Originally Posted by Trollheart

Title: Never were the way she was
Artiste: Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld
Genre: Instrumental/Ambient
Familiarity: Zero

Track 1(Hate) Ok, apparently both of these people are members or ex-members of Arcade Fire. That doesn't mean a lot to me. But given that one is a saxophonist and one a violinist, am I to assume this is another instrumental album? After suffering through Bay of Kings I'm not quite sure I'm up to that. Opening track is good, lots of peppy violin mostly, but I wonder will I have a lot to say about this album? We'll see. A seven-minute opener is not good though. Gets on my nerves after a while.
Track 2(Love) This one's nicer, more laidback
Track 3(Love) This has a nice kind of cinematic feel about it. Gets a little hyper, which I find offputting. Good work though.
Track 4(Love) That was okay; kind of ambient
Track 5(Love) And this has a dark, kind of menacing feel to it
Track 6(Hate) Too much annoying horn on this. The violin's pretty irritating too.
Track 7(Love) This is nice; kind of reminds me of the soundtrack to Interview with the Vampire
Track 8(Hate) Meh, it's just sound effects mostly. Poor ending.

End result: Possibly it's unfair, but coming off the back of a classical guitar album I just was not in the mood for another instrumental one, and this did little for me. I gave it a lot of Love for the tracks, but I'm just being polite really. I got very little out of this album.

So, Love or Hate? Because I didn't fully hate it it has to be Love, but again it's just by default.

Chances of a full review: 0/10

Originally Posted by grindy

Well, as with all minimalist and somewhat ambient music this should be listened to with some immersion to fully appreciate it, although I'd say that the compositions are varied and complex enough to be entartaining anyway.
Plus the fact that Stetson plays all this at the same time and without effects certainly adds to my enjoyment of the album (although again the music also stands on ist own), not sure whether you really care about the technical aspects of his playing and the unique timbres of his sound.

Originally Posted by Trollheart

Bolded: there is an argument for my listening to these albums the once, and often in something of a hurry as I go through the "assembly-line" idea, get the next one done and move on, detracting from possible enjoyment that might result if I listened to them more, or gave them more time, but that's the situation I'm in; they get one chance to impress and if they don't then that's it I'm afraid.

In Red: I have to say that for the most part I found them both boring and a little dreary. And generally I like violins and cellos, but this did not chime with me at all.

Underlined: No, I have little to no interest in that. I'm not a musician and so that aspect almost never comes into it for me. I don't understand it, so I am in no position to comment on the way particular instruments are used. It's all about the simple idea of whether or not I enjoy the music. I don't care how many instruments someone is playing (well I might; take Mike Oldfield or Panopticon, but rarely) or how technical their playing is.

Originally Posted by grindy

I didn't mean to criticize you in any way, it was just a comment. I understand what you're doing in this thread and you being new to a lot of the music posted here and having only limited time ressources at your disposal adds to this threads character and to our enjoyment of your reviews.
I don't quite get what you mean by playing many instruments though, Stetson plays only saxophones and clarinets here, I was talking about him playing the "percussion", bass and often several melody parts at once on one instrument. I don't think one has to be a sax player or musician to appreciate that.