Pop Premiership Week 8 RESULTS

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I've not been flooded with Week 9 entries but no worries, it's only Wednesday.

Here's what katstevens has to say about the tracks you backed. Reveals at, oh, 3-ish?

""Thanks everyone for a great CD! I'm very hard to please and you all did admirably. More guitars than I was expecting though... Prepare for my brutally honest opinions!

01: Pantytec - "Maybe": Enjoyable minimal blip with the sizzling vwerp noise I'm very fond of. However I've heard this before on the Magda mix album - it's 'Maybe' by Pantytec. 7th Place - LOSE - frustration for hauntedballroom after narrow defeat.

02: Yelle - "Je Veux Te Voir": Ah, could this be the French Cansei De Ser Sexy? Boshes up well and a good chorus melody, but doesn't quite have the OOMPH factor. It's weird how something can tick all the boxes but not add up to 'amazing'. Sorry! 10th Place - LOSE - zenith gets tactics right but his squad just don't perform on the day.

03: Natalia - "I've Only Begun To Fight": Ridiculous diva disco stomp! Full marks for a great orchestral start, kind of loses momentum in the first verse but has a pleasant plinky noise the second time round and a smashing chorus. Is this an old Eurovision entry? It rings a bell but I can't put my finger on it. 3rd Place - WIN - inhibitorylinks wins again - is the title in sight?

04: Hadag Nachasg – Zuz: I'll kick myself if this turns out to be Saian Supa Crew. I had to remind myself when listening that just because the only French hip-hop dudes I know are Saian Supa Crew it doesn't automatically have to be them. Not bad at all but I've heard better - by SSC. 9th Place - LOSE - hard working bengraham just can't get the strikes he needs.

05: Morning Masume – Koi No Dance Style: Good to see people sticking to my 'amazingly mental' request! Middle Eastern twiddly bits plus ladies whooping and "aaa-eee-aaa-ee-aaaaa"-ing equals HOORAY! Love the raver munchkins in the background as well. 2nd Place - WIN - strange_powers keeps in touch with title race.

06: Red Transistor - "Not Bite": BRUUUUR! This sounds like a bunch of Very Influential Bands that I shan't namecheck for fear of getting the comparisons completely wrong and ruining my knowledgeable appearance (ha!). Despite it being a dirgy guitar fest I quite like it! I bet it'll turn out to be ex members of Husker Du or something now, knowing my luck. 6th Place - DRAW - xyzzzz_ grabs point despite unconventional tactics.

07: High And Mighty Color – Ichirin No Hana (Huge Hollow Mix): Goth-y Hardcore, hurrah! Boshing and screamy in just the right proportions. This is way better than 90% of happy hardcore I've listened to. Ace! Loses a bit of pace in the middle but slams right back everyone's face just in time. 4th Place - WIN - vital win lifts braisedbywolves clear of relegation fight.

08: Therion - "Son Of The Staves Of time": Over-the-top hair metal. Sounds like a Baltic Eurovision entry (which is no bad thing) and plus points for shouting "The! Runic! Alphabet!". Alas this is going to struggle in an extremely strong field, especially having just heard the previous misery-bosh hardcore track. 8th Place - LOSE - jel_bugle struggles manfully against tough opposition.

09: Eve - "How Many Licks": Lil'Kim reels off a list of dudes she's sh4gged/would like to sh4g. This is really good, but Jesus woman, bung some bromide in yer tea or you'll end up catching fire! 5th Place - WIN - alexmacpherson plays dirty but sneaks important win anyway.

10: Regina Spektor - "That Time": The weakest of a great bunch, I'm afraid this is the only one I don't really want to listen to again. Too slow, for a start! Verging on the Alanis in places, this strummy girl sounds like she's showing off during her Fresher's Week. There's a fine line between bolshy and taking yourself too seriously! Sorry dudette, bottom of the pile for you. 11th Place - LOSE - fan tears up season ticket in front of fugitivemotel

11: Focus - "Hocus Pocus": Prog-tastic! Yodelling and random scatting always goes down well in Kat Towers. This is the one I've had on repeat for the last half hour whilst I've been writing this! Immensely silly and bonkers different bits all over the place, but with a cracking riff underneath to cement it all together. This is clearly what the Spinal Tap dudes were basing 'Stonehenge' on. The only fault is that the bitrate quality is too low making this WAY too quiet! First reaction on hearing this last night? "Hey boyofbadgers, let's start a prog band!" 1st Place - WIN" - barnstorming win puts dubdobdee back in the race.

