The Syndicate

I suppose I post this one in here as well, since it preceded the review above.

Sure I'll do i- oh whoops nvmd

Is it even clear which album is next? "ordered by the time elapsed since the last submission was run per user" whatever this means

Once again, I did not submit an album second to last only for it to become second in line, therefore its chronological placement needs to be respected, or put last (since the last has now become the first), or otherwise ignored altogether.

Aphrodite's Child - 666 / 1972 / Rock opera, Psychedelic, Fusion / 24 tracks / 77:58 / YouTube

[mention]A Person[/mention], recommend something. [mention]insertnamehere[/mention], recommend something. I need my weird music fix.

I object to the queue change. I am to be last.

*

Igor Stravinsky - Petrushka / 1910-11 / Classical, Ballet Music / 4 tracks / parts / 34:58 / YouTube

*not yet decided on the version, I have three in mind so far (of those on official recordings, of course), will decide till the end of the week or till it comes up in the queue

Recorded back in November, too:

Recorded back in November:

Could have bet my house on that being your reply.

I wish to file a formal complaint that I'm suddenly hearing A Flock of Seagulls EVERYWHERE in 80s related movies or TVs.

A n g e r y

Well, after that scintillating 7-post feedback, it's time to move on.

Week 34: Chris Squire - Fish Out of Water

Submitted by [mention]Epignosis[/mention]

Available on YouTube and Spotify? Is prog allowed on Spotify?

I swear, the cover always made me somehow visualise a cockroach without looking closer.

Yooooooo what you guys think of Timbrrrr Tahmbrrr

Also, lmao, Fantano mispronounces them twice as Timber Timber before realizing it.

I'm safe.

Oops, forgot to change yesterday and Jay is an awful boss at having delegated me to do everything from now on.

Week 33: Timber Timbre - Creep On Creepin' On

Submitted by [mention]insertnamehere[/mention]

Available on YouTube and surely Spotify

Happy Halloween

I think it would be of no surprise that my disposition proves to be the antithesis of G-Man's, at least the way he presented it. For instance, my top-of-the-year lists highlight each time a bias for dark ambient, as opposed to other electronic genres - not to mention,list-related, that all my yearly #1s of this decade (apart from 2015's, that found me in a "yeah I'll acknowledge this huge release" mood) portray me as either pretentiously or predisposedly picking more obscure stuff, that probably only me and 99 other people on the planet enjoyed to such extent.

That is not to say I cannot enjoy well-made upbeat music as well - see my embrace of some contemporary indie rock starting 2008-09 - but even there, my slowly-developing credo is that the most uplifting type of music is the saddest - meaning music whose composition, style, instrumentation, rhythms etc. can obviously be described in positive ways, but are a mirage to, say, deeper, subtler, more poetic lyrics. It's a form of expression that entices me without finding it self-contradictory.

*snaps fingers*

Week 32: That Handsome Devil - A City Dressed in Dynamite

Submitted by [mention]speedchuck[/mention]

Available on YouTube and state if Spotify as well

I think there is an element of the whole orchestration style that can strike as casual pop artists who get a backup orchestra for extra oomph or surround. I pay close to little attention to Adele's output as to comment on whether the comparison is meritous, but I'll admit at times the picture in my head was that of a pop big shot playing at Royal Albert Hall with a philharmonic orchestra besides him.

If anything, the voice itself gave me an Antony & the Johnsons impression, sans Antony's emotional, voice-crumbling and -dwindling range.

Unlikely I'll contribute in regular fashion this week - haven't written anything yet, only listened once and I have twelve hours of moviewatching ahead during the next two days. Just the way my week is panning out.

But the important thing is for more peeps to listen to and share impressions, anyway, it's not only about G's or R's reviews.

G-Man wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:58 pm As an amusing consequence, this album came in just a notch or two below Original Sin, which ought to just thrill Rico.

oh you

To be pedantic, I think 'Decade' is stand-alone, in that it is not related or of the same fabric as 'Premonition', yet is an introduction (to the next epic track and to the album by default), since it's too short and form-less to count as either "a composition with its clear structure and message" or "a fully developed/improvised jazz composition".

