So Much Music, So Little Reviews (Universe)

[user]

"We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out — and we have only just begun." —Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Lunkhead]

Thanks for making a review thread. The new songs are up. Review away!

[chocolatechips]

My Four Favorites/Votes First:

Tuners Union: I remember you always blowing me away with the quality of your stuff in the past. You're really really good. Remind me of The Beta Band and I'm a huge fan of them so I mean that as a big compliment. Yeah. I'm a fan for sure. By far the best song of the fight imo.

Holly Furlone: Strong vocals. Being a really good singer is almost an unfair advantage here .... Love the harmonies. The drumbeat is simple/repetitive but it helps add a good energy to the track, if it was just guitar/vocals I might have tuned out. The fuzzyness actually adds to the track I think; adds to the atmosphere. I don't mind the unusual mix either; fits the psychedelic vibe of the title and a lot of the recordings I really love don't stick to the standard vocals up the middle thing.

Nick M. Soma: Catchy. Good mix. Well played. Good stuff. The instrumental breaks remind me vaguely of Neutral Milk Hotel (the rest of it not really... although kind of in the spacier section) Anyway; this is really good. I like the contrasts between the sections.

Zack Facco: Has a cool psychedelic '60s garage band feel. Seems like a pretty fully realized track. Good work.

~~~~~ the rest in no particular order ~~~~~

Berkeley Social Scene: I like it, but I don't love it. Not sure why it doesn't quite click for me. Has some cool elements for sure.

Inflatable Vegetables: Quirky fun tune. The main bit is quite catchy and reminds me of something, but I can't quite place it.

MC oh!: I appreciate the unusual approach and I think it works pretty nicely on the singing bit but I'm not a big fan of the rap verses. Not that they aren't good, but it's not something I can really get into.

Michael Karns & Wolf Kier: The spacey piano is alright, I am into that. But overall I find the song pretty sleepy, I can't get into it. I don't think the vocals are quite strong enough to pull off this minimalist approach.

Nobody and the No Shows: Cool whistling. I like how you mixed the ambient spaciness with the guy & guitar vibe. This is pretty good, I can imagine it growing on me with multiple listens but ... I am doing these reviews and votes based on one listen and it doesn't quite make it to my top 4 (probably #5.)

~)*|*(~: Lo-fi metal ... rock on dude. Not really in my wheelhouse so not sure what I can say that would be constructive criticism.

Toby Roktot: The chorus "so much universe, so little time..." part is quite a cool little bit. Grabbed my attention when it was wandering. I also like the rising guitar part and how it goes to the very spaced out bit. As a whole it sounds a bit like a demo for what could be a really cool finished tune, but I think it's pretty enjoyable as just a guy & guitar track too.

~~~~~ my song on youtube ~~~~~

[Lunkhead]

I can't quite figure out if the new song by ~)*|*(~ is by the same person/people as the July 2004 entry under that name:

http://sfjukebox.org/artists/~)*%7C*(~

Coming back after a 10+ year hiatus? Or somebody reusing the name?

[Niveous]

I can't quite figure out if the new song by ~)*|*(~ is by the same person/people as the July 2004 entry under that name:

http://sfjukebox.org/artists/~)*%7C*(~

Coming back after a 10+ year hiatus? Or somebody reusing the name?

~)*|*(~ = user.

Fun fact: You pronounce it Korftmenk.

[user]

Yeah it was me both times. Korftmenk indeed, your memory's better than mine Niv! I went by user on the old dumbrella boards, changed to Mogosagatai with the board change since by then everyone knew what an asshole user was. Now that everyone knows what a condescending prick Mogo is, it's back to user.

[Lunkhead]

I was very puzzled about the way that the songfight.org archive page for "In The Ditch" sorted the ~)*|*(~ entry amongst the other artists. Then I did this most recent fight update and I realized it's sorting the artists to match the sort order of the mp3 filenames, and the filename starts with "tilde". Whacky.

[hillbilly]

know my entry was weak but wondering why it wasn't posted, jb you still mad. ?

