Note: Please keep in mind that I am reviewing the mp3 version of this album. I am looking forward to hearing the higher quality tracks in the future. Also, I am not a writer and my words generally don't do justice to the music.
Note 2: I have now heard the CD version of this and it does indeed improve the sound quality. I have been enjoying it quite a lot over the last 2 weeks.
Untitled 1 (An early Experiment) A dense field of sound with a lot, but never too much going on. I Love the distorted drums. There are some interesting pace changes but sometimes the shifts are a little abrupt. All told it is an interesting experiment. Not my favourite track, but still a solid 7/10.
Grind (A Crystal Method/Chemical Brothers Tribute) I am only passively familiar with Crystal Method and the Chemical Brothers but I can really hear the influences here. The driving beat is energizing and the guitars really amp up toward the end. This is definitely a favourite so far. 9/10.
Don't You Move (A Tasty Groove) Very cool percussion intro that builds with the addition of first the bass guitar and then the electric 6 string. Some electronic sounds are added to the field (I think these were probably done on the guitar as well) around the one minute mark before the song adds some more distorted guitar and a little mini solo. At around 2:20 it gets a funk groove going and the guitars start going off. Some cool solos run through and the drums pick up just before the 4 minute mark turning the focus back to percussion and some rhythm guitar. The song then finishes with another solo. 8/10.
Guitar Syrup, with Coda (A Tribute to 1991-1994, among other things) A well named tune. The rhythm guitars are evocative of liquid. The lead guitar is very clean and bright. Great soloing on this one. It really rocks right up to the Coda that begins just after 5 minutes. The Coda is a more mellow acoustic sounding piece. Strummed chords play while the lead continues to solo overtop building until a final fadeout. The Coda is my favourite part of this one. 9/10.
Dissolvent (A Massive Attack Tribute) I am not familiar with Massive Attack other than knowing the name. After hearing this, I want to become much more familiar with them. This is a slow track, filled with heavy guitar and great ambience. This is probably my favourite track on the album. 9.5/10.
Symbiont (A Frequency/Amplitude Tribute) I'm even less familiar with Frequency/Amplitude than I am with Massive Attack. I don't even know if they refer to bands (other than those on a radio) or not. This track features some fast electronica beats (don't ask me what category of electronica as I don't know how the categories break down). This sounds like something you would hear at a rave. This is a genre of music I am only beginning to get interested in and I find this to be a good example of what I like of the genre. 8/10
Kowloon Heat (A William Gibson/Neal Stephenson/Heat Tribute) I haven't read any Gibson or Stephenson (they are on the list) and I am not sure what Heat refers to so I can't comment on the influences or how they are reflected on this song. I can say that this track is very cinematic to me. It brought to my mind images of a futuristic city, beginning with a sunrise and closing out with the sunset. In between filled with shots of an earily quiet city. This is a beautiful track. 9/10.
The Size of the World (A Nine Inch Nails/Tweaker Tribute) I enjoy both influences cited for this track, especially their quieter, subtle, and less chaotic selections. The only vocals of the album appear on this track and I must admit that I am a little glad for this, not because the voice is bad but because I just love instrumental music so much. The voice does add to this track and I enjoy the mellowness of the singing over the industrial sounding drums and distorted guitars. I can very much hear the Nine Inch Nails influences in this one. I am not able to make out the lyrics on this track, but from what I have read of Rajas writing, I am sure they are quite interesting and I would like to see them. 8.5/10.
Pretty Good (A Sigur Rós Tribute) I have only heard a couple of songs by Sigur Rós and I have never really got into it. This is partially because it is the kind of music that has to be listened to without any other distractions. It is perfect background music because it stays in the background. "Pretty Good" is a sparse song that uses silence very effectively. The song builds very slowly to a peak and then descends a little more quickly (as in less time, not a faster tempo) into the final fadeout. This is the kind of music that you miss out on if you don't give it your focus. I think I will have to really listen to some more Sigur Rós soon. 8.5/10.
Meizi (For Eman) This is probably my least favourite track on the album. Possibly because it seemed to be mixed a lot quieter than the other tracks and it was harder to hear some of the subtleties. The guitar playing is fine technically, but the mix seemed a little muddy. I am hoping that the non-mp3 version will be a little clearer. 6/10.
Secret Song (A Stellamara Tribute) I have no idea who/what Stellamara is, but I wouldn't mind finding out after this neat little track. This one sounds almost tribal in the percussion and the guitars complement it nicely. The guitars give the impression of insects chirping while the percussion is beat out on wooden instruments by some jungle tribe. 8.5/10.
Overall rating: 8.3/10.
