Mogwai – Earth Division EP Review

Hello people!

The guy who reviews music and apparently enjoys eating turtles is back!

A month ago, a bunch of highly talented scottish musicians who call themselves “Mogwai” released a new EP called Earth Division. 7 months after the release of Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, their brilliant new LP, they release this EP. Quite a busy bunch of scottish musicians as well as it seems.

Anyway, let’s get straight to the real deal: The EP contains 4 rather short tracks, 3 of which are instrumental. It is a small, but very interesting piece of art, kind of the tiny little dessert you get after eating  something really huge (which would be Hardcore will never die, but you will – I didn’t find a culinary metaphor for this album, excuse me for this).

The first track Get To France is a tiny piano piece which sounds more like a classical composition than a song by a rock band….which is great! They tried to explore classical music on the b-side “Music For A Forgotten Future (The Singing Mountain)” of their latest LP, which was a project for an art exposition in Germany. And I loved this track, even though they completely threw out the drums and used the guitars as an ambient background for the piano and strings. They pretty much did the same thing on Get To France, which initially surprised me, but I just love that they’re experimenting with the composition of their songs.

Hound Of Winter is kind of the Cody of this EP. Guitars + vocals make up a beautiful little ballad by this band…which is also something they haven’t been doing in some time considering their last two LPs hardly featured any vocals. The thing about this song though is that I could skip it and I frankly wouldn’t think I missed out on something important. This song is catchy, nice and cute but I am not really blown away by it to be honest.

Drunk And Crazy is what the song title already suggests (which is a rare occasion, I mean we’re talking about Mogwai song titles here!). It’s really freaked out experimental stuff that I didn’t expect at all from these guys. It’s really impressive that they have been making music for so many years now and still come up with something that’s as different from their other songs as a screwdriver is from a penguin. If you get me right on that one. Anyway, love this track, love this band. That’s pretty much it.

The last track, Does This Always Happen? is probably my favourite track on this EP. The guitar melody in the beginning immediately appealed to me and the strings and the way this song builds up is just beautiful. They could make a whole album full of those songs and I would probably love it. But it’s great they also come up with stuff like Drunk And Crazy or Rano Pano (on their latest LP) which keep things fresh and make their music sound a lot more dynamic and changeable.

I reviewed the several tracks now because there are only four tracks on this EP and they can be considered as seperate entities. And although they’re not quite cohesive, they still form a pretty solid EP which showed us all that this band can do no wrong.

Favourite Song(s): Drunk And Crazy, Does This Always Happen?

Least Favourite Song(s): Hound Of Winter

Overall Rating 8/10

Peace. On. Earth….Division.

So long.

Remember Remember – The Quickening Review

Good Morning, Supercaptains! I haven’t been on here for a while now due to several rather boring reasons. Anyway, in the meantime a lot of new albums have been released and I decided to start off reviewing the new Remember Remember LP “The Quickening”. So if anyone (i don’t know who I’m actually referring to there) assumed that I would review the new Opeth or Steven Wilson LP, or the new Mogwai EP which were all released during my absence, they have to be disappointed. I am probably going to review all those, but “The Quickening” is an album I felt like reviewing first.

Remember Remember are a scottish instrumental band I discovered last year through the Rock Action Label which is being run by the mighty Mogwai. I bought their self-titled debut-LP from 2008 and also an EP from 2010. Back then, RR was only one guy who obviously had to loop a lot of stuff. For this reason, I found the material even more impressive. A week ago, RR has released their sophomore LP called “The Quickening” and presumably the band turned into a 7-piece – judging by the band photo on thequietus where the album was streamable before its actual release. This already raised my expectations a bit, so I decided to stream the first track. I was already hooked and bought the album a few days later.

