[baystateoftheart]

Seed #29A:


The Drought by Puce Mary

Nominated by: Tha1ChiefRocka
Genres [RYM]: Death Industrial

Seed #29B:


Crave by Léonie Pernet

Nominated by: guzguzgarbit
Genres [RYM]: no genre votes yet

Instructions:

If you have not already, please listen to both albums in full before voting. Share your thoughts and/or your vote in this thread. This poll will be tallied in no fewer than fourteen days. See Tournament Spreadsheet for the full bracket.
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[Luigii]

Smell that? Smells like a tournament.

With 1/5 of the play ins done, I will say that I do enjoy both albums real well. But there has to be a winner from me. Now I could argue that Crave does appeal to my taste for being inspired by synthwave and downtempo (unless guzguzgarbit wants to correct me). And these songs do bloom into some chilled and intoxicating songs. But if there was a complaint for this album, it just comes down for a few of these songs can feel a bit long winded in there design.
Grade:90

Which leaves The Drought to be the winner of this round. Now, like Chief, I don't expect this to win since this album is quite abstract and can get noisy in it's sound design. Hell I could see some arguments where some people just don't get it. But to me, I love this. Not only is the sound design is spellbinding but also quite captivating. It sounds horrifying as well as mind morphing. Now, if there was a complaint for this album, it would be how for me at least where how the songs end. I wish Puce Mary was able to make some of these songs have a satisfying finish. Otherwise, this is one of my personal favorites for 2018 and could be in my top 20 for 2018 whenever I get to that list.
Grade:95

[Hayden]

[Repo]

[RoundTheBend]

I used Smash Mouth's All Star and Walking On The Sun to be my palate cleansers to properly get this tournament started...

Puce Mary: Really liked the textures here. I did feel like I was playing a creepy video game or watching a scary movie most the time (like one that actually was creepy and scary). While clearly good, I didn't have any inclination to want to spin this record again as it emotionally or mentally did very little to me other than see images of things I wish I didn't. Was looking for some Danish stuff I could get into given my family history, but unfortunately didn't. I got in a deep state of being mentally disturbed instead. Textures are fantastic though, so I can see why this was nominated. 75

Léonie Pernet: This had a tinge of Sylvan Esso to it (from my perspective). I really dug the instrumentation here and how about halfway through the album it slowly twisted to a whole new world. There were moments that appeared a bit more what I'll call amateur songwriting, but overall it was pretty solid. 80

[Tha1ChiefRocka]

Guzguz, your album is pretty cool, and I dug some of the tracks and atmosphere, but I kind of have to vote for myself.

And I like mine better too.

[craola]

[guzguzgarbit]

This is a tough match-up for me... I really like Puce Mary, I have one of her albums in my chart. And The Drought is probably one of her best.
I'm still going with Léonie Pernet though. It's not a perfect record, but there is a great atmosphere I think. And it contains the greatest concentration of good tracks and ideas I've seen this year.

[craola]

i went leonie pernet as well. puce mary is nice in a style-over-substance way, but ultimately, i won't remember this record past this tournament. the leonie pernet album is pretty great, and i could see it being a bit of a grower as well.
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[Fischman]

Two very interesting albums, but neither as interesting as they might be from an analysis point of view, neither one grabbed me big time. That said, it did enjoy the rather dystopian future sci-fi soundtrack vibe of the Puce Mary, so it got my vote by a nose.