~the singles list is looking PROMISING. spent far too much of that top ten thinking 'who?' but i can't go blaming you for my own ignorance reallly.

 

I reckon you'll approve of MOST of the remainder so glad you're liking it so far. Timoteij are total generic pop and Amanda Mair is sweet and melodic but I think you might find some sounds that appeal in Gabrielle's album.

 

Oh. :(

 

You didn't have to be so blunt. :snif:

 

I still love you though. :wub:

 

Sorry, I don't really like to be so harsh. But you don't need to plug your thread everywhere especially with such little effort and interest put into it...

#19

 

 

"Come on / Just kill this"

 

(18-28-34-38)

 

'kill' is the masterpiece at the centre of kin. It seems the truest realisation of the vastness of imagination at work here, as well as the most musically representative of the mixture of propulsiveness and erratic trickery shown across the album. Jonna Lee's vocals pierce, less with menace than with detached madness, during the swirling pit of a chorus, deepening for the crisper black magic of the verses. But the song really flies from the 4:30 mark, when the instrumentation winds to a quicker pace, the vocals pile up and enhance each other's tones (frantic, morbid, ghostly) before dropping out altogether and leaving the synths to wear themselves out. In that, 'kill' becomes a song beyond the restrictions of Jonna's physicality and the truest realisation of the mystery of the entire outfit.

#18

 

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/7285/septemberu.png

 

"I just want you to remember / Before you get carried away"

 

(2-1-4-11-15-8-6-8-17-27)

 

First, the crisp, bell-like synth beat sets the base, before deeper, rounder cousin joins it at the same pace and percussion begins to effervesce around them. Then the dreamier synths start to run across, like comets streaking over the sky. The keyboard melody strikes up, snatching at the melancholy undertow of the song, before the fiercer beat overwhelms again. Then, a full two minutes plus into the song, the vocals - the falsetto, and the shouted harmonies - arrive. For the chorus, they swing and sway with the synths, "carried away" with their continuing pulsation; for the middle-eight, the falsetto notes hold, turning the vocal into the strike of an instrument, almost. 'September' is quite simply a vibrant, dynamic, blistering piece of electronica - never clearer than the final minute of the song, where the vocals dissolve into a frenzy and the synths go euphoric, all peaking in a gambole of clattering glory.

Your reviews are so good at describing the song's listening experience, I always find these so tough to write when doing mine! :lol: Quite a lot I don't know in the singles/albums, but most of what I do is great! I can't really get on board with iamablahblah etc. but September is such a brilliant piece of music and Jessie Ware's album was really good.

September! :wub: Absolutely fantastic song, and to think I passed it over when I briefly checked it out on your chart and even at the beginning in BJSC. Been playing it so much as loud as possible for the past two months (and cheering whenever I'm playing FIFA with friends and it comes up on the menu).

#17

 

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/7229/ghostsk.png

 

"And there's a sadness / Deep down in my soul"

 

(4-4-2-2-3-9-19-32)

 

No song this year was more devastatingly simple than this haunting composition. The heavier piano notes feel painful, hit with venom or distress, or perhaps the rebellion of which Welsh sings - "I won't let them take me in". The loneliness and desolation of 'Ghosts' is a remarkable achievement - the soundscape feels barren even when more instruments and the taunting backing vocals tune in, and the ghosts pile up, harmonising behind Welsh's own voice. There's a fierce strength in her vocals to match the will of the lyrics, although the final break, the ghostly fade of a curtailed note, suggest a dark ending. But having experienced the cracking peaks of Welsh's vocals, you remember that she didn't go easily, and your heart clenches.

#16

 

 

"Drill little holes into my eyelids"

 

(36-32-29-22-19-20-23-24-32-33-40-35-32-37-40-33-33-31-31-40-40)

 

The darkest reach of Shrines, I feel, or at least the song that most vividly broke through my consciousness with the electrifying creep of the synths and alarming shock of the black magic lyrics. The reedy fragility of Megan James' vocals is alternately worrying and frightening - is she scared, wandering, lost in fear, or is she the agent of these morbid suggestions or bodily dissolution? This is a track to stalk your nightmares, but I am endlessly drawn into its skittish swirl of glassy synths and uneasy gloomwobble. You might even call it a drug.

Your reviews are so good at describing the song's listening experience, I always find these so tough to write when doing mine! :lol: Quite a lot I don't know in the singles/albums, but most of what I do is great! I can't really get on board with iamablahblah etc. but September is such a brilliant piece of music and Jessie Ware's album was really good.

 

I'm glad you think so, I'm never sure if it's coming off properly and I'm just writing rubbish! Glad you approve of my top album, too much Jessie hate in this place!

 

September! :wub: Absolutely fantastic song, and to think I passed it over when I briefly checked it out on your chart and even at the beginning in BJSC. Been playing it so much as loud as possible for the past two months (and cheering whenever I'm playing FIFA with friends and it comes up on the menu).

 

Oh is it on FIFA? Amazing, that always brings new fans to songs, happened with Dan Black's 'Wonder' which is a huge fave of mine.

I think 'gloomwobble' might just be my new favourite word.

kill :wub: belispeak :wub:

#15

 

 

"You're from the '70s / But I'm a '90s bitch"

 

(20-11-9-8-16-11-24-26-31-32)

 

Your ears may never be assaulted as much as they are, constantly, throughout 'I Love It'. The duo yell, in chorus, every word of the song, a two-and-a-half-minute lasceration of an outdated ex, a sisterhood standing tall and rocking in solidarity. The vocals are some heavy metal shit, but the base is all pop - whirring, ceaseless synths and a thumping drumbeat that practically propels the listener off the dancefloor. It's impossible to resist the chant, to be carried away in the girls' rebellious youth, their reposte to a tired generation. It's almost a mockery of the 'YOLO' generation, circling through time and space but always returning to that proclamation of adoration. It's independence and camraderie, freedom, abandon, delirious energy.

