threespires
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 7 Aug 2019
- Messages
- 5,677
- Team supported
- City
I think my main challenge with this was I found it very 'bitty'. The issue with putting in a little of absolutely everything is you make it that much harder to create a whole. That said I'm not sure it was his intention to make anything cohesive and though very different from last week's pick it once again feels like he's made it predominantly for himself. Which is fine but again has not produced something that particularly works for me.
It's an odd one because I thought a number of individual tracks were ok and were this to have been on a streaming platform I wouldn't mind if/when the algorithm chucked one of them into the autoplay. But the whole is less than the sum of the parts for me. There's also too much of it, one track like say How We Flow has many entertaining, arguably daft, elements but repeating the trick becomes exhausting.
I stand by my kitchen draw analogy, it's too much of a jumble for me. I rather like a draw with separators and matching things in their own space, possibly because I can rarely achieve such order. I suspect that says something unflattering about me but it's nonetheless the case.
At times it was silly, other times odd and occasionally seemingly serious. I tend to think if you are going to be eclectic you need consistency of quality to unify things and I don't think there is that level of quality. I'm no expert on hip-hop beats but it felt at times, such as with 3po Soul, that he was chucking in three or four tracksworth of window dressing effects to disguise uninspiring beats.
There's too many thoughts, musical and lyrical, that are underdeveloped or not followed through, just chucked out there. Also, though I normally quite like a bit of lo-fi, for some reason this aspect grated at times.
Maybe it is just supposed to be a quasi stream of consciousness but I'm not convinced. If you take Pumpfake then he's clearly making a (totally valid) point which he feels strongly enough to sing about. But it's hardly revelatory that organised religions tend to end up being dodgy as and lose sight of God. The challenge of a reductive counter approach of simply pursuing a personal relationship with God is that it's at odds with the Christian teaching that the church is one body and part of faith is to be living in communion with each other. So I liked the inner tube analogy but where to from there? Maybe he has a view on this, but I either missed it or literally couldn't understand the words if he was making a point in that regard. So I ultimately ended up finding what could have been a good and challenging song a bit basic and unsatisfying.
At one point I did find myself comparing it to Faure's Requiem, a ridiculous and unfair comparison but at a crass level quite illuminating for me. There is a cohesiveness both to Faure's music and the meaning of each individual component that literally more than a billion people would understand. This is at the other end of the spectrum, an individual seemingly spitting out his thoughts on God which may be just as valid but it just didn't feel developed or organised enough for me to get a hook into it.
There's that 'organised' word again, organised kitchen draw, organised religion. It's entirely possible I'm just not mentally flexible enough to keep up with it and I have a latent fear of chaos.
Having had a big old moan about it, and as much as it exhausted me, I do have admiration for the sheer amount of energy he's put into it. Similarly though I criticise it for lack of coherence, the counter argument is it has an endearing feeling of spontaneity. There is also, and this would be an ecumenical matter, an irony to having a moan about someone else's conception or relationship with Christ when, certainly in the UK at least, the dwindling number of Christians are viewed by some of the wider population as either hate filled nutters or weak minded simpletons . (I'm assuming he's not a certain type of right-wing evangelical whose version of Christianity should imo be challenged at every opportunity).
Interestingly, Belfry picked this as his/their most accessible albumsl but I randomly picked another one (1961) that was on a streaming platform and found it more enjoyable and easier to get into. It might not be any more suitable as a pick but musically he seemed to have calmed down a bit and as a consequence I liked it more.
All that said I would listen to maybe half of the individual tracks from this again, and based on 1961 will possibly explore his other stuff.
So overall an interesting pick and I'll go with 6/10.
It's an odd one because I thought a number of individual tracks were ok and were this to have been on a streaming platform I wouldn't mind if/when the algorithm chucked one of them into the autoplay. But the whole is less than the sum of the parts for me. There's also too much of it, one track like say How We Flow has many entertaining, arguably daft, elements but repeating the trick becomes exhausting.
I stand by my kitchen draw analogy, it's too much of a jumble for me. I rather like a draw with separators and matching things in their own space, possibly because I can rarely achieve such order. I suspect that says something unflattering about me but it's nonetheless the case.
At times it was silly, other times odd and occasionally seemingly serious. I tend to think if you are going to be eclectic you need consistency of quality to unify things and I don't think there is that level of quality. I'm no expert on hip-hop beats but it felt at times, such as with 3po Soul, that he was chucking in three or four tracksworth of window dressing effects to disguise uninspiring beats.
There's too many thoughts, musical and lyrical, that are underdeveloped or not followed through, just chucked out there. Also, though I normally quite like a bit of lo-fi, for some reason this aspect grated at times.
Maybe it is just supposed to be a quasi stream of consciousness but I'm not convinced. If you take Pumpfake then he's clearly making a (totally valid) point which he feels strongly enough to sing about. But it's hardly revelatory that organised religions tend to end up being dodgy as and lose sight of God. The challenge of a reductive counter approach of simply pursuing a personal relationship with God is that it's at odds with the Christian teaching that the church is one body and part of faith is to be living in communion with each other. So I liked the inner tube analogy but where to from there? Maybe he has a view on this, but I either missed it or literally couldn't understand the words if he was making a point in that regard. So I ultimately ended up finding what could have been a good and challenging song a bit basic and unsatisfying.
At one point I did find myself comparing it to Faure's Requiem, a ridiculous and unfair comparison but at a crass level quite illuminating for me. There is a cohesiveness both to Faure's music and the meaning of each individual component that literally more than a billion people would understand. This is at the other end of the spectrum, an individual seemingly spitting out his thoughts on God which may be just as valid but it just didn't feel developed or organised enough for me to get a hook into it.
There's that 'organised' word again, organised kitchen draw, organised religion. It's entirely possible I'm just not mentally flexible enough to keep up with it and I have a latent fear of chaos.
Having had a big old moan about it, and as much as it exhausted me, I do have admiration for the sheer amount of energy he's put into it. Similarly though I criticise it for lack of coherence, the counter argument is it has an endearing feeling of spontaneity. There is also, and this would be an ecumenical matter, an irony to having a moan about someone else's conception or relationship with Christ when, certainly in the UK at least, the dwindling number of Christians are viewed by some of the wider population as either hate filled nutters or weak minded simpletons . (I'm assuming he's not a certain type of right-wing evangelical whose version of Christianity should imo be challenged at every opportunity).
Interestingly, Belfry picked this as his/their most accessible albumsl but I randomly picked another one (1961) that was on a streaming platform and found it more enjoyable and easier to get into. It might not be any more suitable as a pick but musically he seemed to have calmed down a bit and as a consequence I liked it more.
All that said I would listen to maybe half of the individual tracks from this again, and based on 1961 will possibly explore his other stuff.
So overall an interesting pick and I'll go with 6/10.
Last edited: