Trollheart

Not important. It was just a joke to lighten the mood as YD was upset with ya. On we go...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Title: Album
Artiste: Girls
Genre: Indie
Familiarity: Zero

Track 1(Love) Nice jangly guitar, not crazy about the singer.
Track 2(Love) Really like this one; can kind of hear Elvis Costello in his voice now. Great bouncy poppy sound to it, great melody. A real improvement.
Track 3(Love) Now he sounds like Geldof! Ah whatever. This has a nice slow vibe to it. Really like it. Great percussion.
Track 4(Love) Gorgeous guitar intro here
Track 5(Love) Man this is mad! Rock and roll rules! Great energy and a lot of fun while
Track 6(Love) I love this for a much different reason. A great morose ballad with some optimism in the lyric. Quite a simple melody, which makes it even better.
Track 7(Love) A really nice little ballad, puts me in mind of The Cars at their best.
Track 8(Love) Kicking things up now with a really strong guitar. Have liked everything on this album so far. Don't see that changing before the end. Back to the Elvis vocal. Some great phased guitar here. What? I don't know: sounds like it to me. I don't even know what a phased guitar is! But it sounds cool. Love the ending.
Track 9(Love) Another slow, kind of moody piece. Really good.
Track 10(Love) A more uptempo track, lots of energy, great guitar, again quite simple
Track 11(Love) Back to slow and moody, with a slight Country feel to it. Love it. The sort of low, crooned vocal in the background is really different and I like it a lot.
Track 12(Love) The very epitome of an indie track? Back to the Geldof style vocal with a certain sixties feel to it. Good closer.

End result: Had no idea what to expect here, but given that this rec came on the back of a proposed slew of punk albums I thought that was what it would be. A pleasant surprise, and a very good album. If the other one is rated better, then I should probably listen to that as well.

So, Love or Hate? No end of Love here!

Chances of a full review: 7/10

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Justthefacts

Glad you liked it Troll! You're welcome

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The Best Collection You'll See Today

Trollheart

Title: There's a light that enters houses with no other house in sight
Artiste: David Sylvian
Genre: Experimental
Familiarity: Little; heard some Japan and my sister had his greatest hits (the one with the dog on the front). Other than that, nothing.

Track 1 (Love): Just doesn't work here as it's all one track. I hear “Rain birds” in the opening part, then the spoken vocal sounds a little slurred and maybe meant to be sleepy, but it's pretty good. The ambient sounds are well done: rain on the rooftops, steps on the landing, breathing etc. Kind of an oriental twist to the music around the twenty-fifth minute (it runs for just over an hour) then the piano gets very ominous all on its own in minute twenty-six. Kind of like listening to an audio book alone in a dark house while the rain lashes down outside and the wind howls, and you have no idea who you are, where you are or how you got there, or indeed if you'll ever make it out of there.

Some violin now, and the vocal weaves in and out of the music like a drunk man or a sleepwalker trying to find his way out of this weird house he seems to have found himself in. Thirty-seven minutes in now and we have some very weird, brokenup vocals which would have me running for the exit, if I knew where it was. Spoo-ky! Bells now, then the vocals settle, partially (still fragmented in the background) but in the forty-seventh minute almost everything fades away and we're left with sounds of dripping water, creaking floorboards and other, less identifiable noises, before suddenly a single, dark piano note rings through the stillness, soon followed by others as Sylvian re-establishes the sombre and disquieting mood of the piece.

A wild, weird, almost screeching sound rises up out of the dark, like the restless spirit of some doomed soul fated to tread these halls forever, always seeking egress but never finding it. It moans and cries, lamenting its lot with a bitter malice in its voice, as the piano keeps its slow cadence like some metronome of the soul. Now there's the creaking of doors and a more dissonant piano, as if the spirit is panicking (can spirits panic? Maybe we're transferring our fears onto it) as the drawling voice returns, scaring what's left of our wits out of us. He's talking about crucifixes now, but we really don't hear the words, as we're just gently rocking back and forth in the corner repeating over and over to ourself “It's just a dream! It's just a dream!” Is it?

As he stops speaking, with the title of the album his final words, something screams at us and we duck back into the safety/horror of the shadows, trying to make ourselves as small as possible. Weird sounds permeate the air, like morse code or electrical impulses or something. A last mournful violin accompanies the final vocal, which we thought already delivered. We feel our eyes begin to drift shut. Mustn't fall asleep. Must stay awake. Must. Not ......

End result: Atmospheric to the max. I would have preferred a more perhaps dark or even energetic vocal; this seemed a little bored to me, but what do I know? Very impressive.

So, Love or Hate? No way would I hate this. This is a Love.

Chances of a full review: 0/10, as I think I pretty much did that already above.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Frownland

Glad you liked it man. I was afraid that the poetry would turn you off of it but I was right in thinking that the composition was top notch enough for you to overcome that. Here's one in something of a similar vein:

John Cage. - A String Quartet in Four Parts

There's a great version by the Arditti Quartet on Spotify that also has Cage's Four on it. You can just listen to the A String Quartet but if you like that one enough, Four will suit your fancy just as much.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Trollheart

