I feel that most of the songs are quite too abstract to be enjoyable - the great number of additional sounds/effects make a barrage to the flow of many songs (such as dogs). The best one in my opinion, Wonder Festival, kicks ass because its melody/theme/chords are super cool AND because the electronic weirdness floating around goes in its direction.

Klaca

318 Posts

August 18 2011 18:25 GMT

#23

Fun songs but please, can you say how recording, editing and mastering was? What software, what VSTs, tips? thanks.

mahnini

United States6862 Posts

August 19 2011 21:15 GMT

#24

castles #1 na band

paper

13196 Posts

August 20 2011 02:08 GMT

#25

Played some TF2 with this in the BG... nice experience

themoon

United States2 Posts

August 20 2011 04:18 GMT

#26

hey this is jan. thanks for the comments!!!

re: the software, i used ableton live, kontakt 4, symphobia, fm8, and a shit ton of random samples culled from various places/recorded. the vocals and guitars were recorded through my laptop mic and an m-audio fasttrack respectively.

boesthius

United States11637 Posts

August 24 2011 02:23 GMT

#27

--- Nuked ---

misclick

Korea (South)155 Posts

August 24 2011 02:45 GMT

#28

noice. this will help me become the greatest hipster.

but, seriously, this shit is bomb so far (on dogs now).

Zergneedsfood

United States10671 Posts

August 25 2011 21:07 GMT

#29

On August 24 2011 11:23 boesthius wrote:
fucking

god

this album is so perfect. the noise in dogs!!! makes me want to leave my body

godtier

lol hi. <3

Yay new album!

intrigue

Washington, D.C9934 Posts

October 14 2011 01:18 GMT

#30

dun dun dun dun dun live versions sound so cool

Xxio

Canada5565 Posts

October 14 2011 02:42 GMT

#31

I like it a lot.

CaucasianAsian

Korea (South)11583 Posts

October 14 2011 03:07 GMT

#32

Intrigue we seriously should make a band!

shindigs

United States4795 Posts

October 14 2011 04:00 GMT

#33

Hope to hear the live version soon, love your stuffffff

fusefuse

Estonia4644 Posts

October 14 2011 04:02 GMT

#34

wow
cheers for bumping, this managed to go unnoticed for me the first time

Now i'm commenting on each tune in length at 5:30 am.. cause to put it frankly, this shit is good.

nanjing 3000 - blissful piano ambience turning into a mess of hazy distortion... so goood n dreamy
trivia - O________O such an amazing mood from the get go, crescendoing while getting more abstract and then falling off. Unexpected to say the least. Comes off as a beautiful moment/happening that culminates, then kind of decays in .."awesomeness" and doesn't leave you unconditionally yearning for the same thing, yet still makes you feel good about what you just experienced :D

wonder festival - that atmosphere is immense! when the glitched phased percussionwork, it kicks up a gear and for me personally, just explodes in awesome and emotion when the beat intensifies and that arp kicks in, immense O___O I'm a sucker for drawn out string sections

And jebus, distorted distant guitar riffs a la Mogwai (just a personal fav) just make it even better :D

filmed at 11 brighton knolls ct. - is following a similar pattern of starting seemingly harmonically sound n settled, yet spirals out of control into a hazy postrock ambience with abstractions. Unconventional? Yes. Is that good? Yes, for that exact reason.
Hah, i'm even instantly reminded of Sigur Ros when the new harmonies kick in after the plucked solo.. Technically though, this is the first time ive noticed so far that the strings sound too unnatural and synthetic, but that impression soon wears off when the layers keep adding to .. the cake :D
MMMM I love low end drones. People don't clearly use enough industrial sounding low end drones in conjunction with more conventional yet perfectly contrasting hugely reverbed and delayed piano and guitar/cello loops :D
I'd even desire for more flow to it, a stricter underlying sense of progression, be it through a similar recurring percussion pattern or a melodic loop, but thats, once again, just my personal preference :D
Ha. The next part. Loving the creative use of percussion. And the escalation at 7:20+.. I like where this is going :D

Lol this is turning more into a stream of concious style writing than a reasonably short review on what i hear :F

OH WELL :D

the clap - this is nice. the vocals and the bass progression following it make it flow soooo nice. LONGER PLZ

dogs!!! - I'm not sure the beat that first comes in compliments the overall mood/atmosphere enough to warrant it being there (so harsh all of a sudden, sry :F).
Okay, now the noise kicked in O__O omg, this is better than i would've expected.. I mean, im usually all for slight abstractions and white noise to compliment the main harmonies and atmosphere, but this... is surprisingly good. Order in chaos.
And now getting slightly tiring @ the 6 minute mark

The high frequencies popping back up briefly and then everything fading out in an orderly fashion ... aaaahhh, into a perfect ambience (:D) give a wicked impression. Making me wonder what just happened

batman - oooh uptempo :D and a HA, a reversed track. Always a slipperly slope to take, but yet so rewarding when it's done right, and this might as well be one of those examples ^__^

leavening - a worthy outro to a great album, great backdrop to watching the sunrise creep up right now :D

And why did i leave ze robot out? To me thats the track that felt completely out of place, in terms of both overall album integrity and personal preference. I tried, but just couldn't get myself to enjoy that one. That perhaps made the transition into nanjing even better. Perception's a funny ting. And haters gonna hate, right?
also because i started writing this 'review' right after starting nanjing

All in all,
Sorry for such a long-winded wall of text haha. But kudos to you guys and godspeed. This album is great as a package, progresses nicely, has a mixture of sounds and styles, but with a strong underlying theme / signature. Call it electronic, experimental, post-rock, or all of the aforementioned, it truly is a nice work. And i guess the fact that i sat down in the middle of the night and got stuck on listening to the whole album and even writing this hugeass wall is another way of saying how much i like this :D
Emotional, intelligent, progressive & full of thought. And being food of thought. To me, atleast :D

Looking forward to more!
And since I'm personally also interested in bringing my sounds out of my bedroom and into a live setting without it necessarily being a DJ-set, I'm very interested to listening to some of your live performances, if at all possible somehow.

hope you enjoy hah.
7am now
o well :F

Azera

3800 Posts

October 14 2011 04:04 GMT

#35

Hey man! This sounds really good. The intro song had a rather refreshing feel on me. Do you have it in Lossy or Flac?

Grettin

42381 Posts

October 14 2011 04:30 GMT

#36

Some of the songs reminds me of Dj Okawari somehow, just needs a beat on the background.

Wonder Festival & Trivia by far the best tunes IMO. Respect for some really nice songs!

FranzP

France270 Posts

October 14 2011 23:44 GMT

#37

It's effin great music. Intrigue is a music P.I.M.P. 8 biting that shit left and right. If you're cool you should listen to it. If you don't you're not only not cool but you're also not intrigued enough.

swanized

Canada2480 Posts

October 17 2011 01:27 GMT

#38

listening

I think hello rabbit would have been absolutely incredible had it not been for the weird sounds kicking me off the beat every few seconds. Good melody though

**Edit**

nanjing 3000 is brilliant

trivia's pretty good

will listen to the rest later but good album man