Final Thoughts: I really enjoyed the album and look forward to hearing more from Raja. I was a little disappointed not to see Paikea on the album as I really enjoy the song and recommend that anyone who likes the album to try to track it down (it used to be available on the Strobelight website but now the page is too stupid).
[ October 05, 2004, 11:08 AM: Message edited by: solo ]
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I didn't purchase it. Twinky sent it to me and to a bunch of other people who requested them. You might want to contact him when he gets back from New Zealand.
Posts: 1336 | Registered: Mar 2002
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I'm always really interested to hear what people think of it, what they liked and what they didn't and why. You've given me a lot to chew on here, and I really appreciate it.
For reference, the lyrics of The Size of the World are:
I, I'm not alone in the world I'm not alone in the world But the world's too big for me
Lonliness is just a song your soul sings when it's nearly gone away
I met a girl who was out on her own She told me that the world was too big for her Too big for her, but not too big for us
Just so we're clear, when I was writing the song there were precisely zero women in my life; it's more of an expression of lonliness than anything else. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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While I like a wide range of music, it's fairly rare for me to find an entire album that I can listen to the entire way through several times and enjoy all of the songs. Usually I would skip several, and often only like two or three. But I find that I enjoy the whole of Idolatry, particularly Untitled 1, Kowloon Heat and The Size of the World. I couldn’t pick out one that I didn’t like, although I tried really hard.
I also liked receiving my album signed and hand-delivered.
...And no, I'm not just saying this because twinky paid me to. Although he did pay me quite well, I also like the album.
Massive Attack are worth listening to. "Teardrop," and "Angel" are good songs to start with (both are from their Mezzanine album).
Heat is the name of a fantastic movie starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
Frequency and Amplitude are video games. The premise is that they give you a piece of music and you have to play along with each track in time (points for accuracy, etc). The really cool thing, though, is the remix mode where you can use the sound snippets of the songs in the game to assemble your own remixes. That was how I got into electronic music in the first place. I'm not all that into it, but I do like some stuff (Autechre, Boards of Canada, the Chillout Session stuff, some Aphex Twin, etc).
Meizi was recoreded five or six years ago on an ancient cassette deck, which is why it sounds terrible. I didn't record it again for the album because by the time I was finished with the other songs I didn't feel like I had enough emotional energy left to do it justice (for me, Meizi is the most important song on the album, because I wrote it when I was sixteen after Eman, one of my closest friends, was killed in a car accident). I do plan to do another recording of it in the future, I just didn't have it in me this time. I agree that the recording quality is terrible as a result.
I actually sing on two tracks: The Size of the World and Pretty Good. Pretty Good doesn't have meaningful words, though -- I use the same gibberish phrases that Sigur Rós' singer uses on their second album, (), and the melody at the peak is a riff on one of my favourite melodies of theirs from Staralfúr on their first album, Ágætis Byrjun.
posted
Count me as one of the people that like it. Both of my friends who listened to it liked it as well. Do you mind if people make copies? (I am guessing not but it never hurts to ask.)
I loved that it was a pretty slow-paced album. My favorite tracks are probably Kowloon Heat and Pretty Good, although this is definitely an album that can be played all the way through.
The only criticism I have is the vocals on The Size of the World. It might be just be me, but I found them mildly unpleasant, although not horrible. They were also too soft to hear what the words were at a volume appropriate for the rest of the CD. On the other hand, when I commented on this to one of my friends, he said he did like them and thought they fit. The Pretty Good vocals I did like, probably because they meant nothing and I could have my brain treat them as just another instrument.
You might take that last paragraph with a grain of salt. It is not out of the question that my taste in vocalists is just weird. (Children of Bodom's Alexi Laiho would be an example of a voice I like, and all he does is scream melodically.)
Are you ever going to join/form a band?
Posts: 281 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I had huge difficulty recording the vocals for The Size of the World. The crux of the problem is that the only microphone I have is awful, and so I have to layer the vocals and apply chorus effects and such to get them even to the point where they're audible. Once the vocal melody was audible, I pretty much said "ok, I've had enough, this will have to do."
There are several things I'm not happy with on that track, actually, but I think that's a natural part of the album completion process and so I'll just learn from these things for my next effort.
I have no quarrel with people making copies (as long as the title/artist information is preserved, obviously; I DO own the rights to the work).
I'd love to be in a band. Maybe once I find a job and get settled somewhere. I do have a couple of potential collaborative projects in the cards with people from other fora, too which will be cool to work on. As far as solo work is concerned, I won't be doing much more substantive writing until I have amassed a collection of instruments (keyboard and drum kit most notably, as well as a good vocal microphone).
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