This right here is why I have never been able to bring myself to submit my beloved Tool in a Walrus.
…wait, that doesn’t sound so good.
In 6th place with 7 points
NIGHTWISH - The Greatest Show on Earth (with Richard Dawkins)
Are you ready for some Prog? I really hope you are because Nightwish are not messing about, this is 21 minutes of rock opera about evolution. How serious are they? Well, they have the actual Richard Dawkins reading it out for them. On tape? No, fuck you, he’s not on tape, he’s there on stage. Just behind the fireworks if you must know.
(He’s actually mostly on tape.)
Apparently this isn’t really Prog, it’s Symphonic Metal, and it admittedly has a lot of heavy chugga chugging guitars in the middle sections. That’s when the female vocalist absoutely thunders out stuff like
Lonely farer in the Goldilocks zone
She has a tale to tell
Good for her.
I imagine this would be way too much for many, but luckily for the submitter I’ve had a copy of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds since birth and, while I can’t say I often listen to anything quite like this, I was delighted to dabble.
So why isn’t it higher? Well, firstly from now on it’s songs I just enjoyed so it’s a rich crop. Secondly there are little imperfections. Musically it’s a tiny bit too purely melodic to really get my jucies going and I’m not a fan of Dawkin’s philosophisings, so most of what he says sounds like gobbledygook to me. Finally I have to mark it down as it’s not really just one song, they stop dead and take an ovation at one point. Being in Nightwish seems incredible fun, though.
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NOT CLICKING THAT
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I cracked and listened to the Beatles on 45 - Mrs S is threatening divorce again.
I sort of enjoyed the Tilda Swinton thing, but can’t imagine listening to it again
Tool and Green Day not for me
going to give the classical one a bash
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I might literally die.
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Do it. You want to.
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In 5th place with 8 points
Einstürzende Neubauten - Perpetuum Mobile
From here to the finish it’s all stuff I liked so much that if Spotify and YouTube didn’t exist I’d go out and buy the records. In fact I have gone out and bought records by this lot in the past, but I never got beyond the first few albums so this is new to me.
I knew they had mellowed from when they smashed bits of metal together and made artful noise punk (industrial?), but it’s good to hear exactly how. The biggest thing that surprised me was just how much groove is has, loping along on a guitar-y, synth-y wash and metronomic bass drum. I think the title means Perpetual Motion and is presumably what they were aiming for in feel.
There’s still plenty of metallic clangs and some enigmatic muttered German, which are parts of their sound I’m more familiar with. I don’t speak German though, so maybe Louis will tell me it’s a shopping list or something. It’s a really enjoyable bit of drifting but precise soundscapery. If earlier tracks weren’t my bag then this is the exact opposite, like my muscial equivalent of a nice warm bath. A complete oversight that I haven’t been listening since it came out. Better late than never.
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My thoughts on the category choice, courtesy of the great @rivaldo. I can’t even imagine how many mandatory listens you gave each one.
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Well, I’m not clicking that.
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it sounds like the image
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That’s better.
eta: By “better”, I mean the video works.
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Sorry, had to find my own YT for that one so I guess it’s one where one works for euros, and the other for you Northern Americans.
i wonder how skydiver won this category
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Hard to keep up. Had to skip Jarmusch/Swinton halfway through but I have listened to the rest up to NoFX so far.
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In 4th place with 9 points
BT - This Binary Universe
Even more so than the Collapsing New Buildings lot BT is unlucky to not be on the podium, I was really impressed by this and when I first heard it I thought it might run away with the category. It’s only that the stuff above it is so great that it missed out.
It’s ten minutes of constantly shifting but mostly relaxing electronic music (EDM? I’m never sure). I don’t know BT at all but it reminded me of Orbital, in that it seems both conciously ‘experimental’ and focused on having a proper tune. (And comparisons to Orbital are high praise from me.) Unlike some Orbital it’s aimed at home listening much more than the dancefloor, and it’s plenty to keep you occupied. I’ll be giving the album a listen soon and expect it to slot firmly into the “late at night reading” playlist. More than any track here (except possibly the next one) it crams ideas in one after the other, and hasn’t run out of any steam when it ends.
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BOOOOOOOOO!!!
Well, looks like the category shook off the majority of you just in time for THE PODIUM!!
In 3rd place with 10 points
Haken - Cockroach King
Tantalized by the Walrus and it’s promise
I fantasized about belching with golden tusks
Hypnotized by the Walrus and it’s promise
I was compromised by a ranking
on the nodium
Thanks for that, submitter.
Are you ready for some Prog? I know I’ve asked before, but we’re doubling down this time, believe me. Bill Bruford could be drumming on it.
It’s a much more self conscious, angular and jazz tinged affair than Nightwish, though there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact there’s everything right with it. It weaves itself intricately through every mildly jarring shift in approach, passing via massed chanting about Cockroach Kings, a few keyboard solos, some silly voices, some weirdly time signatured riffs and, best of all obviously, several enjoyably complicated drum fills to really stitch sections together. I found it all stupendously satisfying.
It is almost heavy from time to time so I think it’s once again considered a form of Metal. Like a lot of people who got in to music after punk hit I long considered this sort of thing slightly suspect, but I got over that years back now and I really need to dig deeper into its modern forms. This seems like a great place to start.
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still on treadmill, still listening, and still alive!
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