Nur Ein XIII Round Two "3:20"

[Caravan Ray]

Owl - ...This is a good way to get out of writing lyrics, eh?

Yep. 3 weeks in with the help of my mate Paul and the Bible, I still haven’t put pen to paper yet.

[glennny]

Congrats Vowlvom!
The weird thing about Nur Ein ( as compared to Top Chef or Project Runway), is winning immunity not only makes you immune from elimination, but also immune from winning the next round.

[j$]

Whoa, thanks judges!

I can still submit a song for the next round, right? Because it's already half-recorded, haha.

yes.

[vowlvom]

Cool, thanks for clarifying! I will still finish up my track even though I'm immune from victory.

Sorry to hear about your arm, j$. Pretty hardcore tribute to the "nur ein" philosophy to jettison one of your own working limbs, though.

[bennyharv3]

Hey everyone!

Ben from the New Ugly with Mike, and our coverage of round 2 is live! Hope you enjoy our very witty and thoroughly prepared comments

http://podcast.songlander.com/?name=201 ... in13-2.mp3

[glennny]

Mike and Ben-

Love the podcast guys!

concerning Cavedwellers ambience challenge, I suppose its a mix failure. One of the tracks is a recording of me walking around the Tesla factory at 3:20AM (I work the graveyard shift). I really thought I might have over done the ambience. You can hear forklifts, alarms and people talking. Oh well, interesting perspective.

thanks!

[arby]

Hey everyone!

Ben from the New Ugly with Mike, and our coverage of round 2 is live! Hope you enjoy our very witty and thoroughly prepared comments

New Ugly Boyz -

Podcast is great! One nitpick that is driving me crazy, it's Matchy MatchY, not Matchy Match. The expression means when one wears accessories - like a purse, shoes, earrings or tights etc - that perfectly match one or more of the exact colors in your outfit. Some people hate the matchy-matchy aesthetic, but I myself love it and do it all the time. I especially love matching my dress to my hair - or vice versa - as seen in my avatar.

Thank you for the helpful comments on our song. FYI the ambience part for the challenge was supposed to be in the intro and also the transition from Part I to Part II of the song. Like the sound effects - I have a helicopter effect I am making with my Q-chord (I omitted the rather cartoonish sounding gunshot noise that originally started out the song because it made me laugh too hard, and this song is supposed to be more on the serious side). For the transition we had a short one on this particular take but we wanted it to be longer, so I artificially stretched it in Sound Studio (changed the tempo to 25% of its original length), which introduced some cool artifacts and (I thought) made it more atmospheric/ambient.

[thirdcat]

my favorites (in alphabetical order)

Carlo Bruno Jr: really groovy groove. really love the sound. has my head bobbin'.

Cavedwellers: love the Enoesque vibe with the frippertronics style guitar. cool surprises as the sections change.

DJ Ranger Den: great creepy noises. this is all ambience with vocals which is brilliant.

Grumpy Mike: I am not crazy about the spoken word part but I really like the way it sounds overall. I like the singing quite a bit.

Mandibles: there's a lot of neat stuff in here. grows on me as I listen to it.

Nick Soma: the Pink Floyd references might be a little too over the top so that it comes off as a tribute. but still it's really well done. impressive work for sure.

Vom Vorton: really nice, I can hear how you won the round.

to the new ugly podcast people: I really enjoyed your podcast and listened to the whole thing and appreciated your comments on my song. if I had more time I might have done a single vocal track, that makes more sense than it should

[arby]

OK since the boards seem to be dead (I dunno why, what do you guys have like a life or something?! ), I will take this opportunity to post my reviews.

Overall this was a very strong round. I liked the songs overall much more than the previous rounds. Proud to be competing in such company. My favorites are underlined:

Bmac - This is quite a departure from your last two entries. I like it better. It’s got more character. The podcast made me think about your strumming and I see what they mean about the downstrokes only but it doesn’t bother me, I think it feels appropriate for the song. Production is a bit ragged but again it seems like a real person made this. I like the background “oohs” and the spoken parts. Overall good effort. Sorry you got cut, I would have liked to see what you did next week.

Berkeley Social Scene - I like the bassline and overall groove, the reggae feel is cool. The vocals kind of kill the vibe though, they’re too loud/strained and nasal for me to really relax and enjoy it. If they were mixed considerably farther back in the mix, or had more reverb, that could have made a difference. I like the first solo, sounds like a backwards synth?

