#I like uptempo stuff and i love it when artists are obviously fucking around with ideas. Igorrr is very much that.

[newkiqx]

Oh my god Heart is confirmed too?

the hype is real

ok i'm making a music post

So Graspop is a metal festival on paper, which is not usually my go to, but there's also a bunch of rock and some other genres. First confirmed name was tool, which i have been a sucker for since I was 17 when they completely blew me away with their live performance

my watch list so far includes:

Alice cooper Avenged Sevenfold Babymetal Body Count (Ice-T's metal band! it fucking slaps) (heres another one) (gotta include this one too sorry) Bruce Dickinson Deep Purple Electric Callboy (if you don't know them please watch these videos. They're hilarious and their upbeat power/europop x metal mixture shouldn't be this catchy, fun and genuinely good, but it is) Heart Iron Allies Judas Priest Limp Bizkit Megadeth Pendulum Scorpions Tool

and more!

it's been so long since i've been to an absolutely stacked festival. Can't wait

[radramblog]

Album Discussion- Saccharine Synergy

I previously discussed Floral Shoppe, the real codifier for early vapourwave, the album that made it huge for a bit, and the album that defined what the genre sounded like for quite some time afterwards. After the memes and marble busts had passed, however, and the internet largely moved on to whatever else it focussed on, the musicians interested in vapourwave stuck around, kept innovating, and created subgenres within subgenres. From this tide pool of aesthetic electronic was born vaportrap, a spin that combined the look and feel of vapourwave with trap beats and such- likely the best known artist from this niche is Blank Banshee. It also was the inspiration for one Jeff Johnson, better known as VAPERROR, who in 2014 released his 2014 album titled Mana Pool. Potential MTG references aside, the album would lead to a total of 10 albums in the last 7 years, the most recent being the album we’ll be looking at today: Saccharine Synergy. Short, sweet, and sodden with synths, this 2020 offering was a blessing in a year that really needed them.

(I might be completely wrong about some of these facts btw, especially some of the genre stuff. Take me with a grain of salt!)

Considering this is a pretty cool album (and Jeff seems like a pretty cool dude, I follow him on twitter), I thought this was worth a looksee.

Our first track is Sweet Release, introducing us to the mood of this album. Now admittedly I haven’t listened to a monstrous amount of this sub-sub-genre, but to that limited knowledge I’m pretty sure most of the time it doesn’t sound this…bright? Like this track has a bit of an undercurrent in some of the bass, but it’s pretty treble-y (I know music words), an ethereal haze cut through by this glittering melody that I can’t really help but bop to. I feel the name of this song is kinda funny, it’s a great name for opening a playful album, and a great one for closing a somber one. This is, obviously, the former.

Pineapple Passion, our second track, sounds deadass out of the VA-11 Hall-A soundtrack. To be clear, that’s a huge compliment. It’d fit fucking seamlessly, it’s got that same rising rhythm and I think uses some similar instrumentation. Jeff really be peeking Garoad’s notes here. With that in mind, it does stand out a bit in its own ways, largely on account of the…warping? That goes on in parts of the track. Like how a DJ’d fuck with a record while doing a set. It adds a little flavour to this dessert of a track.

Next up: Dream Treat. This one comes in waves, elements fading in and out, instruments doing lines with long rests in between. If I’m not mistaken, this sounds pretty heavily panned, to the point that with headphones on you almost get confused as to where things are coming from? This might be a me thing. This song is a vibe, but I don’t like it as much as the previous two so far.

Wiggly Watermelon slowly fades in next, a faster-paced take on what we’ve been doing so far. It’s lead by this uptempo, light beat that you only truly hear once everything else cuts back about halfway into the track. It’s a get things done song. I think the term I could best use to describe this album so far is…aquatic? If that makes sense? A lot of the songs give that sort of colourful, bubbly, tropical vibe, and the dolphins and water on the cover art really solidify that feeling. I will say, if that’s what VAPERROR was setting out to do here, then he pretty well captured the vibe. Catch me at an indoor pool leaning back on one of those shitting chairs blasting this, and then getting kicked out because my Pina Colada is inappropriate to be drinking around all these kids and also they aren’t licenced. Where was I?

Gojira is our next track, and feels distinct on this album in that it’s kind of inverting the focus of several other songs- the lower-pitched melodies are more in focus and the higher synths are in the background. It’s also the shortest track on the album- I mean this whole thing is pretty snappy, the full album clocks in under half an hour- but it doesn’t overstay its welcome, considering how repetitive it is. It’s aight? Its aight.

Salsa Verde is this album’s single, and man, if this ain’t the music to a shop in a video game then I don’t know what the fuck it is. It’s a light-hearted, boppy little number that whispers consumerism into thine ear. Buy this album, quoth the instrumental. This feels like an exceptionally refined example of what this album is trying to go for, just an song that makes your brain go ‘ehehehehehe’ in the background while you’re doing things. The…bridge? On the track is a really smooth little subdued bit I quite appreciate, as well. It’s all here to get you going, you know. There’s just that one little riff going that sounds so iconic, that little shop aesthetic, I don’t know what it’s based on but you’ll know it when you hear it. And no, I don’t know why it’s called that.

