Stream of Consciousness & Music Reviews

      Imagine in your head what 60's sci-fi sounds like; that's this album exactly. Upbeat, bouncy synths overlaid on light wind instruments makes up most of the album for an easy going and simple listening experience. Mr. Nimoy takes on his role of Spock for the album, telling some tales from outer space and waxing poetic on human life on earth and whatnot. I'm sure by this point you have a pretty good picture of what the music's like. It's simple and pleasant music to have on in the background for 24 minutes, if you don't mind Spock talking at you occasionally. Not much to say here, maybe a neat piece of history for Star Trek fans, and a simple once-over listen for anybody else.      Highlights: Theme from Star Trek, Where Is Love, Music to Watch Space Girls By, You Are Not Alone.  Rating: 3/6

      Continuing my yearly tradition of reviewing Aphrodite's Child on Christmas Eve is their third and final album 666. This is their most well known and critically acclaimed album, and uh, yeah it deserves it. The album is a massive improvement over their last showing with It's Five O'Clock, returning with as much bombastic energy, slow sorrow, and experimental weirdness that was present in End of the World, but now tenfold to deliver an even better product. Every compliment that I paid to their first album is the same here. 666 is a pseudo-concept album, as it tells the story of the Book of Revelations; I'm not religious and haven't read the Book of Revelations, but the 'story' that this album tells is perfectly suited to the band's weird and psychedelic sound, with how cryptic and trippy some of the material can be. In addition, the band has majorly improved their sound that they've established, increasing their quality and complexity, while also...

      ELO's grand return to form, or at least it supposedly is. 15 years after the band's 'final' studio album, 2001's Zoom is... odd. I have some mixed feelings on this one. As I hinted, this album isn't quite the ELO from the 70s and 80s, now with Jeff Lynne being the sole member of the band and featuring various artists on certain tracks; notably George Harrison and Ringo Starr of Beatles fame, and Richard Tandy as the only other returning ELO alumni (and sadly for only 1 song). With this major shift in status quo brings with it a major shift in sound. As you could probably have guessed, Zoom is a big deviation from the band's past works. The album seems much more centered around a more straightforward plain 'rock' sound. It's a bit of a shame compared to how unique and varied other entries in ELO's discography have been, only for their comeback to be as watered down and generic as it is. It's not necessarily bad (Lynne is a very good ...

      Hooray, another obscure micro-genre for me to dig my teeth into! Today's prey is Soulside Eclipse's Forgotten Conquest, a dungeon synth album. If you know me, I love a good synth instrumental (which should be readily apparent from a number of other reviews on this site) and this is no exception. The soundscape that this album creates is captivating, pulling forth of number of emotions throughout its runtime. It's ability of storytelling is fantastic, with it being able to truly evoke vivid imagery through it's instrumentation, especially with accompanying blog post by the artist . The droning tones and overly repetitious melodies and motifs really get across that feeling of loneliness and dread that the "story" is trying to convey. I might say that it can be a little too monotonous and repetitious sometimes, occasionally losing my interest before it shifts towards something else to pull me back in. Sometimes along with this the music can feel a little fl...

      Kicking off 2022's holiday album rush is Prince's debut album, For You. I've heard that he was a perfectionist when making the album, and it shows. Every facet of the music seems fine tuned to be as excellent as possible. Prince's style of funk/soul mixed with an absolutely decadent wave of synth make the tracks have an incredibly funky driving force to them and gives them Prince's impeccable unique sound. All of the elements mix very well and everything plays off of everything else in a way that effortlessly elevates every piece. And this is due in part to the notable audio mixing, which is just superb on every song. Every element is brought in, raised, lowered, emphasized, etc. in a way that helps every part contribute to the overall piece. I also want to give a spotlight to Prince's stunning falsetto, which manages to hit that high and energetic feel of strong Tenor to give the vocals a bombastic energy, while remaining smooth and gentle enough to keep ...

  Cardium was dying. His body had long since started showing the effects of the negligence being forced on it. He had given up trying to get water from the slight dew that built up on the stone cliff; he resigned it to be as useless for survival as anything else there, wherever ‘there’ was. Nothing he could even consider eating resembled food in the slightest, save for the earthy smell of the cedar trees and their branches reminding him of root spices. He might have liked a walking stick, but none of the limbs on the ever present cedars were low enough to snap off and he could never find any laying on the ground. He didn’t even try to use the dark red grass for anything. So on he went, although he was also letting go of walking as well. His body was always protesting any form of movement, even when still. He knew that his body was running on fumes. It had been simply too long since he had eaten or drank anything, and it was very painfully apparent to him.  His pattern of...