On “The Quickening” the band still works a lot with looping and layering. It does sound a lot more organic than on their debut LP though. They tend to use a lot more instruments and thus incorporate a wider selection of sounds. Especially the strings bring in a lot of diversity. While they sound very natural and heartfelt on tracks like Scottish Widows, they are very experimental and energetic on the track Hey Zeus. A Larger Demon, the shortest track is a very beautiful piano piece which perhaps serves as a sequel to And The Demon Said… on the self-titled album. Another quite experimental song is the last one called John Candy which starts off sounding really childish and..well a bit like candy I suppose and then slowly evolves into another song with many different layers. My favourite track still has to be the opener though because I just love the piano melodies on this thing. And I love how it slowly evolves and gets bigger and bigger by the minute. Fantastic song. The patterns that are being looped are very reminiscent of some of Steve Reich’s stuff, but Remember Remember tend to use this method of layering patterns and put it into many different directions, which brings up something new with each listen.

Of course on the other hand, the dangerous aspect of looping one track after another is that there is inevitably a lot of repetition. Of course when listening to this minimalistic style of music, you can only expect this. There could have been a few more shifts within the songs nonetheless. For example on the aforementioned track Hey Zeus the drum pattern doesn’t change a bit throughout the whole song which could have been avoided. And because it has hardly got any shifts you know the whole song after just listening to its first 30 seconds which leaves one a bit unexcited. I’m not saying that the whole album is predictable…but a few things could have been a tad more… well let’s call it adventurous.

I could enjoy this thing on first listen… I can still enjoy it on the following listens. It is indeed a solid album and is most definitely not outshined by the debut LP. The band tried to explore more directions which in my opinion is the best thing a band can do when writing new stuff. And even though I could’t appreciate every single minute of this album, it is always worth a listen.

Favourite Song(s): White Castle, Ocean Potion, A Larger Demon

Least Favourite Song(s): Hey Zeus

Overall Rating 7/10

tuned out again, bastards! see you next time.

Epic45 – Weathering Review

Hi guys, thereviewingturtleeater here again for another review. Been a little busy last week, hence there was no review. Hope this devastatingly long period without a new juicy review didn’t make you feel the urge of commiting suicide or eating olives. But who would come down to such a weird idea like eating olives anyway? I can certainly say I’d never do so.

Let’s come straight to business. Epic45 is a british ambient duo and is according to the two band members “a home recording project/collective” (quote from their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/epic45/112619985427761?sk=info) based on their musical ideas. Weathering is their sixth (fifth? seventh?) studio album and was released in June 2011. The album consists of 11 songs and runs approximately 53 minutes.

Weathering is definitely among my favourite “night-time” records since it is a really chilled out, atmospheric and ethereal piece of art, which I prefer to listen to at night. The songs mostly feature male vocals which are pretty subtle and gentle and fit perfectly into the musical atmosphere. Track 5 also features female vocals which quickly became one of my favourite vocal parts of the album. The album’s opener ‘People Say This Place Is Slowly Dying’ has some really beautiful guitars in it and the vocals create a warm atmosphere. Although the album is rather quiet the whole way through, there is a little noise stuff going on at the end of track 7 which was kind of unexpected during my first listens but I appreciate it nonetheless because it improves the transition to the next song. On this next song if  I heard some dulcimer (if I’m not mistaken), which I also liked very much. My favourite song is the title-track: beautiful ensemble of violins, glockenspiel, ethereal vocals, subtle drumming. This song immediately appealed to me and made me think that this was probably going to come out if you’d mix Sigur Rós with No-Man. What I also liked about this album were sounds like church bells or birds singing which added up to this peaceful little world being created while listening to Weathering. This album was my first Epic45 album and I’m really looking forward to listening to their earlier stuff since this new LP really got me hooked with this band’s interesting and unique sound.

The structure of the album is the only thing that prevents me calling this thing a masterpiece. It is unfortunately a bit un-exciting in the middle. I wouldn’t call it boring, it’s just that the middle of the album consists of a bunch of really short songs and interludes where one of the longer songs on the LP would have fitted perfectly inbetween. The album does have a really good flow and cohesion, but one or two of the shorter songs in the middle could have been elaborated a bit more. That is all.

