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München ( BY ) - Germany
Admin of artists : Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill
Website : http://moinlabs.de
Joined : July 20, 2007
Latest starred albums
As the album is short, so will be my review: relatively unexcited music (which is well what would be expected for music marked as "easy listening"), however, the orchestration juxtaposes that with some harsh, ennerving choices.
"Easy Listening" and "Lounge" has, for me, always been of hiding the interesting beauty in details, a little obscured from view by a chilling surface. Beneath that surface, no beauty is hidden with this release.
'nuff said. I don't get the idea behind this album, why it is tagged "idm" and "experimental", or why I don't go out and listen to a proper interpretation (including playing it myself).
Take one spoonful of the jazzy groove of Zony Mash, two cups of aggression and sonic arrangement from a Ruins record, a few ounces of Beer for Dolphins, throw in dashes of and old Massacre and some Naked City, stir well and fry...
This act (which unfortunately doesn't tell anything about itself) obviously got the concept of instrumental progressive rock right: relatively short, almost catchy tunes, non-diatonic (though not atonal-seeming) melodies, aggressive sounds and all that on top of a grooving yet lively rhythm section.
There is not a specific track to single out. While I could not discover any links between the individual pieces and they rather seem to stand as separate (if somewhat similar) entities, any part of the album works just fine.
Keep up the good work! Highly recommended.
The vocals are often the first thing that captures the attention. With that opus, it is definitely the case: they suck so much that you instantly want to turn the music off. This relates to the arrangement, the quality and the recording.
The music appears to me as a mix of Eighties wave and post-psychedelic, although not in an interesting way. Taking the bad vocals and the lack of catchy arrangements aside, there are in fact two tracks which I somewhat like, which may be caused by the fact that they sound very similar. For that, I give one point.
Another point for the genre-satirical "3:33" length of each and every track
The 303. Roland's "transistor bass", which completely failed in its intended role to serve as a play-along bass player for solo guitarists, did define the sound of Acid, Rave and Techno more than any other piece of gear and thus replaced the guitar as the most important instrument in popular music for a considerable amount of time.
So what to expect from an album titled "Revenge of the 303"? Glitch Galore? Circuit Bending? Oldskool Acid? An overview over all the musical styles that contain 303 sounds?
A look at other albums by Mischapex (and also a look at his equipment lists, which for some reason he did not post for this album) suggests otherwise.
"A 303 theory" already starts out to combine various 303s (one of them used percussively to nice effect), but already here, pad-like digital synths are mixed with the attack of the 303s.
The album continues to be mixed in styles and methods, taking as examples "Dark site of the 303"s doomy and gloomy ambient structures, sampled voices mixed with real "melodies" played by a 303 on "The supreme power", aggresive breakbeats which sound like Thomas Jenkinson lost his bass guitar on "Afx 303" and "Maximum 303", and finally a nice remix track with "I remember you 303", albeit on this one the 303 sounds don't fit in with the rest of the track.
The album in its entirety leaves mixed feelings with me. For one, there are some very addictive tunes contained here, and to pick one example of many, I'd like to name once again "A 303 theory". And there's a variety of styles centered around the instrument under scrutinization.
On the other hand, it's often the case that you get the impression that the 303 sound is used "just because", not because it fits in well in that specific context - and this most prominently on "I remember you 303". Finally, it seems to me that in the last third, the artist simply ran out of new ideas to follow.
So finally, if you're longing for that fresh view on 303 use, I'd recommend you check out some of those outstanding tunes mentioned here, or simply the first five. These can be recommended almost without hestitation.
Death metal/hardcore mix in a very authentic way. There's short songs, simple structure, but, most importantly - it's HEAVY!
Not for your intellectual kind of listening, but if you're looking for that kind of music that hits your balls with a wooden sledge hammer repeatedly at 160bpm, then go for Carmina!
An album with eight tracks and a total playing time of about 17 minutes - which points at an average playing time of about two minutes, which is "short" by any standard except for some harcore acts.
