Pop Premiership Week 4 RESULTS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Before we get into hauntedballroom's results, a quick mention that the response for week 5 so far has been VERY LOW! (by the first four weeks' standards) - I won't list all the names but I'll try and send reminders out tomorrow.

Revelations for this and the Chart Championship at about 2.

"Thank you for all the tracks; I like how incoherent it sounded overall. I didn't recognise any of the songs except that one was a cover of 'Love is the Drug'. I found it easy to decide which songs I loved and hated but there were a few that I was ambivalent about. The placings between seven and ten were especially hard.

01. Polysics - "Married To A Frenchman": I liked the robot noises and crackles and pops a lot on this but felt that it was a little bit self-consciously busy. I wasn't too keen on the guitar either. I used to really like Bis which this sounds a lot like but isn't I don't think, and I would have enjoyed this track a lot more when I did. 8th Place - LOSE - katstevens done too much fanny dangle.

02. Built Like Alaska - "Mistake #2". I don't know how this relates to any of the stuff that I said I liked at all! It really isn't to my taste. It seems to attempt plaintive and mournful and ends up being dreary and whiny. Sorry I really think it deserves 11th place - LOSE - tactical disaster for bengraham.

03. Appleton - "Blow My Mind". I really liked this after a second listen. It's slick and shiny with a really good pop chorus and fun lyrics. I like that I couldn't decide whether I loved it or hated it at first. 5th Place - WIN - game of two halves sees dubdobdee sneak a win.

04. Asian Dub Foundation ft Sinead O Connor - "1000 Mirrors". I really liked the music but not the vocals, if this track was an instrumental I would have liked it a lot more. 10th Place - LOSE - red card for striker leaves braisedbywolves high and dry.

05. Bill Orcutt - "Yes Blues". This is something that I would definitely listen to normally, a really good choice. The sparseness and the intersection of the voice and instruments reminded me of Throbbing Gristle or someone like that. Easily a winner. 2nd Place - WIN - Direct tactics pay off for xyzzzz_

06. Six Finger Satellite - "Paralysed By Normal Life". Another really good track. I enjoyed it all especially the cheesy keyboard. A good-fun-to-dance-to song a bit like the Fall. 4th Place - WIN - Carefree play makes it all look so easy for jel_bugle.

07. Georgy Ligeti - "Lux Aeterna". My favourite track. It's really strange but I thought about requesting interesting choral music in my introduction but thought it didn't seem pop enough. I love the sinister wash of sound, how unsettling it is, like an underwater cathedral. I am really, really pleased with this track. Thanks! 1st Place - WIN - unconventional tactics create dominant win for inhibitorylinks.

08. Tori Amos - "Datura". Angsty overblown vocals over the top of some muttering and music that sounds a bit like a corporate video. Then it stops and then another four minutes that sound a bit like a different song. It reminded me of a soundtrack to a mini soap opera or something with mood changes. I thought about it a lot and can't place it higher because I don't really like it, but in terms of interesting to think about it comes high. 9th Place - LOSE - inconsistency costs alexmacpherson dear.

09. Nobukazi Takemura - "Croon". Pretty and pleasant enough but kind of bland. Liked the vocals and the xylophone but somehow it added up to less than the sum of its parts. I liked it enough to draw. 6th Place - DRAW - not one for the neutral as draw specialist strange_powers nets another point.

10. Millionaire - "Wake Up The Children". I like things like this if they are a bit sparser. It's kind of cheesy because of the melody. Emptier I would have liked it a lot. 7th Place - LOSE - fugitivemotel in first defeat of the season.

11. Kate Wax - "Catch The Buzz". A cover of 'Love is the Drug' by Roxy Music. The only thing I recognised but I didn't know who it was by. An interesting reworking I think – the throwaway, emotionless vocalisation provides an interesting counterpoint to the lyrics and sense of the original. 3rd Place - WIN - zenith's experienced back line delivers the goods.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

:(

I am under pressure now.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

I honestly can't tell which of these is mine!

ha!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

This comment is hilarious. No reason why you should be aware that your song was partly a Roxy cover version of course.

Re: ha!

