*

Offline Snupes

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1957
  • Counting wolves in your paranoiac intervals
    • View Profile
Re: Snupes' Must-Listen-To List (Recommend me albums!)
« Reply #300 on: July 29, 2017, 04:37:35 AM »
Both of these are from today. Then, back to your regularly-scheduled programming.




Artist: Arcade Fire
Title: Everything Now
Genre: Indie rock
Release: July 28, 2017

Wow. With all the abysmal reviews, I was expecting something seriously disappointing from my beloved fire at a place made for gaming with or around others. And, to be honest, for much of the album I could see why it got the reviews it did. Win's writing is rather ham-fisted at point and lacks the nuance of a lot of their earlier work ("Creature Comfort" is painfully on-the-nose), but it also featured some fantastic writing in general as well. Not as subtle as Funeral, no, but good nonetheless. Mostly, I appreciate them continuing their trend of evolving from album to album. This sounds nothing like any of their other work, with a much more modern reimagining of rock. The album sort of lacks cohesiveness, which is another fault, but one I didn't mind all that much 'cause I was so absorbed in the music. Then again, the album also features "Good God Damn", which is by far the worst Arcade Fire song I've ever heard.

Anyway, yeah, I liked this a lot and it only got better as it went on. I understand why critics aren't fans of it, but I'd give it more like an 8/10 than the 6s and 5s many have felt it deserves. It's not an "indie darling" album, no, but it's a solid work of an ever-changing artistry. I guess they can't have Everything Now.




Artist: テンテンコ (Tentenko)
Title: ミッドナイト・パラダイス (Midnight Paradise)
Genre: Experimental
Release: July 7, 2017

I don't know if Tentenko's capable of releasing music I don't like these days. Her whole sound is just perfectly suited for me. I can (and do) just put her entire discography on shuffle and listen to it from start to finish. This was much more chill than I'm used to from her; her weird little electronic dirges wandering in the background while she slowly sings is incredibly soothing.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2017, 06:26:41 AM by Snupes »
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.

*

Offline Snupes

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1957
  • Counting wolves in your paranoiac intervals
    • View Profile
Re: Snupes' Must-Listen-To List (Recommend me albums!)
« Reply #301 on: July 29, 2017, 05:40:10 AM »
March 2016 continued. Most of these I didn't write up a personal review for so my feelings have faded, meaning I don't have a lot to say on them, sadly. The ones with longer reviews are either ones I remember very well because I listen to them still or ones that I left a review for myself to use:




Artist: Doe Maar
Title: Klaar
Genre: Ska
Release: April, 2000

Not bad at all, especially for a ska album. My favourites were “Aan de bewoners van dit pand”, “Een droom” and “Leven met een zeven”.




Artist: Boudewijn de Groot
Title: Aeneas nu
Genre: Nederpop
Release: 1969

A nice little nederpop single that was a pleasant enough listen.




Artist: Boudewijn de Groot
Title: Nacht en ontij
Genre: Nederpop / experimenteel
Release: 1968

This was a psychedelic little trip that I definitely enjoyed. My favourite track was the final one, "Heksensabbath 2".




Artist: Jarboe
Title: Thirteen Masks
Genre: Experimental rock
Release: 1991

This ranges from poundingly awesome to achingly gorgeous. Unfortunately, there’s a third point it reaches at times: kinda boring. Mainly in the middle section of the album. With an exception or two, it drops after “A Man of Hate” and stays fairly “eh” until the wonder that is “I Got a Gun”. In sheer terms of wonderful energy, that and “Red” are amazing, and on the other end of slower beauty are “Of Ancient Memory (The Oblivion Seekers) and “Cries (for Spider)”. Also, I found out halfway through listening that apparently Jarboe is (was?) an important member of Swans. Neat. Explains why some of her shit is so (thankfully) weird.




Artist: Foxygen
Title: Take the Kids off Broadway
Genre: Psychedelic rock
Release: July 24, 2012

Really not sure how I felt about this. I think it was enjoyable, but it didn’t leave much of an impression.




