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FatherAlabaster

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Posts posted by FatherAlabaster

  1. 3 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

    But why's Miles doing a tribute to the 1910's heavyweight champ?

    Soundtrack for a Jack Johnson documentary. The album was initially just called Jack Johnson (like the doc) but my CD is "A Tribute", so a tribute it is. 

  2. 3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

    That one Iron Monkey album (Our Problem) is so badass though, might have to hit that one later. Should probably see if they have any others that are any good

    Self titled debut is cool too. I haven't checked out anything since the original vocalist died.

     

    NP: Miles Davis - A Tribute To Jack Johnson

    I could fucking wish the drums weren't smushed over to the right side, given what a triumph of production this is in other ways, but the trumpet hangs in front of me like Macbeth's dagger. Big speakers for the win.

  3. 1 hour ago, markm said:

    Swans/Soundtracks for the Bind (1996)-It's been said by many, that in a career of making weird albums, this is the weirdest album Swans ever made. love it or hate it-and fans fall on both sides of the fence (I am on the love side) there is nothing like this album. The album that was the final straw breaking the Swans for 14 years. They reformed in 2010'ish and they came to more general notoriety in 2012 with their massive trilogy beginning with The Seer in 2012 which garnered a great deal of praise in all music internet sites that cover left of field experimental music, which is when I discovered them. 2012 was when I got into headfi and hifi gear, put together a proper listening system and started following the machinations beyond metal.

    At any rate, Soundtracks for the Blind (2 discs, 4 LPs) and 26 tracks is a herculean listen at over 2 hours.  It's long been a favorite for fans of experimental rock music. Some would say it's been eclipsed post 2010 in terms of what Gira strove to achieve-some kind of transcendental music that pulls from many genres. It's an album that requires patience, there is over indulgence and bloat to be sure, but I find the entire experience utterly compelling. 

    The roots to Soundtracks predates 1996 some 10 years to the beginning of the Swans existence and is as you might guess, conceived to be the soundtrack to movie that never existed. There's quite a bit ambient music and overall vibe of ambient drone on this album, but also explosive music and  field recordings, and creepy, voyeuristic voice tracks. I believe Gira and Jarboe both recorded people in their lives with mental and physical health problems to create a sense of watching a film designed to give the listener a feeling of discomfort. The album is unsettling and beautiful. Much credit has to go to Jarboe, Gira's long time collaborator who has one of the most elastic, powerful, beautiful and at times brutal female voices in experimental music. 

    In fact, the entire album has a combined effect of surrealist experience-reminiscent of a bizarre David Lynch movie and other worldly experience beyond the capacity to explain in words. 

    The voice overs create a sense of watching a haunting documentary of some corner of the underbelly of twisted human existence-ne'er do wells living sordid, utterly depressing lives-something that draws me in, repels me but I just can't take my eyes off the screen--- or perhaps, turning to look at the multi car accident on the other side of the highway-traffic backed up for miles, emergency vehicles, cars burning, bodies on stretchers....and you just can't restrain yourself from slowing down to look at the carnage. 

    There is nothing that I've heard that sounds like this album. 

    I haven't heard anything else quite like it either. It's been years since I put myself through it. The voice recordings are really unsettling. I remember reading somewhere that they combed through a lot of secondhand tapes from pawn shops and so forth, but I don't actually know the backstory for those. As far as the later stuff goes... kudos to them, and I like it. I really got into the immersive soundscape of To Be Kind. But none of it is as compelling to me as the pre-breakup material. Maybe that's just because I listened to it so much when I was younger. Maybe part of it is also what Jarboe added. I don't get into her solo stuff, but she brought so much depth and weirdness to the band.

  4. 9 hours ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

    Ummm... yeah. It doesn't all have to be Frazetta, but the influence is pretty clear, and if there's been some editing done to clean it up a little it doesn't take anything away from the hand-drawn feel. Wait, why am I defending my admiration of 'evil guy on a throne with a sword and fire' #3,041? I've got nothing against simplicity being used where simplicity works. What's the issue?

    No issue, no need to defend. I'm surprised that you love it. Knowing how demanding and analytical you are in your listening, it seems incongruous to me. I feel like if you heard the musical equivalent of something this derivative and poorly executed, you'd have a scathing review ready to go before the end of the first song. 

    I do think there's a very broad spectrum of "good art", and something doesn't need to be technically impressive to be impactful and meaningful, and being a good illustration is outside of both of those considerations. But even with that in mind I think this cover art sucks. It flaunts a lack of effort. So many other images in the genre are just way cooler and better done. I don't really put a lot of stock in cover art either way but this makes me a bit less likely to want to listen to the music.

