[WALRUS] Shad Walrus 2021

#301

39th place:

Frog

The entire bee movie but every time they say bee it gets faster

Ok.

2.0

#302

38th place:

Moose

BroEdits - Super Undertale Bros - Super Show

Huh... I got the two most wtf and done Moose subs of the walrus in the same category. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3.0

#303

37th place:

roro__b

Pogo - I Hate You, Dear

I don't get it.

Why didn't you sub this to cat 2? It could have been modestly functional in 4 too. Here I just don't get it, although I do like it.

5.0

#304

36th place:

Cory

Trace Mountains - Absurdity

Well, the band name contains the word mountains. The lyrics describe walking up a hill at some point. I think the relevance stops there. I really dig that saw-like electronic tone solo from 3:40. His vocals are... unique. I have to make a really awkward squirrel-like face to reproduce them. Approximately this:

And I think I would have to hear them across a broader spectrum to really warm up to them.

This song has a sort of strolling vibe to me, which is actually really great because lyrically that's what they're reaching for. But it feels very out of place in this category.

5.5

#305

35th place:

Relm

Yuzo Koshiro - Reset Bomb Forest

Mmm, another modern Koshiro tune. He was literally the last thing I was binging before I started listening to walrus subs. I dug this a lot on my first spin through everything, but as I really sit down to it I'm struggling to find category relevance beyond the obvious. I mean, yeah, it's Kid Icarus, but it's a very adventure-driven tune that could be any sky level in any game to me. It has all the feeling of a suspenseful confrontation with what lies directly in front of me and none of the vastness this category demanded.

6.0

#306

34th place:

LordQuas

Ruby the Hatchet - Lightning Comes Again

I'm kind of conflicted on this one. I don't enjoy her vocals in much the same way that I don't enjoy male vocalists in heavy metal who can sing well in a classic sort of way but maybe probably shouldn't. She's a pretty dominant factor throughout the song, and I haven't warmed up to her much over time. It's one of those spaces where I feel like the performance doesn't match the mood so it just rubs off as tryharding. This song has a lot of snap and hits a great middle ground of smooth but distorted in every other regard, and her clean cool over top of it's not jiving for me. It's not a game-ender because I dig what else is happening so much, and it's not like she's bad or anything. What made it an easy chop in the end though was I'm not sure what it has to do with the category.

6.2

#307

33rd place:

BoKnows

Harry McClintock - Big Rock Candy Mountain

This does not sound like a 1928 recording to me at all, but I think that's just indicative of how well suited it was for the recording capacity of its day. It's on the short list of songs I would cover if I was ever in a proper band, and I absolutely love it, but it's a very loose category fit to begin with and I've heard it a hundred times.

6.3

#308

32nd place:

Newcomb

Ben Frost - Venter

A ton of subs took the slow build-up approach, and it makes a lot of sense. But I'm not sure what about this is supposed to resonate mountains. It has a mix of spacey swooshes and mechanical beats that could place it in any number of post-modern worlds, but its ah... fellowship with nature is lacking to me. I dig it, and I get what it's doing here in terms of pure progression, but the competition demanded more. I don't know, when all was said and done this ended up being the one ambient progressive tune that didn't get into the 0.1 club. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the others--this category has the highest average score if I drop off the two meme throw-away subs--and that coupled with it painting a scene for me that was so distinctly separate from the category did it in.

6.5

#309

31st place:

Kane

Jason Hayes & Glenn Stafford - A Call to Arms remix

Aaaaand at 31st place we are now counting down from 10 by 0.1...

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where the hell this version is from before I realized it isn't from anywhere. This is a fan remix featuring the Warcraft III betrayal cinematic original (0:00-0:40), the vanilla World of Warcraft version (0:40-1:20), the Wrath of the Lich King version (1:20-2:00), back to the World of Warcraft outro (2:00-2:25).