Artist: The Raconteurs
Title: Broken Boy Soldiers
Genre: Blues rock
Release: May 15, 2006

This is far better than I expected it to be. I mean, I’m already a fan of Jack White, but teaming up with these guys seemed to be a great idea since not only could they temper his unabashed love for singular riffs (albeit fantastic ones), but they manage to add their own creativity to it and make a psychedelic blues rock album that had nary a disappointing song (alright, it had one, in the form of “Intimate Secretary”. My favourites are easily are the brief, rockin’ “Store Bought Bones” and the more meandering, bluesy reverb that is “Blue Veins”. “Broken Boy Soldier” follows closely, and after that the fact that I’m so weirdly fond of mumbly music means “Call It a Day” is up there as well.




Artist: The Haxan Cloak
Title: Excavation
Genre: Dark ambient
Release: April 16, 2013

A near-perfect dark ambient experience. I say “near-perfect” mainly because both parts of “The Mirror Reflecting” are kind of boring, whereas the rest of the album is marvelous and enchanting. Oh well. The rest of it is totally worth the ride.




Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: A Picture of a Painting of a Man Carrying a Large Faggot
Genre: Hard rock
Release: November 8, 1971

I’ve learned two things from this. One, Led Zeppelin has some amazing instrumentals. The guitar-work is phenomenal and, in places, utterly badass. Two, I really, really am not a fan of Robert Plant’s singing. I mean, his voice is great on a technical level, I just find his singing incredibly boring. Songs that would’ve been near-perfect (namely “Black Dog” and “When the Levee Breaks”) got dragged down considerably by his singing for me. I would’ve greatly preferred those two songs as instrumentals. The only songs I think really benefited from his singing were “The Battle of Evermore” (which was great) and “Going to California”. Overally, though, pretty good album. Not amazing, but good.




Artist: Flying Lotus
Title: You're Dead!
Genre: Experimental music / jazz fusion
Release: October 6, 2014

This veers wildly between many genres, from rock to jazz to hardcore electronica to experimental to ambient, easy listening. I love it. There’s not a single boring moment on this album.




Artist: Miguel
Title: Wildheart
Genre: R&B
Release: June 29, 2015

God…damn. This was the album I was least expecting to enjoy (I’m not a huge R&B fan) and ended up being the album I’ve enjoyed most in a good while. It’s so amazingly beautiful, thanks to Miguel’s awe-inspiring vocals and the insanely well-done production. Not to mention how bizarre some of the production is, especially on the lower-case tracks. All one needs to hear for proof of that is “the valley”, which features a beat that really shouldn’t work as well with R&B as it does. That’s probably my favourite track, but the closer “face the sun (feat. Lenny Kravitz)” is just immaculate as a closing track. Honestly, I can’t name a single song on this that wasn’t absolutely fantastic. And aside from those two, I can’t say which I like more than the others. It’s all just so, so, so damn good. Wow.




Artist: 매직칼리 (MagiKally)
Title: MAGiC
Genre: K-pop
Release: October 13, 2015

Boring at times, marvelous at others. The best examples of its marvelousness are “Ding ding dong”, “Fuzzy”, and the dazzlingly odd “Old fashioned disco”.




Artist: Third Mind Movement
Title: Чудовище из Красного дворца (Chudovishe iz Krasnogo dvortsa / Monster from the Red Palace)
Genre: Neo-psychedelia
Release: 2015

Long, neat and fairly minimal. Not bad.




Artist: Мельница (Mel'nitsa)
Title: Алхимия (Alkhimiya / Alchemy)
Genre: Folk rock
Release: October 9, 2015

Damn fine. I’m glad to see Мельница being so consistently good! My favourite track from this is definitely "Война (Voyna / War)", which I honestly wish had closed the album because it's got such an incredible and out of left field ending.
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.