          I don’t expect this to be found by any Humans, so I’ll give some context. Humans come from a planet called The Earth. The Earth orbits a yellow star in the natively named Milky Way Galaxy. Humans first left The Earth about 1,900 years after we started keeping measured track of time (in the “20th century”), although we only went to our moon at the time. A little under 200 years later we managed to go to the next furthest planet from our star in their solar system (Mars). Half a century later Humans cracked light speed travel and began to explore beyond The Earth’s solar system. Humans always recalled wanting to explore “the stars”, so leaving our native solar system, and quickly after the galaxy, was natural after engineering the means to do so. I won’t explain any of our “first contacts” with other lifes or history in the wider universe since you almost assuredly already know.  After becoming an established entry in the wider universe, sett...

    I'm not gonna try to fluff this out with my usual prose and expounding, I don't like this album. I'm sorry but it's just not that good. Firstly, Springsteen cannot sing; he just isn't a good singer and it kinda muddied the whole experience. Not to rag on it too much, but it sounds like his mouth is full of cotton and he doesn't know what words are next and is reading them on the spot. On top of that the instrumentation just isn't much of anything, it's just sort of there. It feels like... nothing, I can't find a way to describe it, that's how little of an impact it left on me. I will say that Clarence Clemon's performance on saxophone is really phenomenal though, easily the best aspect of the music. Along with that, I did like some of the lyricism at points; it had moments where it had really vivid imagery and brought the scene to life. Aside from that, the music is mostly just nothing to really talk about with moments of great stuff, whi...

      A Fifth of Beethoven is Walter Murphy's debut album and is a grand showing, which is a surprise given how unknown this album is. Seriously, I couldn't find the lyrics anywhere save for one song on Genius and all the tracks have pretty low play counts on Spotify. Chances are that you might have heard the title track in Saturday Night Fever but not much beyond that, which is a real shame considering how good this album is. It's no wonder why I like this so much; the gimmick is that it takes orchestral elements and themes and mixes them with 70's rock and disco flair (ringing any bells?) and I think that it's done masterfully. The tracks that utilize the classical theming use the familiar motifs in a way that gives them a breath of new life through a disco-ified medium. The quality is reflected in the songs that don't go for the classical music angle and instead focus on being purely disco, with a touch of jazz and funk to give it some real depth, and it all ...

      It's time for another of my rare forays into metal with what I've been told is a thrash classic. Reign In Blood is pretty similar to what I've heard from Metallica but not quite as inventive. That's really all I can compare it too since my experience with this genre is very limited as of time of writing. This album shares the same general sound/vibe and song structure with Metallica but oddly the tracks are a good deal shorter, averaging around 2-2:30 minutes. I feel like this really limits what the band can do on each track and doesn't allow for much exploration of each song individually (although maybe I'm just too accustomed to bands that lean toward the much longer side of things). As a result of this most of the tracks sound samey and blend together, which isn't always a bad thing, but here I think that it holds back the larger work. Some upsides are that what traits that it exhibits can be pretty good. The rhythm and flow is generally really good...

      This is Steve Miller Band's 8th album and I don't really have any interest in listening to anything prior to this (except maybe one album, shh) since this is where the band took off and all of their popular material follows from here. That being said, there's not much else to say. This is truly just good blues rock; nothing more than that, just good. Everything is at least ok or decent so there's nothing much to really dislike here. It mostly sounds good with interesting texture and instrumentation, good enough lyricism, and a surprising amount of versatility within it's limited range of typical southern rock. It's creative enough to bump it over the median for me but it's nothing to really go out of your way to listen to, but will be a good listen nonetheless.      Highlights: Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma Ma, Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash, The Joker, Something To Believe In. Rating: 4/6.

      Everything about A Night At The Opera is really, really good. The composition, the lyricism, all the performances, the technical wizardry, it's all great. I really don't know if I could run through everything on this album that's done incredibly, and frankly I think that that would just bloat this review. I've been a casual Queen fan for as long as I've been into music and finally giving a whole work of theirs a proper listen has satisfied and far exceeded my expectations. The album nails the various styles it goes for, including Queen's iconic spacey-sort of prog rock that they're best known for, as well as harder sounds (i.e. Death on Two Legs), folk rock, ragtime, etc. It's incredible how well the band is able to take so many wildly different sounds and make them their own. And I have to mention how incredible the flow of the album is, with pacing and transitions that rival the best of Pink Floyd; each song sounds like it's where it needs to...