[Holly Furlone]

Wow. There's so much good stuff here.

Berkeley Social Scene--I really like the sound quality of the shouted vocals and the blend of electric and acoustic guitar on this one. The guitar solo at ~2:20 changed the mood of the song for me. Or maybe it changed my mood. I dunno. I liked it; it was unexpected.


The Chocolate Chips--This has so many great layers and I love the feel of the chorus. It adds a nice sense of fullness to the song. (Thanks for the review!)


Holly Furlone--That's me finally taking your advice and working in other instruments/tracks. It's a little heavy on the drums,and in a spot or two with the piano, but I feel good about it as a solid foundation and motivation to keep working on smoothing out production and structure.


Inflatable Vegetables--I like this. I'm not sure if I was wanting just a little bit of reverb or some other effect on your vocals but compared to the sound quality of the rest of your instrumentation, the edges of your vocal track felt much sharper than the others. Overall though, I really enjoyed the song.


MC oh!--This feels like a few different songs that I'd also enjoy hearing separately. The robotic tone of your chorus was interesting. Not a fit for me but engaging enough to keep me listening. "The kind that doesn't need diamonds 'cause she already shines" is a nice line.


Michael Karns and Wolf Kier--I appreciate the poetry in the lyrics of this song. Structurally, the beginning kind of felt like a 3 minute build up to something that never quite materialized...but it continued to lull me. I could nap to this. And I love naps. The effects you used at the end of the song made me think of orbiting


Nick Soma
--Wow! This is solid, with a lot going on. I love the backing vocals/harmonies and the breakdown at ~2:14 was really, really nice. I started liking the song even more when one of the initial high pitched vibrating/buzzing sounds (synth?) faded and smoothed out.

Nobody and the No Shows-- I like the structure of this song and the quality of the recording. I'm always amazed by people that can carry and maintain a good whistle pitch. I suck at whistling.

~)*|*(~--Rock on! Not my go-to style of music but I can appreciate the amount of work that went into making this

tobyroktot--"Beware of drinks you can't see through." I like where this song goes and I love the slow down at the end.

Tuners Union--Yes. I love so much about this. My favorite so far. Is that a ukulele in the background?


Zack Facco--This is a fun tune. The first little snippet made me think of Soul Coughing (love them). The vocals sound freestyled and I really like the drums. If you plan on developing this more I'd love to hear it.

[Toby Roktot]

Thanks Choc Chips and Holly !!!!! (more than five !'s means your crazy) according to Terry Pratchett...
most of the lyrics were inspired by Pratchett quotes.....I just combined them into a song.
thx again, and thx to the peeps comin' up with these inspiring titles !!!!!!! (yep...crazy)

[Lunkhead]

hillbilly, I didn't see your entry in the Inbox when I posted the fight. I don't see it there now either. When did you send it? Did you get the auto-response email? I checked the spam folder and don't see your email there either. Send it again if you want.

[hillbilly]

I'm kind of glad it wasn't posted, but thanks for looking.

[hillbilly]

voted holly and nick, enjoyed holly all though recording could be better, good job nick, what up toby

[iVeg]

BSS Martyr's singing is always full of passion. I want to hear some solid harmonies behind him on choruses, like Sex Pistols NMt Bollocks. Guitar solo very nice.
CHIPS Unexpected change out of the intro. Totally caught me by surprise.
HOLLY Beautiful song, great vocal harmonies. Nice to hear the added instruments.
ME Got it in right at the deadline.
MCOh Some cool instruments, but they don't seem to fit the melody of the chorus at all. Some cool lyrics
MK&WK Ballad. Pretty melody. cool, jazzy progression. Right when I was wanting a change, it changed. Some of those melody lines towards the (bridge?) were pretty difficult to sing.
NICK Manic tempo. Nice tempo change. You're very good at this uptempo melodic punk
N&tNS whistling. Like first verse lyrics very much. Would have sung the chorus different, tho. Not so fast on Universe. Like "Am I getting thru" part, not so much "So much universe out here" part
TOBY Good quotes, but they don't always follow logically. Like the change of feel. Life passes before your eyes ... I was bummed you didn't finish that quote
TUnion Nice opening harmonies, good instrumental parts. Second part no like so much, but like part three a lot. This is my favorite chorus I think
ZACK Drum intro too long. started off thinking Stones. Liked guitar solo.
~<@v@>~ some cool heavy music, not so much into screaming

[jast]

Reviewing live while listening. If you want any more detailed explanations or constructive feedback, let me know.

