I thought I was done with Swans.

I was curious about their live albums, so I'm not done yet. I'm not bothering with public castration (please listen future me), but you know stuff like Live Rope and... This!

Swans are Dead is a mega live album composing of 16 tracks equally split between two tours: The 1997 "final" tour and the 1995 tour. The 1995 tour previewed many tracks from the then upcoming Soundtracks For the Blind, while the 1997 tour includes many songs which ... read more

THIS MARKS MY COMPLETION OF ALL OF SWANS' STUDIO ALBUMS!

'The Beggar' is another huge album by the Swans act, clocking in at a whopping 2 hours, sporting one of the longest songs in their discography with a 40+ minute one! Already this album completely does away with accessibility unapologetically, even if the other track lengths are comparatively short (11 and under). This is a feature of the double album which makes it intimidating, but having listened to it I can tell you ... read more

Meddle by Pink Floyd is an album composed of 5 coughing babies and 1hydrogen bomb. That is to say that the album has one amazing track preceded by five comparatively worse ones.

That is not to say Side A has nothing good though. San Tropez is a surprising bop being very upbeat, sporting a rich piano which has its own solo by the end. A Pillow of Winds has interesting key shifts, changing from minor to major, shifting the whole mood of the song at the halfway point. Its natural guitar creates ... read more

Whenever I see large time gaps between two albums, I wonder how it's going to sound in a more modern music scene. Here they did a good job translating their sound into something more modern, you still get the classic upright bass, but you also get soulful production on tracks like The Donald and it doesn't sound as gritty and old school. Production can be hit or miss, but overall it's solid and there's some instrumentals I enjoy here.

Chemistryis emphasized on this album, ... read more

In a compositional sense, the songs are so much better than what they could be on the NES, it was relatively new in the SNES' lifespan, and I feel like it was the first game to really show the potential of the SNES' sound. As much as I love Super Mario World, technically speaking the music isn't impressive, usually not using all 8 channels, so this game really pushed it by using everything at a very early point in its lifespan.

The soundtrack takes you through many moods, but ... read more

This album has a more laid-back and calming production, with soothing tracks such as Fades Em All and Keep It Real. It feels lively and even that of a different era, for example"Da Come Up" sounds a lot like something i'd hear in the 2000's instead of the mid 90's. Some tracks did falter a bit, some could've be shortened. Overall though, I found the production to be quite good, which is something given who it's paired with.

See, I don't find Jamal ... read more

I always wanted to get into jazz, I've never really heard much of it, but I was interested by it, and this is my first attempt to do so. I picked this album because I figured Bebop would be an easy genre to ease myself in if I plan to listen to other subgenres of Jazz later on.

The album only having 5 songs, has longer run times as a result, this allows the music more time to evolve, which is helpful with this complex of theory and composition. However the short song list can allow the ... read more

Number One of Three is a thralling album from the mastermind of Swans. It is very comparable to Swans, because of the crew of Michael Gira and Jarboe, Jarboe pitching in with beautiful background vocals. This album mostly contains no lyrics, but the one moment it does feels impactful because of how deprived we've been of any words at all before this point.

The tracks are a mix of both humungous and wailing synth soundscapes and more subdued drones like on track 3. The Drone genre is ... read more

I personally think this deserves a genre for itself, and maybe others like fearofdark. This is progressive chiptune.

Most chiptune tends to be the typical 4/4, and doesn't use very complicated rhythm. This is because the grid size is limited to 64 rows in early trackers (for non nerds, basically just the software chiptune is made in). You would need a higher speed or use the delay command which from my experience is very difficult to use for me.

So it makes sense why most chiptune is ... read more

Waterworld is a very bad licensed game for the SNES. But take a look of this soundtrack. It's actually beautiful. Dean Evans is seriously the best composer of the SNES era besides David Wise.

The soundtrack ranges from dark and atmospheric, pretty and ethereal, and groovy. This is mainly done with the instrumentation and vibes of the chords. A low and echoing flute is used on a lot of the tracks makes it sound sort of unsettling in a way. Plus the ambient chords, which I believe to be ... read more

Motorway by Fearofdark is such an expertly crafted and well produced album. These compositions are so complex and well made, showing how much experience he has with Trackers

The production side of the album so good. First you have the basslines, they are so funky and groovy. Then you have some of the more relaxing sections.

The worst part of the album is the pacing, it's kind of monotinous how a lot of the tracks are way too long, I don't mind it when the songs are good but the ... read more

the opening 3 track run was a little boring, but damn this picked up around the middle, we get some very cutesy and catchy songs here. Overall it is a mixed bag, but still pretty decent

Birthing by Swans is their final massive project I believe. With that this album feels like an end to an era.

What I would say about the album it that it disappoints in similar ways to leaving meaning. This is because I found a majority of the tracks to be boring.

The album has a good balance between beautiful ambience and hard and groovy tracks. We hear this balance really well on the first track. The choir and chords at the beginning are just so good, especially alongside that twisted ... read more

leaving meaning. by Swans is the first post trilogy album. With how good the trilogy was, following it up was going to be difficult, and sadly I think that is what they failed to do amazingly here. Call it expectations, I wont' deny that is likely a factor, but overall I didn't like this for much

The album takes on an atmospheric approach, which I personally love the most in Swans, shown in my favourite albums being TGM and SFTB. This atmosphere is immediately seen in the first disc, ... read more

This album takes Cheesecore, and amplifies the tiny amount of funk elements while still keeping a bit Bossa Nova tracks, and even fuses the two genres on some tracks.

This album requires more attention then Cheesecore because there's way more going on in the compositions. This means instrumentally the album is way more complex and interesting.

This album has flaws that I didn't have with Cheesecore though which is why I like it less. It has higher highs but has lower lows overall, ... read more

This album is full of extremely catchy Bossa Nova instrumental and even some funk stuff making for a diverse and easy going listening experience. For the compositions there is so much here, there is tons of instruments to give it lots of variety, and there's even some background vocals on here.

There is little to say about this album because it is instrumental and the production doesn't much to say about it, but that is not a criticism, it's just that simple of an album and I ... read more

A record that should be shafted "doesn't even feel like an album but objectively is" shared with Eminem's Infinite. Prodigy and Havoc have put down this record as young and dumb teens not taking shit seriously, it's literally a super juvenile record.

So the title does tell you what you're getting into, it probably won't leave a great impression and nothing's going to impress you but there might be some goodies.

So my main issue is they sound super ... read more

So first was laughs, why am I even listening to this? I just started laughing a little. But then I started feeling weird and quenched, something about the sound just made me feel uncomfortable in what was probably an intentional way.

At this point I was already intrigued by the album to be honest and started feeling more positive that this was going to be good. Perhaps my preconceptions about this was wrong.

One part about the album is everytime a little sound would pop out it felt like a ... read more

The black album is something I was expecting to enjoy, but I think I just might not be much of a Jay Z guy because I didn't really like this. Jay Z is a great rapper in the top 15 at the very least and on this album his flow always sticks really well to the beat. He's a good lyricist too with both emotional yet braggadocious lyrics.

The production is soulful and has tons of variety given how many star producers are on this thing. Yet it sounds like they are just made to be hits more ... read more

Progressive Rock is starting to become one of my favourite genres because all of this was amazing and blew me away at certain parts. I truly think this is close to perfect, but personal vibes keep me from rating this 100, but it could easily rise.

So the best part of this album really is the very complex and artistically sound arrangements. There's so many elements to focus on in these songs. A big part of it are the song lengths which give especially the 10+ minute songs a long time to ... read more