ghost

Imagine if he gave this much attention to his music

On 4/4/2020 at 12:31 PM, Anne Claire said:

*Qveen Herby - Pink Cadilac video was here*

Jam of the day

yaaaaas love me some Queen Herby 🙌
 

 

Good aff 90's death metal

 

22 hours ago, secret_no_03 said:

Haha, I wish. Some people who do syphon coffee have set ups that look like a chemistry lab or they're making meth. That pouch is actually roasted green tea (Hojicha) I got a sample of from https://yunomi.life/ which is a small distributor tea farm in Japan that exports every tea you can think of around the world. They sell samples for like $2USD (you're just paying shipping basically).

Hahaha I know what you mean 😂although, I can't imagine having a set up like that in my home JUST for coffee. That's why I'm just a normie. MMm I love hojicha. My sister works at a coffee shop and she's made me a hojicha latte before. good stuff.

On 4/3/2020 at 3:03 PM, haizuru said:

Wow your recent art is really cool it looks so modern and something that could be in-cooperated in to a comic or something. It's also just really different, I haven't seen anything like it before!

Thanks so much! I've been trying to follow the aesthetics of artists I like and it makes me so happy to hear comments like that ☺️

@secret_no_03 - Dang, your coffee game is on the next level!

I'll drink coffee but I'll never crave it. I like my coffee black and dark. I'm always down for a good cup of green or black tea though.

Two lovely Ghibli soundtracks <3 

 

I haven't watched a new anime in YEARS. Not counting things like movies from Studio Ghibli or the Nickolodeon Avatar series, the last new-to-me Japanese anime I watched was Yu Yu Hakusho in like 2007. That's about the time I fell out of anime. While I was digging around for new music I came across the OST for Made In Abyss and absolutely fell in love with it. This made me want to find out what the source material was like because the music painted such a vivid imagery. 

 

And wow is it good. It took me a moment to get into it but when it picks up it really takes you for a ride. I did not expect to get shaken up emotionally but I got pretty invested in the characters and the trials they go through. The main draw for me though is the lore and world that's built around the story. I think a similar reason I loved an anime like Yu Yu Hakusho is the sense of discovering a dark and unknown frontier. The show just feels alive when there are maps and characters talking about creatures they've discovered or when they come across something brand new that's been undocumented. This is the first time I started to read the original manga because I enjoyed the show. It certainly isn't perfect, but for a short 13 episode season I think it's pretty solid. And that music *chefs kiss*.

 

I'm bummed the sequel movie "Dawn of the deep soul" is put on hold for US theaters. I found out it was supposed to show 2 weeks from now : (

8 hours ago, monkeybanana4 said:

The drawing looks really good! I think the work on the koi fish's scales paid off; they are beautiful ❤️ Love the peaceful aesthetic in the drawing; the pink/light purple(?) feels easy and nice on the eyes

Thank you! Getting the perspective somewhat accurate was the toughest part as the reference I used didn't show scales. Had to use a bit of imagination there.  I'm glad you said that, it's the vibe I was going for 😊 

 

7 hours ago, Miku70 said:

Nice drawings  . I like it.

Thanks! 😄

There was a time I recorded random snippets of melody ideas I had, most of them being on piano. Last year I revisited my library of recordings and found one I really liked. I put on a chillhop rhythm to it and then recorded a guitar part for it just a couple weeks ago.

 

Still learning how to mix and produce so it's definitely not professional, but hey I'm just a bedroom hobbyist doing something he enjoys.

 

 

Been working on this one since the beginning of this year. The scales on the fish took forEVER.

 

 

 

Some close-up details on the plant and koi:

 

As of today Kyo has been kicked out of Dir en Grey for spending too much time on his second band Sukekiyo. They're still planning on continuing with all currently planned performances but Die will be acting as the vocalist until a full replacement can be found. They will have a mystery member fill his part as a guitarist for lives in the interim. 