And if my ability to decipher that should tell you anything,

It's that I am way way way way way way way way way too entrenched in the Warcraft universe to hear this as much of anything else. But it's a dope song and I like what was done with it here. Does it work in this category? I think a little bit, sure. There's definitely a sense of cinematic adventure I could place storming down Alterac Valley. It captures a grand view. It's an iconic going off to battle theme and WoW has lots of battles on mountains so something something good enough for me. You definitely found a sweet spot, and I had this slotted in as the half-way guilty pleasure slot for ages. But it had to give way. The subs to this category were just too good. And as it began to slide down, there was just nowhere to slot it in that felt right. I love it as a deeply familiar tune in the context of World of Warcraft, whereas (almost) everything else here is unfamiliar territory first experienced in the context of this category.

7.0

#310

30th place:

Made

Flying Lotus - Never Catch Me ft. Kendrick Lamar

I always love Kendrick's voice, and I think this song had a ballpark right idea with the fluttery synth giving it a floating feel at times. The bass bloops are delivered in a really unique and enticing way. But it's bouncing around on clouds where I wanted to be consumed in the aether around them, or at least looking down and taking in the view. Maybe it's because the song is so mellow. It's not transcending, just hovering around. I enjoyed it, but not quite enough to not care that its categorical connection feels thin.

7.1

#311

29th place:

nutella

British Sea Power - Red Rock Riviera

What an odd track to put in 29th place. This is such an easy sell for me and feels like something I would always slot in near the 8.0 tier in smaller walruses gone by. Pretty much every placement decision from this point on was painful. Post-rock and ambient reigned supreme in this category and is kind of hard to knock as a natural fit, but I got sooooo much of it that some of them objectively had to bottom half. This one maintains relevance through the main grind in not conjuring imagery distinctly different from the objective, lyrics aside. Its very tame in its progression and doesn't really stand apart to me. I found myself not being able to remember it a few hours removed before clicking play despite a ton of listens. That certainly isn't necessary for direct enjoyment but makes it struggle to stamp out turf in a competitive environment. The outro resonated with me more clearly, but its wave samples bring an end to the cat fit component. Given a lot less post-rock at large this would have likely gone higher, but everything is relative to the competition.

7.2

#312

28th place:

gbsfranca

파란노을(Parannoul) - 아름다운 세상(Beautiful World)

This is sad pretty in an encompassing way. I think it definitely grasps the category, and I like the energy it comes back with at 3:35 after repeating itself a while. As a song, I absolutely love it. As a recording, something is jacked here, and it's not the Youtube video, because I pulled it from two other sources and they all sound this way. That metallic piercing edge to the vocal effects is like nails on a chalkboard, and the timbre of the cymbals is horrendous. Feels weird that this and the OmmoKpop sub both suffered the same flaw--and I am extremely hesitant to call anything a flaw in art but it feels appropriate here--because I associate Korean music with god-tier audio quality regardless of song-writing. I suppose we're all human eh.

7.3

#313

27th place:

staypositivefriend

Modest Mouse - Third Planet

Ok yeah sure it's the most famous indie band of the turn of the century, but this is really pretty. I didn't listen to The Moon & Antarctica nearly as much as Good News For People Who Love Bad News back in the day anyway. It's nice. That sweetness in motion vibe works for the category decently enough. I'm thinking it's probably not deeply gripping or else far reaching enough to go too far for me here, but I'll see how it trends.

Coming back for a last read after all's sorted, it trended pretty well. Unfortunately for it, a ton of other subs did too.

7.4

#314

26th place:

Visorslash

The Sight Below - At First Touch (Yagya Rework)

I listened to this on repeat for a really long time. It's chill. It's relaxing. I like it with that purpose in mind. it didn't elevate me or bliss me out, just gave me a really satisfying pulse to ride while I went about my business. I don't know that this category necessarily needed a hype component--given some other placements, I can safely say it didn't--but I feel like it was a little too upbeat for minimalist euphoria and a little too subdued for a rush, and those were zones that other similarly constructed tunes achieved to take me higher. I think the original track would have done better for me here, for whatever that's worth.