[zenith.livejournal.com]

I kind of zoned out here, 'cos while I didn't know that it did more than just reference the title, I ought to have remembered the bit where she goes "love is the drug" and therefore known which track was being talked about. Doh.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Bah, 2 or 4 for me, I think. Maybe 5. (as is traditional I haven't remembered to actually download anything).

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I fear I will be languishing at the bottom. I am terrible at judging other people's music tastes! I am terrified that the Lex will already know the song I've submitted for him!

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Draw, after shock win last week. Still, I've yet to lose!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

You have the last unbeaten record in either league!

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

But destined to plug away mid-table, perhaps scraping the playoffs. Unless I can significantly kick my game up a notch... My strategy is obviously paying off, but I need to sign a solid goalscorer for the front line.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

I agree that the choral work is fantastic and a very worthy winner.

And no, it wasn't mine.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The choral work was lovely! However I kept skipping through it to see if there were any unexpected rave breakdowns in the middle. I'll give it a proper listen later.

[(Anonymous)]

I can't work out which is mine, could be 4,5,6 or 10! Tom, cut the suspense man!

jel

[(Anonymous)]

Aha! Win! Good old 6FS!! Moog Liberation!! I can totally afford to lose next week now.

jel

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My reactions:

- Didn't know any of them.
- Think the first and last places are fair results really - I also liked the Takemura and the Kate Wax track was submitted very near the deadline knuckle so I didn't even check to see if it worked and haven't heard it yet! Electroclash Roxy? Sounds OK.
- I also liked the Appleton and thought it was a good, funny choice from Mark S - glad to see it getting rewarded.
- The Bill Orcutt track was a little too much for me - been quite a while since I listened to noise (we used to play it in the comic shop when we had pricing to do and didn't want too many customers). I'm really intrigued by the description of its "sparseness" though!

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

The Orcutt is very stop-start, so I think what hballroom might be referring to are the guitar-only sections where the vocalist isn't screaming that stretches the whole thing, increasing its impact. Maybe that's where the sparseness comes from.

Overall, its great example of how the ppl involved really are into each other's moves, a great game between Bill and the vocalist (the drummer is a bit left out tho') (they are both from no wavers Harry Pussy), how BOTH free improvisation and noise work together.

Bill really ws one of the great guitar players - they all disappear after a while :-(

[hauntedballroom.livejournal.com]

- in terms of the bill orcutt i guess i meant sparse in terms of lack of layers and melody even though it was in some ways a dense sound. i see it as sort of monochrome if that makes sense.
- i guessed it was all saints initially the appleton one, it was just so them but kind of glossier and less cargo pants-y. it makes a lot of sense now that i know that!

useful tip (if true)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

all my teams are picked in reference to their cargo pants index

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised no-one seems to have recognised the Ligeti one - it's featured quite prominently in the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is where I know (and love it) from. If you like that, then the whole soundtrack album is worth a purchase, as there are other great Ligeti tracks on there too.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

didn't hear till it was named but would have guessed it blind, i hope -- ligeti didn't like the use it was put to in 2001, i seem to recall

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Hahahahah I KNEW that it was Lex's Tori Amos because the file size was huge for the song length = high quality mp3 innit :)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

All the CDs I import are 320kpbpbpbpbpbs, I can't stand any reduction in the quality of ANY OF 'EM.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the lex vs the kids on the bus with their ringtones part1023509-123847§2983745-198476551938

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention that since I'm still in a spare room and my speakers are in a box, I listen to this carefully imported 320kpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbs music through tinny, shitty laptop speakers :D

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

hurrah!

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

It wasn't really a tactical disaster per se, more like I was in a massive rush last week and didn't actually read hauntedballroom's intro before submitting a track. Moreover, I just picked one of three or four tracks that I had uploaded to my PC, that I felt were obscure enough to not get recognised. I don't feel any shame in admitting that in Week 1, where I came 1st, I actually spent time choosing my track for submission, whereas in Weeks 2 and 4, I just submitted the first thing that came to mind. This week's track for Lex, still yet to be submitted, will also be a rush effort, since I'm out tonight and tomorrow night, have no internet access on Friday night or Saturday (for religious reasons) and am going away on holiday on Sunday morning. That said, I've got a couple of corkers lined up for the two weeks I'll be away - it's just that neither of them are particularly Lex-ist!