To sum up, Weathering is always (but as already recommended: especially at night) a good album to close your eyes to and let your mind wander. Let this dreamy atmosphere weave through your consciousness so you can enter another, perhaps more peaceful world for 50 minutes. This experience is of course not guaranteed, but I personally have it while listening to this album.

Favourite Song(s): People Say This Place Is Slowly Dying, Evening Silhouettes, Summer Message, Weathering

Least Favourite Song(s):  -

Overall Rating: 8/10 (strong 8!)

Final Days Society – Ours Is Not A Caravan Of Despair Review

I’m talking about a swedish shoegaze/post-rock band now. No, I am not talking about Ef. Nor am I talking about pg.lost. I’m talking about Final Days Society who released their sophomore LP four months ago! It is called “Ours Is Not A Caravan Of Despair” and follows up their debut with the title “Noise Passes, Silence Remains” released back in 2008.

While comprising two songs less than their debut it runs about the same time, which obviously raises the average song length (Kudos to me using high incredibly mind-twistingly difficult mathematics in my review! I bet no-one has done something that cool ever). The songs really work well together and create some kind of flow throughout the album. They seem to know each other and thus work that well when played together. Something that I love about albums. To be honest I missed that kind of thing a bit on their debut. Similar to their debut, the opener is a rather atmospheric chilled out intro. It sounds really ethereal and up-lifting and thus is probably my favourite track on the whole record. The album is mostly instrumental but has some vocals on it, fortunately exactly at the right spots. The long crescendo build-ups mostly end in some loud exploding (tremolo-picked) guitars. Something that might have been a bit overdone on this album to be honest (later more about that in my ‘complaints’ section, you know, where I nag and bitch about stuff). The last song only features those aforementioned “exploding” guitars which makes the album end pretty epic. I also noticed that the song titles of the last songs on both of their releases seem to complete each other. ‘Silence Is…’ (last track on their debut) ‘…Beauty’ (last track on Ours Is Not A Caravan Of Despair). Pretty cool thing. Also, one of my favourite tracks off this album is ‘Swans’ which was the first track I listened to from the band – on facebook back in April – it immediately got me hooked on the band. I especially liked the drums on that one and it had a nice overall feel and was really something totally unique and new to my ears. Splendid stuff!

Ok, the album also has a few weaker spots on it. (Which album hasn’t? Damn, now that I’ve written that, several voices in my head keep shouting Effloresce…f***ing oceansize geeks in my head..) For example, to me the fifth track ‘Theory Of Everything’ didn’t quite fit in between the other songs that (as already mentioned) know each other. It is pretty good as a stand-alone song though. Also, this album really needs to be listened to while relaxing in the evening (which is the normal time to listen to albums anyway for non-music-nerds such as people that aren’t me) after you’re done with all your work or whatever the hell you did the whole day since otherwise it could be a bit straining due to the very frequent use of those crescendo guitar explosions. Although I appreciated them very much, they were in fact a bit over-used and some songs correspondingly could have been a bit shorter.

To sum up, this album was really enjoyable and to me is definitely among the best post-rock releases of 2011 so far. It was a bit too extensive here and there, but it is nonetheless a good listen-to-it-the-whole-way-through-without-getting-bored-or-killed-by-some-mosquitos-or-stuff-album.

Favourite Song(s): 1:60, Swans, Aeons

Least Favourite Song(s): Theory Of Everything (because it isn’t as good as the others. however it is still pretty good)

Overall Rating: 7/10 (a rather strong seven actually)

the reviewing turtle eater. how you doing? well, whatever. hello.

Jesu – Ascension Review

For those who don’t know yet, Jesu is a post-metal/drone/shoegaze project from the UK started by the mastermind Justin K Broadrick (Final, Pale Sketcher, former bands: Napalm Death, Godflesh) after the split up of Godflesh. While Godflesh was a pretty heavy band, Justin decided to maintain this heavy sound in Jesu, but added electronic influences and tried to write accessible almost poppy songs. Those pop melodies are perfectly disguised in crushing drone heaviness and his  soft, melancholic vocals also fit in quite well.