Tuners Union -- Nice opening. I kind of wish it (the chords, mainly) would change a bit throughout the intro (and the rest of the song, in fact), but okay. The extra guitar coming in at 2:09 seems a bit whimsical. At first I was turned off by that, but I grew to like it. All in all this feels very cohesive. I would have loved an additional section to change it up, though.

~)*|*(~ -- My first impression is that there's top end missing. I don't really have any other comments, this isn't pushing any buttons for me.

Nobody and the No Shows -- This sounds a bit restrained, at least at first, but otherwise well done. Some bass would have been a nice counter to the high synth thingy (which, by the way, is a great choice for this arrangement). The breaks are quite long -- almost too long, but not quite... so, good sense of timing.

MC oh! -- The synth is super painful. Ironically, the tuned vocals are out of tune in relation to the synths. Your rhythm/flow needs work. With a backing track this minimalist (not even any proper bass! Why?), there needs to be something else that is really good to carry the whole song, and I'm missing that here.

Nick Soma -- Very solid (if not supremely innovative) arrangement and structure. I love the pad in the bridge sections. The whole thing is a bit relentlessly loud, but all in all, nice listen. I can't think of anything else to say.

Zack Facco -- Opening is a bit disjointed, but not so much that it would turn me off. The genre/style doesn't work for me, but apart from production (which is all over the place; e.g. the bass being panned right bothers me, as does how muted the snare sounds compared to the hats) you've done a pretty good job.

Holly Furlone -- Interesting blend of styles in the arrangement. But... vocals panned right? Why? Oh, right, there's more vocals coming in later. I probably would have automated the panning to only shift the lead vox to the side when the other part comes in. Or maybe I wouldn't have panned at all. Still... almost all of the drum kit panned right? Why? Enough about the mix, though. This is nice to listen to, but I would have wished for some more development, some kind of build up and/or release. Some kind of extra section to change things up wouldn't have gone amiss, either.

Inflatable Vegetables -- The verses are very, very hard to make out. Speak up! I kind of like this, but the arrangement and pacing just keeps on hammering at me and it gets a bit old that way. How about an intro, a middle eight, an outro, stuff like that? There's a reason they're used so much in general.

Michael Karns and Wolf Kier -- Good showing, many redeemable qualities (the contrast between more complex and simpler chords in verses vs. chorus; pretty good writing; perfectly placed synth at the end), but there are too many things that bother me that I could really enjoy it. The bass is drone-y, the vocals are lacking the foundation (that element that gives clarity and "bite" to the speaking voice), the transition into the bridge section is hit and miss. Plus it's too long, given the weaknesses.

tobyroktot -- Energetic! Slightly compromised by the vocals, though... lacking foundation. Nice coda. Nice song.

Berkeley Social Scene -- Vocals a bit thin in the mix. Boy, you guys like putting almost impossible challenges in front of your vocalists... if I make allowances for that, I like this song.

The Chocolate Chips -- Not enjoying the filters on the vocals, they sound like they'd kill clarity. Nice song, very good arrangement and such, I just wish there was more happening in it.

[iVeg]

Thanks for the reviews. I had recorded the main chorus Monday night, but had nothing else. Weds morning I wrote and recorded before work. I was trying not to wake sleeping wife and dog.

[user]

Zacko Facco
Kinda groovy funky bluesy, not bad. Pleasingly non-repetitive. Yeah, break out that guitar solo! That alone gets you like, I dunno, 15 points. The bass gets you maybe 8 more. Not a big fan of the vocals, but I have no room to talk. If you're gonna insist on the reverse drums part, I'd stick it somewhere in the middle of the song as a sort of wacky bridge, and then go back to the more comprehensible blues. But by all means, reverse away & get wacky.

