Well, here I am trying to get back at it. It's been a few months since I really felt like doing anything with this project. In all honestly I lost any interest in hearing music I've never heard before. I felt like I had realized the answer to my initial question, "Is there anything else out there that's really missing from my life?" The answer is, "Yes, but I have to sift through a whole pile of shit to find it."
I don't really understand why that's true with music. It's certainly not true when I watch movies. I can watch a movie that I find horrible yet still enjoy some small part of it. It might be because a movie has so many interwoven elements that regardless of overall quality there's something to enjoy. Or maybe it's that even when a movie is truly terrible, in a "Manos" The Hands Of Fate kinda way, I still admire the filmmakers for actually succeeding in putting together a feature film.
That just doesn't translate for me when it comes to music. Maybe it's because albums only go through my ear, and without the visual stimulation my brain gets bored way too easily. I often remark on how video game music works for me, in spite of being just as electronic and big-beaty as the crap Fat Boy Slim makes. That could be because when I listen to the music by itself I can see the visuals of the game I loved in my head while I'm listening. But Fat Boy Slim's music never has any accompanying visuals, unless they wind up on a movie soundtrack I like in which case maybe it could work for a minute or 2.
In any case for the last few months I've pretty much only been listening to music that's been in my regular rotation for years. Listening to more than 300 albums has resulted in me really only adding a handful of albums and songs to that collection. But I do think if I never complete this project I will regret it. Even if it takes me decades, which it probably will at this point, I will see this through.
Now on to an artist I've never heard of. He or she has a really funny name, and I kinda expect this to be one of those albums that is called "introspective" or "revelatory" or "beyond it's time" except it's actually just a bunch of electronic nonsense.
OK, so looks like Nitin Sawhney is a woman's name, and she has a lovely voice in the mold of most R&B artists since 1990. I feel the range is similar to Mariah Carey with a tone slightly reminicient of Tina Turner. The opener "Broken Skin" is laced with Indian influences, though it hits a bit on the nose by including news broadcast clippings of India's nuclear weapon ambitions. The follow up "Letting Go" is at times haunting, but I'm already weary of the slow hip-hop rhythm. I hope the rest of the album is more ambitious.
Yikes... "Homelands" has a lovely string arrangement but about 30 seconds the vocals kick in with "Neyehzedadlzedadlzedadlzedadlzedadlzedadlzedadlyageezabomabomgombom" or something. I'm sure that means something in some language, or maybe it's the Indian equivalent of scat. Whatever, it sounds insane. I had to look up the lyrics to see if anyone transcribed it and was disappointed. The website metrolyrics.com seems to think the only words to the song are "Sa da pa ma pa da, Ga ma pa ma pa da, Ga pa ma sa ni ni." They're definitely missing a few.
I also learned online that Nitin Sawhney is not a woman, nor did he sing the first song on the album. Oh well, I could go back and correct that I guess, or I could leave it because whatever. I also read that this album falls into the "downtempo" genre, which is going to drive me nuts if every song has such a sluggish tempo. It also apparently falls into the "drum 'n' bass" genre, which I already covered how much that tag pissed me off with my review of New Forms.
I might have ruined my chances of liking this album by bringing up New Forms, because now the similarities are starting to stand out to me. The song "Nadia" for example, other than having words, sounds exactly like something I would expect off of New Forms. It's got a stupid canned dance beat, a repetitive melody, and is at least twice as long as it needs to be. On the other hand Beyond Skin kinda goes back and forth between crap like that and pleasantly well-produced R&B tracks like "Immigrant". So I'm going back and forth between hating and liking it.
Why is shitty editing so popular in this type of music? So many samples are spliced in and cut like half a beat early. Sometimes it's done so sloppily there's an audible popping sound. I just don't get it, and it seems everyone does it! Is it a requirement of using samples that it absolutely must be obvious that the sampling artist didn't record the sample? And to that effect they leave in the kind of shitty audio mistakes that would get fixed on a quality recording?
Anyhoo, I wasn't impressed by Beyond Skin. It was only slightly more than the electronic junk I was expecting. At the very least most of the music within was played on real instruments. Bare-minimum isn't enough to get me to like it, but at least I don't hate it. 2 stars.
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