Next, the title track: Saccharine Synergy. You wanna get that very vapourwavey ethereal computational aesthetic well here you go fucko. We got panflutes in this fucker, because they’re fun, and that little chiptune-esque line is similarly enjoyable. It’s got the beat coming in at just the right moment, it’s got a groovy bassline, it’s a good time.

This next track is deadass called “69 Game Boys Singing All at Once”, which is the single greatest song title I have ever heard, although I might be somewhat biased. Considering there is a synth line in this that does almost feel like lyrics muffled to the point of incomprehensibility, it probably isn’t too inaccurate either. I don’t know why, but I really enjoy the percussion in this, there’s a fair bit going on with it, and it occasionally just gets hammered in in a satisfying way. I feel like this is the most…”song”-y of the tracks on this album? Considering that technically none of these tracks are songs because songs require lyrics, but no-one gives a shit about that pedantry anyway.

Our final track: Super Megaenergizing Powerup. Yeah, ok. This is less Power Star/Invincibility Candy than the name suggests, however, since it’s possibly the lowest, hardest track on the album- though it does have a similar energy despite the darker tone. This sounds the most like Blank Banshee than anything else here, but it still has flourishes and instrumentation that are entirely VAPERRORS own. I guess I’m more comparing the mood, considering Blank tends darker than anything close to what’s in this album. God I fucking *love* the piano line in this song, though, it just comes out of nowhere and gives the second part of this track an organic edge to balance out the harsher electronic noise that follows it. There’s something almost harrowing about how this track ends, building up with this intense noise until it all finally cuts off, ending the album.

What Saccharine Synergy provides, in my opinion, is something music like this often lacks in my experience- it’s a very fun, energetic addition to a largely sombre genre. It’s a new direction for VAPERROR, considering how slow and methodical his last previous solo album, System Delight, turned out. Saccharine Synergy is an excellent album to get shit done to, providing the right kind of energy to satisfy the ADHD-brain housed in my skull. My biggest complaint, I guess, is that it’s too short- easily the briefest album I’ve talked about on this blog, and one of the shortest I can think of off the top of my head. But that’s fine too- unlike the consumer products vapourwave tends to parody, its something here to be appreciated while it’s here, and reused when the time is right. Solid/10,

[cadpadawan]

Day #5 - A Song that needs to be played LOUD!

