The Syndicate

Start with Vanessa Rossetto and then hate me forever for the advice.

Last vid went down to just 5 views lol.

Poll is up. Vote nao!

Uh poll?

thellama73 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2017 2:50 pm

Ricochet wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2017 2:41 pm

thellama73 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:49 pm If it's not too late for submissions, I'd like to submit the 1970 acid folk masterpiece First Utterance by Comus, because every time I listen to it I literally cannot believe how good it is.
Full album on youtube:

There's this protocol called "sitting out after submitting something".

It's called "my work keeps unexpectedly sending me on trips that make it hard for me to post a lot."

It's called "tough bananas".

thellama73 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:49 pm If it's not too late for submissions, I'd like to submit the 1970 acid folk masterpiece First Utterance by Comus, because every time I listen to it I literally cannot believe how good it is.
Full album on youtube:

There's this protocol called "sitting out after submitting something".

Getting low with those rates, fellas. Do we need another quality batch of Jethro Tull to improve that?

tfw trice's reviews are more br00tal than mine, yet I'm the one being remembered as the boogie man

I'm out of town for a week starting tomorrow and I have not, nor will have time to deliver in regular format - not that I have to feel too bad about honoring stuff, considering this was submitted by Quin. Last Dinosaurs' album was a nice 50-minute distraction, but overall they play quite the whitest bread of indie rock in the market. It's the easiest thing to pick on when there's almost no sense of variety and contrast from track to track, both in how the songs are formally shaped and how nuanced the instrumentation is. Although you might as well choose this album over their sophomore record, Wellness, which in turn is just exhausting - making you think it was made at the Florence & The Machine Academy of turned to the max, beefed up, shouty music. The best thing I felt was that some songs struck a fine balance between the instrumentation and the singing, the former being moreoever toned down. A few songs (such as the aptly-titled "Honolulu") went for the some of the same "caribbeana" playful vibes that you'd hear from Vampire Weekend (Contra) or for some echoey ambiances that struck similarities with The War on Drugs. But even such cues are suspect of being derivative, sort of. Decent 5.

Nvmd then.

Updating...

I am a dick, because it's time to move on to the next album.

And because I've no idea who submitted the next album. The new queue suggestions and voting process got erased. I only recall nutella submitting McFerrin and MP De La Soul.

Anywho

Lol, very nice. Your attempt was better than mine, for sure.

Jay doesn't love us anymore.

But yeah, my own schedule will make it impossible to focus on this until next week, so if people could still use this week to catch up and/or actually listen to APP, I'd propose we put things back on track starting this Sunday.

(Spoilers tag text, sans putting it in a quote, doesn't work in the green skin btw. It's all a sea of white inside.)

The Syndicate 2.0.: Nobody cares about SAW anymore

Err?

The APP review, in case you didn't see it the first time (which, judging by the views count, you did not).



My hair grew back in the meantime. Pretty pointless haircut, that was.

What about A Passion Play?

Pity votes, ey?

Golden wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 5:06 pm

JaggedJimmyJay wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2017 4:52 pm The first Ricoreview I haven't watched in full.

You don't like Rico any more?

Probably not, after Woodface.

Can't use spoiler tags currently, so here it is in the open.

Metalmarsh hasn't posted in here since Week 1, yet here we are, honouring his submission.

Option A, continue as we've been. Despite the long individual wait, I think it's more fair to ensure we get a lot of recommendations from different people rather than a lot of recommendations from potentially the same people. There's also option C, but if the core of regular listeners and debaters here would keep submitting, we'd be looking at a queue of two-three months.

Anyway, Jethro Tull - A Passion Play. But it's the last time I'm submitting it.

A Person wrote:

nutella wrote:My high school orchestra director drilled into me the opinion that the only correct definition of music is "organized sound," which I think is better articulated by AP's description of intention. So I tend to be pretty generous about what I consider music, and this album is still close to the borderline for me but I definitely see intention and skill in the organization/production/juxtaposition of the various sounds. I do agree with G that there are definitely some parts that feel more musical than others, but overall I recognize/appreciate it as a work of art (and again I find it interesting on a more anthropological level as well). As for rating I think I'll go with a 2 out of 5.

I have heard that definition, yeah. I figure 1) "organize" as a word has some baggage, and 2) they are more or less synonymous since organization would be the result of intent, regardless of what that organization or purposeful lack of it happens to be.

Here is something I was thinking of yesterday: Grouper's (Grouper is the solo project of Liz Harris, her work is generally described with terms like dream pop, ambient, and experimental) album Ruins was recorded while staying at a house by herself in Portugal. She used a simple recording setup to do this, using only I think a 4-track, mic, and piano. At one point the power had been off due to a storm taking it out, and during the recording of the song "Labyrinth" it comes back on, causing the microwave to beep as it came on and it was captured on the 4-track. It's a gentle piano piece, ostensibly written before recorded, and yet the final recording includes that beep. Is the beep musical? It must be there intentionally, because she chose to keep that take and put it on the final album. But she also had no knowledge it would end up there beforehand. If she performed the piece live, would the beep be included? Or in that case would the incidental sounds of the room it is played in take its place? Do those sounds always take that place? Is the recorded piece of music a separate piece of art from the composition itself, and is the composition different still from future performances? And so on.

This reminds me of Ricochet, whose second part had some noise right at the beginning, before the proper start of the composition (the piano slow ballad). It's now most likely removed ever since the 1990-something re-release of the album, but it exists on the cassette tape my father has and which was what I listened to all my childhood. This is documented here appearing to be clapping. I guess the same questions you posed could be applied here. If it's just noise, why was it left in there (at least at first), especially after extensive, intentional edits and mastering done in studio to release this "live" album? We even used to have debates on TD forums on whether we like, dislike or give a damn whatsoever that this sound is present, right in between to two parts of the album.