Toners Onion
You guys obviously put very little effort into this and have little musical talent, especially when it comes to vocal harmonies. The big wet organ sounds are just awful and unpleasant. I absolutely hate the percussion, particularly starting around 1:19. The plucky guitar near the end that seems to drag on the tempo while not actually doing so just detracts even more. You're going to receive very few votes. Wait. Scratch all that. Put it down, flip it, and reverse it.

Tiny Roktots—er, Toby Robot
Note to all the guys&guitars out there: This is how you do it. It's a little brooding but not whiney or mopey, not lame, just solid songcraft. A point of contention unrelated to how good your song is: I think it's the other way around, that reality is fantasy's curse, while fantasy is one of reality's many blessings. But we could argue in circles all day and your song is great.

Ain't Nobody and the Nohows
I dunno, I'm not really feeling it. It may be that it's too musically predictable, catchy but too catchy. Although I imagine, say, the Postal Service or Aerosmith could pull it off. I guess I'm saying it needs more style, or better style, to work with such simplicity. I like the space-noise though.

Nick “Megalodon” Soma
Very technically proficient. I'm not a fan of the synthy organ, but it could work for me in a different context. This falls into the “a little too peppy for me” category, like the song is really excited about something that I'm not that excited about. The drums kick ass though; they're real, right? Well they sound real. The lyrics are great too, the parts I can understand. The sequence with the shaman and the bear et al is awesome. Okay, all the musical parts are technically pretty great; you got mad talent, this one just isn't a fit for me, because apparently I'm a curmudgeon.

Michelangelo Karns and Wolfman Kier
You have the piano chord skills, to be sure, and the bass fleshes it out nicely. Top it off with the old-timey sounding vocals, and y'all have a unique sound, even if it isn't exactly my thing. I must say that for such a long song, this does change and meander enough to not be too repetitive. At about 2:23, with “but a blanket...”, it sounds like you're actually singing while yawning, which made me yawn, which isn't so much a criticism as a curious observation. My attempt at constructive criticism would be like, “add some weird sound effects and a spacey background drone and a funky beat that abruptly appears and disappears, and...” that's when you'd stop caring what I had to say.

MC oh snap!
Ahh, there's my weekly dose of crapcore. My initial impression was that this totally sucks, what with the grating synth and the droning chorus, but it has grown on me to a small extent and now I can even happily hum along. Familiarity breeds con...mmmradeship? I chuckled at the lightsaber line. I'd work on smoothing out your lyrical flow a bit, making it less choppy and stumbly, for which see MC Frontalot. Hey, did you hear they're making a Beetlejuice 2?!

Infallible Vegetables Last week Lou Reed was played by Ross Durand; this week he's played by you, in a sort of cheesy casio style, parodying Skynyrd's “Gimme Three Steps”. Pretty decent, if a tad peppy for my taste. The vocals get a little buried in the mix at times, but at other times they stand out clearly. I would make the drums “tighter,” by which I mean, less shah-CHAH-shah-CHAH and more chicka-chucka-CHICKa-chucka-chicka-chucka-CHICKa-chucka; just seems like a better fit to me.

Holy Furlone!
You got a purdy song. I did not see that coming, given the intro, but it works well enough. Reminds me of Henrietta and the Hostage's “Blueberry Hassle”, which I consider a Songfight classic, although it doesn't quite reach that level for whatever reason. Gotta love that deep kick drum sound, not to mention the beautiful harmonized vocals. I'd increase the tempo just a smidge and add some bass guitar or some kind of non-percussive bass-sounding track.

The Chocolate Chops
You have a good thing going here. It's heavy (not in a metal way) but simultaneously happy, which suits me to a tee. Love the bassline. I'm afraid you may get another win, unless Tuners Union or BSS take it. We shall see.