Jesu has released tons of EPs, but only 2 official LPs: Jesu (2004) and Conqueror (2007)

Now, after 4 years (with several EPs released in the meantime) they released the third LP called Ascension. What a title: Jesu Ascension. Well, while that nice chap called Jesus back in the  day actually managed to ascend, the question now is if the band Jesu also made it with this album.

In  my opinion they didn’t.  And here’s why:

The album starts quite promising, but after a time it just gets really lost in itself. I liked tracks like Birth Day or Broken Home where Jesu tried to go back to the roots, with a slow, sludgy song and those particular keyboard sounds known from Jesu’s self-titled debut. But most of the songs sound rather boring actually. Nothing going on really. Ok, Jesu is known for not really adding lots of different parts to their songs. But they always managed to use such catchy tunes such as in Conqueror or Old Year that the  song doesn’t get boring or too extensive. This time unfortunately most of the songs do. Especially the second half sounds really uninspired and nearly not distinctive at all. I didn’t care for tracks like Black Lies or Small Wonder at all and could easily skip those and would’nt miss anything in the album’s sound. There are also songs which are significantly shorter than Jesu’s usual length of 7-9 minutes. I also didn’t really care for those. The only songs I could like (but still found pretty weak in comparison to previous work) were the first four tracks, which unfortunately often prevents me from listening to this album the whole way through.

And then there’s this mixing. The vocals are way too quiet and the drums also sound kind of sloppy. I could probably enjoy the album a bit more if it weren’t for this horrible mixing. The songs did have heavy guitars and good vocals on them but they didn’t make me feel the same way I felt about the songs on Conqueror or Jesu – both due to the mixing AND due to the song-writing that wasn’t to my enjoyment.

Ascension is sadly one of the biggest disappointments of 2011 to me because it couldn’t live up to my expectations at all. And I really had some  high expectations since I loved their 2 previous LPs and lots of their EPs too. Opiate Sun, their latest EP was already underwhelming though. Jesu developed a unique sound over the years and I started to love this sound. But with Ascension they kind of got lost in it and definitely should try something different with upcoming releases.

Favourite Song(s): Broken Home

Least Favourite Song(s): Brave New World, Black Lies, Small Wonder, Ascension

I hate to give a Jesu album this rating, but as for now:

Overall rating: 4/10

Own Header Image….How cool is that?

Guys, as you can see I edited the looks of the page a bit. You might say it has become a bit lighter now. I also got a new Header image made by a friend from Sweden (check out his last.fm, he has an incredibly good taste in music, just like myself: http://www.lastfm.de/user/Davvda95).

Ok, that’s about it for the changes. They’re pretty cool eh?

Thereviewingturtleeater can also now be found on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/thereviewingturtleeater/168904849849827 Make sure to like that page.

There might be some reviews coming up, I haven’t decided which and when though. So stay tuned in general for…whatever.

Much love for turtles and you guys.

I’m off.

3 Short Random Reviews – Part 3: *shels – Plains Of The Purple Buffalo

The third and last review of the ’3SRR’ experiment. The new 2011 LP ‘Plains Of The Purple Buffalo’ by british/american band *shels.

Plains Of The Purple Buffalo starts off as a dynamic post-metal album which initially appealed to me. I liked the first track and the thing I immediately noticed was the use of a trumpet which I found quite experimental but fitting (as for the first track). But as the album goes on it got a little too flat and cheesy (partially because of the trumpet, e.g. in track 3). The dynamic shifts were a bit too extreme with parts that I could almost not here with my volume up high being followed by significantly louder parts. Track 5 was quite good, but it got towards a rather pompous direction which I could’nt quite enjoy. What I did like was the celestial but also very mysterious track 10 called ‘Conqueror’. But then the ending of the album was still way too quiet and calm. There wasn’t much going on actually. And this didn’t do anything for me really.

