View Single Post
  #44  
Old 04-28-2014, 07:23 PM
holden
collateral damage
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: foothills of the front range
Posts: 2,900
Send a message via MSN to holden
Re: NEW ALBUM: Someday World (hyde+eno)
Oh dear.

Well, not much else happening, so here's a track-by-track review, FWIW.

Opening track "Satellites" is interesting for all of 28 seconds, until the mess of Casio Brass heads in. Around 2 minutes, when Karl and Brian start singing, my thoughts are - first, their voices don't really compliment each other, and two, why does the bassline sound like farts?

Tried "Daddy's Car" again...managed to like the first 50 seconds into this one, thanks to the beat, though the synthbass line was pretty dated... and then, brass nonsense and "oooh" chorals again. Can't take Karl's vocals seriously with Wang Chung playing in the background.

"Man Wakes Up": Dated, phased keyboards with "oo" "oo" effects - reminds me of a Was (Not Was) outtake. Again, Karl's vocals (and presumably guitar) is diminished to a the least common denominator of what we know he's capable of.

"Witness" - melody's okay, but the repeated vocals and guitar/piano feature was a bit cloying to start Stick with it and it the female vocal recalls Lemon Interrupt/UW mkii "Eclipse" era. This one straddles the line between annoying and catchy.

"Strip it Down" - Starts with a simple one-note bass, two note guitar figure (with some flourishes), then layers on the (synth) piano and extra guitar riffs... has some potential till the vocal again. I'm not sure; "Edgeland" was pleasant enough, but i think i prefer when Karl's vocals are more monotonous/vocoded. I just don't love the more "traditional" melodies herein. Still, some interesting counterpoints.

"Mother of a Dog" - i have nothing nice to say, so i will say nothing more on this.

"Who Rings the Bell" - ok, i kind of like how the one note guitar evolves into three-note pattern and overlaps the growing effect. Maybe "Who barks like a dog?" reminds me of "Dogman Go Woof", but this almost evokes Dubno era mkii for me (though Mother of a Dog does not! Some dogs are just dogs). Anyway, fairly pleasant, minus the chorus near the end.

"When I Built This World" - err, dated sounds and single one-note patterns again. Really odd key shift in the second minute, and the effect on Karl's vocal is unusual.... then, ~1:40 in, it's time to lay on the brass again. This track is a mess. Is it for a Halloween Spooky Sound Effects album? Is it an Erasure out-take? Were the vocals stolen from Depeche Mode during a creative dry-spell? Oh, it's bizarre, and not in a good way.

Thank goodness, the album closer "To Us All" - kinda nice guitar figures, recalling the "Sunshine" soundtrack noodles (What were they called? "Mercury" or "Jelly Blue"?) - the vocals are forgettable, and one of the vocal tracks (can't tell if Karl or Brian) is screamed a bit out of tune with the other. Otherwise, it's uplifting, but ends very suddenly.

Overall, i stand by my prior assertion that these tracks are snippets that don't really constitute finished tracks, and the majority of them sound really dated. Eno revisiting Roxy Music, Karl remembering UW mki. Sure, vintage and retro is cool, sometimes, but a lot of the 80's music still sounds cheesy, and these synth-heavy tracks with uber-earnest vocals about nothing recall that forgettable musical era.

Again, i think both artists are extremely gifted, but these tracks sound incomplete or, overly-layered with really simple patterns in an attempt to disguise incompleteness. Not every idea needs recorded.
__________________
Believe in Billy Records

Last edited by holden; 04-28-2014 at 08:02 PM.