Hi everyone! I'm back. So a little update to my returning schedule: as I gathered up possible review targets for my blog, I realized that I wanted to review a lot more older music than I thought. So we're going to split the difference between new releases and throwbacks. Instead of single reviews, Wednesday will review releases from before 2000. Thursday will be for any releases from 2000-2018, and today and Monday will be for releases from 2020 or 2019. Got it? Let's go!
This one was actually a request, made to me by one of my Discord friends. If this request had not been made, I doubt I would have even heard, much less reviewed, this album. But I'm glad I did, because it gives me a chance to flex my creative muscles by stepping outside my comfort zone to something I don't typically familiarize myself with: IDM, or "Intelligent Dance Music". Well, I had better like this, or else that means I'm stupid, right?
Well, from what I can tell, not even the artists who make IDM appreciate the label. Consider it the antithesis to the "mumble rap" label, in that IDM makes the genre and its artists seem snobbish and exclusionary, whereas mumble rap is used by people who are snobbish and exclusionary. Not knowing much about IDM, I'd say off the basis of this album that this is more so introverted dance music than intelligent. Which, we can have a discussion about the possible stigma that label would carry, but Jesus, let's get to the fucking album already.
Like I said, IDM is a challenge for me to cover, but so is any dance music, really. I often leave this style feeling cold, like I'm missing something that everyone seems to be getting. And indeed, I started to feel that way going into this album. Everything was alright, I suppose, but I wouldn't go back to any of it. I started to wonder if I had the capacity to give this a fair review. Then I got to "The Pale Moth", and something clicked. It clicked with me in a way that felt illuminating, like maybe I could enjoy this album after all. And indeed, the back half of the album was a lot more successful in retaining my attention. There just seemed to be bolder choices with better payoff.
I'm not sure how much I can scrutinize every individual track, as much of it I can just attribute to the instrumental "working" for me or not, whatever that means. Talking about music is hard! I like doing it, but it's hard, particularly when I have no lyrical story to base my opinions off of. Not that lyrics make or break a song for me, but they help to add context, even if it's just Daft Punk going "around the world" over and over. But I'm happy I listened to this album. It was an experience I wouldn't have sought out on my own, but maybe this is a wake-up call for me to broaden my horizons.
7/10
Best Tracks: "The Pale Moth", "Nurula", "Dust", "Crown Shy", "Praze"
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