Dan Berglund plays solely an amplified/electric double bass - unless I am sorely mistaken, but he has never changed his instrumental role within the trio, throughout their career and discography. So what you're hearing on 'Ab initio' is the bass sound played and distorted in such a way, that it comes off like ragged guitar slashes.

dew eet

I'll be at work till late tomorrow, so gonna change to our next submission tonight.

Week 31: Woodkid - The Golden Age

Submitted by [mention]nutella[/mention]

Available on YouTube and Spotify, most likely

Also, for those who submitted the five new albums, if there are Spotify links available, please provide them (now or when those albums will come up).

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Prom (or homecoming ball, whatever) scene.

Background music.

I saaaaawwwww yoooour eyyyyyes...

Two views on my AFOS vid lol.

There's doing that or just following the order in which they were submitted. Idk, it was my understanding that we could just roll with it, when we don't have to decide on five from a bigger pool.

No need. There are only five new submissions.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:45 pm Submitting:

Joanna Newsom - Ys / 2006 / Folk / 5 tracks / 55:41 / Available on YouTube

Ayy.

E.S.T. played in my hometown in 2006. The concert was recorded by the national television and is available on YouTube. I was there.

Some local fans are proud enough to speak of this concert as better than even the Live at Hamburg live recording, though I was never in the mood to make such comparisons (both this "bootleg" and that official live album kick ass, anyway, so big deal).

Until then, I hadn't really picked them up, but needless to say, with a month or so of preparation, then this concert, then digging into their entire discography, I was hooked ever since. They mostly toured here their 2006 release Tuesday Wonderland, which I'll just say is overall a different beast than Leucocyte - more accessible, even - though still with some of the same elements that's at the core of their language.

>ornamental folk rock made with a poetic vision is meandering, 2.5
>tin pop rock with one-two-one-two drumming and lyrics in which only one line gets changed, no complaints except one song too many, 3.0

world_eject.exe

That's already different - interpreting what it's for and how you feel about it, as opposed to claiming it's empty space of no creative placement - and it's up to you.

G-Man wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2017 6:20 pm For me, a soundless track does not a movement make. It doesn't take any skill to add a minute of dead air to a recording. At least field recordings involve effort.

And yet, to point out the obvious reference again, 4'33'' has three movements. It doesn't take any skill to sit at the piano and open / close the lid, either.

When I listen to music, I want to hear the fruits of the musician(s)'s labors. I want to hear their skill with sound. Silence may not technically exist but what you hear when a performer is silent is not something they can take credit for. They didn't create any of the sounds the environment or the people in that environment made during that pause.

If an actor has (or chooses interpretatively) to sit in silence for a minute during a play, both he and the playwright will have created something (out of nothing). They don't create any sounds, movements or words in that environment, either. Don't understand why that wouldn't apply to how a band inserted a minute of silence in their concept. The bigger question, especially in this album's case, is whether they had it in the blueprint all along or was manufactured posthumously. I have always partially mused on this, but that, of course, is a topic for the review.

To ascribe meaning to a soundless track or to sit silently as your performance is an act of performance art, not musical ability (my interpretation). It is just not in my nature to interpret international silence as meaningful. I will judge this track as any other track we've listened to, which means it will get a zero and pull down the album's overall score.

If you are rating tracks / music merely by how they sound, then yes, you have nothing to rate here, because nothing is sounding. You could technically leave it blank, but it's your rating system, no doubt.

You don't consider it part of the band's creation, yet you'll rate it and thus downgrade the band's creation all the same. Huh.

G-Man wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2017 5:25 pm I get what you say about music being about sound and silence but I will argue that music is about sound and silence within a composition.

Which you are listening to. At least, arguably, one called Leucocyte and having four movements.

To claim silence as a composition in and of itself is something I cannot agree with.

I have John Cage on line 1 for you.

If you want to add a minute of silence, add it at the end of a track (you could do it at the beginning of a track but why start with a pause? awkward). You get the same effect without falling into this very debate we are in. I'm fine with incorporating a minute of silence for flavor and all that but I see no reason to give it its own space, regardless of how clever the "track" title is.