      I'm split on this album. On the one hand it's one of the most technically impressive works I've ever listened to; on the other it's just kinda ok, pretty standard rock. Some of the tracks are incredibly impressive in their composition (Opus Insert, Magnum Opus) while others have absolutely nothing going for them (What's on My Mind). I think the best way to frame it is this: whenever the band is going through an instrumental section and just letting the music do the talking, it's amazing and genuinely some of the best music I've heard, but falls short whenever it has to return to it's verse-chorus structure that seems to hold it back. Thankfully, almost every song has multiple points of pure instrumental that are great and enjoyable. The instrumentation, composition, and timbre of everything on the album work so well together to create a unique sound that really encapsulates the hard rock/prog rock combo the band is sporting here. The combination of...

      It's been a while since I've taken a look at Pink Floyd and I don't listen to them too often any more, so why not take a look at another highly regarded work of theirs? Animals is supposedly inspired by Orwell's Animal Farm. I have not read Animal Farm, and I'm not really one for politics (especially 70s British politics) so I'm not gonna talk about any of that past here. Animals comes smack dab between Wish You Were Here and The Wall and boy does it sound like it. It has the somber sort of sound that was prescient in WYWH, while also starting to lean toward the harder sound in The Wall. This halfway point between the two isn't much of anything one way or the other; I like it enough but it doesn't really pop out at me, knowing the other albums and how they sound. One unique thing to point to that I really do like, however, is Animals' use of electronic modification and fuckery. I'm a sucker for some good distortion and synth-alteration (see...

      This is gonna be a hard album to discuss because of how bizarre it is. Every aspect of the music is just so weird, and I'm having trouble coming up with any other way to describe it. Every individual part feels like it was made without consideration for how it would work with every other part and yet it all somehow comes together to create really good and surprisingly funky songs. The production is great on this album, and you know that it's something special if I actually mention the quality of the sound. The more traditional instruments, especially main guitar, have some sort of filter over it or something similar that gives it a very unique timbre that I can't quite nail down but that I really like. It's almost like it's being played through some form of older recording equipment to give it a very technologic and nearly artificial sound, which plays really nicely with the more artistic instruments (bongos, horns) that are left mostly unaltered. Combine that...

      Balance of Power was the original final album that ELO recorded under their recording contract (before regrouping multiple times in the future, I'm getting to those too) and this is a real let down. If Secret Messages dipped it's toes into 80s sound and tropes, Balance of Power has leaped off the high dive. Every song just sounds generically 80s, especially when it comes to synths, which just seem to have that generic 80s synth timbre that's in every glamrock hit from the era. As a result of this pretty much every track sounds samey, which isn't helped that ELO don't really do this sound very well. I think that I liked Secret Messages as much as I did because it was restrained in how much it let itself be influenced by then modern trends and was able to use those elements to enhance a strong musical foundation; Balance of Power tries going all in on it, and it kind of fails. There some tracks or sections of songs that are creative with the tropes it takes ...

    John Lennon said that he was in his Bob Dylan phase around the time of Help! and the music really reflects it. The majority of the album has a more folk-y feel to it, opting for acoustic guitars instead of electric for most of the songs, and using other acoustic instruments not really found in rock too often, namely tambourine; seriously, there's so much tambourine on this album. Despite being inspired by 60's folk and Bob Dylan, while the sound matches, the lyrical content doesn't. It's mostly the same sort that was on A Hard Day's Night, i.e. mostly love songs and a few more personal, deeper songs (Help!, Yesterday). Speaking of things that haven't really changed since AHDN, the instrumentation and complexity of the music hasn't evolved much yet. Aside from the obvious folk direction, it isn't really doing anything that AHDN didn't also do. It has the same general level of instrumentation and harmonies, without being too complex. It's a lit...

    This is my first real dive into southern rock, and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised. I expected Lynyrd Skynyrd to be good based solely on their popularity, but there's also a good amount of real sophistication in the music, both lyrically and technically. There's some complexity in the music that I genuinely wasn't expecting and really helps to strengthen it's basis as very heavily "country" and also push itself beyond that; the uses of different unconventional instruments in different songs is namely very well done and helps the songs stand out amongst each other, and I'm sure from other music that's similar. I think that there's also a good deal of inspiration from, or at least similarity to, country and R&B from the early-mid 1900's here that also really reinforce the general sound. Speaking of sound, it's pretty good. Allen Collins on guitar and Ronnie van Zant singing especially stand out as really great; Collins' so...