Pop Premiership Week 5 RESULTS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The verdict from alexmacpherson!

(I still need a good few Week 6 tracks! Will try and send out reminders tonight)

"Overall I'm super-pleased with the CD: the opening double whammy in particular put a very wide grin on my face when I first listened to it, and it's not often I ever grin during the freezing cold walk across London Fields to catch my bus in the morning. The good definitely outweighs the bad, though I must say I was hoping that more people would take advantage of my famed lack of knowledge about The Past, eg more in the vein of the big disco number."

Track 1

01. Ron Hardy - "Sensation (Edit)": What an awesome start! Big pumping beat followed by massive-voiced disco diva stomping in and belting out stuff about love/darkest dreams/sensations/fantasy/ecstasy/mystery for all she's worth. I'm guessing this is 70s disco proper, very sound tactics as it's a genre I love but have barely scraped the surface of. Full-blooded and full-bodied, and the only flaw is that it ends just when you've started looking forward to it lasting for about another five minutes. 2nd place - WIN - fans jubilant as hauntedballroom gets off the mark with convincing win.

02. The Pack - "Go": Haha zenith has done to me as I did to him - awesome example of a crunk banger here. Oh my god the distorted kid's voices from Dizzee Rascal's '2 Far' have shown up for the chorus to talk about money and weed and hoes, fantastic, really catchy too. I don't recognise any of the rappers but one of them sounds endearingly pleased with himself for using the word "shagging". 1st place - WIN - zenith cruises to thumping win.

03. Gyptian - "Is There A Place": Loverman reggae-lite, like Wayne Wonder or someone...completely basic skanking riddim topped off by very sincere, very sweet vocal. The kind of thing that passes me by in a cloud of pleasantness if I'm not paying attention, usually on the radio, throughout the entire summer; it's like when you're on a beach and everything seems a bit too distant to really focus on. But equally it's the kind of thing which seeps into you gradually until you realise several months later that you're completely in love with it. 4th place - WIN - xyzzzz_ gets tactics right again.

04. Lax - "Forget You": Cod-crunk synths, an insistent two-note guitar riff, lots of r'n'b affectations...this is OK, you know, but it all hinges slightly uncomfortably, as if she's...European or something. The explosion into the rock chorus isn't really what it needs, it hasn't got a big enough hook to pull off the transition and feels a bit Sellotaped together. Reminds me of Stacie Orrico in her less stellar moments, ie 80% of the time. 6th place - DRAW - a point for katstevens but the pressure is mounting.

05. Robyn Loau - "Sick With Love": Amazing strings to start, and indeed throughout! And her voice is nicely restrained in the verse. It's a pity first about the ver serious, very claustrophobic (in a heavy-handed, obvious sort of way) drumming, then the full-on way it reveals itself to be a standard-issue late-90s goth track, like a precursor to Evanescence without even the mildly mitigating pop sensibility. The sort of thing that I discovered when I got on the internet that, sadly, other Tori Amos fans tended to like. The "LOVE HATE DEGENERATE" chant makes me freeze in disbelief and horror. 9th place - LOSE - inhibitorylinks falls apart in the final third.

06. Cath Carroll - "To Close Your Eyes Forever": Pretty, in a haunting way, for about a minute, before I realised with a sinking heart that nothing further was going to happen: mannered vocalist continues to look down her nose at the song happening somewhere beneath her, though who can blame her when that song mostly consists of dodgy, slightly Celtic 'atmospheres', New Age flutes of some sort, and a dodgy plinky-plonk keyboard line which recurs at random intervals. And it goes on for six bloody minutes! 10th Place - LOSE - dubdobdee all over the place in heavy loss.

07. Mylene Farmer - "Plus Grandir (Nouvean Mix)": Well, this is odd! Cavernous and awesome dance noises made me think it was going to be some sort of house track for the first 30 seconds, at which point it turned into a very lovely, if very unexpected, slice of sweet French pop. The vocalist sounds like a slightly more refined version of Laetitia Sadier; I love the breathy, hesitant, up-and-down verses a lot, more than the slightly too smooth chorus. 5th place - WIN - smooth win preserves strange_powers' unbeaten record.

08. IamX - "Nightlife": Oh god, indie dance. If it helps I probably know lots of people who would totally love this, it brings up a fair few memories of me exiting the dancefloor post-haste at the first sound of those out-of-tune shaggy-indie-boy vocals only to turn round to find certain of my crew going nuts for it. He sounds like the bloke out of The Music, this is not a compliment. I guess the bits when he's not singing, if I ignore the cheapo drum sounds and the not-treated-enough guitars, are pretty good. Yes this leaves hardly any of it but we take what we can, eh. 8th place - LOSE - direct tactics fail to pay off for fugitivemotel

09. Eve ft Missy Elliott - "Ain't Got No Dough": Haha whoever picked this is either very blase and very lucky, or is a stalker who has investigated my record collection very thoroughly! I recognised Missy on the chorus immediately, Eve by the second verse, and helpfully Missy confirms both of these towards the end (as well as producer Swizz Beatz). This is really good ranty ho-rap, more ladies throwing their weight around than cheerfully throwing their legs up like Kim or Trina, sounds like it's from the late 90s or early 00s; but seriously, how did anyone guess that Eve is basically the only female rapper I don't own the back catalogue of? Not through design, I've been meaning to buy it up for ages. 3rd place - WIN - big money signings come good for braisedbywolves

10. Dragonforce - "Once In A Lifetime": This is...metal. Of some sort. I think. The opening guitar solo alone gave me a migraine and then it got really really fast and made my stomach feel queasy, and then a man started screeching. This is the only one I couldn't get to the end of - I even stuck the Celtic bobbins out, through a sense of duty - so apologies if this turns into hott r&b in the last minute. But I think someone must have submitted the wrong track :( 11th place - LOSE - massive defeat for jel_bugle but the fans still love him.

11. Antonia - "My Friends Are All Hotties": High-school teenpop which is certainly pleasant enough, but it's a slightly bland example of the genre; the singer is trying to sell herself as some sort of Miss Popular, with everyone wanting to be her friend, but she's not convincing because she sounds like a nice, sincere girl who'd no sooner think of snubbing a less pretty girl than she would of eating a baby. 7th place - LOSE - bengraham's side pays for lack of killer instinct.

Comments

Re: If it had been me...

[koganbot]

Ha ha! that makes it three of these tracks that I'd heard before without recognizing 'em in this go round. In my defense on this track, I only heard it once, on the Lax MySpace, probably on a tip from skyecaptain. I should give 'em more attention, though they don't seem to be hitting big.