The Visions Will Return! - My first full album.

[L0SS]

  "Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise."

 

I've officially released my first full-length album. It takes inspiration from several places; thematically, I drew on 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Coleridge poem, Kubla Khan. It's ambitious in its scope, and was inspired by film scores and soundtracks amongst other things. 

 

The album is loosely based around a concept of death and rebirth, and is primarily an experimental electronic album, but their are elements of jazz, Hip-Hop, Psychedelia and plenty of other stuff in the mix. I suppose I'd compare it to Flying Lotus, sound-wise, with some Wonky elements, but I don't want to draw too many parallels as I'd like to think it stands up on its own.

 

Please please give it a listen, and let me know what you think. If any one is willing to give it a full on review I'd be eternally grateful. Thanks guys!

 

https://soundcloud.com/the-deaf-aids/sets/the-visions-will-return

[.Rai]

Awesome. I definitely hear the filmic approach to the album (and the fancy album cover now makes sense now that I realise it's a Kubla Khan attribution.)

It splits the balance between more melodically and harmonically pleasing tracks and noisier stuff quite well. I commend you on the flow of the album. Sequencing of tracks is good: everything makes sense in context, and I think I can just about make out the concept you were going for here. Firstly, is that a knife being sharpened at the end of scary at this time of night? Dunno, that's what I heard. And, then, obviously the end which is essentially as Space Odyssey as Space Odyssey can get.

I've kind of split it into three parts. Firstly, you have more erratic, experimental tracks bookending the album (The Start of Something in its formless improvising over that simpler ostinato bass, followed by scary... which is plain bizarre and then Star Child which delves into the realm of drone and noise music more so than anything else on the album).

Secondly, you have the first middle which are the more obviously structured, I'd argue more accessible, tracks: Escape... until about The Afterlife Forecast have the most immediate grooves on the album, and also what I'd say is the most obvious source of Flying Lotus inspiration especially on the Interlude and Lairy Musings.... It's definitely not too in-your-face, and you've managed to distill that influence into something that maintains something unique to itself. The psychedelia, free jazz style remains on Lairy Musings..., but you suddenly have these huge breakbeats absolutely pummelling throughout the track. One of the highlights of the album for me.

Thirdly, you then have the second middle which is much for filmic in its composition, doesn't forgo groove, but definitely emphasises this more soundtrack-style atmosphere, lots more jazz influence, lots more obvious ambiance into the mix. You've even got this Far Eastern vibe on If You Could Be Born Again..., which is kinda cool.

There aren't really that many shortgoings to this album. Not for everyone, just out of the sheer experimentalism you have going on, but, even for an experimental album, there's plenty of solid, meaty grooves to get stuck into. If there was one thing I would say, is that some of the tracks might do well with maybe 20 seconds or so shaved off of them. This trend is probably most noticeable on the more unchanging tracks: probably best seen as the tracks that have flat dynamic profiles across the whole track. Not a huge criticism, but I'm a big believer that more extreme lengths often do great things to a track. Super brief tracks and super long tracks are slightly easier to remember, and force you to maximise sonic impact within the constraints you give yourself. Anyway, sidetracking here, just a random thought I had.

Absolute banger of an album though. I think highlights are probably Lairy Musings... and Remover from me. Just because I favour that particular aesthetic a bit more. Don't think there's a single dud on it anyway. As always, nice to see musicians here properly getting great material out.

[L0SS]

Awesome. I definitely hear the filmic approach to the album (and the fancy album cover now makes sense now that I realise it's a Kubla Khan attribution.)

It splits the balance between more melodically and harmonically pleasing tracks and noisier stuff quite well. I commend you on the flow of the album. Sequencing of tracks is good: everything makes sense in context, and I think I can just about make out the concept you were going for here. Firstly, is that a knife being sharpened at the end of scary at this time of night? Dunno, that's what I heard. And, then, obviously the end which is essentially as Space Odyssey as Space Odyssey can get.

I've kind of split it into three parts. Firstly, you have more erratic, experimental tracks bookending the album (The Start of Something in its formless improvising over that simpler ostinato bass, followed by scary... which is plain bizarre and then Star Child which delves into the realm of drone and noise music more so than anything else on the album).

Secondly, you have the first middle which are the more obviously structured, I'd argue more accessible, tracks: Escape... until about The Afterlife Forecast have the most immediate grooves on the album, and also what I'd say is the most obvious source of Flying Lotus inspiration especially on the Interlude and Lairy Musings.... It's definitely not too in-your-face, and you've managed to distill that influence into something that maintains something unique to itself. The psychedelia, free jazz style remains on Lairy Musings..., but you suddenly have these huge breakbeats absolutely pummelling throughout the track. One of the highlights of the album for me.