Boffo Yux Dudes - pretty wacky song, I like the music quite a bit. I wish there were more verses sung by a single person, or even spoken like in the intro. the chorus would then have more contrast. The pronounciation of “Eye-talian” makes me laugh. I like it but I think it’s a bit too “busy” in production for me to truly love it.

Carlo Bruno Jr. - first of all the lyrics are hilarious. “Shut up if you want me to love you” - I laughed out loud when I read that in the lyrics thread. The music is also really nice, great groove. The audience chatter in the background is well mixed, though not exactly versimilitude because if this were an actual live recording the rest of the song wouldn’t sound anywhere near this clear, but it still works because overall it sounds good. Nice guitar playing. The punch out in the solo is hilarious.

Cavedwellers - I really love the middle section of this. If the whole song were like that, it would be so much better. But the first section leaves me cold and the last section is too screamo for my taste.

DJ Ranger Den - deeply creepy, well-executed. I love the creaking and chain-rattling sounds in the background. I guess my only beef with this is the song itself doesn’t really grab me. Like I completely admire every aspect of this but I wouldn’t listen to it as much as your song for “Trial By Fire” (which I LOVED, btw, and the pronunciation of “funeral” is fabulous - reminds me of one of my favorite songs by the band 20 Minute Loop (https://20minuteloop.bandcamp.com/track/parking-lot)).

Fisher & Diaz - Intro is pretty funny. I really like your overall sensibility and sense of humor. The rapping doesn’t bother me at all, I think it’s funny and cool. But then I have a high tolerance for wackiness (Weird Al, TMBG, early BNL and early Beck being some of my favorite artists). This is a good song and I am personally annoyed you got cut because I want to hear more of your music. Would definitely listen again.

Grumpy Mike - I like the intro a lot. Your singing is quite good and your voice reminds me a lot of Tom Brislin from the band Spiraling (formerly (You Were) Spiraling). The arrangement gets a little busy for my taste though, somewhere around the 2 and a half minute mark. I like the ending too. basically the sparse parts of this work better for me than the busy parts.

Inflatable Vegetables - This is well done but it doesn’t really grab me. Like I find it fun to listen to but I wouldn’t listen to it again unlike some of the other numbers. Reminds me of Pulp? Some band that I can’t quite put my finger on. TMBG on Apollo 11?

Lookylu - Your voice reminds me of a poor man’s Peter Gabriel. Or like Thomas Dolby’s album “The Golden Age of Wireless”. It’s perfectly fine but a bit too slow and dragging for my taste. Well constructed but didn’t move me.

Lucky Witch - Me, personally - I like our song a lot (Jerky Boys ref in case anyone is wondering). A return to our grunge roots, with a side tour to Pink Floyd via shoegaze, Radiohead and Mazzy Star. My main issue is with the whiny/piercingly high-pitched sound of the Q-chord (usually I play Omnichord, which sounds better, but Q-chord has the sound effects). I should have put the vibrato on which softens the tone a little bit. Also I couldn’t sing the second part and play at the same time, so I dropped out of playing on this take. (On other takes I played it but didn’t sing it right.) But given the annoying sound of stupid Q-chord, it’s probably just as well. Btw the line “timor mortis conturbat me” came to me in a dream several months ago. I don’t usually dream song fragments, let alone in Latin. I must have read it in a book somewhere.

Mandibles - Sounds like an Irish folk song or something. I like the background swirly parts but the lyrics don’t really grab me. It’s a bit too earnest for me. It sounds very pretty though.

Matchy Matchy - This sounds fabulous (production-wise) but the vocal is too “jokey” for my taste. I think it’s a good song but it’s hard to tell because of the aforementioned silly quailty.

Nick Soma - Great production, nice sounding, obvious Pink Floyd pastiche. I like all of the individual sounds on this (I adore the Floyd) but the song itself doesn’t stick with me.

Owl Chemist - The bells are quite nice. Again I like the music but the vocals are too loud/intrusive. Wish they were mixed further back. I like the ending.

Rob from Amersfoort - Cute tune, I like the synths a lot. Reminds me of Lemon Demon. I like how you mixed the vocals low and with a kind of telephone/megaphone effect. Overall one of my faves for this round.