Comments

Bitrate quality on Track 11

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Mea culpa. I was tardy in downloading the YSI I was sent and so it expired and I had to go look on P2Ps.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Buggery. I was track 4, and it wasn't French. I really thought you'd go for the cheesy rapping!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It was one of my favourites! Mind you I only listened to the first four: I am bad referee.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I am officially rubbish at spotting languages.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Anyway, I did like the song! Just not as much as the ones that I ranked above it :-)

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Result! Was worried I'd lost my touch after last week, but I can sit back for next week's home game with a little more confidence now.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Morning Musume's Koi No Dance Site is a bona-fide million seller. In Japan, but it still counts. They're an interesting and fundamentally poptimist-friendly bunch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_musume), employing a revolving door membership policy as long as you are a cute Japanese girly. The departing members are typically thrust into the stratosphere of J-pop.

PHEW

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I knew Kat would love it but I was scared she'd know it already - I've always thought it was totally super-famous but it was never a single over here and it emerged in Kat's indie phase so she'd have missed it.

The video is AMAZING and is on my myspazz page. Every time Anna-Marie and I DJ together it gets an airing...

Re: PHEW

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Eve! Is Lil Kim just guesting then?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I have just finished listening to track 11 for the 48th time since Monday night. It's so good I want to learn the flute!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I've only listened to brief excerpts of these so far, save for #11 (which I knew already and love - very pleased it won). Will try and catch up this evening and will comment further on the rest then.

*ponders compiling a 70s prog mix for Kat*

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Why do I think this is like, Edgar Winter or something?

[(Anonymous)]

My bosh is not your bosh :( And most of the band are bald!

I wonder if I'll get a point from Kogan? Probably not.

jel

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

i was sure you were track 11!

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I'm not actually sure which is mine, but both the candidates are sporting 3 points. Result, in a quite literal sense!

[koganbot]

This week would have been wrenching to rate if I'd been the home team since I was pretty sure what my first place would have been, but after that everything was pretty much dead even. For instance, on hearing TRACK ONE I thought "This is brilliant," and penciled it in at fourth place after my first run-through and then knocked it to like ninth place as I was liking other things then brought it up to eighth, but could pretty easily put it third if I had time for another listen. I already knew TRACK THREE, which would have placed in the top four, so it's my draw. (Eurodisco John Paul Jones tribute, more of a Laura Branigan-type stomp than classic sweet Europop.)

Anyway, these's be my winners:

TRACK SEVEN: You'll have to tell me the name of the subgenre; I'd call it Happy Boshed-Up Junglecore. This is a pisser!
TRACK SIX: Punk eight-to-the-bar strumming while drummer rolls and splatters and man goes "oh no no no no no"; this actually fits perfectly with the obsessiveness of all the dance and bosh stuff, might have scored first if it had gone anywhere.
TRACK NINE: Lil Kim gives us 99 lines about 33 lays and invites the boys in the brig to masturbate on her pics.
TRACK FIVE: East Asian (?) hyperbosh, w/ mideast cowboys and cossacks. Thought it was my winner at first but didn't hold its emotion all through.
TRACK TEN: Tegan & Sara type, touching bit of memorabilia that goes twisted and sad.