There are a few spesific genres, to which you simply cannot do full justice without blasting the songs at full volume, such as techno, trance, drum & bass, and most metal genres. I highly doubt that there is any additional value to be unveiled in, say, cocktail jazz, lounge and ambient wall-paper music, by turning the volume knob up a notch. Certain uptempo rock anthems also are best experienced with the volume cranked up to 11, in the best Spinal Tap fashion. I'm not sure, where I should start with today's music challenge, though... the multitude of options present quite a challenge, once again. Maybe I could set the record straight, for once and for all, by picking one epitome of loud-assedness for each genre. Most of my personal trance favourites date back to the golden era around the turn of the millennia. It was, quite frankly, relatively peculiar time in my life, to say the least, what with the dubious number of music projects, McJobs, doomed attempts to study for a profession that inherently was not suited for my creative spritit etc... It was a frigging, never-ending rollercoaster ride, so it was only appropriate, that the soundtrack for my adolescent dumb-fuckery consisted mainly of the epic trance classics of the era. A common characteristic of trance music is the mid-song climax, followed by the mellow breakdown, with the industry standard being something in the lines of: 1. toss the pedestrian 4/4 beat aside for a moment 2. conjure an atmospheric synth sequence that's vamping as the backdrop for the melodic hook! The melodic motif is usually an ascending synth line, sugar-coated with the paradidmatic flanger-effect, in order to resonate the stereotypical sensations of an ecstasy rush. Executed properly, such a trance breakdown can give you the chills even without the aid of any illegal, mind-altering drugs. A perfect example would be Dj Tiesto's superb remix of the song Silence by the Canadian new-agey electronic music duo Delerium, featuring the amazing mezzo-soprano of Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan. Genres that are heavy on the sub-bass obviously benefit a great deal from being blasted at full volume. Although, I haven't yet fully come to terms with modern EDM-subgenres, such as trap and dubstep. In general, these new genres tend to provoke a thought inside my mind, that modern street-drugs are getting overly hideous. Some tracks I've found extremely hilarious, though I'm not really sure, if it was the artist's initial intention. That's why I've even added these tracks to my carefully compiled Spotify playlists. I'm talking about tracks such as Black Beatles by Rae Sremmurd & Gucci Mane, Panda by Desiigner, 679 by Fetty Wap, and Bad and Boujee by Migos & Lil Uzi Vert. Nevertheless, I highly doubt that I will be returning to these particular tracks, say, in ten or twenty years time – unless I wish to organize an impromptu, unpleasant surprise to my age peer group in the nursing home. Dubstep, in turn, sounds to me like someone, going through a convulsive type of an epileptic seizure, is improvising with electronic instruments. Maybe it's because I've deemed the whole genre as a synonym for Skrillex. On the other hand, I really love Burial's album Untrue. It's really dark and emotive stuff, with a grain of old school 90's vibes. I have no clue, why Burial is often labeled as a dubstep artist. If there is such a subgenre of dubstep, that is fundamentally layered with gloomy and dystopian soundscapes, in the spirit of Burial-esque sound aesthetics, I just might have to check it out. In a positive way, Burial's music reminds me of the golden era of drum&bass, that started somewhere in the mid-90's. I think it was in 1995, when I heard Goldie's epic Inner City Life. It was one of those musical moments of illumination, a.k.a. ”Stop the press! What the fuck is THIS?!?”. I instantly bought the epochal and timeless (sic!) drum&bass classic album Timeless by Goldie, and immersed myself in its' other-worldly soundscapes for weeks on end. There was one particularly street-smart record store in Helsinki: Spinefarm. It was one of the very few stores, where I could find class A jungle vinyl. I hauled shitloads of 12”-maxis and EP's home from that Aladdin's cave, most of which I have lost somewhere since then. Intelligent jungle, as the more atmospheric drum&bass was called back then, was that particular type of high-speed breakbeat stuff, that I was most drawn into. Well, in all honesty, I'm a bit of a slut, when it comes to atmospheric synth textures, layered on a syncopated jazz-groove, even at high-speed. Furthermore, if the ear-candy of this particular type is driven by a laid-back dub-bassline, and ornamented with a few casually strewn modal jazz chord progressions, fingered on a vintage Rhodes-piano, I will be inclined to succumb to the ”shut up, and take my money”-approach. The Looking Good/Good Looking-label, that was led by the British drum&bass producer LTJ Bukem, was one of those go-to labels for me, with kick-ass releases, such as Bukem's own scene classics: Demon's Theme, Music and Horizons. British jungle artists didn't exactly rush to perform in Finland, during the genre's prime time in the mid-90's, but I managed to witness dj Krust and Aqua Sky. The Finnish electronic jazz pioneer band Rinneradio also had a brief love affair with the drum&bass aesthetics, on their Rok album, that was released in 1996. I guess it must've been around that time, when I saw the band perform at Vanha Yo-Talo, in Helsinki. It was a superb gig! I was also a frequent face at the one-and-only drum&bass club, that had a residency at one gay bar in Helsinki, hosted by Dj Alimo. The vast majority of the drum&bass cognoscenti, that congregated at the venue every Thursday, consisted of boring heterosexuals, so the bar's old regulars soon disappeared. Soon, in the next couple of years, the drive and excitement of this new genre also kind of disappeared. I haven't really bothered to keep up with the drum&bass scene after 2005. However, I do listen to those goldien oldies, released during the artistically coherent time interval of 1995-2001. For some stupid reason, quite many of the classics are missing from Spotify, like the magnificent Colours album by Adam F, or the ultra-rare Pseudo Jazz-EP by Justice – no, not the French electro-duo, but the drum&bass alias of the British producer-musician Tony Bowes. Both releases represent the polished and ”intelligent” Bukem-styled approach. On a funny side note: I remember, how these atmospheric tracks were usually blasting in the main hall/dancefloor in a typical 1996 drum&bass rave – and only five years later, the very same tracks were aired as the background music in the chill-out room of a hip trance party. O tempora, o mores! Well, anyways... The seismic sub-bass of a stereotypical drum&bass anthem just won't sound the same, when it's not bellowing through the club-PA loud as fuck...and the same universal truth applies to techno. Whereas, in the case of metal, it depends heavily on the very type of metal, whether the increased volume enhances the listening experience in a positive way, or not. Simple staccato rhythms and powerchords usually work wonders...or, what the hell do I know; I compiled a list of songs that sound kick-ass when played really loud. At first glance, however, I couldn't pinpoint any common factor contributing to this peculiar phenomenon. What can I say? If it works, then why not let it. I think today's challenge is pretty much wrapped, so...until next time, tomorrow, that is. Adios! Wolfmother: Joker and the Thief Ihsahn: Undercurrent Underworld: Born Slippy (Nuxx) Slipknot: Duality Skindred: Set It Off The Comet Is Coming: Summon the Fire Fluke: Absurd Dead Letter Circus: The Mile Infected Mushroom: None of This Is Real Leila K: Electric Lab-4: Candyman Shinedown: Devour BT: Giving Up The Ghost Thränenkind: Monument