Play-In: Blood Wine Or Honey v. Fundament

[baystateoftheart]

Seed #32A:


Fear & Celebration by Blood Wine Or Honey

Nominated by: joyofdivision
Genres [RYM]: too obscure for RYM

Seed #32B:


Fundament by Fundament

Nominated by: Kool Keith Sweat
Genres [RYM]: too obscure for RYM

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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[Kool Keith Sweat]

Here's a link to listen to Fundament on Bandcamp. It's two similar sides in the fashion of Anthony Braxton's For Trio and, also like For Trio, it's concerned with the spatial qualities of sound but, rather than using studio channels as a proxy for indicating space via recording, there's a lot of low-end resonance here, which also adds a physicality to the sound. I think both feature different configurations or moving configurations in the room to indicate space as well. It includes several basses, tubas, bass trombones, tubaxes, and burly men growling gutturally with an almost black metal quality. Like many en vogue avant garde recordings these days, it's dynamics are subtle, almost drone-like sometimes, but these undulations are receptive to each other and timbrally rich. There's little aggressive breathers at the ends of each piece and it's only 40 min, so the pacing should be good for y'all. Enjoy.

[baystateoftheart]

[joyofdivision]

BLOOD WINE OR HONEY - Fear And Celebration



INTERVIEW

BANDCAMP




Link


Link

[baystateoftheart]

I put both of these on RYM tonight, for those who want to genre vote etc.

Fear & Celebration
Fundament
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[RoundTheBend]

[craola]

i love the tags. and given the users, it's not really a surprise at all.
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[Fischman]

Two very interesting choices. Blood had a cool groove on most cuts and generally made for a fun listen. The vocals didn't add much though and in some cases, were even a distraction.

Fundament mostly worked for me as well. I found the minimalist cuts to be very effective... almost mesmerizing. The more active parts were too cacophonous for me, full of too many goose honking and farting sounds.

Overall based on the strength of the majority of the recording, I settled with Fundament.

[Norman Bates]

Wanted to vote for Fundament but clicked too fast. Can you correct my wrongdoings? Cheers.

Liked JoD's entry but on the whole I found it somewhat uneven, I specifically found some of the sung bits on the awkward side of things, wished the LP had been wholly instrumental.

[baystateoftheart]

Unfortunately I didn't really like either of these albums, and neither will be in my top 200 for the year. I wish both of them lacked vocals.

Fundament is a well-executed rendition of a sound/concept that doesn't click with me. It was an interesting listen, but not an enjoyable one.

Despite the discussion of perfectionism in the interview, this work from Blood Wine Or Honey feels half-baked. The songwriting is uninspiring, and the arrangements don't feel like they are fully-realized. It's not a very interesting listen, but the grooves and combinations of instruments are pleasant enough that it goes down easy.

So my instinct is to vote for Blood Wine Or Honey because I enjoyed it more, but is it really the better album? Probably not. I might abstain on this one. We'll see.
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