedoutr...n/ambientdisco/

 

In, Out, Thru, - this one is sort of representative of an issue I've had with some of your stuff in the past. All of the parts are good, & go together well, but the track feels more monotonous than it should because every major element is introduced at once & remains, unchanging, for the duration. Normally I'd say monotony is a result of melodies being too simple & repetitive, but I actually think that works for your style (which I think of as "crazy mystery techno found on KaZaa in 2001"). Instead, I think it could feel more dynamic if things weren't going constantly - building up layers at the start, beats dropping out for a measure, that sort of thing. Because this track is good. It just feels like it could very easily be a lot more good.

 

Soft Light - right off the bat I was more into this one, because it starts off sparse. Attention is drawn to a few specific elements, and the mood they set, before more is introduced. Even though it soon becomes just as dense sounding as the opening piece, the bits we were introduced to early on dominates throughout, holding everything else together.

 

Mojave - here I think there's a bit more of the "drowning in sound" vibe I got from track #1. There is stuff coming in & going out, but it's also quite a bit longer. Out of all the tracks on the album, this one feels the most like a draft to me (which, seeing as you apparently did each track in a few hours, ain't too bad at all). I do like the saw chords, the distortions, & the Space Invaders bassline, so there is that.

 

Yurt Rave - Apparently a yurt is a house made of felt. Well I never. Anyway, at first I wasn't that into this rave because it sounded a bit too much like what had come prior - fast beats, vaguely-Asiany Middle Easterny drum samples. But then came the bubbling lead melody, which held my interest, and worked well with everything that came after that. I tend to think of beats & simple rhythmic melodies as the foundation of a song, on top of which more complex elements can work their stuff. In this particular track I felt the foundation did its job, but didn't really spark my imagination like the rest did. Maybe if it was weirder & less dense, while still maintaining the same momentum.

 

Herro Botnik! - this one might be my favourite, because it demonstrates how you can maintain a quite nice groove with fairly simple loops. Most of your other tracks have that going for them as well, but the grooves aren't as apparent because it feels like there are three or four of them competing for attention at the same time. There's less going on here, and each piece feels stronger for it. The funk is brought.

 

Snowdown - the most overtly "computery" sounding, probably because of that vowel synth that reminds me a lot of the vst I played around with a ton years ago when I found out computers could make techno. Not that there's anything wrong with being computery. Your sound, to me, is very artificial, but not canned. If I had to hazard a guess as to why that is, I'd say it had something to do with digital synths combined with room reverb & plenty of knob twiddling. But I have no idea if that is actually the case.

 

Revolution #2 - the closer sounds not much like the rest of the album at all. Whereas the other six tracks mostly stay in the realm of dense computer techno, this one feels like watching an episode of Rugrats & listening to The Wiggles while really really baked. It's fairly catchy, actually. If this were two minutes long, accompanied by some weird animations, I could see it being the next internet anthem for fecal incontinence.

[Cryptowen]

http://www.soundsagacity.com/006hautlle.html Mr. Hautle

 

First, a general comment about the sound: it reminds me somewhat of that drill & bass type music - you know, the kind with all the little bits going at once, doing their own little thing & somehow it all holds together. Most drilba I've heard sounds like someone made 40 clones of Gregory Coleman, gave them all LSD, then put them in a warehouse full of pots & pans. Very sharp & angular. By comparison, everything on this release feels soft & organic. I'm even tempted to say analog, but it avoids the common cliches of "old tape wobble" & "1989 rave drum machine" so that's good.

 

URn Sp4 - quickly builds a nice groove & sticks with it throughout. Has an ominous undercurrent that becomes more pronounced with the introduction of weird semi-melodic voice(?) samples coated in harsh reverb. On first listen I thought it could have done with a few more chord changes or something, but not as much on subsequent listens. Probably because I was paying more attention to the beats.

 

The Fam - Not sure about this one. I was quite into it at first with the continued vaguely off-kilter atmosphere, but then I noticed that the orientalish melody sounded rather, well, Aphexy. And then that voicey synth came in at 1:05 that, while neat in its own right, sounded straight outta Donkeyrhubarbtown in tone & melody. Which is a shame because I quite liked how the track was going in the first few seconds.

 

See, putting Aphex-type sounds in an electro track is a bit like using Garlic Plus in cooking. Everyone loves Garlic Plus. But if people notice it in your food they're gonna be all like, "hey man did you put GP in this?", totally overlooking whatever else you were doing. Put too much in & it just tastes like a big bowl of herb. Most people, after experiencing this, will seek out the raw ingredients used to make Garlic Plus, & start putting those in their food. But true enlightenment comes not from knowing how a man uses Garlic Plus, but why a man uses Garlic Plus. Anyway

 

Valley Shoes - I liked this one better. Sounds more like Hautle music, with the layers of noisy bits forming a base for the melancholy pads up above. I did think at five & a half minutes it was a tad on the long side. Maybe in need of some tightening up. But I can't point out any parts off hand where I went "why's that here"

 

Contraption - possibly the best example of what I was talking about in the first paragraph. It very much sounds like some elaborate contraption full of small moving parts. But not a robot like so many electronic tracks. More like some sort of animal made up of cells & things, walking through the sunlight. I'm drifting dangerously towards fake techno forum synaesthesia territory here.

 

Jehova Like Joy - my favourite, because all of the squelchy elements that had previously been going off on their own semi-related grooves here come together as one entity working towards a singular goal. The blips & basslines & such are all in on it. I listen to a lot of electronic tracks where I'll think "yeah, this is pretty good. Got a beat", but only once in a while do I find something that feels like a song, something that could be taken out of context, recreated in a totally different genre, & still be recognizable (some folk say songs are things with words in them but I disagree. It's just a nicer word than track). This is one of those times.

 

*continues to follow Hautle*

[Hautlle]

Thank you much sir! Kind of hard to believe that EP is almost a year old now, some of those tracks are over 2 years old. I'm planning on getting another EP out sometime soon, probably after the startof the year, but idk.

 

I've had a few people compare The Fam to Donkey Rhubarb. I never really thought of it until someone said it. I think it's the FM drums that really bring the comparison. The last track is one of my least favorites, but a lot of people love it. It just sounds so cheesy to me, but CSS chose the tracklist for the EP so

 

Thanks for listening, and doing this great service for so many watmmers :sup:

[Cryptowen]

The last track is one of my least favorites, but a lot of people love it. It just sounds so cheesy to me

Yeah, kinda maybe, but it also seems very much like a tune, gnome sane

[chim]

Loving your reviews.

[Cryptowen]

^Thanks....which reminds me, I should get another one done in the next day or two. Don't want this slipping off my radar for another month.

[acidphakist]

http://soundcloud.com/the-carrier-wave/burner-09

 

 

 

http://soundcloud.com/the-carrier-wave/like-a-virgin

 

 

 

http://soundcloud.com/the-carrier-wave/orion-busted-the-carrier-waves

[Dan C]

I recommend this music for Halloween displays/cruising around in a creepy houseboat.

 

Thank you darling!

 

It was nice to hear what you thought, and I have to say your efforts in this thread are nothing short of awesome.