7.5

#315

25th place:

PunchyTheCat

Taylor Swift - The Lakes

Ok you found a Taylor Swift song I enjoyed. The lyrical pseudo-tryharding that rubbed me in prior Swift subs didn't weigh so heavily on this one because it's laced with creative introspection. I'm gathering the romantic partner she keeps referring to is herself--she at least left it open to that interpretation--and maybe the fact that anything at all is open to interpretation makes the song feel a lot less contrived than I've grown used to. I'm not really vibing with her but I'm respecting that she's vibing something. Thematically it's more about wishing she could dissolve into the world around her than actually doing it. She can't finish her description of the nature setting without mentioning the absence of Twitter. It's not clear which world she's referring to when she goes on to say she doesn't belong. Maybe I'm subconsciously overcompensating a bit here, but it's a sweet and lyrically creative piece with clear relevance to the category.

7.6

#316

24th place:

Zack

Novo Amor - Repeat Until Death

The backdrop to this is interesting. The banjo is mixed so low that I barely notice it's playing--a subtle flavor that enhances the taste without ever letting you know it's there. The view thickens up from just a piano to its many-layered peak with good pacing. There are no real transition points, just this gradual accumulation. It's a good sub for the category. The vocals fall into a stereotype range I already associate with music that's a little too low key to wow me but a little too glam to vibe sweetly--like if Bon Iver just sang generically or something, I dunno. I think they're functional here. They feel appropriate in the setting. But they still don't do terribly much for me. The rest of the song is beautiful.

7.7

#317

23rd place:

Adam

Keiichi Okabe / Kakeru Ishihama / Keigo Hoashi / Takafumi Nishimura - Song of the Ancinets ~ Fate

This starts out like it's going to build and build but hits a sort of stagnation point early on, content to ride out the vibe established in the first minute for another four without any meaningful progression. It feels like a great credit roll number, elevated but post-climax. I don't know if that's its actual role in the game, but I enjoy it best thinking of it that way. The soft but pounding drums and windy strings definitely give it a feel like floating above a landscape. It's incredibly at home here. I would have put a point gap between this slot and 24th if I'd had any to spare. Definitely feels like we're getting into the next tier of greatness.

(This was the comment that prompted me to bump the categories up to 10.5, for what it's worth. You got some padding after all.)

8.0

#318

22nd place:

Zarathustra

Masayoshi Soken? - Endwalker Trailer Theme

Having never actually played Final Fantasy XIV, I'm always caught off guard by how.... not fantasy its music tends to be. I'm not sure if an official credit for this song even exists yet, but I'm going to guess Soken, and that compression as an intended effect sound is something I've caught snips of in his music before. This might be ripped from a trailer, but I'm guessing the audio isn't quite as far removed from the polished product as it might feel on first encounter. I'm not put off by it though. This works here surprisingly well for me.

8.1

#319

21st place:

schadd

Mary Lattimore - Til a Mermaid Drags You Under

This track and the original version of the The Sight Below sub both had a ghostly.com logo, so I'm thinking that's a label I need to explore. The bass that joins in at 1:58 is the big selling point for me here. The song is nice from the get-go, but that feel pushes it to a higher level. It might be a bit questionable as a mountains sub? It's full at the bottom and peacefully sparse at the top in a way that sounds like it should work when I type it, but the drawn out depths are carrying more than the flavor above them. It could be an ocean sub if that category had been more open to peaceful as a dominant mood. It could work in some future outer space theme. It's a bit too grounded to radiate mountains for me. And well above the quality threshold where I care that much about such things, but something something words.