 

I had to translate this from their Japanese twitter so I might have missed some details and nuances. I'm linking it here so that anyone with a fluent understanding of Japanese can get the full picture. (Also, if you could provide a more accurate translation I think everyone would appreciate that):

 

https://twitter.com/DIRENGREY_JP/status/12451896898892634829

Igorrr released another baroque-core beauty, "Spirituality and Distortion". It's less straightforward than their last album, but still isn't as chaotic as their earlier works. Still, it's a refreshing breath of air within the metal scene.

 

Full album

 

 

@platy - Bruuuh I liiiike Hayley Kiyoko. Her latest EP has got some nice house vibes on it and I am totally here for that.

 

Have you heard of Allie X? She's another Canadian pop artist I've really been into these days. Her production is soo good. 

 

 

 

 

Purity Ring released a few more tracks from their upcoming album and I'm reaaally liking this one:
 

 

3 hours ago, platy said:

I'm looking forward to Rina's upcoming album. She seems to be making a shift sound-wise from her previous major release. There's a change in themes as well which I guess really suits her current fanbase and will bring even more people in (y'know, the gurl power crowd). I can see her gaining a lot of popularity this year.

Yeah, me too. All the singles that have come out so far are really good and I'm liking the changes in her style. 2020 will be the year of Rina!

 

3 hours ago, platy said:

Doja Cat - who isn't into doja cat lately? She's taken over the media. Definitely check out her discography, her older songs have a charming sense of humour that's hard not to get hooked on. I hope she doesn't go down too far the badass sexy bitch/flashing muh money route now that's she's mainstream though.

Haha, listen to "Say So" much? lol. I hear that song on sooo many tik toks. Like you said, I like that her music hits this nice balance of light hearted fun and good ass RnB.

 

3 hours ago, platy said:

I guess Janelle Monáe counts as pop(?). She has a lot upbeat funky songs. She can very from sexy to whimsical.  Not sure how else to explain it, but definitely give her a try if you fancy some feel good tunes.

Janelle Monae is amazing! Not just from a musical stand point but from the social messages she talks about and her involvement in film. Electric Lady is such a good album! I feel like people don't talk about her enough.

 

4 hours ago, platy said:

Hayley Kyoko popped back on my radar after I realised that she was the same girl from that old Disney movie 'Lemonade Mouth' and she's now known as lesbian Jesus. She released a great  EP recently called 'I'm Too Sensitive for This Shit'.

I haven't heard of Hayley Kyoko yet, but I'm gonna have to check her out.

 

@Bear - Ughhhf that Freddie Gibbs track is soooo good. Those 03 Greedo songs are fantastic too. Looks like I'll be working through their discography today while I work.

 

All the samples you just linked are scratching the (what I believe is called) trap/gangsta rap itch I've had since listening to Denzel Curry's Zuu last year. I've been looking for rap with a similar vibe and production to that album but just haven't found anything quite what I'm looking for until now. 

Is there any other trap rap/gangsta/hardcore rap that you know of that sounds like "Death Row"? What I like about it is how the beats are straight forward but they hit hard.

Sometimes nothing quite hits like DnB music

 

 

1 hour ago, platy said:

He is spreading hope around the world with a celebrity collab. tbh as a will.i.am fan this song is actually pretty good

 

 

 

Not bad at all!

Any of ya'll like Kenny Beats? His production is:

 

He did some collaborations with Denzel Curry and Rico Nasty and both albums are pretty fresh.

Samples

Denzel Curry - DIET_

 

 

Rico Nasty - Big Titties (feat. Baauer, EarthGang) *@CAT5 speaking of Earthgang!

 

So, I'm surprised by how much of the album I actually enjoyed. It's like @YuyoDrift pointed out, but there is some musical semblance to an older era of jrock. For me, I hear some throwbacks to lynch.'s own "I Believe in Me" and even a touch of "Inferiority Complex".  That being said, I think the album is an inconsistent pile of concepts frankensteined together into a seemingly complete project. 