*

Offline Snupes

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1957
  • Counting wolves in your paranoiac intervals
    • View Profile
Re: Snupes' Must-Listen-To List (Recommend me albums!)
« Reply #302 on: June 15, 2018, 06:37:59 AM »
So a few years ago I listened to an album called Madvillainy, by the hip hop duo Madvillainy, consisting of Madlib (producer and occasional rapper) and MF DOOM (rapper and occasional producer). I played it in the background and thought it was pretty good, but didn't really pay much attention and consequently I never ended up listening again. Until as I got deeper into the lyricism and technical side of rap, and MF DOOM's name just kept on coming up until I decided I had to revisit and figure out what he was all about. So listen I did, and his insane rhyme schemes, confidence, interesting flow, and Madlib's fantastic production sucked me in. I was impressed by tri-syllabic rhyme schemes throughout songs, then this fucker goes and casually drops eight-syllable rhymes mid-song and my brain just sort of melted. I listened to Madvillain a dozen or so more times over the next couple weeks before deciding "hey, I'm gonna download MF DOOM's entire discography", including collaborative albums.

So, basically, this is my list of MF DOOM's works (on which he raps, not including his 9 or so instrumental albums).




Artist: MF DOOM
Title: Operation: Doomsday
Genre: Underground hip hop / jazz rap
Release: April 20, 1999

A great start to the mythology of DOOM, an album where he establishes his supervillain persona and first really flexes his talents as a producer. Much of the production and mixing is a bit rough, but still an interesting mix of 90s hip hop and jazz. The more experimental tracks (like "Tick, Tick...", which has a constantly-shifting tempo) end up being my favorites, but it's overall my least favorite solo album of his. There are fantastic tracks, but most are just passable. He hadn't quite found his footing with complex rhyme schemes and layered story-telling yet, either, though even at that point he still outperformed 99% of rappers.




Artist: King Geedorah
Title: Take Me to Your Leader
Genre: Underground hip hop
Release: June 17, 2003

The start of DOOM's most prolific period, in which he releases six albums in three years. Also the beginning of his use of aliases; he only has two albums as "MF DOOM", and almost every collaborative album takes on a unique name for itself. "King Geedorah" is the name he uses when he performs with a group he used to be in, the Monster Island Czars (M.I.C.), but this release was essentially him producing a bunch of songs and his group rapping over them. Of the 13 tracks on the album, he performs on only four. While his appearances are few, each one is fantastic, showcasing how much his cadence and writing have solidified in the four years since Doomsday. Most of the tracks are great (minus "Krazy World", which sucks shit); their greatness is mostly thanks to his tight production, not really the decent-but-mostly-forgettable rappers in his crew.




Artist: Viktor Vaughn
Title: Vaudeville Villain
Genre: Underground hip hop
Release: September 16, 2003

On this album, DOOM establishes a new alias: Viktor Vaughn. Viktor is a high-school student with aspirations of being a supervillain of DOOM's caliber. The album is much more narratively focused than much of his work prior. Viktor is more frenzied, frantic, and desperate to prove himself; a departure from the calm, confident cadence DOOM had cemented with the last few albums. It's also where his complex rhyme schemes really start to shine, laying it on heavy with lines like "for a buck, they'd likely dance the Jig or do the Hucklebuck / To Vik it's no big deal, they're just a buncha knuckle-fucks" and "quit your bitchin' or get BLAUW in your babble-box / punishment for drysnitchin', now eat this Travel Fox". The production on the album is still wonderful, but mostly takes a backseat to the narrative and wordplay DOOM wants to focus on. That being said, the closing track, "Change the Beat", puts both aspects on display with beats and cadences that change several times throughout the song, growing in intensity. One of my favourite DOOM albums.




Artist: Madvillain
Title: Madvillainy
Genre: Jazz rap / experimental hip hop
Release: August 3, 2004

Widely considered DOOM's finest release and, by some, one of the greatest hip hop albums ever made. I'm inclined to agree with both of those statements. This is one of those rare albums where every single time I think about listening to a song off it, I want to just listen to the entire album from start to finish. There's no filler. Every single song is finely tuned, expertly produced by Madlib (sometimes with DOOM's assistant, but the album is mostly DOOM rapping while Madlib produces) and masterfully carried by DOOM. A kinda interesting note, too, is that most of the features on the album are actually just alter egos of Madlib and DOOM. It has some of his finest rhymes (Figaro opens with an eight-syllable rhyme) and indisputably his most confident flow. He sounds like a supervillain who has nothing to prove, reveling in his own knowledge that nobody is any match for him. It's the greatest album in terms of the sum of its parts, but it's hardly the peak of his lyrical dexterity, which only improves as time goes on.