Title: Deltron 3030
Artiste: Deltron 3030
Genre: Hip-hop
Familiarity: Zero

Track 1() I'm not going to be rating “songs” that are thirty seconds or so long.
Track 2(Love) I like this; kind of relaxed hip-hop with a shot of sci-fi and kind of electronica in the music
Track 3() See track 1; in fact now I'm just not going to even mention these little “bridging tracks”
Track 4(Love) Like this one too; the kind of Arabic riff is cool
Track 5(Love) This is very uptempo, fun and kind of reminds me of those old disco songs from the seventies. Nice.
Track 7(Love) Love the “Twilight Zone” riff!
Track 8(Love) The drum loop (?) is great, as are the alienesque keys. “Upgrade the gray matter, cos one day it may matter!” Class.
Track 10(Love) Yeah, that was pleasant enough.
Track 12(Love) Like the synths on this also the chorus is really good; kind of takes you by surprise after all the rapping
Track 14(Love) Nice to hear some guitar, even some harmonica (though I'm sure it's synthesised). Good female vocal too.
Track 16(Love) Has a certain amount of drama about it, ominous but doesn't really sound like it
Track 17(Love) A decent track.
Track 18(Love) Yeah it's okay
Track 19(Love) Uh-huh...
Track 20(Love) And again.

End result: Nothing I can hate, interesting but maybe too long; I kind of lost interest about halfway through. Would probably get into it more on subsequent listens. Maybe.

So, Love or Hate? For now it's certainly a Love

Chances of a full review: 4/10

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The Batlord

A pleasant surprise. I figured you wouldn't hate it completely, but didn't think you'd be anything more than indifferent. I also agree that hip hop albums tend to go on too long, BTW. Don't know why that is, since the songs are often more to the point and structurally stripped down when compared to a lot of other genres. I'd love it if hip hop artists started releasing more thirty-to-forty-minute-long albums.

So, would you say it's more the subject matter and language used in a lot of hip hop that turns you off to the genre, more than the actual music? I can't imagine any totally anti-hip hop people like my mother or uncle getting into this regardless, so clearly you're not as close minded to it as you might appear at first glance. Your slowly growing appreciation for more extreme forms of metal certainly undercuts your assumption that you "know what you like" as well.

Digression: Honestly, I suspect you just got too used to being in an isolated musical bubble throughout your long, long, loooong life, and possibly never had the experience of a community with the free flow of ideas between music fans that exists here, and so just assumed that your tastes had become set in stone to an extent. With your opening yourself up to all sorts of recs through this thread and others, I think you should give yourself more credit and really consider abandoning altogether your stubborn stances against such genres as punk, hip hop, jazz, etc, since they really don't seem to reflect the reality of your potential musical evolution. TBH, you're coming off as a late-blooming Goofle ATM.

Getting back on topic: I'm not trying to flood you with hip hop recs, but right now I'm just academically curious about testing the bounds of where your like/dislike for the genre lies. If you can like it at all, then clearly you can connect to music which is rhythm-focused, rather than melody-focused, even if you have a limit to how "hard" the rhythm is, and how little melody there is.

Would you say that something like this is to your taste (just a song, not an album)?





Another test. These guys are definitely gangsta rap, but they combine their vocal approach with actual singing (at the same time, so not just changing from one to the other), creating a unique combo of hip hop rhythms and often mellow melodies that I really don't think would fall into any stereotype you might have in mind when you think of gangsta rap.





You don't have to listen to those just to make me happy, but I'm really curious about your reaction to both.

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WWWP

Ah yeah, everybody loves Deltron. Great stuff.

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#DEMODFROWNLAND
#TERMLIMITSFORMODERATORS

Trollheart

Yours is coming up real soon, don't worry.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Yeah, like I've said before, it's the whole culture, the violence, the strutting and preening, the disrespect to women, the expletives, and often the speed of the rapping that I don't get. Honestly, a lot of the music itself is not bad, but sometimes, most times, listening to some guy go on about how hard or tough or mean or rich he is just doesn't do it for me. I was thinking of trying out a guy I think DJ repped, or maybe it was Antonio: Chance the Rapper?
Thanks man, that's a real compliment. And yeah I think you're right. For a long, long, loooonnng time all I had was the radio, my LP then CD collection and that was it. Nobody at work was really deep into music, and the only guy who was was into Bowie, Eagles, that kind of thing. So there was no incentive or encouragement to expand my musical tastes. Plus, remember back then (Triassic Age) there was no real internet and certainly no free downloadable music, so if you wanted an album you paid your 15/20 Euro for it, and if you didn't like it you were ****ed, so you were VERY careful about what you bought. Even second hand, I'd only buy albums from bands I knew. There simply wasn't the money to allow experimentation.

Also factor in my mindset at that time, really up to about 2009/2010 really: I was like a moody child folding his arms and saying NO! I was not abotu to try new music because I thought I hated it and sure why would I spend money or just listen to "that crap"? Not to mention that there was very definitely a feeling of superiority --- "Oh I don't listen to chart music/rap/punk/jazz --- I'm a REAL music fan!" Jesus! It's only now that I'm breaking out a little, and really you guys all deserve a lot of credit for that. Other people, when faced with my stubborness in the face of their music, could have said, fine, sod ya, ya don't know what you're missing.

But in general people here really tried. Like, if I wasn't into jazz they'd try to find something accessible, you'd look for a way into death or black metal for me, and it's really only through your forbearance and patience that I'm beginning to stir a little outside of that bubble you so correctly mentioned I was in. So thanks to you, and to all of you for helping to educate me. Even if there is still some of your music I don't and will never get.

yes, I loved that! Great upbeat lyrics, innocent almost and no violence, almost more sung than rapped, something I could listen to. No expletives, or very few, and no misogyny. I know, but still...
Yeah, that one was ok as well. I'm not sure I'd listen to a whole lot more of that sort of music, but that was certainly not too bad.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018