#14

 

 

"Kiki / So so / Oui oui / No no"

 

(2-1-2-6-5-13-20-12-19-29-35-xx-31-38)

 

"What's up, it's Pickles. Leave a message." 'Let's Have a Kiki', is, like many of the finest Scissor Sisters songs, all about Ana, but it doesn't begin with her. That opening line also shows the completely game Jake sidelining himself, joining the audience for Ana's flamboyant narration and the backing singers for the remainder of the song. 'Kiki' is the novelty hit of the year that tragically never was - alive with a sense of joy and camp that most such ridiculous songs never are. It came complete with a dance routine that may have even prefigured the song, although it doesn't take much digging to get to a fully conceived musical base - the percussive shake, the rhythmic wildness, the eclectic instrumentation that makes the Scissors' inventiveness shine bright. And live? Well, you can't even imagine.

Oh I like the majority of what I've heard in here, will make a larger comment when finished and listen to some I don't know...

#13

 

 

"I'll put myself on fire if I find a spark"

 

(4-2-2-1-2-4-6-10-11-18-15-24-32-40)

 

It starts terribly dark, here, heavy piano notes and a foreboding, reedy synth building pace to reach Hyvönen's first words. She moves quickly, a speed that soon betrays her fear and confusion ("I hear shots, shots from the forest") and lyrics that suggest an immersion in nature, but also a distance from it, a wariness of its mystical qualities. Shades of 'Echo Beach' abound in the chorus, and the almost comedic strikes of the brass temper the overwhelming morbidity of the song, especially when she desperately, unexpectedly asks "Do you think we can dance?". But confusion overwhelms again, and when Hyvönen starts singing different lines at once, both at vivid, breakneck speed, the delirium marks its definitive rule: a woman taken into the darkness of the forest, never finding the fire she needs to escape.

#12

 

 

"I gave you everything / And now there's nothing left of me"

 

(1-4-4-2-3-5-6-8-13-17-21-19- )

 

The snatches of an almost feline call that begin 'Losing You' instantly grab the attention, a wild samba beat that gets the hips moving immediately. When producer Dev Hynes then throws in the melancholy synth melody on top, and then follows it with a bubbling, effervescent companion, the effect is a vivid one of the lights somehow dimming - this is a song of the moonlight, a lament with a tapping toe. Solange's voice has always been smoother and more tactile than her sister's, a whisper compared to B's commanding force, and on 'Losing You' the sensual qualities of it have never been more apparent. As she sings the chorus again, rising out of a slower den of noise, the effect is almost one of triumph, the same repeated words turning into a note of triumph as the ad libs dance in the background. The animal snatch and the handclaps keep jiving to the end, diving out on a final note of unqualified '80s darkness, despair and loss the final impression.

#11

 

 

"And deception is the only felony / So never fuck nobody wit’out tellin’ me"

 

(DNC)

 

If not the finest beat of the year, then certainly the most instantly exhilirating and iconic - and certainly advert-ready. The gnarly guitar that runs throughout 'No Church in the Wild' gives it an instant baseline of menace and unrest, a rolling constant of the political violence and religious questioning that make up the subject of the lyrics. Ocean, one of the defining artists of the year, provides a harmonic counterpoint to Jay and Kanye's notably troubled rapping - their cockiness absents itself, the opening to an embossed album proving to be an unexpectedly preoccupied quagmire of drama. The compulsion to the song, primarily through that beat, but also through the wails and sirens and monkey cries and Ocean's soft concern, make for an unsettling experience.

Losing You and No Church In The Wild! :wub:

God Belispeak, I Love It, Kiki and Losing You are FAB FAB FAB FAB FAB! This countdown is slaying me

#10

 

 

"You're holding in your hands the two halves of my heart"

 

(2-2-1-4-3-5-15-29-xx(x16)-12-9-8-8-4-11-3-5-8-15-13-11-13-17-26)

 

A song that doesn't lose the feeling of utter strangeness even after so, so many addictive listens. There isn't really a chorus, just peaks of screaming, both from synths and from Rihanna, whose often abrasive tones are used to their finest effect on the wailing, repetitive, echoing sections. It's a bewildering mixture of refrains, colliding in unexpected ways and creating a collage of mysticism, drawing on Orientalism, prog rock, modern synth-led pop music and god knows what else in the most peculiar of ways. There's some sort of inscrutable pain here, a majestic tragedy - lost castles, stolen stars, broken amour. It still seems like a song that should disgust the ears, but the power of it, in part due to the sheer starpower on display - familiar voices used in surprising ways - makes it an undeniable, endlessly fascinating, eerily engrossing masterstroke.

#09

 

http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/4248/pyramidsk.png

 

"What good is a jewel that ain't still precious?"

 

(9-13-6-2-6-11-9-17-31-31-39)

 

How to even begin with a song of this breadth, this muchness? Within the channel ORANGE album, this somehow doesn't overwhelm, with its many pieces conncting as parts of the larger, complex whole. Alone, though, overwhelm it does, announcing itself with the chiming synths before seguing into the deeply cool calls of Ocean's voice, more aggressively used here than on much of the album. The gliding segues are the thing - "we'll run to the future" - tumbling away from the melee of sounds into a different configuration, crashing together amongst the exotic flavour of the lyrics and the futuristic scapes of the instrumentation, tinged with '80s (that synth heyday once again) nostalgia. All over, 'Pyramids' mixes past and present, biblical tropes colliding with images of a dystopian future, all winding through the many strands of dark musical invention. Songs like this don't come along every day.