Artist: Viktor Vaughn
Title: Venemous Villain
Genre: Underground hip hop
Release: August 3, 2004

This album is generally not very well-received, thought to be one of DOOM's worst offerings, and while I can see the reasoning I personally enjoy it quite a bit. The production isn't as interesting, but it's still solid and it complements the somewhat more frenetic pace of Viktor's rapping. I don't have a ton to say about this album, since most of my reasons for enjoying it slightly more than Vaudeville Villain are just that it's a really fun record, but it is probably one of his weaker ones musically.




Artist: MF DOOM
Title: MM..Food
Genre: Hip hop
Release: November 16, 2004

This album, hoo boy. This is where DOOM seriously got nuts with his rhymes, lacing every single line effortlessly with schemes and alliteration, steering you in one direction and then swerving into another when you least expect it. It's a few other milestones, too. It's his last album under the MF DOOM name, and it's the album where he really establishes his knack for skits made up of samples and music. There's a solid 8-minute section in the middle of the album that's purely skits overlaid on instrumentals, and there are more skits scattered throughout tracks. Of its 50-minute runtime, I'd wager about 15-20 minutes of that is skits. Now, they're not your standard hip hop skits; he doesn't speak on them, they're entirely made up of chopping up and reorganizing samples of TV shows, movies, commercials, and laying them out in such a way that they build on the mythos of MF DOOM, characters speaking of him and gossiping. A sample thread that runs through the album is of a Fantastic Four episode, more or less squaring them as his main enemy for the work. Playing into that, he features a rapper called "Mr. Fantastik" on one of his songs. Mr. Fantastik was actually featured in a song on Take Me to Your Leader as well. He's one of my favorite artists DOOM has worked with because they bounce off of each other so well, which is a shame because nobody knows who the fuck he is. His only appearances ever are on those two DOOM tracks, which leads some people to wonder if he's DOOM with an altered cadence and pitch-shifted vocals, or if he's really just some great rapper that only ever wanted to write two verses. It's terrible.

Anyway, my favorite track is one of the openers, "Beef Rapp", which is basically him mocking the state of modern rap. He tears into rappers walking around shirtless, touting their image over their talent ("yuck, is they rhymers, or strippin' males? / out of work jerks since they shut down Chippendales / they chippin' nails; DOOM, tippin' scales / let alone pre-orders counted off the shippin' sales"). Anyway, it's a fantastic album and likely the second-best right after Madvillainy.




Artist: DANGERDOOM
Title: The Mouse and the Mask
Genre: Underground hip hop
Release: October 10, 2005

This album is a really weird one. It's MF DOOM and Danger Mouse—a producer known for very, very sample-heavy music—made almost entirely from music pulled from Adult Swim shows, which DOOM raps over. Dialogue from shows is included, as well as newly-recorded dialogue just for the album, and almost every song strongly references those same shows. It's bizarre, but damn good. It's also, by far, DOOM's most poppy effort. "Benzi Box (feat. CeeLo Green)" could very easily have been on the radio had anybody in the world known about this album. I don't love it, musically. I appreciate how the samples are built and work out, and DOOM's flow and rapping are top-notch, but it's just such a strange, disorganized effort that I find it hard to really get into. Maybe that will change over time, but for now it's one of my least favorites.