Berkeley Sercial CERN
Dig the spacey guitars that soak into my head like water soaks a sponge. Dig the vocals. Y'all hit the spot with this one. Extra points for non-awkwardly rhyming “to traverse” with “universe”.

~)^|^(~
Built out of chopped up pieces of the guitar, bass, & drum tracks of Metallica's “Ride the Lightning” (please don't sue me Lars, ya friggin' jerk). The time signature increases by 1 count with each passing measure, from 1/4 (sounds like a pickup note) to 26/4 (A to Z), but our minds naturally break down the larger measures into smaller ones, so it's more like 4/4 with increasingly spaced funny bits. I shat all over Metallica's awesomesauce with my terrible, terrible vocals. Lyrics allude to Signboy's “Fever Dream” (“no spoon, no sky”) and to Portal (“no cake...no lie”). The whole thing can be superficially interpreted as nihilistic, but an opposite interpretation is also possible, and really I was taking a sort of zen buddhist approach.

-----

Votes: Choco, Berkeley, Toby, Holly, & Tuners.

[HeuristicsInc]

I was very puzzled about the way that the songfight.org archive page for "In The Ditch" sorted the ~)*|*(~ entry amongst the other artists. Then I did this most recent fight update and I realized it's sorting the artists to match the sort order of the mp3 filenames, and the filename starts with "tilde". Whacky.

On Unix systems, files with the tilde usually means a file is a temporary file for editing something else, or maybe a backup.
-bill

[user]

On Unix systems, files with the tilde usually means a file is a temporary file for editing something else, or maybe a backup.
-bill

Cool, but he means the word "tilde". I didn't want to burden our fightmasters with unwieldy filename punctuation.

[kaz]

Remind me of The Beta Band and I'm a huge fan of them so I mean that as a big compliment.

I remember you saying this before - thanks. I'm a fan of theirs too and The Aliens, although I never really would have considered them an influence.

Is that a ukulele in the background?

There's a uke in there, but I thought I'd buried it pretty badly in the mix. If you mean the strumming at the end, it's actually a Martin Backpacker.

Tuners Union I kind of wish it (the chords, mainly) would change a bit throughout the intro (and the rest of the song, in fact)

Yeah. I made a decision early on to see if I could make an interesting song using only three chords, which transformed into using the same 3-chord-progession for the whole song. So I tried to make the sections different enough that they didn't feel like they were repeating. I guess I need to try harder .
Incidentally, I assume you are the same Jan Krueger that posts Git cheat sheets to your personal website (which, if you believe it, I found completely independently of Songfight). If that is indeed true, many thanks! I have one hanging on my cabinet by my desk at work.

Toners Onion

I chuckled at this.

Berkeley Social Scene
I love this chorus, and I love the traverse/universe rhyme. I'm not real crazy about the synthy thing in the beginning.. it may just be a little bit too loud. Yeah on second listen, overall, I really like this. The "I was counting on forever.." is just perfect. Can't say much else. Awesome. Lyrically solid.

The Chocolate Chips
This is pretty cool. I didn't like that it took over a minute to get to the lyrics. Maybe that's just because it's a short song, or maybe because the opening guitar solo, while solid, didn't knock my socks off. The vocal work I like a lot. How did you get this sound? It's got a haunting kind of quality to it. I think I hear a meandering pitch-shifted voice in there. Right at 2:43 out of the left channel I hear "universe, universe, universe" and man... that's the kind of little thing that turns a good song into a great song. Love it.

Holly Furlone
Well I'm split here. On the plus side, I don't think I've ever heard a drum machine+piano+acoustic+pretty vocals before, and that's a really cool fusion. But at the same time, I keep getting thrown off a bit because there are these raw, straightforward recorded vocal and acoustic sounds with the little bit of authentic hiss and natural room reverb to them.. and then this super clean drum machine. I guess I just can't make up my mind if I like the contrast or not. Just a production gripe. Also, my OCD doesn't like the vocals weighing heavily on the right channel, but that doesn't mean much. Structure, lyrics, everything else I quite liked.