But the context here can invite such debate, instead of being a deterrent. Why would it being at the end of a track matter or make a difference between suitable and not? It's a moment within a suite, of pure silence, specifically named "interim", the piece before it slowing to a halt, the one after fading back into a different atmosphere. It's not a track of silence between a ballad and a banger on a indie rock album.

G-Man wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:27 pm
Ricochet wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:20 pm Ad interim is one minute of silence.
Here's the thing: to me, giving one minute of silence its own track space and track title smacks of pretension. It's silence. It's not created. It's not intellectual property. To treat it as such preposterous. That "track" alone is going to hurt the album's score in a big way.

I do not know as much about the album's conception in regards to that minute of creation - one guy is since dead and I never read interview with the other two members about how they conceived what. There is probably some fabrication in it, since I doubt the band literally stopped for one minute whilst recording what constitutes this four (or three, I suppose, if this one doesn't count) track cycle - still, no idea.

Yet I'll disagree with your position from a both general and specific perspective.

One, music is about silences just as it is about audible resonances. To deny that would be to say that pauses and rests are not a part of a musical composition and are not a composer's property in placing them. Of course, there are fewer instances going as far as to create an entire minute of such silence, still it's even so not outside any bounds of how to implement silence in a desired artistical work.

Two, this is not one minute of silence in its own ether, but rather one minute of silence within a specific suite of four movements, if not altogether within an entire record that is, more or less, bound together. If anything, its (sub)title would only enhance this understanding. I offered you, of course, the technical explanation to what the track represents (plus clarifying that there is no low frequency shenanigans going on during it, at least as far as I know), but from an expressive and contextual point of view, a more truthful answer from me would have been "it's one minute of void".

I'd personally rather be more worked up about records with "hidden tracks" wanting me to "wait" sometimes up to 10 minutes to hear them rather than one minute of silence.

Contortion is literally 16 minutes of crescendo.

Ad interim is one minute of silence.

G-Man wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2017 12:50 pm Murgur De Fluier

This was a neat list-

Hold on.

G-Man wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2017 12:50 pm Murgur De Fluier

Ergh.

G-Man wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2017 12:50 pm
This was a neat listen. I don't have many albums where the lyrics are sung in a different language. I don't need the words sung in English but foreign-language lyrics aren't mainstream in America, so I stick to what I can get. What I got from this album was a good time.

The opening track, "Lasa Lasa, Pt. 1" (forgive me for not having the time to find all the right punctuation marks on song titles), pulled me in. I enjoyed the slow, tribal start and was hooked when it cranked the tempo up halfway through. The chanting is equal parts haunting and riveting. Track 2, "Pavel Chinezu, Leat 1479," kicks off with a thumping bass line that sounds like Jack White ripped it off for "The Hardest Button to Button." I was taken aback by the songs witch into late 60s/early 70s rock conventions. It highlighted just how slow some things took to trickle past the Iron Curtain.

I didn't dock points for the band's recycling the sounds of Cream and Deep Purple, however, because it sounded good. If it was fresh for them, then that can't be held against them. At least I don't think so. I'd have to listen to earlier albums to make that determination though. The third track, "Strunga," while good, sucked some of the energy and momentum out of the air.

I ran into a dilemma with this album though. I scored the first Lasa Lasa track on it's own because I felt that it wasn't an introduction to track 2 and it was long enough to stand on its own. The remaining Lasa Lasa tracks forced me to think about how to score them. They are not songs in their own right but, as Rico pointed out, sort of like interludes sprinkled throughout the album. I like them but I couldn't score them as stand-alone songs. So, I ended up scoring the first Lasa Lasa on its own and the remaining four as a combined unit. Somehow, I felt that was fair.

My favorites would be the entire Lasa Lasa component, "Pavel Chinezu, Leat 1479," and "Ochii Negri, Ochi De Tigan." Tracks 6, 9, and 12 didn't captivate me like the rest of the album but I was never indifferent. I like the fusion of folk elements and rock instruments. They could have been singing about brushing their teeth and watching anime and I wouldn't know the difference but the vocals have an alluring quality. They aren't a harsh or distracting foreign sound. They have good flow and tone, which I can't say the same for the Fishmans album we listened to at the outset of this listening group. That makes a big difference but I realize that has a lot to do with personal preference.

