Topic: Daily Music Reviews (Summer Challenge)

I took a bet that every day of summer vacation I would listen to and review at least one new album. I'll just quote the rest from my Facebook because this challenge started 2 days ago.

So yeah, I need some more albums because there are 66 days left (without 66 albums recommended) and I believe I should find people with some pretty eclectic tastes here. So please give me some albums, preferably more obscure ones because I plan to review stuff I haven't already heard singles from. Next 2 posts I'll give you a sample of my fairly mediocre writing.

Day 1: Repeater + 3 Songs by Fugazi with a bonus addition of Dopesmoker by Sleep (which I listened to the day before the last day of school.)

Before I listen, here's what I know about Fugazi. They're a fairly famous 80s punk/post-hardcore band who were probably more famous for their $5 live shows and anti-music industry antics than their music. But their music is still critically acclaimed so it's all good. Now to listen.

While I begin listening, let me tell you about what I listened to yesterday, Dopesmoker by Sleep. This is an album that pretty much consists of one song that's 63 minutes. My fear was that I wouldn't enjoy it because it sounds like it would get boring. It did not get boring AT ALL despite being fairly repetitive. The solos were great along with the atmosphere. I feel no more need to write about the Weedian Chronicles so I'll now write about Repeater already.

First minute and I'm already surprised. This is way less inaccessible than I thought. I was expecting something like The Jesus Lizard but this is not that far off from other punk bands, though it isn't any Good Charlotte bullcrap or something like that. The feedback at the end of the first song is awesome. Second song is a bit noisier, and flows nicely into the third song which is an instrumental. No more track-by-track please. Or at least I'll try to avoid it. New paragraph.

9 songs in (yay for no track-by-track) and the formula basically seems to come down to political/working class lyrics (akin to Minutemen) with some jagged guitar work. The original last song (or fourth to last song here) in particular features some pretty awesome shouted vocals.

There are 3 songs which weren't on the first pressing, hence the "+ 3 Songs" bit. The first song is pretty similar to the majority of the first 11 songs. Then we have another instrumental and a short finale song which is a bit more aggressive than the other songs (besides the 11th track).

Overall, this is a pretty good album. The guitar work is pretty great. Dopesmoker is still better though. I should've saved that for the last day, an hour-long song would make an epic last album, no? It already did for the band.

Day 2: Immersion by Pendulum - Album Choice: DoctorHax

I don't know too much about these guys. They play electro-rock and had a few songs in the game Mungyodance, including a remix (correction after googling: Mash-up) of sorts of Daft Punk's most famous song, Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. I also heard the song Another Planet in 2008 and liked it but never bothered looking up another song. So here we go.

It took me a while to hit play for some reason, like several hours. Orchestral, soundtrack-esque intro with chiptune. Not bad thus far, liking the next couple of tracks. 2.5 tracks in and I'm interrupted. Crap.

A little over 4 hours later and I continue where I left off, 3 minutes into track 3. Track 4 is dubstep, a genre I'm not exactly partial to (read: Skrillex makes me want to van Gogh my ears and his live shows are the most worthless crap I've ever seen 2 minutes of). The interesting vocals work though. Up to track 9 and everything seems pretty versatile. Some songs are fast DnB, some songs are electro house (The Island Part 1 reminds me a bit of Swedish House Mafia), some songs are electro-rock and some songs are godawful ear-chafing headache inducing Dubstep. The Island Part II in particular gives me a killer migraine, which sucks when Part 1 was pretty decent.

The 2 tracks after the aforementioned Part II aren't much better to be honest. These attempts at metal come off at best as a cheesy attempt at Nine Inch Nails-esque industrial. At worst, they're a step above I Set My Friends On Fire. The last few songs improve on that by a longshot (except perhaps Self Vs Self, Death Metal and DnB is an effing weird combination) and the last song ends with some nice water effects after all the DnB/Metal/Whatever else to pound in your ears.

There's a deluxe version which adds over 70 minutes of audio (along with almost 50 minutes of video). There really is no reason for that to exist especially when 12 out of 13 tracks are remixes, as this album is already a bit overlong in my opinion. If you were to cut out the less enjoyable dubstep/metal tracks, you'd trim about 20 minutes and be left with a much nicer package of great DnB/Electro House tracks. As it is, this is a 6 or 7 out of 10 solely due to the smatterings of crap between the good music.

this sounds like an interesting project, but would be better served being on one of the many free blog sights on the 'net. you are welcome to advertise the site in your signature file or add a link in your profile. good luck with the bet!