The Syndicate

Points of this album almost have a stoner rock sound. That's probably my favorite thing.

I'm listening through World Music now, currently in the final track. To be honest, psychedelic music has never been My Thing, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to get into this quite like some others have. It has been a pleasant surprise though. There's still a discernible melody and structure which psychedelia often lacks.

It feels purposeful and I have enjoyed it.

We've arrived at Sunday, so it's time to move on to our next album. Thanks again for sharing Fishmans, MP; I'm glad a number of people were able to get exposure to them including me.

Week 3: Goat - World Music

Submitted by Boomslang

Accessible on Spotify and Youtube via the link in the OP

Tell us about this psychedelic thang, Boomslang.

I gave the album a second spin today while I was doing other things. The two hours passed a little more smoothly this time; I didn't feel like I was just waiting for it to be over. At the same time I was paying less deliberate attention.

I could listen to Rico review things all day.

I'm in the huge final track now (finishing my first listen). I think the album started very well, and I was enthusiastic about it probably through the first three tracks. The momentum didn't hold though and I eventually found myself checking my invisible watch a few times. I think the concept of the music is appealing and I appreciate the effort, but there are a couple things that I think hold it back from being something I like more:

~ The length. This might seem like a petty complaint, but I really do think it's too much. It's a recording of a live performance so I can understand, but I find myself assuming that listening to this for over 2 hours is more interesting at the live performance than in my living room. I would label very few double or triple studio albums among my favorites as well, because so much content is going to seem like it's dragging at points.

~ The language. I don't think the Japanese language sounds bad or is a problem, but it does prevent me from getting more into the music. I don't think lyrics are a critical component of making music enjoyable, but they certainly can help to elevate an album above "good". Without that element present in a way that I can understand it's just potential that can't be realized unless I go out and learn Japanese.

Some positives:

~ The music is diverse enough to keep my attention. If a release is going to be as long as this one is, it better not be filled with samey or repetitive themes/sounds and I think this one meets that criteria admirably.

~ The quality of the performance is strong. Remove all of the idle chatter from between tracks and the sounds of the audience and I may not realize this is a live album. I'm not quite as anti-live as some people here seem to be, but I also don't go out of my way to hear live recordings. I don't think this one suffered for being live at all.

~ The atmosphere of the music is agreeable. The best qualities of the "dream pop" aesthetic are done justice without the music seeming formulaic as it often does with that genre in my opinion.

Overall I'd say it was a positive experience to listen to the album, but it will also be difficult to motivate myself to do it again. This thing is obviously a 2+ hour commitment and I don't know when I am going to both have time for it and also want to hear it again -- the planets have to align very closely. That'll hinder its chances of growing on me. I may be able to listen to portions of it though; it isn't necessarily imperative to hear it all at once in proper order every time.

Thanks for sharing MP. It's an interesting addition to my pile of ratings. As I type this I am arriving into the latter half of "Long Season" and that piano is hitting the spot after such a long audio trip. A strong finish will be appreciated.

I probably won't be able to "officially" shift us to the second album, but any moderator can feel free to edit the OP. MP, go ahead and introduce your album whenever you're ready tomorrow.

Thanks, nutella, for kicking us off with a strong selection.

Their debut album The Village sounded a lot to me like a precursor to Beneath the Brine. By that I mean it sounded like a less refined expression of the same basic thing. Of course my perspective is influenced by having heard the latter first, so I don't know if I'd feel differently otherwise. I wouldn't say The Village was bad, but I did enjoy it less -- at least at first exposure.

I'm giving their debut album a spin now just to see how it compares.

I'd never heard of the guy you were referencing, Rico, but it's clear you were dedicated to the joke. Well played, sir. The review was interesting too. I encourage you to make those at your leisure as time permits.

thellama73 wrote:Does anyone find it useful to rank tracks on an album? I find it very strange. I view an album as a coherent unit of music, not just a collection of songs.

I wouldn't call it "useful" to rank anything in music. There is no objective good or bad anyway. It's just numbers porn for people who like numbers. I'm not even that into it personally. This activity springs from a similar one I used to do waaaaaaaay back, and in that case they liked to rank the tracks.

When I initially included the word "ranking", I was talking about tracks. I won't be ranking the albums as we go (I'll feel bad about whichever one inevitably finishes last), but of course y'all treat the activity as you like.

It doesn't appear "ranking" is going to be a prominent thing here, which is perfectly cool with me. So I'm pulling it from the name. I think just Syndicate Album of the Week is fine. SAW.

We'll see if the name changes again tomorrow.

I like the vocals too. I think they suit the music very well. I tend to be a fan of this sort of colorful indie stuff though.

I'm on my third run through the album now. I definitely think the first half is stronger than the second, though I can't tell if that's the product of the music truly being more appealing or me simply running out of gas as a listener. I quite like the album though and am glad you brought it to us, nutella. I intend to listen to their other album The Village too soon. It's a pleasing sound.

G-Man wrote:What exactly are we evaluating?