    So yeah, I'm a little surprised to see your high standards for music juxtaposed with genuine enjoyment of this piece. But I'm also not telling you what to enjoy... if this works for you, then great. You are the target audience. Love wins.

  5. 12 minutes ago, navybsn said:

    So naturally kids gravitated to something that pissed off all the right people.

    Accurate. I was one of those kids. The first time I heard Once Upon The Cross I was 16, sitting alone in my truck before work, and the vocals actually scared me a bit. I used to like Benton's voice and thought the first 3 albums were killer. Never liked any of the later ones. They don't do much for me anymore but I think there's still some nostalgia value. 

  6. Bethlehem is like two or three different bands depending on what albums you're talking about. I'm a really big fan of Dark Metal when I'm in a specific angry mood. There's a simmering glum quality to it that I don't really pick up on with anything else. Thin guitars and all. Then there's the DSBM stuff with the extreme vocals, then there's the Rammsteiny NDH stuff. I could understand not liking any of it, and I suppose even a fan of one style could easily be turned off by another, but at their best they're pretty unique and sometimes they hit the spot.

  7. Searching With My Good Eye Closed and Room A Thousand Years Wide are my two favorite tunes on Badmotorfinger. I probably like the B side better than the A side all things considered.

    Down On The Upside is the one Soundgarden album I can't make it through. Too many low points. Maybe it's the lingering flavor of disappointment from 25 years ago or whenever it came out. A handful of songs I like, but the rest is a slog. No idea why I like King Animal better, but I do.

  8. 10 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

     I do love to drop in random Silence of the Lambs quotes from time to time. Best I ever came up with was when we were learning some useless thing in math to do with order of operations, and the teacher asked me to spot problems with the equation on the board, so I hit 'em with "It puts the quotient in the brackets or else it gets the hose again."

    Better choice for class than "I can smell your quotient!" 

  9. I don't know what new things are available now that might do this. The best thing you can do if you want a unique drum sound is to record your own samples. There also are (or used to be) a lot of free or cheap sample packs from acoustic kits.

    I feel the same way as you about overused modern drum samples; I still use an old copy of Fruity Loops from over 20 years ago because it lets me drop in my own stereo samples and build a "kit" from my own hits instead of being stuck with some new school sample library. Maybe you can do the same thing with a newer and more convenient piece of software. I know that some modern programs go really deep as far as virtual mic placement and stuff, you could probably mimic almost any sound if you put the time in. I really hate the actual process of programming hit by hit on FL, it's tedious and extremely slow. But, here's how I approach it.

    The first key to a more realistic sound is to have a lot of different hits on each drum and cymbal, some at different levels of intensity, but also with several hits at around the same intensity so you're not stuck with exactly the same sound for each hit during a given beat. The more the better, although again, the more samples you have, the more tedious the process gets. For example, I've got 12 different snare hits in the FL "kit" I'm using now. Samples 1 - 5 are hard hits that I can use as single hits during any given beat, and then they get progressively softer, with 6 - 9 being less aggressive hits that I can use in a snare roll, fill, or single hit in a softer part, and 10 - 12 being even lighter. The only time I'll use the same hit a few times in a row is for blasts, on one of the softer samples. This kind of variation is really important in the cymbals - you want a few different aggressive hits and then a few that you can use in sequence to mimic "cymbal bashing" without repeating the same sample every time, or even every other time. I have something like 15 different ride hits, for instance, on different parts of the cymbal and so forth. Also give yourself a few different cymbal chokes and hi-hat drops that you might use very sparingly. The more variety the better. If you're in a pinch for variety, you can duplicate a hit and pitch shift it very slightly up or down so it doesn't have exactly the same resonance.

    The second key is to export your finished drum tracks as audio and mix them like you would the tracks from an acoustic kit. When I'm doing a final mix, I'll have separate tracks for kick, snare, cymbals, toms, ride, and hats, going to a group buss where I can add overall effects like reverb, compression, distortion, etc. For a lo fi sound you'd probably want to roll off the high end a bit and play around with tape emulation and room reverb. You can also record the finished drum tracks with a microphone in the room and blend that sound back in. There's really a lot you can do to distress the sound. They'll always sound a little stiff but it's better than not having drums on your song.

     

    This isn't a lo-fi recording but it's the most recent finished thing I did with programmed drums, as an example of what I'm talking about. Listening back, there's some stuff I would do differently, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

     

  10. This put me in a Soundgarden mood. Louder Than Love is where it's at for me in the past few years.

     

    There are only a couple songs I like on Down On The Upside, but I actually like King Animal a lot even though it's overpolished dad rock. Badmotorfinger and Superunknown are the highlights but I played them to death when I was growing up.

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