8.2

#320

20th place:

Aladyyn

Midnight Odyssey - Starlight Oblivion

It starts out feeling like a closer, which is a promising sign for this category. I looked it up and this is... kind of smack in the middle of the album actually, but I'm not going to check out all two and a half hours of that one in the process of writing this to see how it fits. Somewhere around six minutes in I start to get the feeling that the song doesn't intend to go anywhere further. It proves me wrong to a degree, but the progression feels minimal, like I'm either vibing the persistent overall aesthetic feel or I'm not because everything is focused around sustaining that. Conveniently, I am. Quite a bit. It reminds me of certain eras of Enslaved. It's something I'd be quite content to roll through in the fall when that mood tends to do the most for me. It tips into that viking fantasy with legitimately spiritual undertones spectrum. Around 15 minutes in, an upward trajectory becomes more pronounced and makes me think ok, maybe I should give this more category credit. I've been in a sort of state with it where I find myself going yes it's suitable for mountains, but it encompasses so much more than that. It feels odd limiting it to something this specific.

But that's sort of what I asked for, isn't it? Trying to grapple with my hesitance to put this higher, I think it's something in the pace. The drumming is very plodding. It's not giving me that trance-like experience of direct immersion, but it's a style that baits me to want that when I think of it in the confines of this category. Whereas if I listen to it without trying to pin it down to a specific scene, I just enjoy it a lot more. I did add his 2021 release to my bandcamp cart.

Guessing this is soah from the other subs I got, I can definitely say Earthshine would have scored higher for me here.

lol it wasn't soah

8.4

#321

TOP HALF

Ace Marvel
Ampharos
birdwithteeth11
Bloobird
BLOODYRAIN10001
Keldeo
KnightsofCydonia
ladd
Logic
Marcher Jovian
marmot
MyNameIsNothing
Owner of a Lonely Heart
Psycho666Soldier
shubaka17
soah
tane
Tangrowth
vanity.

#322

19th place:

Marcher Jovian

This Will Destroy You - The Mighty Rio Grande

lol you thought we'd get back to normal walrus subs. The average track length from here is pushing 8 minutes, so buckle up.

The usual quip of I first discovered This Will Destroy You as a local opening band aside, wow, 2.2 million views? I never realized they were that successful. If this was an earlier category, I might have wasted an hour digging my Young Mountain t-shirt out of the attic for glamour shots.

For better or worse, This Will Destroy You are the definition of textbook standard post-rock in my mind, entirely appealing on every encounter and almost never memorable in a lasting way. I vibe with this song like I'm standing in a sweaty human meat factory converted to venue watching a post-rock band play something breathtaking. It doesn't relate to a nature scene for me naturally because I've experienced so much of this sort of thing so directly. It's beautiful to witness people creating these sounds--to get this feeling while watching it physically emerge in front of you. It's a grounded euphoria to me. It's human magic. They do it so tastefully and organically; I'm completely satisfied listening to this. It doesn't quite bleed mountains to me beyond the basic nature of post-rock, I think because it's such an iconic post-rock sound that I can only associate it with the thing itself. I don't want it to take me some place else. I want to be rooted right here. And that's just fine.

8.5

#323

18th place:

vanity.

3nd - ハルオト

My son insists on saying "threeth" instead of third. I thought I could combine the two and give you 33rd, but unfortunately I really like this. The feeling is an intense sweetness with perhaps a bit of longing for me, a sort of modesty lurking beneath the talented performance. In some sense I don't think it's far removed from my Panopticon sample, but something in its math rock shell opposed to spectrum-spanning metal makes it feel a bit more grounded. I don't really care that it's not 100% 'mountains' to me, but hairs have to be split at this point.

God that bit at 4:10 gets to me. Fabulous stuff.

