Albums A-Z #4-6

This entry features three of my very favorite albums just by chance, two of which are by the same artist! So uh, I assume we'll be hitting dryer spells at some point. I have a lot of music.

THE​(​OVERUSED​)​END OF THE WORLD and I MISS YOU MUH​-​FUH by SuiseiNoboAz (2011)

My music player ignores "The" in album names, so this technically starts with "(". So that's why it's so high up in the list! 

Anyway, this album rules. I've been listening to it on and off since it came out 12 (!) years ago. I got it quite literally at random off of a torrent site when I was stil operating under the illusion that I would learn Japanese at some point in my life. 

I wasn't expecting anything in particular here, but I was immediately entranced. The opening riff on E.O.W. giving way to these huge, clipping drums was enough to make me sit down and just listen to this thing. Now I would describe it as a shoegazey kind of album but with a much bigger sound. It's kind of dad-rocky in that way, including an almost immediate reference to Smells Like Teen Spirit, but I think the rawness of the vocals gives it a different identity. 

I don't know Japanese still, so I have no idea what most of the lyrics mean! But the singer is really raw and powerful and I get at least some sense of emotion from that alone. 

One consistent thing about albums I love is that they tend to have lots of changes within songs, and this is no exception. Lots of little changes to keep things interesting, including some fairly complex drum patterns at points.

Anyway, if you want a good taste of this, go listen to the song 64 from this album and listen to that bass player wander all over the place and how a nearly seven minute song can still stay fresh through its whole running time. I will be listening to this album for a very, very long time.

*.WAV SLAVE by BANDETTO (Halley Labs) (2012)

We're already on our second Halley Labs entry here, this time by the BANDETTO alias. If the first thing you heard by them was the album by greenhouse I mentioned in the last entry, then get ready for, uh, a real change of pace.

This is, I guess, part of the Happy Hardcore genre. I stumbled on a lot of this backwards though - in trying to discover what the hell this album's genre was, I listened to a bunch of stuff explicitly labeled Happy Hardcore. And guess what? It's really, really boring most of the time!!

But this album is a constant changeup of pace, tempo, instrumentation, and rhythm in a way that any of the other "happy hardcore" stuff I found was not. It's absolutely relentless, I love it. 

I would say this is also more Techno-y than a lot of the other stuff I've listened to - it's just got a sharper edge than most stuff in the genre. It's really good! I listen to it while I'm working all the time, the relentless-ness makes it easier for me to focus somehow. I'd recommend starting with barf city. If you like that at all, then the rest of the album is surely going to make you happy.

♞ by RQ

Ah, the mysteries of alphabetical order in the age of unicode. Why does ♞ sort above numbers, but below asterisk? Someone knows, but I don't and I'm not going to google it.

Anyway, if you hadn't guessed by the cover art, this is another Halley Labs joint. Guess what? I like it a lot!

I don't even know how to classify this. It's dance music for sure, but like, what genre? I dunno. I have no shortcuts to describing this. 

It is definitely on the techno spectrum, it has a bit of jungle influence in there, and it's definitely influenced by video game music. But mostly I find it easiest to compare this to other Halley Labs releases, which is unfortunate because that doesn't mean much to anyone who hasn't listened to like 60 albums by them.

Regardless, I find it to be exuberant, loud, and an absolute blast to listen to. I'd recommend starting with Ⅵ／ SPEAK ⇧ BUDDY, which is probably the one that's easiest to pull out of context and understand. It's just a lot of fun! 

And yes, I italicized the little horse in the header. You're supposed to italicize titles.