Reviews by deksametazon

This is my first step into the world of Gong, and I can say the choice of album to start off with is great. From what I can read, here we can hear a combination of a drunk imagination of space prog-jazz with a dash of canabis (a combo I don't recommend btw), and some ditsy, gremlin-esque psych rock, both of which dominate their other well known albums.

I'm a much bigger fan of songs such as "Radio Gnome Invisible" and "The Pot Head Dixies", which are more vocal oriented tracks that I find myself getting addicted to much easier to, but the s/t "Flying Teapot" is also good with its funky and dancy quality.

Overall, a nice and quality album. Maybe a bit lacking in overall replayability, but still worthy of listening.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2025: #44 An album you found browsing Bandcamp (25th Album)

Reminds me of a combination of Jonathan Bree and late stage Leonard Cohen, with a huuuuuuge love for Tindersticks. Maybe even more than the previous two

I like it. It's not the whiny indie sound, but a more intimate foray. Still, it lacks momentum and memorability. It just comes and goes, like the whispery vocals in it.

An album that defies standard genre conventions, yet it firmly stands its ground in this hazy, psychedelic trance-like soundscape that mixes Pink Floyd, Tool, Fugazi, and the cornucopia we call the alt-rock scene of the late 80s and early 90s.

A maker of its own ecosystem, Scenes From The Second Storey is a bite of epic proportion, be it because of its length, or because of its diverse content, which ranges from classic distorted guitar blazing, repetitive tribal and stoner, post-metal thumping, desolate acoustic sections, a weird classical ambient influence, and this idea which I can only describe as Spacegrunge. The band clearly emphasized instrumental over lyrical content, as most of the album is sparse in terms of singing, which I find positive because the songwriting wasn't their strong suit, at least on this album, with it being mostly introspective, existential, and angry ranting (oh 90s, you never seem to disappoint in that area), and their instrument playing is tight, concise, and knows where it wants to go, and uses a plethora of different ways to arrive there.

Sadly, Scenes From the Second Storey never got its due diligence. Whether that be because of the band's short life span, or the weird place it occupied in the music world, the band, or their albums never took off, but that only makes it more rewarding to find an overlooked gem on the vastness of the internet without any recommendations whatsoever.

Perfectly OK album. This is just an adequate indie pop album without a lot (or any) deviation from the mean. I wish it had at least one more shade to its sound, because the opener is had it going for it, with a change in atmosphere sometime in the middle of the song that amplifies the emotion.

Sadly, the rest of the songs are typical radio rock filler.

A nice and somewhat interesting palette of instrumental ideas being bogged down by a plethora of bad vocal ideas, which in turn, like stacked cards, makes the whole thing fall apart rather unspectacularly. Make up your mind: do you want an angry sounding and anxious album, or do you want an openhearted and "pour your emotion out" experience.

Add to the previous that it's a long album, full of tropes, "quirky" moments (a habit I despise a lot) with a plastic facade, and you get this album, a comical effort with a lot of promise.

But at moments they do have their shit together, somewhat. 200 and commatose (which, for an almost 10-minute track, nails it every step of the way) tower from the rest, but even that doesn't excuse the horridness you have to subject yourself to get to them.

Overall, too few tracks to be considered a good album.

As far as stories from the Yugoslavian music scene, this is up there. Apparently, these guys recorded a song called Karrigat, but due to politically charged lyrics, the Pristina radio station wouldn't play it. Then they recorded this album but couldn't release it because they couldn't quite put out an album cover with the Albanian eagle on it, at least not then. After a year of pushing for a release, it finally came out, albeit in a limited run only on cassette. You can see how and why everyone outside of Kosovo and Albania overlooked the album.

The album is mostly standard new wave layered with a bit of Albanian folk music. Kinda reminds me a bit of Dorian Gray, with the mysterious nature and the synths. Probably would've been better if it wasn't recorded on a cassette. In essence, more talk than substance.

I guess it doesn't suck suck, but more so suffers from being jam packed with a lot of ideas that go everywhere but don't stay anywhere. I guess I'm too old fashioned to understand the appeal

Something came about me and I decided to check out Gibonni a bit this night, and seeing this album appear the most in his Spotify playlist, thought this might be as good of a place as any to start off with his solo career.

It's glossy, for sure, and hella polished in terms of production. His songwriting was always his strong suit, and it shows on most tracks, particularly Divlji Cvit, the song that was the biggest reason for me checking the entire project.