Whatever you want.

G-Man wrote:Are we using any kind of common rating scale for the songs and album as a whole?

Nah. Whatever you want.

G-Man wrote:I have two rating scales at my disposal, personally. Are we just judging for discussion or are we going to come up with an average group rating to track as we go along? Am I over-thinking this already?

If enough people rank (keyword rank, not rate) the tracks on the album, I will compile a group average ranking just for kicks. It'll be a neat little bit of numbers porn for those who enjoy that sort of thing, but it isn't required. I intend to do a ranking once I have more exposure.

I'm pretty sure a long time ago there was a regular on the RYM boards with "Walter" in his username who would insist that music made after 1989 was all bad. Same reference I guess? Or maybe the same person?

Anyway, that's complete nonsense.

Yeah I think that's just Epi making a joke. He hasn't heard it yet, and the qualities he was disparaging are hallmarks of his precious progressive rock anyway.

We're obviously not going to like everything we hear here. Honesty is ideal, so long as nobody is an arse (and I don't anticipate that). My first exposure to the album was positive though. I'll probably listen again tomorrow and see how my feelings develop.

nutella wrote:What about "Album Sharing Shenanigans" or ASS for short?

Coming up next Sunday, in our secondly weekly ASS...

Sure I'm down. And hey look at the thread title!

It makes me chuckle because I'm 8 years old. Different ideas are welcome.

I'm on my first pass through it now. I'll listen a couple times at least before commenting in depth, but I do appreciate the dramatic flair of the album. There's a momentum that starts rolling in the first track which hasn't relented through #8 so far, and I dig that. So often there seems to be a sort of intermission track jammed into albums that disturbs the momentum and that hasn't happened yet with this one.

Week 1: The Family Crest - Beneath the Brine

Submitted by nutella

Accessible on Spotify and via the link in the OP

First poll:

Spoiler: show

I've updated the OP to reflect that and added links where necessary.

Thanks for voting folks. For the four tied at 6 votes I set the queue in order of submission. For the two tied at 5, I've deferred to llama. So our first queue:

1. nutella: The Family Crest - Beneath the Brine
2. MovingPictures07: Fishmans - 98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare
3. Boomslang: Goat - World Music
4. insertnamehere: Scott Walker - Bish Bosch
5. thellama73: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown

Golden wrote:
JaggedJimmyJay wrote:~ I don't want a small portion of the participants getting all the glory, and that's possible with repeating polls.
A one poll stand down after your album is selected? Or is that discouraging.

I wouldn't say it's discouraging, though the results would end up basically being identical to a queue anyway.

Golden wrote:I'm fine with a coin flip, even if it goes against my submission. The thing will still be there next time.

A question - what to do with the submissions that aren't in the top 5? Just roll them over to the next poll? Does that mean people who are successful get to nominate another, the others don't?

My original intent was for the second (and beyond) poll to just be whatever people want to submit, regardless of what was in the first. Previously successful people could submit new things, and the others can either re-submit their prior entries or something else. The logistics of this process are very loose. I was going to see how the first set of album goes to determine whether another poll is even necessary. I'm open to ideas, because this is the stuff I want to avoid:

~ A gigantic queue of albums forming similar to the old Mafia game queues here. I want people to have a glimmer of hope that an album they submit will be heard here in their lifetimes.

~ Newcomers to the activity being essentially screwed out of submitting an album that will be heard any time soon.

~ Someone finally getting to do their album after a long wait and getting minimal participation because it's unpopular.

Those things all favor a polling process. However, this also warrant consideration on the flip side:

~ I don't want a small portion of the participants getting all the glory, and that's possible with repeating polls.

I guess if there's a tie I'll just include everything within the tie. That might look shady since my submission is currently tied for 5th, but a coin flip wouldn't really be fair (this ain't no lynch). So whatever.

nutella wrote:also slight nitpick bc I just noticed this, the youtube version of Beneath the Brine is missing the last track for some reason? you have the running time correct but there are 12 tracks and I guess when it comes up I'll point it out if anyone uses youtube.

RYM also reports 11 tracks on that one, maybe the 12th is a bonus track added later? Spotify has 12 though so I'll change it.

I'm afraid to change the poll options; I don't want all the votes to vanish.

It's two tracks, gang. Two tracks.

Ricochet wrote:Wait a minute, since when does A Passion Play have "4 tracks"?

RYM reports 4, though only two have a duration. So maybe it's 2 tracks?

I think there's a greater likelihood that a hard queue would leave the last few people on the list waiting long enough that they'd no longer care when their turn arrives. I'm hoping to prevent that, and a repeating poll might help. It's just a guess though, and if the poll ends up being pointless we don't have to do it that way next time. I welcome all feedback on that stuff as we proceed.

The most important thing is that we're sharing music with each other.

There's Rico voting for his own album.

The poll is up. It's only running for a day so we can get moving with this. If an extension is needed we'll play it by ear.

