Dave12D3

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October 20th, 2008

11:04 pm: Rip Slyme - Funfair
Um.. I'm gonna try to use a cutoff tag.

<lj-cut> With a few exceptions, I've never been that big on Rip Slyme. (If anyone cares, the exceptions are "Funkastic", "Steppers Delight", "Zatsunen Entertainment", "Dandelion" and "Super Shooter" which are all awesome.) I don't know. I remember listening to GOOD JOB and EPOCH a while back and other than the songs from Animutations and a couple others, I just didn't like the beats. Maybe my tastes have gotten better, or maybe this is a much better disc than the two I just mentioned. I love the way they constructed the beats on this disc and I've always liked their rapping style. Now I'm gonna attempt to do a track-by-track.

01. Introduction

This is a pretty good description of the mixing style. It's an instrumental consisting of strings, banjo, marching drums and a few other things chopped together into a song. It gradually gets louder until it decides to change melody, lose the banjo and gain electronic drums and noises. It changes back and fades out. Cool intro.

02. NP

This starts with a chopped up bass riff, a breakbeat is added and two more versions of the bass are added, both harmonizing. I can't talk about what they're saying because I don't know a word of japanese, but it sounds good and that's really all I care about.

03. Bubble Trouble

The first beat on this song is based on some techno sounds and casio handclaps. Speaking of that, before the rap starts there is a sampled version of whatever the main line of this song is and it sounds low-quality. Like maybe it was done with the Casio SK-1 sampler. Another breakbeat is added and a single trumpet sample which is manipulated throughout the song. Once again it sounds great. I have an idea for an animutation based on this actually. I doubt I'll do it, though. Way too lazy. Maybe if I attempted to do one with Vegas...

04. SPEED KING

Just go to YouTube or whatever and watch the music video. It contains them all in skeleton suits dancing, rainbow skulls and what I think are sprites from the original SMB. Not to mention that the song is awesome.

05. Tales

I guess Rip Slyme are Japan's equivalent of the Backstreet Boys. This is that generic 90's boy-band ballad.

06. Zannen Boy

After that last track, this fades in with the treble at the bottom which is gradually raised. It's an instrumental with awesome noises which sound like they came from a speak-and-spell combined with an old string sample. I dig it.

07. concourse1

An odd sounding beat fades in with some crowd noise and one of them going "Uh. Uh." like rappers do. And then a brass section comes in with one of those generic click beats found in most all modern rap and what I think is a female singer. The click beat combines with some can rattling and such and it makes it sound good, actually. The brass section is taken out for the actual rap part. This is mostly just them rapping over that beat with nothing behind it. There is a single synth in the background at parts and for a chorus they go back to the part with the brass section. After two verses a cool synth comes in with a three-note line that actually kinda sounds like something that would fit in a Kraftwerk song. Due to that, the beat changes to just four bass drums per measure and the female singer(s?) sings over that. And then that beat gains the click beat, a new synth and the rappers which are actually in Rip Slyme. And that turns into the chorus again. I'm not sure why these songs are called "concourse" because I'm pretty sure that I clearly hear them repeating the word "Evolution" in the chorus. That turns back into the four bass drums with the can rattling and such behind it. The female voice echoes into space for a while and the song fades out.

Holy crap, I just realised that the next song on this song is called EVOLUTION and it features Coma-Chi who I can only assume is the female singer on the last song I was talking about. I'm pretty sure I either have the songs in the wrong order or I'm missing some. I guess you guys can enjoy this epic fail review anyway. No hate comments, guys. What I was trying to say is that I think the album is good. At least what I have from it. :S</lj-cut>

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September 11th, 2008

07:26 pm: head o'clock
best video ever

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August 5th, 2008

01:43 pm: Lemon Demon - View-Monster
I haven't seen a review of Lemon Demon's new disc yet, so I thought I would do one. Yeah. Well as I said on the Lemon Demon forum, I think this might be Neil's best disc to date. It has the nonsensical nature of the first few LD records and the polish of Dinosaurchestra. It's near-perfect. Let's go to the track-by-track as always. I will be talking about the transition tracks as well.