8.6

#324

17th place:

MyNameIsNothing

James Holden - Spinning Dance

The sustained deep buzzy tone and hand claps make it feel like the song is raining all around me. That flute style is enchanting, whatever it's called; I run into things that sound like it from time to time and my gut assumption is it's some sort of native American traditional approach, but I never actually hear anything like it if I sample those things. It seems relegated to new age type jams in my experience, but I feel like that can't be the origin. The drumming in this is pretty imaginative too, in a way that's easy to ignore and absorb passively but always exciting if I hone in on it. The heavily repeated main melodic thrust doesn't develop much. I don't think it needs to with what all else is going on, but if there was something I had to point to as feeling slightly stagnant over repetition in a song that's otherwise constantly going somewhere, I guess I did tire of that a bit. Most songs aren't written to be listened to a dozen times on repeat, and I could have probably done a better job catching myself throughout this walrus faulting tracks for falling off a bit in ways they were never meant to be experienced in the first place. This is great, and I totally feel the category.

8.7

#325

16th place:

Owner

Nitin Sawhney - Homelands

I love this so much ahahaha. The vocals are delicious. Everything's vibing Spanish with an Indian flare and it's so tight and just mmmmmm. Does this actually have anything to do with the category? I don't know, something something the cello, let's just say it does. This might have taken second place in cat 1.

8.8

#326

TOP 15

Ace Marvel
Ampharos
birdwithteeth11
Bloobird
BLOODYRAIN10001
Keldeo
KnightsofCydonia
ladd
Logic
marmot
Psycho666Soldier
shubaka17
soah
tane
Tangrowth

#327

15th place:

Tangrowth

Carl Stone - Banteay Srey

mmm... this is a very peaceful journey. I click play and I'm instantly in the zone and never leave it. I don't know if it's taking me up into an all-encompassing everything or just floating along. I'm definitely absorbed into it, spread through it, immersed in the sound. There are some earthy, natural features in the beginning that give it an outdoor vibe. It develops so smoothly that I never realize I left them behind, or that they were ever behind me, by the time they're gone. That feels... very appropriate here as I think it out. Yeah, this works quite well here.

8.9

#328

14th place:

birdwithteeth11

Isis - In Fiction

Isis is a band I would place in my top 10 all time more often than not if put to the question. I've listened to Panopticon a fair bit, but not enough to know every note by heart like Oceanic, and it's been a while. I still got to enjoy this in a fresh way. My initial thought was that Backlit might have been a better fit off the album, and that feeling grew with repetition. Backlit is a bit more lifted, more optimistic, where In Fiction channels their usual vibe without a flare distinct from the norm. Not that their norm wasn't like, pretty much perfect anyway. That isn't going to hurt it here; I just think Backlit might have done even better. Given it was predictable I might have known this--I used them as a sample artist in cat 2--maybe I should knock it a little, but I can't because I love it.

9.0

#329

13th place:

Keldeo

Seirom - Strands of Golden Light

These are some bleak peaks. I love how the song progresses into a full noise and blast beat wall so gradually that there's never a remotely jarring transition until it ends around 6:10. It's a satisfying background experience for sure. What I love most is how the initial sense of desolation carries on as the song transforms and just sort of marries the spiritual satisfaction of the climax. It's like you've met death and your soul is lifting up out of you and dispersing into the beyond. It resonated with the category incredibly well for me.

9.1

#330

12th place:

tane

Emerald Web - The Dragon's Gate

I'm not sure if I'm on top of the mountain or catching my first glimpse of Mordor across some barren hellscape, but God I love this style of music and they pull it off so well. I would call it dungeon synth but it somehow was released in 1981. Wild. This was either way ahead of its time or else there is a whole scene of awesome out there that I've never tapped into. I initially placed this low as a cat struggler and lamented not getting it to cat 3, but one slot at a time I kept going yes, yes, categorical relevance, but I just like it more. In doing so I managed to eventually convince myself that it works well here and shot it up to the top tier, but I probably gaslighted that so I can't tell you why. Well, it's more like I can easily place it on the top of a snowy mountain, it's just a cold and lonely view. Good enough for me.