Then again, on one hand, I think this is actually an instance of a noise sound that's placed ahead of the actual, "musical" composition, instead of added to the integral mix of the piece; while unconfirmed, it could easily have been a member of the audience, finishing off clapping one beat later than the crowd. On the other hand, both Grouper's beep and the clap on Ricochet are petite moments of noise and seemingly out-of-place sound. I would call their generating in both cases sort of accidental, even if there was clear intent afterwards to leave it in there. More to the point, I don't think that much amount of questioning and philosophising, the way you did in your post above, is truly necessary for either of them.

Epignosis wrote:Sometimes experimental music isn't music. It's just experimental. To my mind, experimentation is best when you find something cool and refine it.

I'd like to hear an example of experimental music that you consider to be either cool, refined, music, any or all of these.

MovingPictures07 wrote:
I just finished. Here's my Bowie rankings:

Spoiler: show

1) Low
2) Station to Station
3) Blackstar (RIP)
4) Hunky Dory
5) Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
6) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
7) "Heroes"
8) Aladdin Sane
9) Lodger
10) The Next Day
11) Diamond Dogs
12) Earthling
13) Heathen
14) 1.Outside
15) The Man Who Sold the World
16) Let's Dance
17) Young Americans
18) 'Hours...'
19) David Bowie (1969)
20) Reality
21) Black Tie White Noise
22) Tonight
23) Pin Ups
24) David Bowie (1967)
25) Never Let Me Down

What's different for you about Blackstar so that it made the top 3, as opposed to, say, how you viewed Bish Bosch?

Aside question, if, let's say, Walker would have made his album in a moribund state and then pass away sometime after its release, would your thoughts on the album differ in any way now?

As you can see, I've made modifications, but do please verify that I haven't changed any of your ratings in the process of flipping them over.

I'm running out of space for the ratings.

I will most likely bail out of this week's review, since it's already Saturday and I barely have a paragraph written down, and prepare to resume normal schedule with the next one. This week just had me pinned, tis all; it's in no way a slight to Arthur, which, while not the kind of album to describe as "sensational" and grabbing, I appreciated for what it went for. If, say, Tommy is showy, this one is kinda more artistic. I would have spoken of it in a slightly more positive light than much of the previous couple of albums and would give it a 3.5 / light 7. I guess this small comment will have to do, I just don't see myself sitting down today (or even this weekend) to write and record myself.

MovingPictures07 wrote:Looking forward to listening to this later today! I've only heard a little bit by The Kinks in the past (mostly just listening to the Village Green Preservation Society a handful of times), and I've never heard this album.

An update for Rico (and anyone else who cares): I revisited my ratings for all of these albums over the last few nights, and I have revised my ratings for Bisch Bosch (2.5) and Berry Is on Top (2.5), which fell just a bit because I'm mostly bored with both and otherwise the moments of enjoyment and displeasure cancel each other out just too much. All other ratings remain the same.

Chucky downgrade noted.

Bosch downgrade denied.

You peeps sure like rockarolla.

MovingPictures07 wrote:

Ricochet wrote:If y'all poop on APP for a third time, I might just push R.E.M.'s Murmur.

Just nominate Murmur instead.

No! We must find what happened to the hare who lost his spectacles.

If y'all poop on APP for a third time, I might just push R.E.M.'s Murmur.

One of the most hard-ass and hard-core reviews I follow on RYM (mostly anything besides atonal contemporary music and Morrissey is banished to the Land of Suck) expresses his rating system in philosphers and whisky.

5.0 foucault / laphroaig
4.5 adorno / lagavulin
4.0 levi-strauss / ardbeg
3.5 freud / talisker
3.0 bourdieu / macallan
2.5 zizek / balvenie
2.0 popper / highland park
1.5 bauman / glenmorangie
1.0 habermas / caol ila
0.5 baudrillard / glenfiddich

MovingPictures07 wrote:

G-Man wrote:I'm enjoying the wide variety of responses to my pick. Maybe I'll have to throw some more oldies at you with future picks.

Speaking of oldies, I know what I said about Chuck Berry, but I absolutely need to nominate this.

If you go your life without hearing this, you'll never know what you're missing, and you'll be missing what I would say is literally the root of modern music as we know it. And it's absolutely splendid in every way. Those songs put such a huge smile on my face every time I listen unlike nearly anything else.

I thought the root of modern music was The Rite of Spring

juliets wrote:

Quin wrote:I'm torn between obediance and defiance to watch bttf just so I can hear more of Rico's beautiful voice.

Why do you think watching bttf will give you the opportunity to hear Rico some more (also, I haven't seen it either)?

S~V~S wrote:I think the anxiety of Rico reviewing my submission would make me sick, lol. I would worry so over being judged by that amazing voice (I could listen to Rico talk forever, so long as he isn't talking about me), lol. I don't know if I could stand the disdain.

I'm not the boogie man k

In fact, rumours are he hasn't been spotted ever since he visited me when I was 13.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:I didn't realize until just now that this Chuck Berry release is a compilation, which makes for an interesting change of pace along with the shift in era.

I thought it's his third studio album.

I say stick to how the poll will turn out. Right now, he's slotted to be listened two or three weeks from now, anyway.

I did - but like all fine jokes, you have to stick to it afterwards.

This is the story of the hare who'll never make it up there.