May 28th, 2014
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Particle Protocol by
Speaker Gain Teardrop
Huh, I could've sworn I've reviewed more Japanese post-rock. Speaker Gain Teardrop is an experimental post-rock Japanese band, with glitch and ambient elements. Not a very inspiring combination, as there are multiple bands that do that. 65daysofstatic is one that comes to mind almost immediately. Just because an idea is uninspiring doesn't mean that it'd always be bad though.
Colophon starts off with beautiful yet melancholic guitars. The introduction acts as a warning for what it is coming. It starts off very minimally and progresses more and more... becoming more intimidating but at the same time remarkable. The sounds of looming disaster further enhances the mood... and vanishes for a brief moment. Before you realise it, the wall of instrumentation just explodes. While it's nowhere as spectacular as a couple of other tracks I've listened to, it's still beautiful. The sounds of guitars crying of joy almost make the track too overwhelming for me. Great track.
Particle Protocol is as generic post-rock could get. There are some ambient influences in here for sure, but nothing impressive. Nothing really happens here, it just wanders around in random directions. It does take control of itself halfway through though. It realised that it was being too aimless and just transforms to something larger. It's a pretty relaxing track relaxing as a whole, but it's an odd contrast from the previous one. Couldn't really find any mutual concept between the two. The rest of the crescendo is alright, nothing special. Respectable regardless.
The variation here is quite impressive. Charcoal Feather is a minimal IDM track, very light. It's nothing spectacular, feels more like filler more than anything else. It's unmemorable, but at the same time I wouldn't mind listening to it again. Just not something I'd revisit. Abbreviation shows a landscape of a desolate wasteland. How it presents the landscape is a little uninspiring, as I felt that I've listened to it before. However, it's still very clear and vivid. The bitter and depressing atmosphere is as prominent as you could imagine in this track. When you think you've seen the worst, the track hits you with crescendos. It destroys the desolate landscape and creates something more disastrous. How the crescendos ruin everything in its path is so vivid and tragic, almost heartbreaking. Once the destruction is over, it clears up. Surprisingly enough, the landscape hasn't changed much. You realise that you've been looking at a dead piece of land all along. You can't really kill anything that's already dead.
The remix track, Colophon.#02, is actually one of the best tracks in the album. While its distorted instrumentation is gone, Kashiwa Daisuke has put his own spin on it. It's very reminiscent of his older works from Program Music I - always a good thing. However, this track can't be compared to Program Music I in quality. Colophon.#02 is too aimless and stagnant - but it's a pretty listen. I almost like this more than the original, actually. For people who are curious, it is slightly different from the one in Re:. The intro is a lot more detailed than the one in Re:. However, the track seems to take its time much longer than it did in Re:. Some parts feel long-winded, as a result. I do prefer the one in Re: better, but the difference is nearly negligent.
My biggest problem with the album is that it's ultimately not very memorable. In addition to the fact that I'm not a fan of half of these tracks - it doesn't leave me with a good impression. Most of these tracks have been outdone by many other post-rock acts; 65daysofstatic and Yodaka are a few that do. It's a bit aimless too, there really isn't much of a concept to follow and ultimately remember. I do think that a strong post-rock album has an underlying concept behind it - it doesn't seem to exist in this album. An album that's weaker than its sum of its parts, basically.
It's a respectable release. It does feel rather unique at points - but it really isn't. I could compare most of these tracks with many others, which isn't necessarily a good thing. The fact that it can be so easily compared just shows how replaceable some of these tracks are. I really want this band to be more experimental with their work. I heard that they play shoegaze as well, they could embed that into their music. More acts like Yodaka would be absolutely fantastic. We need more shoegaze/post-rock acts. But as it is, it's decent. Not too bad, but there's tons of room for improvement.
Album Highlights: Colophon, Abbreviation, Colophon.#02 (Kashiwa Daisuke Remix)
Track Average Rating: 3.19/5
Overall Rating: 6/10
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Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center: 1961-1973 by
Various Artists (recommended by choof)
This album baffles me. I can't give any background information on ths album because I think it's mainly self-explanatory. The album itself however... is really peculiar. These tracks are incredibly minimal. What makes them move are these robotic/unorthodox beeps and sounds, which I've never heard before. This is really unfamiliar territory for me, and probably for most people as well when they first listen to it.
I see this album as a primitive android trying to communicate with other machines. While the android cannot feel, us, the listeners, could. Postlude From "Music for a Sacred Service" starts off very vaguely, almost too mysterious to be comfortable with. We don't understand the conversations going on, at all. We're kept in the dark for a good majority of the track. We could hear some machines being more responsive than usual at some points, notably towards the end of the track. For some reason - it really scares me. It's as if you don't know what's going to happen at all. Whatever is going to happen is caused by this... android... thing.
I'm pretty certain that there's no concept here, whatsoever. Just a compilation of tracks from the electronic music center. However, for some reason they feel connected. Earth's Magnetic Field almost feels like the mind of the android itself. It starts off very minimally and simple - mirroring the mind of the robot. It gets overloaded with information often - as shown in the spike in volume and larger clusters of sound. On another note, while we construct robots as callous - it doesn't seem to be the case here. These sounds almost feel... dulcet and innocent. But at the same time, it may as well be programmed that way.
Even when it's overloaded, it can only translate its thoughts in its own naive language.
Prelude No. 8 is a lot quieter - but still cold. While there are no other machines to communicate with, but it's still moving. In contrast to what you can hear in its core, it translates very differently on the outside. It sounds very clinical, just as you'd expect a robot to sound. There's something really dark about this track, but I can't point my finger on it. The atmosphere sounds quite sinister, even though only the robot is around. Not sure what this means, but it's a little unsettling.
What really interests me about the album is not the story, but the textures. These tracks, as I said before, are mainly made out of bleeps and bloops. VERY minimal bleeps and bloops. As a result, these minute sounds feel very prominent. Every spike in volume looks and feels like a cluster of noise. Out of Into shows this quite well. I could almost see clusters of sound just moving in this vast grid. The fact that most of the sounds can only be heard through one part of headphones enhance this. They actually give you a direction on where the sounds are. It makes the textures feel a lot more intricate. Some of these sounds almost create a melody - which is odd. It's still odd to me that how only 4-5 sounds in a sequence could make us think of melodies instantaneously.
Cortez is probably the oddball here. It shifts the mood drastically - it's almost pleasant. These distorted low voices almost feel like drones. I've actually never heard sounds like these being used as drones before. It's actually really neat to see it work, although it's really unorthodox. It's very unnerving too, which is a pleasant surprise. Really interesting.
Heh, I thought I was odd for almost feeling emotions while listening to Autechre - specifically Tri Repetae and LP5. I'm not sure what I'll think of myself after this album. This just takes the minimalism to another level. Surprisingly enough, it actually works a lot more viscerally. There's something about the purity of these sounds. Either that, or the textures were intriguing enough to impact me on an emotional level. Not very often that tracks like these really do that, so that's a huge feat.
One of the most leftfield albums I've ever listened to. Not that it's saying much... but jeez. There's absolutely nothing I can compare it to. Autechre is a very loose comparison - you can't compare their works to this. There's a lot of interesting tracks in here, but that's an understatement. Any experimental electronic enthusiast should listen to this at least once. It's an interesting listen. While I can't say that I'm too fond of these, I can definitely respect how they were constructed. Great album.
Album Highlights: Postlude From "Music for a Sacred Service", Out of Into
Track Average Rating: 3.5/5
Overall Rating: 7/10
I'll put up one more review today probably.