We're each selecting 5 of the albums in the poll (or up to 5) not including our own submissions. That would kind of defeat the purpose. If your submission doesn't happen to be selected, please don't take it personally. The choices are limited and I'd like to hear them all as time permits. Just save it for next time.

Thanks gang. I've got all the info now, poll going up soon.

MovingPictures07 wrote:Sounds good. Let me get the details for Fishmans for you too.

Should we just keep the discussion / poll in this thread and change the thread title?

Works for me. I was considering a separate thread for each album, but that wouldn't take long to become spam city.

Gonna need a little time to compile the details though.

Since it appears most people don't mind the notion of a poll, I'll just roll with that so we can get started here.

triceratopzeuhl wrote:What is duration doing to be? The OP says 5 weeks, I'm interested if it will be shorter than that

One week per album was the original intent with a 5-week queue.

Also, anyone who voted yes in the poll that hasn't submitted an album yet, please go ahead and do so. Don't let me stop ya.

If anyone wants access to these little "Spotify" nuggets we're dropping that doesn't already have it, I'm pretty sure it's free if you don't mind a commercial here and there.

I don't work for that organization.

Note: if we end up doing a poll, I would gather some basic information about each album to make the choices feel a little less abitrary:

- Release year
- [Parent] genre
- Number of tracks
- Duration

Nominations/Queue/Whatever:

~ JJJ - Crowded House - Woodface / 1991 / Rock-oriented pop / 14 tracks / 48:11 / (on Spotify or I can individually link YouTube videos when the time comes)
~ Golden - Corinne Bailey Rae - The Heart Speaks In Whispers / 2016 / Neo-soul / 12 tracks / 55:31
~ Marmot - deadmau5 - > album title goes here < / 2012 / House / 13 tracks / 79:53
~ Epignosis - Echolyn - Echolyn / 2012 / Progressive rock / 8 tracks / 70:44
~ nutella - The Family Crest - Beneath the Brine / 2014 / Chamber pop/Indie rock / 11 tracks / 53:12 / (Spotify and YouTube)
~ Ricochet - Jethro Tull - A Passion Play / 1973 / Progressive rock / 4 tracks / 45:11 / (Spotify)
~ MP07 - Fishmans - 98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare / 1999 / Dream pop / 14 tracks / 2:10:19
~ Boomslang - Goat - World Music / 2012 / Psychedelic rock / 9 tracks / 37:10 / (Spotify)
~ INH - Scott Walker - Bish Bosch / Experimental / 9 tracks / 73:04 / (Spotify)
~ llama - Arthur Brown - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown / Psychedelic rock / 1968 / 10 tracks / 36:39
~ G-Man - Chuck Berry - Chuck Berry Is on Top (YouTube Playlist- Listen to the first six tracks (through Johnny B Goode), then listen to this solo track (Little Queenie), then resume the playlist.) 1959 / Rock and roll / 12 tracks / 29:26
~ trice - The Kinks - Arthur / 1969 / Rock-oriented pop / 12 tracks / 48:43

That's 11 submissions, which I think is plenty for now no matter how we proceed.

So lemme know everyone, how would you prefer to do this?

~ Shall we go with a hard queue as above?
~ Shall we do a poll vote to cut it down and then revisit the rest later?
~ How many days do you want to spend on each album?

These details mean little to me, so I am very open to your preferences.

I definitely had an answer in there. Stupid phone.

That's fine with me G-Man.

G-Man wrote:
MovingPictures07 wrote:
G-Man wrote:What would the verdict be on finding an incomplete playlist on YouTube and then linking to a separate video of the missing song if that missing song belongs in the middle of the playlist? Are we trying to listen to the album in song list order? If so, the idea I have in mind would require listening to five songs, pausing the playlist, listening to an individual video, then resuming the playlist. I have a back-up album in mind but it's not quite as good as my preferred choice. I don't want to create too much work for people.
I have to listen to an album in one sitting and in order; I'm one of those weirdos that views the album as the ultimate vehicle by which to deliver music. But that's alright with me, depends on what everyone else thinks.

The album I recommended is not standard either in that it's live and just over two hours long, but I couldn't not recommend it. I still think that's doable for a week, but by all means, I can pick a different one if you all think that's too much. I think we can get into specific grievances or preferences when it comes time to vote though, right? Maybe Jay can advise there as to what he was envisioning.
I prefer listening to an album straight through as well. I guess I've gotten used to partial playlists and searching for individual tracks as I've been working through my Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame list. YouTube is lacking in the 'oldies' department.

I'll wait and see what Jimmy says.

Nominations/Queue/Whatever:

Crowded House - Woodface (on Spotify or I can individually link YouTube videos when the time comes)
Corinne Bailey Rae - The Heart Speaks In Whispers
deadmau5 - > album title goes here <
Echolyn - Echolyn
The Family Crest - Beneath the Brine (Spotify and YouTube)

Truly all the details aren't that important, I just want to listen to music.

How about 5 days? A bit more difficult to track, but I guess it's still just basic math.

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