Overall, this was a solid album. Spotify seems to be lacking, with only three other Phoenix albums in their database, so if I ever do want to wander back into the mystical sounds of Phoenix, I'll have to YouTube some of it. It may be a while if I ever come back around but it would be interesting to see if the sounds I liked on this album continue to please on other albums or if my unrefined musical sensibilities would count this as a one-off novelty.

G-Man Scale: 3.92 out of 5
Rico Scale: 4 out of 5

G-Man wrote:They could have been singing about brushing their teeth and watching anime and I wouldn't know the difference.

Right on the mark, though.

===

As I've said, they have three classic albums, of which this was their second. They made even beat-ier music before that and then the next periods got lost in quality and intermittance. Some say their 90s album (concert?) Symphoenix is also honorable, but I simply never explored.

Out of interest, anywhere in the near future, would you be interested in checking their Cantafabule as well and tell me how you found that evolution? Any trivia details you'd need would be provided, of course, though I touched upon it a bit in my review as well.

We also open a new poll, starting around Friday, to decide the next five submissions - if we have more than five entries, of course.

Of the regulars, [mention]A Person[/mention], [mention]Epignosis[/mention], [mention]JaggedJimmyJay[/mention], [mention]speedchuck[/mention], [mention]nutella[/mention], [mention]insertnamehere[/mention], you are all eligible to submit new albums this cycle. In case you already mentioned something in the past, I'd ask that you write it down or quote it again, as a reminder.

Of the sporadic (or currently absent), [mention]Boomslang[/mention], [mention]Quin[/mention], [mention]Golden[/mention], [mention]thellama73[/mention] - you are all welcome to submit something once more.

Week 30: Esbjörn Svenssion Trio - Leucocyte

Submitted by [mention]MovingPictures07[/mention]

Available on YouTube and Spotify, most likely

I don't have any real bias formed against that particular song (yet?

), I was just amused about having to approach it in my serious face style, after having heard it just once, yet with a strong memory of it retained, since it was used in the movie La la land, during a scene that somehow mocked the idea of such a song being performed by a "serious" musician (in that case, it was a cover party band, with the male protagonist in it, subjected to such "ordeal").

Cute scene, for that matter, in a movie that otherwise impressed me far less.

And with that being said...

Week 29: A Flock of Seagulls - A Flock of Seagulls

Submitted by [mention]G-Man[/mention]

Available on YouTube and Spotify? (as always, you'll have to check)

(is this seriously the band that wrote the song I Ran? Am I about to willingly listen to I Ran? :blobglare:)

So how bout that Phoenix? Who'd like to share more impressions?

Ricktano review will be late as usual, maybe suffer even further delay considering how much time I'll have to prep it during the weekend, but, contrary to my A Passion Play review that I have totally forgotten about (and was a stink of a shill review), I have reviewed this album on ProgArchives back in the day (close to a decade ago, in fact :agingmattdamon:), a review I actually consider pertinent and level-headed, if a bit wordy, as usual. Feel free to check it out.

I'd venture to say those bits work as intended - a prelude, several interludes and... well, No. 5 could have been an epilogue, but interestingly isn't. I'm not solid on the essence of the lyrics, but they seem to stem from evoking folk shouts or calls to join the village dance. "Lasă" literally means "let, leave sth" and some of the verses, across the five moments, are as playful as "leave it, leave it / leave yer damn home / leave her alone" (No. 1), "leave this, leave that / leave your herd" (No. 2), as in leave it all and come join the dance, "let the drums roll" (No. 5), "come hear the violin / and the maiden's weepin'" (No. 3).

But it's still an evocation, since one of two censored quatrains, that didn't make it on the album, was to say "leave Manix / leave Felix / come and hear Phoenix".

Jammy instrumentals or not, I doubt it would have worked as one long piece, with five, six unvarying verses.

[twenty-five]

Spoiler: show

Last but not least, tho

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