[koganbot]

I actually loved the instrumental sound on the Built Like Alaska, though after a while I began to have homicidal urges in regard to the singer. Probably would have snuck in a win if I'd been the home team.

Roxy Music

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I didn't know they had a song called 'Love Is The Drug' and I've never heard the Kate Wax version but is it the same as Grace Jones's terrific song of the same name?

Re: Roxy Music

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

it is

If it had been me...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I already knew the Ligeti (which I love) and the Tori Amos (which I don't).

I guessed #3 might be Appleton. This song didn't click with me on first listen, but it might grow on me with repeat plays.

Of the rest, #10 was the stand-out for me - great slice of noisy guitar pop that reminded me of Silverfish a bit. #11 very good too. #2 surprisingly good: this is far from the sort of thing I would choose to listen to, but it was very well structured. Unlike some of the other songs, the lengthy running time seemed fully justified. I quite liked the understated vocals too.

I skipped rapidly through #5. Not really the sort of noise-fest I like.

My winners then (based on one listen) would have been:
Millionaire
Kate Wax
Built Like Alaska
Polysics
Nobukazi Takemura (with potential for Appleton to replace him)

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I continue to be boggled at how few songs get recognized! Sometimes you get to feel -- I do anyway -- that you basically know about everything you need to know about, short of the new stuff coming out. (I know there are ten new bands on myspace every day, and deeper artist pools in genres I don't really follow, but I can't be bothered -- I always feel like the cream rises to the top). And yet here is all this stuff that people are listening to and apparently quite liking (and, I hope, not just submitting random obscurities they think other people won't know).

It will be interesting at the end of the tourney to look back over all of the tracks submitted and see how many of them each of us actually actively like (i.e. will keep and want to listen to).

[koganbot]

This is giving me an idea for the Koganbot Teen Of Pop Counterratings* in which the League Of Pop tracks score points for their players on the basis of getting onto my playlists and mixtapes. Not many tracks get anything at all: 0 if I already know the track, 0 if it stays in its original League Of Pop playlist, 1 point if I put it onto one of my "Play These A Lot" playlists, and 3 points if it gets onto a "Turn This Into A Mixtape" playlist. Usually only three or four a week get into either of those last two. From this week it looks like braisedbywolves, alexmacpherson, and fugitivemotel are getting a point each and inf0vore over on the Chart Championships gets a giant three. Thing is, I can always change my mind and take something off the Play These list or jump it up to Mixtape or move from Mixtape down to Play These, etc., so it ain't over 'til its over. (The Tori is the only one with a chance of jumping from Play These to the Mixtape, though it's too damned long, and both the Asian Dub and Millionaire were borderline so they could fall off altogether.) When I get the chance I'll have to go back and find out who contributed what: poptasticuk and dubdobdee have at least one irrevocable three each (plus whatever else they've picked up) as I've already burned BarobaX and S.H.E. onto a mix. Anyway, I guess I should keep a running tally. (*The reason this is "Teen Of Pop" is that anything I like is teenpop because I was once a teenager)(34 years ago).

[koganbot]

Would have given pretty much everything a B or a B-PLUS after the first listen, meaning "nice, or interesting - or nice and interesting - but never touching my heart," the major exception being Built Like Alaska which was getting a solid A for the instrumental mood and a B-MINUS for the singer, though I assume in the long run it would scrape into the win column as I got used to the vocalist and bracketed her contributions, or locked her in a closet. Tori probably'd have grown on me, probably get a win, so would the dancey squalling tune-thrash (Millionaire), so might the reggaeish, trip-hoppish thing (Asian Dub Foundation), even though Sinead does her best to ruin it. Not as enamored as you guys of the choral track, though it got better when high voices came in to make things difficultly intersting. My other winner would have been the Polysics' version of Pop Muzik trapped in a pinball machine. Damned if I know what'd get the draw from me; seems a dead heat between Six Finger Satellite's not-as-good-as-the-Contortions dance skronk and Bill Orcutt's action painting, which I'd have liked more with more rolling around the floor and fewer feedback hums.