1 Kaleidoskull
This song rekindles the trend Neil had in the early days of Lemon Demon, where he would begin his albums with an instrumental. Neil's been doing a lot of scoring for his (and others) films lately, and it shows because the melodies on this song are brilliant. It's also a great opener for the album, seeing as it shares the vibe of quite a few of it's tracks.

2 Untitled [view-monster]
So here's the first of the transition tracks. A while after Dinosaurchestra was released, somebody suggested that Neil do his next album like the transition between Indie Cindy and Bystanding. View-Monster is most likely the closest Neil would ever go to doing that. This track continues the melody of Kaleidoskull for a short time before going into an arpeggio which leads to the next track. Apparently this was all done with a Casio SK-1 and effects. If so, I'm impressed because I didn't think the SK-1 had an arpeggiator in it.

3 Amnesia Was Her Name
This track is really great. It combines Neil's two main guitar sounds with a solid beat, great lyrics, a awesome sounding new wave synth bass, some keys and I think this song might contain Neil's Keytar. I could be completely wrong with that, though.

4 Untitled [hippocampus]
This one's just a bunch of random glitchy sounds for a few seconds.

5 The Man In Stripes and Glasses
This song sounds like something from Live From the Haunted Candle Shop, except.. Neil's much better at singing and playing now. It's also about Waldo from Where's Waldo getting killed by a giant magnifying glass, and the way Neil disposed of his body. I can't complain about that.

6 Untitled [spooky sounds vol 6]
A bunch of spooky sounds are played and Neil guesses what they are. A good time is had by all.

7 Marketland
This song might contain Neil's best guitar playing, assuming he did it all at one time. (One of his tricks is that he sometimes does hard guitar parts one note at a time.) The acoustic guitar in the background sounds really hard to play. The song is really good, but I've been listening to it since the CDFreedom Compilation came out, so it's not as.. fresh.. as the rest of these. Still damn good.

8 Untitled [x-ray glasses]
A Casio SK-1 has been submerged in water. It is Neil's job to save it with the power of rock! (Meaning, it's time for the next song.)

9 Gadzooks
A song about the illemonati. A lot of people hated this, but I think this is a pretty damn good song. I would say that this is better than the original, just because I like Lemon Demon's new-found new wave-ish sound.

10 Untitled [prelude to a knife fight]
Neil saved the keyboard from the water, and it thanks him with an awesome 7-second solo.

11 Knife Fight
IT IS NOW TIME TO ROCK. OH YEAH. ROCK WITH A KNIFE, BITCHES. Yeah, I like it. A lot. If you want to know the rock a bit better before you buy the CD, you might want to download this one from Lemon Demon's official website. Oh and Martyface is awesome.

12 Untitled [autofocus]
I guess this one's called Autofocus because it starts out in the background with a bit of toy piano backing it up, but it builds over a couple seconds, gets to full force, goes all muffly for a second and turns into a beat that leads into the next track.

13 The Only House That's Not On Fire (Yet)
I cannot stress how good the melodies in this song are. The song itself is some bass, some acoustic guitar and some drums. It's simple, but very very effective. On the second verse Neil adds a toy piano which follows his vocal lines for the most part. The lyrics mean absolutely nothing, and if you knew anything about Lemon Demon you would want it that way. Awesome.

14 Untitled [combs]
This song starts off with even more toy piano (reversed this time), and the SK-1 returns once more. This time he makes it sound freaking awesome. Like the best analog synth you could ever buy. I think he did that with a delay but no matter how he did it, it was wicked.

15 The Ocean
I think this song might be based on Neil's keytar. I swear I think I've heard that synth sound in the background in White Bread Boyfriend. Just like last time, a song about the ocean is a big competitor for best song on this album. Once again, the melodies are freakishly good. The accordion's back, that's always good.

16 Untitled [wet hair]
This song is a really big delay on Neil saying the word "Ocean" with what sounds like like a Atari 2600 one-sample beat and an arpeggiated chord. Just guess what synth he used for that.