 

I want to start out by saying that there are absolutely some great tracks on here. The highlights for me (in order of appearance) are Barrier, Eros, Idol, Zinnia, and In This Era. The only real dud for me is Aster which I think is the worst ballad lynch. has ever written. It's just boring and the climax of the song isn't a good enough payoff to have to sit through 5 and a half minutes of serviceable song writing and none-too memorable melodies. The choir-like vocals at the end seem tacked on as there aren't really any other moments in the album with anything like that. And that leads me to my first real issue with "Ultima" as a whole.

 

A lot of tracks show lynch. playing around with new ideas but they seem like half-baked afterthoughts. Ultima features a female vocalist for a short 15 seconds, Allergie shows just how brutal the group can be with a heavy-as-lead breakdown and vicious growls from Hazuki but is tonally set miles apart from everything else on the album, and Aster & Eureka include some underutilized choir vocals . I'm all for experimenting, but my issue here is that none of these ideas really come together into one cohesive effort.

 

The female vocals in Ultima are there for literally just the intro before the song even takes off. What was the point of them? They hardly add anything. Why are they using choir voices in the last two tracks? I've already made comments on the choir voices on Aster but why are they also in Eureka? If they had been incorporated throughout the song somehow I think I would've warmed up to them more, but what the band has done is literally write an unrelated minute-and-a-half break just to fit in an extended choir section. The song would've worked fine without it, if not better, because it's bloated in its current state. You might also be saying, "but ghost they used choir voices in Zinnia too" and, yes I don't think they're really worked in all that much better there either. But it sounds more natural to me there because it goes well together with the flute acting as a sort of orchestral support.

 

And this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think Allergie should've been left off the album. It's not a bad track, but it's tonally entirely different than anything else on the album. "Ultima" has its heavy moments, but this is such a stark contrast. It feels more like lynch. decided to add it in to throw a bone to fans of their more hardcore sound.

 

Everything else for me is just par for the lynch. course. Xero is yet another paint-by-numbers lynch. track down to the breakdown countdown. They've done songs like this to death and I don't hear Xero offering anything different or better. It's this album cycle's Evoke/Antares, F.A.K.E., Blood, or Joker (Except, I really like Evoke). Rudeness and Machine are too short and don't offer anything impactful in their short run lengths. I think these tracks definitely could've used more development.

 

Although not their worst offering, I think "Ultima" as a whole just doesn't all come together. In total I'd say there are 5-6 tracks I can say are solid with the rest either being average or in need of some more time in the thinking chamber. If anything I'm quite pleased because the tracks I do enjoy I find refreshing and somewhat set apart from other songs in their ever growing library. They strike this perfect composition of throwback sounds, balance between melody & heaviness, and new direction that's re-ignited my interest in the band. But the album could've used more work and that's my main criticism; they need to give themselves more time in between albums. I'm not sure what their contractual obligations say about how often they need to pump out albums, but assuming they're not in a release-an-album-a-year situation, I really wish they would slow down and refine their work. 

 

That being said, don't sleep on this one. I think it's their most interesting release since D.A.R.K.

Based on the poll, I think I know how I'm gonna feel about the album. But people saying that it sounds somewhat different has got me so intrigued. BRB, gonna take a listen.

It came today and it works beautifully 😭

 

There's a special repress up for Meitei's Komachi. A bit pricey at around $45 USD shipped, but it looks lovely. This is worded much better so I'll just repost the description from the artist's bandcamp:

 

Quote

"I want to revive the soul of Japan that still sleeps in the darkness” - Meitei / 冥丁

Haunting and delicate, distant and timeless, Komachi is awash with white noise, complex field recordings and the hypnotic sounds of flowing water. Though confidently contemporary, like a bucolic J-Dilla, Komachi’s lineage can be traced back to the floating worlds of Ukiyo-e and Gagaku via the prism of 80s Japanese ambient pioneers, and 90s pastoral sample-based artists such as Susumu Yokota and Nobukazu Takemura.