Maybe I need to give this a deeper listen sometime when I’m in the mood to really focus on the quiet parts, but as for now I could only like the songs where I felt that something musically exciting and interesting happened. I don’t know the band’s history yet though because they seem to have made really heavy music in the past and supposedly tried to do something different with this album. Let’s see if I can find out more about that in the future.

Favourite Song(s): Journey To The Plains, Conqueror

Least Favourite Song(s): Plains Of The Purple Buffalo Part 2, Searching For Zihuatanejo, The Spirit Horse

Overall rating 5/10 (first impression)

Well, that’s it for now with this 3 random reviews experiment. Hope you enjoyed it. I also hope to get some feedback maybe. I know I enjoyed trying this.

the reviewing turtle eater.

Guddo Bai!

3 Short Random Reviews – Part 2: sleepmakeswaves – And So We Destroyed Everything

Part Two of ’3SRR’: The new 2011 album ‘…And So We Destroyed Everything’ by australian instrumental rock band ‘sleepmakeswaves’.

…And So We Destroyed Everything is the band’s debut LP and sounds really promising. The band combines post-rock guitar melodies with ambient and electronic soundscapes and is also able to create something new with it. They also integrate a few heavier parts in their songs to make it sound more active and straightforward. This was especially well achieved in the tracks 2 and 6. The electronic and more atmospheric parts were also pretty good, e.g. in track 3.  What I also found pretty interesting and memorable were the “vocals” at the end of the last track, they fitted pretty well in there.

The longer songs such as the opener or track 4 seemed a bit too long and excessive to me because it was like that slow crescendo build-up scheme known from many post-rock bands. But hey, maybe I’ll enjoy them more after re-visiting this album who knows. The last track (also being a longer song) differs from that though. It is a really distinctive (especially because of the aforementioned vocal-part) and dynamic closing song.

Overall, I loved the mix of the different influences (especially the electronic component) making the album an interesting and diverse atmospheric journey and I’m looking forward to getting deeper into their stuff. Very good for a debut LP.

Favourite Song(s): In Limbs And Joints, Our Time Is Short But Your Watch Is Slow

Least Favourite Song(s): To You They Are Birds, To Me They Are Voices In The Forest

Overall rating 7/10 (first impression)

3 Short Random Reviews – Part 1: Blackwaves – 0140

Ok, so this is a bit experimental now, more like a sudden idea that I had. I used the website www.postrockxchange.com to check out 3 new albums (2011) of 3 different bands which I haven’t heard from before. Now I’m going to review them all very shortly as I only listened to them once and it is more like a first impression than it is an actual review. But I find this quite interesting because I love getting into new, rather unknown stuff and gain a first impression of it.

I start this “3 Short Random Reviews” thing with the new EP (?) or LP called “0140″ by the band “Blackwaves”, a german underground metal band.

The first thing I noticed about the album were the rather strange song-titles (you can check the tracklist out here: http://www.postrockxchange.com/2011/07/blackwaves-0140-2011-postrock/). I realized after researching a bit that the band continuously numbers their songs adding some several letters or numbers after the number. On this album each song title consists of that number + 2 letters. When you read all the letters together you get the two words: Nordic Nights. Interesting thing.

The music was really dark and heavy, somewhat reminiscent of the really drone-y and heavy parts in Post-Metal songs by Isis or Cult Of Luna. Instead of altering those heavy parts with quiet parts like the aforementioned bands, this band decides to strictly play those dark and heavy riffs throughout the songs. This is a great idea since it really differs from the sound of lots of bands using this heavy/quiet duality. As much as I love this dark and heavy style the problem was that after a few songs it got a bit monotonous and it could have been a bit more diverse, e.g. different rhythms, different melodies and so on. The track that stood out for me was track 5 “0145 GH” because this song was a bit different from the others and thus more memorable.