9.2

#331

11th place:

soah

Kauan - Akva

I grabbed another link that didn't cut off the last second of the song. It still ends extremely abruptly, but this one's a bit less jarring. I liked it enough that I considered just tacking the next song from the album on at the end for a smooth transition, but I eventually realized that the entire album is one song split into seven parts. I would have likely queued up the whole thing if this won, but unfortunately I can't cram a 52 minute run into the 11 slot. I haven't listened to it start to finish as of writing this, but it's sitting in my Bandcamp cart. This feels like it was written for the precise purpose of capturing something like my category description, and it does a wonderful job of it. It's just... perfect here and I'm a bit thrilled with the anticipation of getting to hear the rest of it after this walrus is finished. It nullifies the feeling that this sample is a bit incomplete, to an extent, but the lack of an ending is still probably what kept it out of the top 10. It's a tough call. I mean, I would have rejected the full album as a sub, so it feels a bit unfair to jab this one for not going further, but it is what it is. Thanks for introducing me to it.

Good lord how is this only 11th place.

As I'm running through my final spin of these I keep getting to songs and going "How is this so low. I made a horrible mistake. The next half dozen tracks won't be as good as this." And they keep proving me wrong.

9.3

#332

TOP 10

Ace Marvel
Ampharos
Bloobird
BLOODYRAIN10001
KnightsofCydonia
ladd
Logic
marmot
Psycho666Soldier
shubaka17

#333

10th place:

Logic

Jeremy Soule - Over the Shiverpeaks

After all that, a 2 minute sub makes the top 10. Isolated peaceful majestic, soaring alone above everything. This is an incredibly vivid piece for its minimalism, and a Soule track I've managed to never hear before. I love how evocative it is. It captures so much of the category doing so little. I'm left feeling incredibly satisfied. It might be brief, but nothing more was needed really.

9.4

#334

9th place:

ladd

Television - Marquee Moon

Kind of surprised myself with this placement, but it didn't trend here. This was one of the few tracks that I slotted in the top 10 on my first play through and actually kept there the whole way through, in a category that saw a ridiculous amount of shifting around. The post-rocky progression before it was cool stays within a light, peppy framework that feels deliciously appropriate here. There's something brisk and perpetually ascending about it that lets me place it in the scene with ease. It gets there feeling happy rather than gripping, a nice and functional alternative to what I had in mind. And Tom Verlaine's voice sounds... sooooort of like every other band of the first twenty years of rock and roll tonally, but I'm continuously struck by how much what he's doing with it reminds me of David Lowery, one of my favorite singers. I loved everything about this.

9.5

#335

8th place:

Ace Marvel

유아(YooA) - 숲의 아이 (Bon voyage)

Whatever the appropriate term is for afro-disney choirs, they work for me here. The video feels awkwardly displaced from the song at points, like sterotype kpop directing is incapable of grasping deeper visual art than show me sexy, but I don't score on that. In my earliest attentive listens I found her vocal lines outside of the chorus repetitive in a way that didn't hurt the song but didn't take it further either. She's expressive, but more cool and smooth expressive than intimate, in a setting where the latter may have carried well. But this one grew on me incredibly. The subtle light floaty feel of the whole thing is inescapable. It's sweet and pretty and fits so well in a uniquely innocent sort of way that felt really refreshing up against so many meaty subs.

9.6

#336

7th place:

Psycho666Soldier

Melvins - Hung Bunny

Speaking of meaty... Hope you like Melvins, because we're in for a DrOnE sUb.

I fucking love this. Maxed out volume highly recommended.

It's weird how one of the most pioneering bands in metal was lumped into the grunge bin in their prime. I blame Kurt Cobain's solid taste in music. I think I tended to parse songs like this when I was younger as ok, so he plays a note on a guitar and eight minutes later some drums come in... Is this some new wave of punk where instead of not knowing how to play you just don't bother playing anything in the first place?

