ALBUM RECOMMENDATIONS |

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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

c.layne

[#] Shark Week (2007)

Reviewed December 21, 2018

Proving both the sea and the sky are out to kill you.

c.layne has a knack for writing concept albums that don't know they're concept albums. Antonymic, his debut, was psychedelic lo-fi genius that had some curious lyrical themes running throughout if you were lucky enough to catch enough of his woozy, reverberated vocals. The grainy, MP3-ravaged sound, offset by synthbasses and softly-falling synths and chiming guitars, made him stand out amongst the Song Fight! crowd. Abandoned followups like Drawing Shapes With Sounds built on Antonymic's sonics, but by 2007, he had cleaned it all up and was onto making sure people could actually make out his voice. The result is probably his masterwork.

Don't be fooled by "You Think You're So Clever", the bubbly opener built on screeching strings and loopy acoustic guitars. Songs flow from one to the next, ease in and out of atmospheric theatrics, and somehow go from the sea to the sky in the span of an hour. The album takes an interesting detour into the vacuum of space halfway through; "Spacesick" and "Abell 1835 IR 1916" trade in depictions of being ripped apart and getting caught on hooks for the confusion and fearful isolation of being alone in a world alien to our own. "The Places We Visit" shows c.layne acknowledging the trip in a glitchy, breathy voice. It's not for everyone, but those who can appreciate its cold, disconnected world will be greatly rewarded.

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"Abell 1835 IR 1916", "Chlorophyll", "The Places We Visit"	"Octopus Trees"	It's all pretty important tbh
Download from c.layne's Bandcamp

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