Overall 0140 is an interesting album, but personally I don’t feel like re-visiting it a lot. I’m probably going to check out more from the band nonetheless. First impressions might – as we all know- be quite deceptive (see my Battles review)

Favourite Song(s): 0145 GH

Least Favourite Song(s): none; can’t really tell if I didn’t enjoy a song at all (would have to listen to it again)

Overall rating 4/10 (first impression)

Battles – Gloss Drop Review

“Ok…Wait, what exactly is this thing? And why is it being recommended to me all the time?”

That was about the first thought that came to my mind after watching the Ice Cream video on YouTube for the first time.

Initially, I didn’t take this band seriously. I thought the music was weird, but still a bit attracting and impressive. I didn’t bother getting into it for another few weeks, though. After these first impressions and after falling in love with their sound, in retrospect I guess those first impressions are pretty normal considering that the band hugely differs from the usual image you would have of a band or music in general. After revisiting the Ice Cream video again and again, I slowly realized I started liking the sound of the song although I didn’t quite take it seriously as a musical piece in the first place. This led me to the decision of buying the album which I did in a local record store (I was surprised they had it).

Let’s get to the review. The album consists of 12 songs running a total time of nearly 54 minutes. Of course the band history is quite relevant considering they’ve turned into a three-piece after losing the very talented Tyondai Braxton, but I decided not letting this background information influence my view on this album (also I didn’t know anything about this background info before listening to Gloss Drop for the first time anyway)

I instantly enjoyed the opener Africastle after the one minute intro within the song. I immediately loved the drumming and those strange sounds I could’nt quite identify. Nor could I tell how they were even created, but what I did know is that I love them. I also love this dark and heavy part at the end which is then interupted by those quirky, almost ridiculously happy and childish sounds leading towards the general mood of….

….Ice Cream, the next song on the album. Since I’ve already talked about this song, I only want to add that it has grown on me (which I never supposed would happen). It just makes one want to move to it, jump around, smile and maybe as the title suggests eat some Ice Cream to it. I also enjoy Aguayo’s gibberish/spanish fusion now which I honestly found rather stupid during my first listen.

The next three songs Futura, Inchworm and Wall Street (the latter in particular) are without a doubt my favourite tracks from the album and also among my overall favourite tracks of 2011. They are a truly beautiful experimental intricate (further random adjectives that stuck in my head but which I cannot put into words) experience which also makes you want to move, jump around, burn your carpet, drink coconut juice out of a dice cup and all that kind of stuff. How do they come up with that??? The moments I especially enjoy on these tracks are the un-expected breaks, the abrupt endings, the slow build-up in Futura, the totally mad and straightforward beginning of Wall Street and many more.

Track 6, My Machines features Gary Numan and thus has vocals in it again (after 3 fantastic instrumental pieces). Numan’s vocals perfectly add up to the still very interesting and experimental sounds of the band. Great song.

Now I’ve listened half way through and I’m completely blown away and think this is going to turn out as a 10/10 masterpiece right?

As for the following second half of the album the answer sadly is no. I enjoyed the second half nonetheless, but it didn’t leave me speech-or breath- or whatever-less, which the first half perfectly achieved. I didn’t really care for Toddler, Rolls Bayce. They seemed kind of  unnecessary to me. I did enjoy Dominican Fade and the closing track Sundome. And it isn’t like the second half ruins the album, it just doesn’t continue to amaze me on this very high level of the album’s beginning.

Overall, I really loved the hell out of this album and revisited a lot up to now. Due to the comparatively weak second half I realized that I revisited the first 7 tracks significantly more than 8-12 though.

This album still works pretty good as a whole and thus deserves an overall rating of 8/10 and leaves me pretty excited for their following stuff.

Favourite Song(s): Africastle, Futura, Inchworm, Wall Street, My Machines

Least Favourite Song(s): Toddler, Rolls Bayce

Overall Rating 8/10

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it..as much as..

the reviewing turtle eater.