And obviously my tastes evolved, it's just funny to think about hearing Melvins for the first times so far removed from a state of mind where I could really appreciate it. The things Buzz and Dale did with bare-bones tools at their disposal still stand fabulous today and inspired wow... 30 years? of doom and drone metal to follow.

30 years.

Yikes.

9.7

#337

6th place:

shubaka17

Percival - Percival - Dziewczyna Swarożyca

It's like cat 3 except it's cat 7 and I am completely fine with that. The not post-rock or ambient approach had a lot of opportunity to distinguish itself. This could have just as easily filled a lot of other hypothetical themes, but I love what it's doing for me here. It's very much moving upward intensely, and if the suspense is slightly at odds for placing some adversary or point of conflict into the scene, I... don't really care that much because I like it a lot. I never said the higher plain of existence we're transcending to had to be our friend.

9.8

#338

TOP 5

Ampharos
Bloobird
BLOODYRAIN10001
KnightsofCydonia
marmot

#339

5th place:

Ampharos

Jizue - Shiori

lol jizu

This made for a beautiful background piece for quite a while before the repetitive arpeggios started to gnaw at me, and the jazzy minute they bust out at 2:25 never got old. The climax doesn't stand out much to me, but not in a bad way. It gives the song an appropriate level of escalation to follow upward from the break while maintaining a mood not appreciably different from the first half of the journey. It did wear a liiiiittle bit over extended repetition, but I defer back to songs aren't intended to be listened to like that anyway. It seems a bit basic to be placing this high given the level of competition. I've definitely questioned this slot more than any other when I'm not actively hearing it. But it's just sooooooo in the categorical zone. As soon as I click play, all of my concerns flutter away.

9.9

#340

4th place:

KnightsofCydonia

Yoshida Brothers - Frontier

This is some pretty transcendent Enyacore. The accompaniment is fabulous from start to finish. There's maybe a moment where I wish the shamisen did more to capitalize on its eternally staccato texture, but the rock inclinations that come out around 2:50 hit at the perfect time to resolve that. There's some really rad bass support that's easy to miss. On the whole it feels... oddly predictable for a song that pursues sweetness on such a grand stage, but maybe this was a style that couldn't fail. I loved it every time I listened to it.

10.0

#341

3rd place:

BLOODYRAIN10001

Midori - Swing (If Takuya Were In Midori)

Mariko Gotō's vocals grew on me just as much as I knew they would during my first perplexed listen. The intensity of her voice and the frantic guitar and drums pair with the relative calm of the piano to really grasp the scene, at once grand and deeply personal. This is some joyful chaos, and a rare case where I enjoyed a remix more than the original, too.

These videos are back on Youtube now, and in the process of digging around to figure out who Takuya was, I accidentally left two recordings of the song on playing at the same time out of sync. I had a moment where I went holy crap this song is even higher level than I remembered before I realized what I'd done.

So I did it a few times intentionally, and for better or worse, layering more and more madness on top of this just makes it sound even better.

10.3

#342

2nd place:

marmot

Shackleton - Primal Drones

This is sublime. One of those songs where I can just close my eyes and completely space out into the soundscape. I can imagine the scene, if really want to, but it's so much easier to let the experience take me there directly--to become a part of it. It's so odd to walk this track backwards after it has ended. I'm always caught off guard by how much has changed. It progresses so much, but I never notice that in a conscious sort of way. It's like a physical journey: I'm not reflecting on how one view looks different from the next; I'm immersed in the enjoyment of traveling through this space, and the song recreates that experience perfectly.

On my final run through these I had a seriously difficult time reading my own write-up. This song holds me so fast I can't concentrate on the words for the twenty seconds it takes to parse them.