Then there's the list of genres, which involves ten of them - some as disparately-seeming as "funk" and "ambient". Ambient and funk, both on a 17-minute album. Can this work?
It doesn't. First of all, the constant changes in mood are somewhat disturbing, even more so as it doesn't seem like they are meant to be that. You have a rave tune like "Black Sheep", continue for two minutes of Acid Jazz in "Stay tuned" before moving into rave territory in "You can do it". What's more, the two-minute-frame does not work for some (or rather any) of those various styles presented here. The tracks seem more like a musical idea, meant as the basis for a remix artist to work on and expand it into an actual song.
And this last statement also holds true for the entire album. A collection of musical ideas (some very appealing I have to say, others not so much) does not form a good record - at least from my point of view.
Ever since I joined jamendo back in 2007, I have been listening to the music of SaReGaMa. I really enjoyed their "4 Elements", as well as basically all of their releases.
"4D Reality" is their take on a mainly ambient-ish shape of sound, and contains some of their best tracks so far - among them the striking "Afterimage", and the outright funky-electronic-ethinc "Shanti". And on any of the tracks, which span a wide musical range with a lot of electronic, dance as well as ethnic and ambient influences, it becomes clear that the artist is indeed a master of his trade.
Yet there are downsides: even though there are great tracks on that album, it misses a cohesiveness which lets you want to listen to the album in one go. Being an album man (vs. single man), I certainly enjoy works of musical art where whole of the album is more than the sum of its tracks - and here, the whole actually seems less than the sum.
Still, a collection of some outstanding tracks!
This album leaves a very mixed impression with me. There are things which shine outrightly, others which appear out of place and boring.
The tunes on the album appear as a mixture of (mostly programmed?) drums, electric bass, keys (mostly electric piano), some sax lead voices and a granish of synth and arpeggiator textures, electronic percussive noises and electronic percussion.
There are things which are musical, clever, capturing - the combination of a simple, yet deceptive drum beat, combined with a counterpoint of programmed percussion, changing synth arpeggios, and an outstanding use of the bass guitar (does the artist play bass as his main instrument?). Then there are sax and keyboard leads which...well, basically, suck.
With that combination, I simply don't know where to put this album. The disturbing (in a negative way) solo breaks make it unusable as some lounge music, which the rest of the art (including great sonic production) would otherwise hint at. Then again, as a "more than lounge" (electronic) jazz record, the absence of capturing melodies and lead breaks makes it a no-go.
With that, even the nice cover art can't really save the show...as I said, I'm torn apart by this album, hence the rating of "dead center".
Basically, Miles Davis' explorations in the seventies started it all: that phenomenon called "NuJazz", and in the days where due to lack of musical creativity, every style of music got the prefix "Nu" and some hiphop influences added, it's easy to forget which great musician rooted that desaster.
The Kolektyw Etopiryna finally silently slips some new approach under that ill-fated moniker - and their approach to "NuJazz" is not exactly new, either, it rather is a fusion of various jazz styles from the past - including NuJazz (whatever that exactly means).
There's the all-important Davis salute in "Jazz Emulator", presented in two versions (with funny version numbering - will music in the 21st century all have version numbers like software?). A deceptively simple groove forms the basis for some non-harmonic explorations on organ and trumpet, before we move into a completely genre-atypical silent part.
The odd combinations continue on the next track - a really quiet and subtle affair, more in the realm of early Art Ensemble of Chicago work, starting off with beautiful (improvised) double bass/piano interplay, before odd electronic noises and glitchy loops take it to the present.
There's lots of bebop influences, too, reminding in its drums/bass/two horns lineup of some early Ornette Coleman work, all in all, there's a lot of great influences to be discovered.
The greatest thing that can be said about this album is that it's not what you'd expect of a "NuJazz" album at all! Rather, it's an interesting, beautiful, if somewhat challenging collage of jazz - highly recommended