17 The Afternoon
A song about how much growing up sucks. I fully agree. It's got some great melodies as well, but it's not the best on this album. That being said, they all can't be as good as The Ocean. I think there might be some mellotron on this track, starting right before the second verse. I guess I won't know that until Neil tells me though.

18 Untitled [afterafternoon]
This is the best transition on the whole thing. Which is weird, because it's just the main riff from The Afternoon being played with a Casio SK-1 (With preset beat - I'm pretty sure nothing else is on this track, except some effects), which explodes into a flanger.

19 Spring Heeled Jack
This song starts with what I think is not an accordion, but an olde-tyme chord organ. I had one for a while, and it sounds way more like that. Yeah, it is. I just listened to it again and I heard the blower turn on when he started. I think it should have stayed on the whole track. It adds character. But the song is really really good. It feels really.. christmas-y. Which is weird, because it's about a monster who breathes fire and has springs on his feet.

20 Untitled [alternate history]
Neil continues in Spring Heeled Jack's key with some ambience, but then he turns up the key so he's in the right place for Being a Rock Star. Good move.

21 Being a Rock Star
I really love this one. It reminds me of Eyewishes in structure, in that it's a great regular song which turns into an awesome rock riff and that pushes it over the edge. I also really like the lyrics, which are about how much the Jonas Brothers can suck Neil's balls. Or at least that's the way I see it.

22 Untitled [like a balloon]
A cool melody with a weird growling sound in the background that turns into the main synth of the next track.

23 Ask For Nothing
This song probably has the weirdest structure of all the ones on the album. But the melodies pull it together and it sounds great. The lyrics are about being agnostic.

24 Untitled [disconnect]
This is the song on the splash of the new Lemon Demon site. If you haven't heard it, it's some fairly great ambience which vanishes in a puff of smoke.

25 The Satirist's Love Song
And then this starts. I really like the sound he put on this. It sounds very odd, but very good too. Great mixing on this. The beat and bass fit eachother like.. Um.. two things that fit really really good together. This song is about Neil explaining to his woman about how their relationship had nothing to do with reality, and was in fact satire. I think he should have kept the lyric about Colbert.

26 Untitled [therapy]
Some ambience and an old movie clip which says the main line of the next song. It's definitely not one of the most complex ones on here, but it's one of the best regardless.

27 The Machine
I sound like a freaking broken record, talking how the melodies are so great on this album. But it's true, on this song especially. This song is about a machine. A machine that does absolutely nothing. Can't get more cool than that. This song contains the voice distortion effect Neil used on his first two albums, which the illemonati dubbed the Lemon Demon "Vocoder" even though it's not a vocoder at all.

28 Untitled [between the frames]
I'm getting really tired of talking about these. This one's mostly comprised of arpeggios but with the Casio getting it's word in as the bass. I think it might be the longest of them all at around 45 seconds but I'm not listening to this on a computer, so I'm not going to check right now. Around the end it gets really fast and epic. For a transition anyway.

29 Bill Watterson
This song got a facelift for the new album. It's got a couple new verses and a nearly completely unrelated piano bridge. It's also got harder sounding guitars, some piano and synth. Also a tiny bit of the Lemon Demon "Vocoder" at the end for horror-inducing purposes. A very big improvement over the original.

30 Untitled [sleeping]
I'm amazed at the sounds he can get from this Casio. I swear he makes it sound like a minimoog in this.

31 Something Glowing
This song is based on a really good acoustic guitar riff, some reversed stuff and some piano. It works really well. Even though I'm making myself look like a retard for saying it so many times (stfu anya), the melodies are really, really great on this song.

32 Untitled [finale]
An extension of the end of Something Glowing. It starts with the end of that song, adds some glitchy sounds and then what sounds like an airplane fades in and the rest of the elements disappear. The airplane sound lingers for a while, eventually fading away and that's where the album ends. And I was probably wrong about that one being the longest, because this one's one minute long.

So.. yeah.
If you don't already have View-Monster, it is your duty to give Neil his 11 dollars.
So says I, so shall it be done.

Current Music: Lemon Demon - View-Monster (lulz)