Artist: DOOM
Title: Born Like This
Genre: Hip hop
Release: March 24, 2009

DOOM's first album in four years, and his first album with the MF dropped. Where was he? Who the fuck knows. Also, even more sadly, his final solo album. It's weird to talk about DOOM records that aren't as well-received as the rest, since even the worst of his works is still a solid 7/10 critically, but this is one of those that a lot of fans didn't love when it came out, and even though critics like it it's not considered one of his best. Which, to me, it's one of his best. He's back in the producer's seat (co-producer for some tracks) and he's back with a fervor unlike DOOM, his calm cadence often giving way to something more frenzied and energetic. He seems as if he has something to prove after being away so long, to show that he's still "got it", and by God does he do that and then some. The album has a very constant narrative of DOOM's return and the havoc that ensues of it, and it feels sometimes like almost every other word on the entire album rhymes with something else—especially on "That's That", a track bound to make your head spin trying to keep up. I care more about the technical side of rap than most do, which is, I guess, why I'm drawn so powerfully to this record. It's fantastic.




Artist: JJ DOOM
Title: Key to the Kuffs
Genre:Alternative hip hop
Release: August 20, 2012

A decent output that made me wish DOOM would put himself back into the producer's seat. You sort of settle into his style and take it for granted until he's rapping over somebody else's. I haven't mentioned it up until now, but DOOM's cadence is a strange thing. He often oversteps boundaries, to the point it's hard to tell where one bar ends and the next begins. Generally a "bar" in hip hop is four beats, where a rapper sets up a rhyme scheme and continues it on the next. If two bars are "1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4", he'll often end a bar on the second "1" or "2" and then begin the next on "2" or "3". His style is predicated on the unexpected. Most rappers you can read their lyrics, hear a beat, and know how they're going to deliver them. With DOOM, it's always a mystery. That's his foundation, and his own production as well as the production of those who work well with him (Madlib being the best example) are based on that same concept. You don't know where the beat's going to go, you don't know how he's going to ride it, and it makes for a much more engaging listen than any other rapper's work. When he's rapping over pretty generic rap beats, like those made by Jneiro Jarel here, it just feels...wrong. So wrong.




Artist: NehruvianDOOM
Title: NehruvianDOOM
Genre: Hip hop
Release: October 7, 2014

Oh, hey, speaking of DOOM being in the producer seat...

I was disappointed to find out this is pretty much DOOM producing an album for Bishop Nehru, an up-and-coming teenage rapper. DOOM himself only appears on the album's final three tracks. That said, it's exciting to hear anything produced by DOOM, really, and Nehru is a very, very talented kid. I just wasn't as engaged as I'd hoped to be. His rapping was fine, his rhymes were good, the beats were great, but it just didn't really come together until the last song. I didn't realize until listening through this, but DOOM doesn't really do hooks or choruses for the most part. He tends to prefer rap from start to finish, with shorter songs as well. Which is fantastic, because rap hooks are very rarely any good. The last track exemplified this, keeping it concise and powerful. Here's hoping DOOM does more production in the future.




Artist: CZARFACE & MF DOOM
Title: CZARFACE Meets Metal Face
Genre: Hip hop
Release: March 30, 2018

The final album in our journey and DOOM's first album after his son passed away in 2017 at the age of 14. Many artists would go into a slump after such a tragedy, but it just seemed to inspire DOOM to dig deeper into darker facets of his mind and use them in his music. I wasn't honestly expecting to like this as much as I did, given I hadn't heard much fanfare. But CZARFACE is a more interesting group than I expected, consisting of Wu Tang's Inspectah Deck, producer 7L, and Esoteric, a rapper I generally enjoy listening to. The music is interesting and, though the album lags in the second half, it never gets boring. All three rappers hold their own, trading verses and trying to one-up another over and over. It leads to an entertaining clash of styles and a very unexpected collaboration. Not in my favorites of his work, but I'm glad to add this to my Playlist of DOOM.



Alright, well, that's the end of DOOM's main work. I'm going to go on and dig into EPs and his instrumental series, but I don't think I'll chronicle it here. That was my main adventure, everything else is going to be just unearthing any gems I didn't get to. Sorry if you read all that. Thanks for the patience.
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.

*

Online honk

  • *
  • Posts: 3347
  • resident goose
    • View Profile
Re: Snupes' Must-Listen-To List (Recommend me albums!)
« Reply #303 on: June 16, 2018, 03:00:47 AM »
sorry who are you
ur retartet but u donut even no it and i walnut tell u y