Image (originally) by bepmp3
Time for the eleventh instalment in the "
ICYMI, we're taking a listening journey through the discography of the great
Last week, things were more Normal.
This week, the grammy nominated...
4x4=12 (2010)
Another childhood classic but I'll be quite honest, it's not nearly as good as I thought it was when I was younger. Incredibly funny for both this and "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" (an album that Joel put out on his label) to be nominated for two Dance/Electronic categories, and have the latter win both.
It's possible my attention span has somehow gotten even shorter since I was a kid but like half of these tracks just drag oonnnn soooo longgg. Yeah, yeah, it's progressive house. Doesn't mean it needs to be boring. Regardless, there are some real high points here. 'Some Chords' and 'Sofi Needs A Ladder' start the album off on a pretty good note. Great bassline on the latter; genuinely an awesome track. The next two are fine, once again pretty cool bass sounds (even if 'A City In Florida' is only like one note), but we slowly start to realize that this album is just gonna be more or less the same deal for an hour. 'Animal Rights' is probably the last real highlight before we get plunged into a slog for the next 3 tracks. These tracks bring about an issue I tend to have with some of deadmau5's songs and that's that it feels like he made one pretty good 3 or 4 minute track and then just played it a second time and called it a day. 'I Said' goes nowhere. 'Cthulhu Sleeps' is probably the most interesting of the bunch. It's got good sound design, but once again it just feels looped. 'Right This Second' is whatever. It has a neat chord progression, I'll give it that.
Now, 'Raise Your Weapon' is a track that honestly pisses me off just a little bit. The first half is so fucking good. It sounds like a proper dreamy progressive house track. Almost like he's trying to do another 'I Remember'. And that's cool cuz that's also a sick song. But...then he tries to do dubstep. And it's just...so bad. He just can't. Complextro, sure. He's got the sound design chops. But everytime he tries to do like a half-time dubstep groove, it just never lands. It sounds like The Lonely Island doing a joke dubstep drop. This carries on into 'One Trick Pony' which is probably the worst track on the album imo. Sofi's performance on her earlier appearance worked well enough, but here the cracks start to show. This may be a hot take but I've never really been the biggest fan of what I can only describe as "Uffie-style" rap vocals outside of a few exceptions. This track is not one of them. I don't know if it's the sound choices or if Joel just doesn't know how to mix this style of music. The 909 ride is laughable. It's like he's trying to make dubstep with house techniques and it just doesn't work. That clip I linked is even funnier because he talks about misusing limiters and holy hell is this album compressed.
I think most of these tracks work well enough in their own right, but they really just don't play well in the context of an album. I've heard better things about the Continuous Mix version of this record but I didn't listen to that one so I can't speak on it. I still have some nostalgia for this one but it's kind of tiresome to get through. And my favourite tracks of his are elsewhere anyway, so I don't find myself returning to this one all that often.
Now it's your turn!
What are your thoughts on this album? Do you love it/hate it? Have you even heard it? (if not, go listen, the image is a link to it's RYM page)
Speak your mind!
also happy april fools week