Third Cat - This is very pretty and meditative. Sometimes the vocal delivery is a bit awkward. Reminds me of the Dodos without the drumming. Again I wish the vocals were quieter in the mix. (This voice is too loud, just give me silence! )

Vom Vorton - I like the distorted/echo effect on the background synth. This is technically very, very good. (I can see why you won the round!) Something about it reminds me of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Kind of a Sergio Leone quality. Not sure I love it though. I dunno why.

[vowlvom]

Huh, I just started listening and the Nur Ein site seems to have partially fallen over after playing the first few tracks. Those first few tracks were excellent, though!

[vowlvom]

Remembered that I could listen via the listening party. Some of the songs sounded a little fuzzy, sorry if that’s YouTube’s fault and not your mix! Ordered roughly in order of preference this time, why not.

Grumpy Mike - love your take on the challenge, this has buckets of dreamy ambience. Bold move to have such a long intro before the vocal kicks in but it pays off. I’m not crazy about the sample coming back in over the main vocal but I really like everything else about this.

Third Cat - beautiful guitar playing. This song reminds me a lot of “Ghost Ship in a Storm” by Jim O’Rourke which is a fine song indeed.

Matchy Matchy - more super-catchy power-pop, and I like the lyric a lot. The end bit that meets the ambience challenge feels a little tacked on to me (even though it fits the story you’re telling) but I liked this a lot.

Owl Chemist - possibly my favourite OC entry thus far, really good stuff. A little bit goth-y, in a good way.

Fisher and Diaz - haha, this is really fun! I’m surprised the judges were so harsh on this. It made me smile.

Rob from Amersfoort - really like the weird keyboard sounds you’ve chosen for this round. It’s another strong RfA song, I don’t think it hits the ambience challenge as well as a lot of these tracks do though.

Carlo Bruno Jr - love the way you combined the title and the challenge, really clever. I don’t like the song as much as I did your last one but it’s a lot of fun, especially the bar brawl.

DJ Ranger Den - really unusual and strange. Echoing arby but I’m not as into the song itself as I am the production / execution. But it’s a fascinating listen either way.

Lookylu - dreamy and strange. You’re doing something very different and I like it.

Mandibles - another really interesting track. Mandibles sound like a different band each week, which is quite fun. In places this gets a bit too noodly for my liking but all the vocal melodies are strong.

Cavedwellers - that ebow intro is absolutely killer, I like the verse, but the overblown ending is a bit too epic-rock for my liking (the chord sequence from Since You’ve Been Gone probably doesn’t help!)

Pigfarmer Jr (shadow song) - nicely played acoustic rock with a good vocal performance. I really like that bit of acoustic lead guitar that you break out between verses.

Inflatable Vegetables - I really like the (synth?) lead guitar work on this one. The song as a whole is a “like it, don’t love it” one but especially when that lead is fast and intense it sounds very cool.

Boffo Yux Dudes - interesting take on the title! The layered vocals got a bit exhausting for me after a while, but this is still pretty good fun.

BMac - interesting lyrics, I like the rhythm and the monotone bass, but the vocal and guitar are a little rough (possibly the YouTube compression is making this sound worse than it actually is).

Nick Soma - there are some bits of Pink Floyd that I like but the stuff you’re paying homage to here is… erm… the bits that I don’t. It’s well done but not really my thing, so I felt the length. The dreamy section in the middle is very pretty though.

Lucky Witch & the Righteous Ghost - obviously your live-in-the-practice-room sound is perfect for this round but I didn’t dig the actual song as much as your previous entries. The layered vocals at the end are cool, though.

Berkeley Social Scene - this is the rare BSS song that doesn’t do it for me at all. I liked the guitar solo, but the song itself just didn’t click with me.

plus:

Vom Vorton - surprised but delighted to have won this round! It’s extremely rare that I write a song this serious / sincere and I always feel a bit nervous about it. My parents’ cat died last week which got me thinking about how much I missed my old cat Henry, who would frequently wake me up in the middle of the night during the last couple of years of his life due to a series of health problems. I thought I’d check Biblical references as well and the one I picked from Revelations made me smile because it made me imagine Henry pacing the house at 3:20am bellowing “BEHOLD! I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK!”, demanding to be let into the bedroom.

[Manhattan Glutton]

Huh, I just started listening and the Nur Ein site seems to have partially fallen over after playing the first few tracks.

Oops, sorry about that. It's working again.

[vowlvom]

No worries! Nur Ein finds a way.

[Manhattan Glutton]

I don't always develop in production, but when I do, it's because I'm supposed to be recording a song.