LogFAQs > #969861130

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

yeah, seems like the jazz you enjoy the most is smooth jazz, which most people agree... isn't actually jazz

Fair enough. Again, let's not pretend I know what any genre actually is. >/.>

And there are undoubtedly better examples than short end credits sequences, but as they seem to be where the nostalgia comes from & get to the sax really quickly (by virtue of being so short) they seemed... relevant at the very least.

#13 & 14:

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#???: Kimihiro Abe - Abandoned Building [3:49]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeBDUmldtjw

Nominator: @TunnelScene [23/27 Remaining]

Initial Score: 57.43
Revised Score: 57.43
Final Score: 54.57 [Upgraded to 55.00]

(First Reaction: This isn't the type of song you'd expect to hear from Bleach, fighting games, or from something titled "Abandoned Building" but it's got a sort of... "beat-em-up stage set in the burned out remains of a jazz hall" groove to it that's nice.)

!Hell Jazz is certainly a different experience.

[Final Thoughts: Slightly less interesting when I'm prepared for it since it loses most of its unexpected surprise value, but it's certainly a unique audio environment to fight in so it's still fairly neat.]

[Later: ...Well this elimination wound up being more topical than I expected and those short reactions are coming off far more dismissive than was intended. We're getting to the part of the list where I was less able to type & one to two sentence responses are going to be more and more common.

This is an intriguing sound to it and I do like exploring the musical environment it creates, though I'm unable to articulate what is intriguing about it other than vague "not like the other nominations" and "hell jazz".]

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-burn it down!-

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???: Architects - Dying Is Absolutely Safe (Orchestra Version) (4:38) :
https://youtu.be/OnQhVL1o2CU

Nominator: BlackDra90n [25/30 Remaining]

Initial Score: 50.10
Revised Score: 54.00
Final Score: 54.60 [Upgraded to 55.00]

(First Reaction: I want to like this, but it just feels... "fine". Which is a brutally harsh and unfair way of putting it because everything about the song is certainly more than fine, but I just have no reaction to this. I certainly don't dislike it, but I have a hard time saying I liked it either. Definitely needs to be above the Exact 50 tier, but... not nearly as far above it as one would expect.)

Something is off here and I'm not figuring out what it is... the singer's voice is pleasing, the lyrics are alright--not my favorites, but "angels with anhedonia" is a great metaphor and I don't particularly dislike any of the other lines, the softer & more controlled orchestra is definitely my thing (and I also like how it picks up during the outro, it's a very nice ramping up in power without becoming epic or pushing too hard). By all accounts, this song should be somewhere in the 70 to 80 point range because it's literally doing everything right and I have no specific complaints about it or negative associations with the song to pull it down.

And yet, I actively do not want to give it more than 54 points. When I ask myself if I like it, the answer is a pretty definitive "not as much as everything in the 55+ level" which is an unpleasantly mean way of putting it, but also an inexplicably bizarre take because I am quite certain where I want to place this in terms of scoring & completely unsure of why. It's not a song with an unknown value or a highly volatile value, it's one with a known value for unknown reasons, which feels like an important distinction.

...Reminds me of "Oak - False Memory Archive" in a way. I never figured out why that song's score was as low as it was either:

https://oakinoslo.bandcamp.com/track/false-memory-archive

Which I definitely like, but not as intensely as one would expect for all the praise I have for it. Alas, I suppose I'll have to leave this writeup at this... I've now listened to the song three times in a row in hopes of finding some indication as to why it has this score (as well as False Memory Archive once), so I've already spent a lot of time on this one writeup without making any real progress... oh well.

[Final Thoughts: Wait, I compared multiple songs to False Memory Archive? For a low scoring song I certainly won't shut up about it.

...Though I get the comparison because I don't know why any of these songs fail to obtain the scores it feels like they demand. It seems like this song is far too great to fall at one of the "it's fine" tiers, but that's where my reaction is at.]

[Later:

Oak - False Memory Archive: A song nominated at the second annual ranking topic. Came in 191st place out of 300 songs, with a score roughly equivalent to 65 points (though we were more liberal with giving very high and low scores back then), that I desperately wanted to give a high score to:

I'm trying, I just listened to this five times in a row practically begging the song to give me SOMETHING I can use to justify giving this a very high score too, but I still have no emotional connection to it. Which is unfortunate because I really, really want to love this--it's a modern progressive rock band fronted by someone that could be Gordon Lightfoot's successor if he wanted to be, singing a song with an amazing title!!--but...no.

It has since become the Ur Example of a song that should be getting a very high score, but isn't. I still go back to it occasionally, wondering if today will be the day I finally love the song... but I never do. This isn't the first or last time I'll be comparing a song to it.]

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