[koganbot]

And these's (these's?) bes's my losers (which are all good, actually):

TRACK TWO: Thick bosh beat while French (?) chick yammers and expostulates. Doesn't quite achieve delerium of melody.
TRACK ELEVEN: How is this not my number one? Prog metal doesn't really describe it. It's hilarious, got everything but yodeling. (Gwen? Calling Gwen!)
TRACK ONE: Electro boinks do the funky popcorn; one of the boinks is a sampled voice that in its microsecond of fame every two measures has a poignant effect. Probably too long, but quite fine.
TRACK EIGHT: A classic high-voiced hair metaller, even gives me a few Axl thrills; the track's ambitiousness gets in its way a bit, since all the choral pomp competes with the thrills. Which doesn't mean I don't appreciate the ambitiousness and the thrills.
TRACK FOUR: Sounds like the Pop World Cup, with Afro sounds and Eastern European (?) rapping. The guy rappers get boring, but there's a girl rapper with speed and pizzazz who'd have made this a winner if she'd been the whole thing.

[koganbot]

This is the closest my scores have ever been to the home team's ('cept for TRACKS TEN and ELEVEN).

The bitrate/volume thing is a strange one. Some tracks are just recorded or pressed too soft, for some reason, even if I give 'em the full bitrate. I blame my bhangra showing last week on the low volume. I just hope that people will turn 'em up.

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

If it's any consolation, one week later your choice would have climbed up the rankings just enough to get a win - it keeps popping up in my head now, so I think the problem was less with volume than with immediacy.

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride

[koganbot]

The track three woman took a shot at Eurovision, but it was with a different song, was the runner-up in her country's competition. She was also the runner-up in her country's Idol (or so says the not-always-trustworthy Wikipedia, which also informs us that her own favorite idols are Celine Dion and Anastacia).

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I never really thought of my track as belonging in a genre, though clearly it would be the best genre in the world. It is I think a fairly good J-Pop song (of the video game theme tune style - the burbling reminded me of Tekken music), and this is the remix by a Japanese Aphex Twin.

It also has that thing I love (that I should have mentioned in my intro) - the slapstick second, when time starts to slow and you can tell what's going to happen when it unslows: 3:13 in, when the screaming starts to fracture, and then cuts out for a second, and you realise that the only reason it would do that is if it was about to return, and bring ALL ITS FRIENDS.

Needless to say, I nicked it off cis.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

High time we had some J-things in the LoP. Up until now we seemed to have covered most parts of the globe except for Japan.

[koganbot]

Agh, did I misidentify Eve? This is embarrassing, but I do have trouble telling the two apart. But I'm pretty sure this is Lil Kim on "How Many Licks." Maybe they both did versions of the song.

[koganbot]

Oh, yeah, I see you talked about it upthread. It is Lil Kim.

Track Two (Yelle)

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

That track is brilliant, I can't believe it did so badly here - I nearly chose this myself instead of 'Fett' the other week.

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

Red Transistor were a no-wave band and what survives of them are two tracks - "No bite" being one of them.

I posted bcz I thought it ws a bit like the inverse of Van Halen's "Jump". 'Heavy' solo in the middle, a v basic synth riff. Maybe not as 'catchy' but I listen loads to it as if it is the catchiest thing.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

I thought it was cracking, nice pick!

If it had been me...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

As prev. mentioned, I knew "Hocus Pocus". Of the rest, my five winners would be:

- Morning Musume (quite possibly the best J-Pop track I've yet heard. Sounded a lot like Madness! Well, Madness if they sacked Suggs and replaced him with a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls)

- Hadag Nachasg (fighting it out for first place with MM. Is this another Slovenian track?)

- High And Mighty Color (what Kat said)

- Pantytec (a bit soulless, I guess, but full of great sounds)

The above all no-brainers. Now it gets more difficult. The Regina Spektor and Little EvaLil Kim tracks are normally my sort of thing, but both were kinda annoying, especially lyrically - and I didn't care much for Sisqo's contribution on the latter either. Yelle starts out brilliantly, but tries too hard - should have ended around the 2'30" mark really. So, I think my final winner spot goes to:

- Red Transistor (engagingly silly for no wave).

Re: If it had been me...

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

No, Hadag Nachash are Israel's all time biggest selling hip-hop group. I met them when they came to England (I was working behind the bar, and they asked me if I knew anyone who could get them some weed!)