Thirdly, you then have the second middle which is much for filmic in its composition, doesn't forgo groove, but definitely emphasises this more soundtrack-style atmosphere, lots more jazz influence, lots more obvious ambiance into the mix. You've even got this Far Eastern vibe on If You Could Be Born Again..., which is kinda cool.

There aren't really that many shortgoings to this album. Not for everyone, just out of the sheer experimentalism you have going on, but, even for an experimental album, there's plenty of solid, meaty grooves to get stuck into. If there was one thing I would say, is that some of the tracks might do well with maybe 20 seconds or so shaved off of them. This trend is probably most noticeable on the more unchanging tracks: probably best seen as the tracks that have flat dynamic profiles across the whole track. Not a huge criticism, but I'm a big believer that more extreme lengths often do great things to a track. Super brief tracks and super long tracks are slightly easier to remember, and force you to maximise sonic impact within the constraints you give yourself. Anyway, sidetracking here, just a random thought I had.

Absolute banger of an album though. I think highlights are probably Lairy Musings... and Remover from me. Just because I favour that particular aesthetic a bit more. Don't think there's a single dud on it anyway. As always, nice to see musicians here properly getting great material out.

Firstly, thank you so much for taking your time to post, means a lot. Glad you liked it, I agree that the concept is pretty loose, I guess it was more a guideline for a worthwhile structure and flow, so I'm glad you felt that worked. Yeah that is a knife on scary by the way, that gave it a bit of a tie in conceptually. I think length is something I still struggle with, notably, The Afterlife Forecast is unchanging and pretty repetitive. I kinda of wanted to have a decent length in terms of the whole album so I might have stretched out tracks a little too far in order to do that. Definitely something I need to work on.

 

There are certainly a lot of musical styles at play here, one of my aims was to get them to gel, but I agree that the styles throughout have quite distinct and identifiable changes. I worked on a few tracks at a time as I was listening to different stuff, which led to that figuring into the whole thing. 

 

Thanks again, I think creating this was a good avenue into different areas for me, sonically, and I can't wait to try even more, whilst hopefully pinning everything down better and working on production and consistency.

[Susie]

a bit improved from your previous outing, youve kept the unorthodox songwriting and youve become more distinct with your sound but i feel like there needs to be more going on with the dynamics of the songs. a lot of these songs give off some of the weirdest feelings for me, i can never tell if im supposed to be happy or frightened with some of these songs, i can hear some mildly uplifting melodies and grooves being thrown into relentless experimentation and noise, its a hard and rare combo but i feel like you did a great job on creating that weird atmosphere, seriously i feel like im playing Klonoa while watching The Shining during certain songs. another big thing about this record i, like i said before, is how the sound is much more diverse, the only record that i can think of that sounds close to this would be Ultravisitor by Squarepusher, but the one big problem that keeps me from loving this record to death is definitely the lack of dynamics, i would say that you could just cut off a minute of so out of each track, but that wouldnt be nearly as interesting as really playing around with each of the songs some more. overall you have much more interesting things going on and some great new ideas, but they just need a bit more tweaking.

sadly i cant really comment on the concept at all, since i havent seen A Space Odyssey or have read that poem

Lair Musings of a Mental Mind, If You Could Be Born Again, The Milk of Paradise, and Star Child are the best tracks for me here

[L0SS]

seriously i feel like im playing Klonoa while watching The Shining during certain songs.

Love this! If I ever create a website to promote, that'll be the quote on the front page. 

 

I get what you're saying about dynamics, I think that's partly down to my production still being shoddy and amateurish, so I miss out on a lot of subtlety and emphasis of certain sounds in the mix. Not heard Ultravisitor but I've heard some other Squarepusher stuff. I'll definitely check it out to get a feel for the comparison. I'll take that advice on, and try and diversify tracks more. I think I definitely want to create more free-flowing tracks that shift around sonically.

 

Cheers for that, I appreciate it. 

[Susie]

Love this! If I ever create a website to promote, that'll be the quote on the front page.

I get what you're saying about dynamics, I think that's partly down to my production still being shoddy and amateurish, so I miss out on a lot of subtlety and emphasis of certain sounds in the mix. Not heard Ultravisitor but I've heard some other Squarepusher stuff. I'll definitely check it out to get a feel for the comparison. I'll take that advice on, and try and diversify tracks more. I think I definitely want to create more free-flowing tracks that shift around sonically.

Cheers for that, I appreciate it.

i draw the comparison to Ultravisitor because of how both are noisy and chaotic but filled with grooves, the biggest difference is how dynamic and diverse Ultravisitor is as well as the sheer fact that its a live improvisation. the album has a love it or hate it status with the fans, though personally im on the love it side and i feel that its his best masterpiece.

[L0SS]

Bumping for fresh feedback!