Backed by Vlatko Stefanovski (of Leb i Sol fame) and Niksa Bratos (a multiinstrumentalist of multiple famous bands around Yugoslavia), it's a rock canvas with pop colors, with a lot of ballads and some more contemporary attempts that shapes a very good album, honestly. Don't expect some world-quality, boundary pushing moments, but do expect some solid, replay-inducing moments with a powerful vocal work from Džibo.

This album feels like a more fleshed out album, in the sense of it having the same mysteriousness to it, but without a sense of ascension, and more of a feeling of spiraling deep into the clutches of hopelessness and dread of what games life has in store for us. Beth was always a master of creating atmosphere, be it solo, or when she's fronting Portishead. The album is theatrical, but not in a way of relying on a grandiose notion, but having a cathartic element, and pouring emotion of peril and uncertainty that slowly drips.

Lives Outgrown was an album I waited ever since it was first announced, and I'm glad it didn't let me down. One of the few highlights in music this year.

Benign as it gets, but that's exactly why it's so revered and enjoyable.

This is exactly how I love my jazz: calming and charming as fuck. None of that phallus waving, virtuosic, instrument jerking stuff. Just pure mind wandering with great musicianship, as it's displayed here.

Its approach can be enjoyed by those who dislike the instrument jerking that jazz can sometime be, but can also be approved by those into more intricate stuff due to its simple nature and how much it conveys with just a few simple licks.

This is a soundtrack to a 30-minute elevator ride. It's quite similar to, so why did I enjoy it, but not this? Simple, Astrud is on the former, and this is just cool jazz jamming.

É luxo só is dope, with an upbeat dance rhythm, and the opener Desafinado is really lush. It's definitely worth checking out. If anything, it's worth as background music.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2026: #40. A noise album (20th Album)

Usually, anything that's pure noise gets very iffy, boring, or just downright awful, but Gero P sort of straddles that line of being decent despite it's very unforgiving genres and descriptors. Maybe because it's made by members of The Gerogerigegege, a noise band which is top class in a sea of self-indulgent wankery.

Closest I can describe the sound of this album is the cover art. Very apocalyptic and very scary, much like a war against humanoid ants.

Thank you, [~SpeedKills] for the rec!

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2025: #1An album where the artist left music soon after its release (11th Album)

For this entry, I wanted to chose someone who actually quit on their own terms, rather than going for an artist who took the highway to the farm, if you catch my drift.

Good grandma-core stuff. But we all know that grandma-core music is useless unless it's god tier stuff like Sinatra or Dolly Parton which, while we're at it, Bobbie sounds like here, except at a 2nd tier rate.

Maybe her sound is different, and more energetic, on her previous album, but this is just plain safe, smooth sailing across a lake because this feels more like a contractual obligation than a stream of inspiration, and god help us if she sounds like this with hands full of inspiration. Somebody Like Me has a nice urban funky backbone though, and Beverly has a shade of cool artistic acrobatics with the Spanish flamenco influence, but they for damn sure can't carry it.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2023: #47 A classic album from one of your favorite genres (41st Album)

Y'know, Enter The Wu Tang might be the one that put the gang on the map, but Liquid Swords is the Wu album where everyone was on the right wavelength.

It sounds cold, but the flows from everyone is pure magma. The self-titled song set the tone here, grim and dark, while the other rolled with it and built upon it. Cold World is probably the best song here, with its hard-nosed bars and an artisan representation of the real world mixed with an almost heavily commercial beat, but really, all songs here are worthy of an introduction to the hip-hop almanac, if a thing were ever to exist. RZA's production fits it on every level, and the slow and methodical poetic approach is what makes me return to it for almost a week straight. Even the interludes, which usually make me roll my eyes, are surprisingly good.

My entire love for this album might just be my general attraction towards cold hip-hop albums with lyrics that are worthy of reading on their own like a poetry book, and creative sampling that remind me of the tall blocks where I grew up, but it's really essential listening with a lot of things to love.

I'm glad it didn't let me down, not even in the slightest.

Underrated in my book, Trespass should be considered one of the better progressive rock albums instead of being relegated to a footnote in a great period of Genesis's career, and being generally known as "that one progressive rock album that Phil Collins didn't drum on."