And I've now re-read your own review of your song, and let me just clarify: the mixture of everything is great, the drums add an excellent layer. I absolutely agree you have a solid foundation here.

Inflatable Vegetables
I missed a lot of the lyrics during the spoken-ish part, just couldn't understand them. Maybe just boost the level a bit there? But this is fun enough in its own right. Interesting lyrics, generally put together pretty well. There are some vocal spots where it feels like you're holding back... the feel of the song is pretty fun but then the vocal just kind of sits there and doesn't have enough animation to match the musical energy. Know what I mean? I'm not criticizing your voice here so I hope it doesn't come off that way. Just open up and let 'em rip!

MC oh!
That saw synth gets really grating. And it feels off beat in places which make the lyrics harder to follow, and the lyrics seem like they ought to be the focal point here. The rhymes are pretty cool, and they're performed rather well too. Not a fan of the auto tune on the chorus, is it in a different key? Cleaning up the beat and cutting like 30-60 seconds somehow would probably help with the overall delivery.

Michael Karns and Wolf Kier
I like what you're going for here, but to echo Chips, it needs to be a little more crisp to pull it off. At times the vocal sounds really great, and in others, not so much. But I suspect that's an effect of writing and performing a song in a week. Actually, I'd love to hear this cleaned up a bit. The progressions are great, and the vocal does have kind of a dreamy quality to it.

Nick Soma
I like this, very well done. You voice reminds of the guy from Alkaline Trio. Lyrically this is great, too, "the stars up there will die" fits perfectly, is powerful, and flows really well. Do you have a band or is this all one guy (I'm assuming the latter)? Just curious. Overall, excellent.

Nobody and the No Shows
I loved the story, the opening lyrics especially. Needs to be a little sharper all around though. I think the beat gets lost a few times, which for me is disorienting. Do you have a pop screen for your mic? There a few plosives that seem to overwhelm. If not, you can get them sorta cheap (although still overpriced), or you can make an equally effective one for next to nothing with a wire coat hanger, panty hose, and zip ties/duct tape/whatever.

~)*|*(~
I do these reviews in notepad++ because it's a little easier to manage, and yeah, when I copy this in you show up as "Tildecloseasterpipeasteropentilde". Anyways. I mean, I don't like it, but that's subjective. Technically it's pretty good, performed and put together well. I can't really understand any of the words though. It'd be great menu music for a video game about, I don't know, motorcycles. But really I'm the wrong person to give an opinion on this style, so please disregard all of this except the first sentence, because I think that's hilarious because I am a dork.

tobyroktot Doesn't knock my socks off, but I love it. I don't know how it's possible either. Your voice is nice. Overall... it needs something, but I don't know what. Sorry. I do know that it needs less vocal reverb when it settles down towards the end, but in general the transition is seriously really great.

Tuners Union
I have been away too long (again) and am trying to change that. Anyways, this is the result of stretching 3 chords into an entire song. I had a few lines where I could not come up with any words to fit, so I used http://creativitygames.net/random-word-generator for some jumping off points... and yeah, that really helps with writer's block.

Zack Facco Musically, I like it, but dang the production on the vocal really doesn't work here. The feel of it isn't bad, but I dunno.. maybe just quiet them down a bit? In some parts (not all, mind you), something rubs me really harshly here. Maybe what I'm hearing is the combination of a pretty-well-produced-instrument section and a just-do-it-real-quick vocal.

[johndisk0]

I really liked everyone's entries. I had a party at my house on Good Friday and played all of the songs after dinner. Then I told everyone to go home and vote on their favorite. Hopefully, they did.'

Having said that, I really wanted to make an entry for this fight. I had all kinds of ideas for mixing Star Trek TNG into it. Unfortunately, I went on vacation and couldn't mix while I was gone.

There's so much universe! Come on, let's go.
I got my Earl Gray tea. Warp 5. Make it so.

This is what I wrote the hour after I saw the fight. Yes, my preliminary lyrics are never that good. My final lyrics are never any better, either

-jd0

[Niveous]

My votes go to Toby Roktot and Nick Soma.