LogFAQs > #963419868

50st
Game: 140
Title: 140 Part 4
Composer: Jakob Schmid
Nominator: @kaonashi1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in6bX_HL9Wk

TOP 50 time. it would have been so funny if this was 140th place, but unfortunately i liked it far too much for that to happen

it's strange that i'm not more educated on certain edm categories (especially like, trap, and lots of types of the hip hop) given what a fan of ~90s production techniques i am; like i instantly get excited when i hear 808 hi hats and stuff, but i've historically avoided their use cases outside of stuff closer to when they were invented. so this modern full spacious incarnation of this instrumentation, is fairly foreign to me despite that it's not even uncommon in modern popular music. but i suppose dance music is an incredibly giant category, so there's bound to be some areas i don't see. the direction this takes that sound though is something i'm not even sure i can point to much that's simiilar at all! There's honestly probably plenty (maybe blank banshee is the closest i'm familiar with),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLESzyscHAw

but really, regarding 140: composition this angular, mathematical, full of quartals and stuff, that's not that common to see paired with this production or instrumentation style

i guess the other closest song i can think of to the mood of this is this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtVZAHo_Hb0

but that oizo song's a lot more ttyd/super paper mario-y and dissonant

ANYWYS I LIKE THIS 140 song I get a KICK out of the fact that even the KICK drum here is going up in a fourths arp (actually i guess it's just electric toms but they're kinda hard to distinguish when re-pitched on these sounds), what a way to have a "quartal run" embedded even into your drums...

this track is entirely based around transposition, and oh my ghod IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL ; i joke about how when i listen id~purpose i start floating in the air. i do here for the exact same reason; constant modulation and all that. but this environment is different. instead of id's castle above the cloudss, this takes me to soaring above the neon wireframe cityscape inside the infinite computer void of 1s and 0s. How very quilava(sneasel), just in time for "march is mustelid appreciation month" and "marten day" (i know that mar10 is also mario day, but GUESS WHAT. have you ever listened to "Ice" from super mario odyssey?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42v5g_9L1Oc

it's this mood too i guess. i love that mood, reminds me of that weird 'charge cycles' game).

unlike id tho: the transpositions in 140 part 4 are based both the chord progression itself, and individual chords just jumping around for more dissonant textual flare. still gives me very similar out of body experience into the sky though

the exact synths here...so percussive and FM? and some "iconic korg m1 presets" at least i think (if not, at least similar). i especially love the punch of that low organ hit, and that 808 cowbell at one part... you nailed my sound palette interest here, but taking the step further and putting that sound palette into an environment of composition that elevates my interest a lot more than its traditional use case. one of my more common complaints is my favorite sounds not lining up with the types of music that have my favorite composition but this song pretty much nails that merging! It feels very deliberate too, like it's meant to be a deconstruction of historic dance music tropes, and how proggy and strange they actually can be used! while still all being a simultaneously beautiful and intimidating traI LOVE THIS SONGck

the individual harmonies here are not only that cool desne and full extended type of chord i love, but i THINK they seem at least a bit detuned for purposes of just creating a more crystalline sound? I like that : ) i guess i understand why rwlh always calls music like this crystally now (it was the first word that came to mind and i couldn't think of any other). I'm not sure this is going for any very specific non-12edo intervals (as that's one of the main incentives for microtonal music for many people), but it does remind me of this just intonation acriel song, in many ways! I love this song!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_4zr0Qk6o0

anyways i have to say; i've listened to 140 part 4 enough times that i got pretty big chills that when this autoplayed "0x8c" next for me, and the chords at 3:01 in that song played there:
https://youtu.be/M4wxte922qQ?t=180

I'm so familiar with this 140 part 4 song from this being nommed for me 5 years ago, hearing 0x8c for the first time, during typing this writeup...it felt like i finally beat an impossible boss in a video game i'd been stuck on for 5 years and am having the main theme called back. I KNOW I'm talking about THE WRONG SONG right now, but like, to me this makes me appreciate how powerful motifs can be when they're not even something melodic. In this case, it's just, a pair of a couple chords played back on a specific patch. It gave me chills and that's all it needed to do, was recontextualize those same chords and sounds in a darker, more dramatic environment. good job Jakob Schmid (i don't get chills that often in music these days, very thankful this managed to do it for me) I LOVE THIS SONG

140 part 4 was probably one of the most memorable noms of the topic to me. I wouldn't say it's ranking is anywhere other than accurate even after 5 years, it definitely belongs in this position in terms of where i rank it. but when i think "my ranking topic on board 8" it's almost like this song starts playing in my head, well, this and [ranking topic spoilers], and maybe [ranking topic spoilers] as well. but this is just as memorable as those top-10 tier things (i actually have to say this about masterpath as well. i suppose that defines this exact range of the ranking: still in the 8.x zone, songs that by definition i don't necessarily consider "favorites" even if they're in my regular listening rotation. but these are the songs that... while they don't have 'that' golden status, they still did the maximum they possibly could without breaking that threshold. i had a similar thing to say about the high 7s / high 6s / etc. it's sorta the definition of the purpose of tier-ing, they're different "categories" of enjoyment. and this song is very toward the top of the category of "music i would put on a cd mix but don't consider a favorite", that in itself is astounding! because once i shift to the 9.x zone, the reason behind my enjoyment changes, meaning that the high 8.x's are the top songs at appealing to my tastes in the "i would give a song an 8" sort of way?!)

((long winded way of saying this is one of my favorite songs that is possible for me to love in a "chill lo-fi quartal beats to study to" background sorta way. but in a ranking you're less incentivized to celebrate that, than the "the epic standouts", but fuck that, that's dumb, this song wins an award of some sort for sure for me, as well as the others i'm ranking near it))