ILM Listening Chamber 13

shugayser

Won't play on my Window media player (or anything else for that matter). Any Ideas??

I dont like the bassline in the intro. it doesn't match up with the chord progression. Uninspired vocal melodies/rhythms. During the slow part the bass is kinda ponderous., the lead guitar wankout near the the end (neener neener neener) could be reigned in a little. uh, i liked the ending tho. what effect is that? tremolo?

the pacing of the thing is odd- episodic almost. like it wasn't written in realtime. using a more minimalist aesthetic in devising the song structure would have improved the thing- made it feel less like it was spliced together on a compooter multitracker. you dont have to use all yr cool riffs in one song! but, in any case it still rawked.

i'm ambivalent about shoegazer. i feel manipulated when every song on an album is trying to simulate ciotus with the angels (up up up into the heavens!! *back down* then back up up up!! into the heavens!!! we need small, banal things to make the big things feel big. reestablsh our sense of scale.

also, i was going to say something along the lines of 'shoegazer is kind of inherently maximalist' cuz it sounded smart, but then i thought, mmm, whats a maximalist? so what is a maximalist? does the word apply here?

p.s. i used to get night terrors when i was a kid. they were always really abstract- i could never remember the subject of the dreams afterwards, but always: my body (or A body) expanding in size really really really fast without any apparent end. which is sort of scary in itself, but the real terror lay in the horrible abyss between the comical hugeness of my body and the tiny (and fast-moving) spidery patterns i saw in my skin.

Billy, try Winamp. You can download it for free from their site. The basic version is about 400k big.

Got it play on liquid audio, not really worth the effort though.

12 years ago I may have been quite enthused by this, but now it sounds rather quaint. Like listening to a mod revival band in '79 or Primal Scream any time in the past 10 years.

I've listened to it twice and both times I've found it quite pleasant and both times as soon as it fades out it fades out from my memory.

"An invalid media type was specified"

I am not permitted to download any alternative software onto the PC I use (a work one).

Answer to No.8 please?

I love the track. Even if the band is maybe technically not 100% fit, the song qualifies easily for one of the top ten shoegazing tracks I have ever heard. It is true that shoegazing records have not aged very well. But still. Listening to a track once in a while does some good I think. And this one was recorded not so long ago.
Sorry if the file does not play on the Windows media player. On Winamp it works. Btw I suggested the track.

My top two shoegazer songs would be "Flower to Hide" by Catherine Wheel and "When You Sleep" b My Bloody Valentine. Too lazy to look up the other seven making up the top ten. Probably some Ride, some Lush and Pale Saints (both at the crossroads of shoegazer and dreampop) and more MBV and CW. Not to forget one early Boo Radleys (don't know which now). But is so true this music should only be consumed in small doses.

god, this is a long one! it's already too 'bitty' and they've managed to lose the rhythm, and i'm only a minute and a half in...

Overall I find this song unsuccessful. I'm not a big fan of the shoegazer genre, but that's something that I can overlook to a certain extent. The quality of the recording is odd -- the vocals and guitars are fairly clear and upfront, the bass is thin but clear, and the drums sound like they were miked with overheads and nothing else.

The beginning is OK -- was this an excerpt from something longer? -- if not to my taste. But the changes really throw the song off, in part because they seem somewhat arbitrary. I think that's partly due to "poor ensemble" -- i.e. the band's not tight, and not loose in a good way either. In particular, the drummer seems noticeably sloppy, and unfortunately chooses the kind of two-sticks-on-the-high-hat beats that are VERY hard to really nail, at least in my experience. And the guitar leads are rather amateurish, evocative of countless guys alone in their apartments with four-tracks and delay pedals. The one at the end is particularly incongruous. The more distorted stuff, though, sounds pretty good. The bass is neither particularly good nor particularly bad -- it's very "safe", and has all the hallmarks of a beginning-level bass player taught his/her part by the band's guitarist. But I think it's too thin and not well-recorded.

Anyway, I think the song would be more successful if it just stuck with the initial thing the whole way through. The changes are ambitious, but just don't really work -- they don't seem "inevitable in retrospect", they just come off as wanky. The song can't really decide what it wants to be, and that keeps it from being anything well. But the band clearly has some ideas that could work very well (even if they're not my thing); it just needs more focus and clarity, and perhaps one or more of the band members need to rein in their egos (since long, sprawling songs with too many parts often = delusions of grandeur / auteurism).

The week is over. I know nobody really wants to know who this was. The calmest music chamber in terms of posts with not even one positive evaluation. It was a group from San Jose, CA called "Your Precious You". They have released an EP and toured the west coast with Brian Jonestown Massacre I guess.

i don't know much about shoegazing - was it mostly a UK thing though? was surprised to find out this was a US track. not sure why it came up as being 16 mins long when it isn't - that may have put people off listening to all of it.

alex - I didn't mind this track at all. Sounds a little dated -- it's more peripheral, shoegazer-influenced alterna-rock I think ... has a very early-90's ring to it. It's the blaring, Unwound-esque tone to the guitars that is too overwhelming, and sounds a little wanky to me ... I like the chopped-up, multi-part structure, which bothered other people. Nothing wrong with progressive songwriting .. as long as the music isn't castrated Rush clones .. ;)

one question .. in my mp3 player, the total track time was listed somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 or 14 minutes, but I only heard 7 ... was this an edit of an even larger track, or did I not get the full download?

chris.

Chris - I do not know about these 13 minutes showing up in your player. You can download the song from the band's site. It is "Wake" the first track. There are three other mp3s for the hardcore fans.

Was this band the band @ the heart of a minor ILM controversy where the poster of the band information was accused of spamming the board? Alex, would YOU be that long-forgotten person?

I only say this because, for what it is, it's pretty good. Granted, outside of The Shoegazing Troika+++, I have little interest in more such stuff, but it's solid stuff.

Yes. Your memory is quite amazing David. But why the hell does everybody love this suddenly? After you have almost convinced me that it is rubbish. As I said before. Shoegazing was a movement I loved as it was the hippest trend in indie music when I started to listen to indie music. And this track was the first one of a US band I appreciated. Do anything what you want with this but do not buy the ep. It does not include this song but only three weaker tracks and cost me something like 28 dollars.

i'm a fan of shoegaze/dreampop/whatever and i have to be honest, that didn't really do anything for me. it reminded me of the rockier end of things, Spitfire and stuff like that, catherine wheel maybe.