While we're on the subject, John Mayhew can hold his own, sometimes even stealing the show with an almost marching tone that fits the medieval aesthetic.

The Knife is considered a high point here, which is true from a technical standpoint with the driving motorik and Peter's theatrics. However, I'm much more fond of the opener, which has that melancholic aura around it, and the ethereal Visions Of Angels always brings joy when listening to it.

I always thought this album was overrated due to how much it leaned into being a snapshot of American (underline that word) history. A lightning bolt caught in a bottle which Americans ate up, and in turn defecated a turd with a sign that says "best album of all time (or close to it". I get the idea of being emotionally invested into something and getting your heart strings tugged into loving something, I'm a victim of that, just look at my top-rated albums, but something that can't even cross the neighbouring borders should not be even put on the same street as the Pantheon of greatest albums of all time, let alone be let inside.

That was me before I heard this album. Nothing too new to me, mind you, I always had that habit of taking revered albums with a spoon full of salt. Most of the time I was right, but on a faithful day sometime last autumn, that all changed. A guy who sells records around the town I'm studying in has a tendency to have a few gold nuggets, be it in wisdom, old musical stories, or in the currency of those aforementioned records. Sometimes it was 70s or 80s Yugoslav rekkerds, sometimes it was All Things Must Pass for 25 bucks, and sometimes it was full of absolute junk that's overpriced to the point of laughter. You never know with this geezer. One of those records was the album you've stumbled upon here, minty first UK press, promotional copy. "How much do you want for it?" "20 bucks." I was on the fence for it. I thought, even if I didn't like it, I could at least triple it on the open market. And just before I could make up my mind, he said: "Take it home and listen to it, if you like it, bring the 20 bucks tomorrow."

I took it home, put it on the platter, and my god was I blown away. I instantly realized why people love it. This is dream soul. Nothing sounds like this beautiful piece of hazy lush soul that doesn't rely on bombastic melodies, and/or piercing sexy vocals, but on sensual sounds and calming instrumentation. Oh, and the whole "American history" thing I yapped at the beginning? Scratch that. My father, who only knows how to say "Hello" and "How do you do", thought this album was one of the most beautiful soul albums he's heard, and he's one of those guys who doesn't even like soul. I consider that a huge stamp of approval.

This is an album with objective "good-ness" to it. Marvin pierces the ears of those who don't want to listen, and the hearts of those who don't want to feel. And even after listening, if you still aren't on the right side of good music, I have no words for you. You are truly lost.

I often think about the fact that he gave me the album on his own personal accord. I could have stolen it and never bring it, or the money back. I think Marvin was smiling on that day from the skies above. Partly because of me being an honest bloke, and partly because his music is finding new audiences from generation to generation

Top tier sex music. It's not emotionally deep like the political What's Going On, but it's more loose and fiery, which is to be expected considering the subject at hand.

To me, it's more of an album I'll put on and vibe to than an active listen (obvious reasons), but it's good in both variations. Let's Get It On is the most famous and best cut, but If I Should Die Tonight has the most emotional downpour.

A lot of this album is "Let's Get It On"-lite, with a few questionable choices regarding track choices and song structure. To start off with the yuckiness, the album has 3 purely instrumental tracks, one of which is just an instrumental of the closer, and the other two feel like something you'd find on an expanded remaster they do these days in "I Want You". The second yuck part is the questionable background """vocals""" on some tracks, which for me doesn't really click.

With that out of the way, this album sounds like the middle of a Venn diagram between Let's Get It On and What's Going On, with luscious instrumentals and production characteristics from the latter, and the themes of the former being fused together to form a very crucial part of a somewhat rocky, but very important, discography. There are some heavy hitters here, the first two and the closer, which are nice Marvin songs everyone should hear. The rest is alright, but definitely worth hearing after you've heard the essential releases.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2026: #24 An album with exactly six tracks (10th Album)

Very simple and safe jazz album, even by Red Garland's standards. This one glides through the air safely, and you drift in and out of consciousness whilst listening to it.

I appreciate the occasional Art Taylor drum, but overall, Red Garland is a very vanilla band leader and this album captures it. Fits a café setting, or one of those "music to study to" playlists.

The golden age of the golden-age hip hop. Gang Starr perfectly threads between sounding poetically playful, and menacingly conscious and ominous. All with simple delivery and beats that are minimalistic and straightforward, yet highly memorable. These kids could learn a thing or two from these two.