10.4

#343

1st place:

Bloobird

Dan Deacon - Wham City

This is one of those categories where I can listen to songs in ranked order and end each going I must have made a mistake; how can it get better than that and be proven consistently wrong. Kind of mindblowing that the major transition happens 7 minutes into this song, because it never feels like I've been listening anywhere near that long when it happens. Those indie pop vocals have no excuse to work here. They should be pleasantly silly, not aural bliss. But somehow this comes together perfectly. Perfectly. The bass feels like enhanced Gameboy tones and maxes out everything I love about that sound. The... why am I even bothering to type things at this point lol

How can a song be this perfectly orchestrated to make every single moment feel more hype than the one before it for 12 straight minutes.

Oh hey you also get my bonus point for best sub of the walrus, so I guess that makes this the highest score I've ever given anything. :wowee:

10.5 + 1

#344

Scoring through 7

39. 36.0 PunchyTheCat
38. 39.7 Moose
37. 44.4 Frog
36. 45.0 Relm
35. 46.6 Cory
34. 49.3 BoKnows
33. 49.5 Logic
32. 49.9 roro__b
31. 50.7 ladd
30. 51.0 gbsfranca
29. 52.2 vanity.
28. 53.0 Visorslash
27. 53.2 nutella
26. 54.0 staypositivefriend
24. 54.3 Ace Marvel
24. 54.3 Made
23. 54.4 soah
22. 54.7 LordQuas
21. 55.2 Marcher Jovian
20. 55.5 Keldeo
18. 56.5 KnightsofCydonia
18. 56.5 Zack
17. 56.8 Aladyyn
16. 57.3 Owner
15. 57.9 Bloobird
13. 58.4 birdwithteeth11
13. 58.4 Kane
12. 58.5 Ampharos
11. 58.8 Adam
9. 59.7 shubaka17
9. 59.7 tane
8. 60.3 Psycho666Soldier
7. 60.5 Newcomb
6. 60.8 marmot
5. 60.9 Tangrowth
4. 62.3 schadd
3. 62.5 Zarathustra
2. 62.9 MyNameIsNothing
1. 64.9 BLOODYRAIN10001

#345

8. 2am at a dive bar in Cincinnati

And we're finally back. But you didn't save the best for last. You've been going all out since the opener. Your bassist looks like he's in a coma and your drummer's already kicked over half his set. You light your last cigarette and absent-mindedly tug at the volume knob that's already maxed out. One final rush of adrenaline. One final moment of clarity before you fuzz out into half-conscious oblivion. It's closing time.

#346

38th place:

Moose

VvvvvaVvvvvvr - Take On Me (SingStar Pop)

This is cute I guess in that they made him actually work with the song, but I know absolutely nothing about Minecraft except that it has intentionally putrid pseudo-retro graphics and the creator is a jerk. Y'all gotta meme a bit more boomer to register with me. It was surprisingly pleasant to listen to though when they're just modifying his voice and not sampling him coughing up flem into the microphone. Maybe if it had some grand underlying cat relevance I'd put it higher for yucks.

4.5

#347

37th place:

PunchyTheCat

Be Your Own Pet - Becky

It's a cute one time through I guess and I like their punk edge, but the gimmick gets tedious for me pretty quick. And it doesn't really feel like the sort of song you would close with at all.

5.0

#348

36th place:

gbsfranca

Fugazi - Bulldog Front

I wanted to vibe with this. I have heard extremely little Fugazi, and post-hardcore seems like a style loaded with appropriate material. But I'm just not connecting with the category here. It doesn't have that aura of a closing track to me. I feel it belongs in the early late phase of a set, when you're actually starting to feel the burn and haven't caught your second wind yet.

6.0

#349

35th place:

BoKnows

Travis Scott - The Ends

That's a pretty wild album cover. This gets off to an intriguing start, but it kind of calms down to a brooding tension counter to what I'd ideally hoped for. I can see it as an ending track, just not this category's kind of ending track. But mostly I think the autotuning wore on me fast.

6.2

#350

34th place:

Owner

Witchrider - You Lied

This is cool but not the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best the best

6.4