This CD actually came out last October, but I never picked it up because none of the music "previews" or whatever really grabbed me. If you listen to the two tracks posted on the ohGr myspace page, you have two songs that both start with weird spoken word things, and when the song starts, the first one "Timebomb" is kind of a samba style thing, and the second one, "Feelin' Chicken" is like circus music with random chicken noises in it. Based on those two songs, it comes off as an album by one of the leaders of the industrial music genre, whose solo work has had kind of an electro/synth-pop flavor to it, apparently doing every other random style of music that is not industrial.
This album was released right after Repo: The Genetic Opera was in limited release in theaters, which niveK Ogre aka ohGr had a role in. Based on these two tracks, it isn't entirely unreasonable to deduce this album is somehow influenced by - well - musical theater or some shit. I also listened to the 30 second samples on Amazon.com, but nothing there really changed my mind. It seemed like, for whatever reason, ohGr decided to do an album of industrial tinged show tunes. That's great, I'll pass.
As time passed, I noticed a lot of industrial reviewers gave the album high marks. Regen Magazine even went to so far as to call it the number one album of 2008. (Angelspit's Blood Death Ivory should be way higher on that list, possibly even number one.) I wanted to check the whole album out, but I didn't feel like spending $10 or whatever in case I hated it. (And I don't fuck around with piracy, no bit torrent, none of that shit). So I put it on the back burner until recently when Gemma and I happened to get an amazon gift certificate from an extended family member of hers.
It's really fucking good.
It's not a collection of songs, it is an album. You listen to it from beginning to end. Each song blends into the next. Unfortunately, the Amazon.com 30 second samples tend to fall on the in-between portions of songs, so you get a lot of Bill Moseley saying weird shit. And "Feelin' Chicken" is probably the last song that should be used to promote this album. It's not bad when it's played in its place on the album, but out of context it's just WTF.
Another thing I love about this album: it opts out of the Loudness War. It's beautifully mixed and mastered. The first track, "Shhh," intentionally lacks the highest frequencies (aka "sparklies") - why? So that when the second track, "Eyecandy," comes in, it has those upper-upper frequencies and it creates DYNAMIC CONTRAST and therefore MAKES AN IMPACT. Y'know, like music is supposed to. Music needs to be quiet sometimes so that the LOUDNESS means something - everyone who mixes and masters knows this and yet we all feel pressured to accommodate record execs (and consumers) and mix for maximum loudness all the time.
Musical "volume," aka dynamics, are not meant to be static, however record execs, radio programmers and consumers are increasingly demanding the music be LOUD all the time. Some Amazon reviewer called this album "poorly mixed." Wrong, bucko, all music should be mixed/mastered like this. The industry standard for movies is an overall dynamic range of 24 dB - meaning that the quietest part of a movie can be 24 dB less than the loudest part of a movie. In music, the standard is inching from 8 dB to 6 dB.
That's bullshit.
Decibels are not a linear measurement, it's logarithmic. That means a dynamic range of 12 dB is NOT twice the range of 6 dB, it's actually exponentially more. So 24 dB of dynamic range is actually far more than even four times that of 6 dB.
What does this mean? It means we're losing a lot of quality and fidelity in music. Why? Well it all started with the idea that, on the radio, the louder track grabbed people's attention and therefore sold more singles/records.
But does that even fucking matter anymore? Who listens to radio for music nowadays? No one I know. And what station is playing ohGr? Probably not a single one, probably not even college radio anymore. So why play the LOUDNESS game? Why not opt out? (I guess in the industrial genre, there's being played at clubs, but I digress...)
So yeah, this album is awesome. The music is great, the mixing/mastering is bold and refreshing, and if you're on the fence about it, my best suggestion is just to listen to the first two tracks, "Shhh," and "Eyecandy" back-to-back.
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