An Endless Sporadic - Ameliorate
Track 1, Anything: Starts off with some nice sparse riffing. Production is on point, very clear and bright, if a little lacking in intensity. Instrumentation is solid. Lots of stuff is happening, sort of pleases the part of me that digs, like, hella and ****. A little bit mathy, which is cool.
Now it's gone into some softer, pretty bass stuff and a synth, which is fine, then back into riffs. Not necessarily an aesthetic that I super dig, but it's well made.
Track 2, Impulse: This time, less distortion on the guitars. Now moving on to, like, fat classic rock sounding guitar riffs. Some atmospheric synths in the background are a little nice. Softer section here isn't really doing anything for me.
Oh, hey, funky guitars now. And now back away from that to more intense instrumentation. Although I don't really feel like the production really captures any type of viscera, so that's a little bit moot. I guess one criticism is that none of these track really like they're going anywhere. Also, there isn't a lot of interplay between the instruments, and it's pretty obvious that there was a lot of overdubbing done. Which is fine, mind you, except that it actually feels pretty stale and clinical.
Track 3, Sun of Pearl:
Some atmospheric synths start it off. Don't really care for them. With that being said, this one feels a little bit more visceral. Some interesting stuff gets overlayed. Oh, but now it's just jumping between things, without really making anything feel remotely coherent. I also feel like the songs do very little to differentiate themselves in my head because of this. This feel exceedingly like soundtrack music -- I don't think it's that interesting on it's own. Obviously, there is some degree of technical proficiency, but the songwriting and lack of any type of interesting style or aesthetic bores the hell out of me.
Track 4, The Adventures of Jabubu
Still pretty uninterested. A lot of what's here feels pretty like ****ty midi instruments that aren't executed in any interesting way. Reminds me of a slightly heavier version of elevator music. It's taking a style of music, and making sure that it absolutely fades into the back of my head. Actually, and keyboardey-things sound lifted directly from muzak.
Final thoughts: I mildly enjoyed this ep, but I probably won't be revisiting it anytime soon.