Klangverschmutzung (Take me apart, please)

[InsaneGenius]

Greetings everyone!

I started making music two years ago without any prior musical education. Since then I've improved a lot and while I'm happy with my progress I'm not entirely happy with my work. I mean, I don't take myself too seriously, the day I released the final song of this album I wrote a review (here) to bash it. But I enjoy making music and I'd love to improve.

To do that, first off, I think it's important to know what other people hate or like about my music. So feel free to take it apart. Secretly I hope you enjoy it.

Do the clickety here.

Oh, and I have no idea which box to put this in, so sorry for that. It's probably some kind of electronica, but that's a warehouse, not a box.

The tracks are in chronological order, so I hope you can see some progress across those 12 songs.

Best song is probably Translucent followed by Total Eclipse Of The Art if you don't wanna wade through a swamp.

[Calum]

OK, i'm going to do a huge reply here.

First off I'll say I'm not a huge electronica-head and I won't be able to give you a huge amount of feedback on productions and such but I shall give you my opinion.

Track 1: Good start, enjoying it. Although I do get the feeling that the ideas behind it aren't completely solid. Like it hasn't got a distinct direction. It works but at times I felt it was dawdling around a little bit. That's only a tiny thing and i'm not suggesting you change it at all. When the bass came in it was a bit overbearing and a little too 'synthy' for my taste. I would have rather had a quieter or warmer bass sound enter. Perhaps the bass-line could be more slow-moving to suit the intro but if you're going for a kind of change in feel or up-tempo section as you have added the drums here this seems fine. The drum-beat itself is quite odd, you often have 4 snares on each beat, which appears strange. It comes across as more of an orchestral snare part towards the end but in the section around 2:30 it seems a little distracting like the bass.

03:24 it feels like there is little clarity in direction of the writing, as though you weren't sure what chords you were using.

In general for this song I would suggest using a half-time beat instead with some quite reverberant drums and a warmer slower-moving bass.

I like the idea, if it was intentional, that the some of sound quality decreases or it becomes more electronic towards the end, as though it is breaking down. This leads well into the next song.

Track 2 - Very distorted, i like the whispering delayed voices. And you're right, I cannot grasp the true form of this song! I'm finding it hard to give feedback on this song. I really am. Any feedback I would give would be to make the song more "graspable", but it doesn't seem like that's what you want. I enjoyed the 02:02 arpeggios, but that sound seemed to come from no-where out from the distortion, perhaps think about putting some effects on it or fading it in more. The chromatic bass lines from 3:40 or so seem quite arbitrary.

Track 3 - quite unconvincing piano sound. The staccatto at times is a little too short and seems quite unauthentic. At the start there appears to be some "wrong" sounding chords which disappear after a while, I don't know what the reason for them is. The guitar-line seems to include many repetitions of either single notes or two note patterns which seems quite unnaturally and unmelodic, maybe try and keep it more fluid. The drums are a similar affair to track 1 with the snare on everyone beat or every quaver (depending on your tempo). They don't "not fit" but they don't particularly add much to the song, I don't feel.

Track 4 - synth intro again seems quite indistinct and arbitrary. Strange chord sequence at 1:30ish and particularly dissonant synthy (sounds like an oboe/clarinet) line following that. It is not particularly flowing, perhaps this isn't what you want. I found my mind "unraped" by the end of it, though not intact!

Track 5 - interesting wobbly sound. Everything is very dissonant again. At 00:50ish the 'melody' is quite repetitively going nowhere, if that makes sense.

Ah i'm gonna stop here as it's a similar tale for most of the songs. Perhaps all this feedback is unnecessary as you may be intending to make "unmusik" as one of your previous albums is named. If that's not the case, my main suggestions would be improve melodic clarity - you often have melodies that repeat single notes and don't have particular shape to them. The sounds - bass/drums/guitar are the best either, but I'm not one to comment on production too much. I'd generally say just shape and direction to the songs is the main issue I have. But considering one of your songs is called "You cannot grasp the true form of this song" maybe that's beside the point. BUT FOR ME TO LIKE IT, i'd stick by these suggestions!

Hope this helps.