Rankings from Cybronica:
Read on for Cybronica's reviews!
It’s been a great spintunes, and I am so glad to have had the excuse to listen actively to the more than 80 songs composed this time around. Thank you to all the contestants for sharing your art, to my fellow judges for your thoughtful perspectives on the songs, to Tommy for the listening parties, and to Micah for making all this happen! It’s been a blast. Apologies to the shadows this round as I was not able to get you your reviews, but I enjoyed each and every one of your songs.
Stacking Theory - Goodbye Baby
This is a beautiful finale to your ST21 collection. The way you’ve woven your previous three songs into the three first verses is subtle enough that someone who didn’t listen to those songs can still enjoy this one, yet for those of us who did, it’s a tear-jerking easter egg. Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in this week, but the poignancy in this song really shines through, not solely in the lyrics, but in the music as well. That opening is sumptuous; the faded in “ha”s set up an aural expectation of floaty, dreamy, self reflection, and the song delivers. I felt it particularly in the orchestration; the bubbly clav-synth, the gentle pulse of the organ, the drifty bass, and the laid back groove of the drums create a pastel backdrop for the guitars to do their thing. “Sunlight” gives me an ASMR shiver; goooood I love those close vocal harmonies. Speaking of vocal harmonies, I want to say thank you for the beautiful contrary motion in the vocal lines. It’s a fabulous effect, especially when you strip back the rest of the instruments and we get to hear it in all its glory. Well done with the challenge.
Hot Pink Halo - Mimeograph
Gorgeous poetry here. I love how you took the challenge and used it to play with sounds and tenses to achieve variation on a verbal theme: sentences/sense, tell/tale/told, masks/mistakes, etc. I also love the image of “Until the ink runs clear,” subverting the expectation of ‘runs dry.’ It's clever and fun and I love a good subversion of expectations. I really love the couple of bars of intro you have at the start; they are beautiful in a way that matches the poetry of your lyrics. Then, once the song starts in earnest, you go into that jangly, beat heavy chunking rhythm. At first i was put off by it, but am I right in thinking you went in that direction to imitate the sounds of the machines you're singing about (I may have looked up a couple videos to see them in action)? I applaud the direction your'e going in, but I think the execution did not stick the landing. When the full ensemble plays together, the beats are not lining up, like each track is just a little unsure of the beat or what their next note should be. When its just you and one or two instruments, there’s so much space between each note. It’s like, those sections are mostly negative space without definition around the major melodic or rhythmic landmarks of the song. Maybe if there was an ostinato going in the texture, that would hold all the parts together, but as of now they just hang out of context. All in all, the form, composition, and even orchestration make this feel like a 20th century opera aria. Even that flourishy little cadence at the end has a flavor of classical music, and I think if you had a few more weeks to workshop this, it could have really gone somewhere, but right now it feels like a work in progress
Tunes By LJ - Watermelon
These lyrics are word salad (a word fruit salad?). I’ve sat with them for a long while and I can’t for the life of me figure out what you’re singing about or what’s happening. As far as I can tell, you put on a random word generator and strung together a bunch of nice sounding phrases. And don’t get me wrong- they do sound nice! You’ve done a lot of good stuff with assonance/alliteration/rhyme/phoneme design, and it sounds good as we listen to you sing it. As a person who does not comprehend the words in a song until I’ve listened to it a few dozen times, I enjoyed the music and your singing a great deal. I never would have noticed if I didn’t read the lyrics. But I did read them. Does it mean anything? I kinda feel like it doesn’t. If there is a deeper meaning to your song, I wish you had written a song bio. It would save a lot of angst here. But enough with that- the music is lovely. Like with all the other songs you have, the ensemble is especially tight. The bass is dominant without being domineering, I particularly love the bit on the not-a-chorus with the guitar strumming and the piano coming in with its Ravel-like countermelody. It’s a magical moment every time it comes back around, especially because the bass has been so thoroughly pulled back in the mix, and that really changes up the texture.
The Dutch Widows - Finish On A High
Wow, I really love this song. The music is spot on, has a nice groove, does not plod or go too fast. Pulling apart the panning on lines like “Grief’s an ancient’s despair” is fantastic. So subtle, so unexpected, and it brings attention right back to where you want it, not letting the mind wander. I love the tom heavy drums, but wonder if the drums could be punched up just a tick in the mix. Same for the guitars, which I think blend into the background a bit too much, especially on the solo. It may be that I want a little more volume of drums, and a little less compression on the guitar, because in general it fell like the song wants to be punchier. I agree, the backing vox are really pretty, and you fold them into the texture really nicely. The lyrics are really well done. I don’t think it’s too verbose - you got your whole point across, succeeded in the challenge, and the song is less than 4min to boot. Poetically, I love how you handled the words- a focus on the [aɪ] sound throughout the piece leads us to a more climactic finish on “High” (pun intended). It’s a difficult topic to tackle, and I think you handled it gracefully.
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