Composed as individual sonic dioramas, each of the twelve tracks have been crafted to not only evoke feelings of nostalgia but to also explore the dichotomy of ancient and new in modern Japanese society. This pervasive narrative runs throughout, calling to mind the work of authors Yasunari Kawabata and Natsume Soseki, as well as the films of Yasujirō Ozu and Hayao Miyazaki, artists similarly fascinated by the reflective tranquillity that permeated traditional Japanese domestic life."

 

 

 

 

Buy: https://metronrecords.bandcamp.com/album/komachi

 

 

 

Full album

 

MAKE IT POP

I haven't seen any kind of general pop thread in the global music sub-forum and that just will not do! 2020 is shaping up to be an amazing year for pop music and there must be a thread to discuss everything pop-related! I'm going start by sharing some upcoming releases I'm looking forward to and then sharing some artists I've enjoyed since last year.

 

Upcoming Releases

Rina Sawayama

Sawayama (04.17.2020)

-Rina's been making some waves in the indie pop scene. She seemingly just came out of nowhere but managed to make an impression on people with her self-released EP "Rina"  with hits like "Cyber Stockholm Syndrome" and "Ordinary Superstar". Her sound is very reminiscent of 90's pop/r&b but she finds ways to make it sound fresh and interesting. She's got a new album coming out in April of this year titled "Sawayama".

 

Samples

 

 

Purity Ring

Womb (04.03.2020)

-Purity Ring is a Canadian electronic pop duo drawing from sub-genres like glitch-pop and synth-pop. While they can sound bright and poppy, their sound is more strongly defined by dark and ominous undertones both lyrically and musically. They're probably most known for their tracks "Fineshrine" and "Obedear". They'll be releasing a new album titled "Womb" in the beginning of April and it's sounding like it'll be a more lighter listen.

 

Samples

 

 

Recent Favorites

Grimes

Miss Anthropocene (02.21.2020)

-I'm sure Grimes doesn't need an introduction. She's known for her unique sound of ethereal and pop music and made hits such as "Genesis" and "Kill V. Maim". Her album "Miss Anthropocene" came out earlier last month and, honestly, it's been one of my favorite releases in 2020 so far. Certainly not the most amazing album and, arguably a bit half baked, but there are some solid tracks on the album and I've been revisiting it often.

 

Samples

 

 

Charli XCX

Charli (09.13.2019)

-Charli XCX went to the top of my favorite artists in 2019 when I listened to her latest album "Charli". Her sound was so different than a lot of other pop artists I had heard. While she certainly has songs with tons of pop appeal featuring bright dance-y music and catchy lyrics, she also brings with that a blend of future pop and experimental sounds. The production on her latest record is absolutely amazing and I was hooked from the first track onward. Although I'm a fan of her latest sound, she's probably most known for songs like "Boys" and "Vroom Vroom" (which, I absolutely love both).

 

Samples

 

 

Sophie

Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides (06.15.2018)

-If Charli XCX's recent output is futuristic, then Sophie's music is so far ahead in the pop genre that by the time it's considered a classic the human race will have evolved into a higher physical state (fun fact, Sophie actually produced Charli XCX's EP "Vroom Vroom". ). All jokes aside, this album is quite simply something else. It has a few more traditional poppy moments but the other 90% hits you with leftfield experimental sounds intermixed with soundscapes and industrial bass music. The production on this record is so good though and there were so many times I kept asking, "what the hell was that sound? How did she do that?".  It's certainly not for everyone, but for those looking for a more expanded take on pop music, so much as to the point of almost being unrecognizable, I highly encourage you to take a jump.

 

Samples

 

 

On 3/14/2020 at 6:55 AM, The Reverend said:

Let me 2nd the "yes get a pro controller" I can't imagine things like Zelda or Mario without it (even mario maker really doesn't feel right on the joycons)

 

Do let us know how that SNES-looking controller works though, it definitely *looks* awesome.

Should be coming in the mail in the next couple days. Will report back!