lauantai 3. lokakuuta 2015

The blog has been moved!

Narrow-minded Metalhead Reviews Experimental Music is being continued as Like Music to your ears: www.likemusictoyourears.com !. Its purpose is to combine multiple themed blogs. For example Great albums you've never heard of + Music quickies (quick, short & dirty reviews), live reviews and other subjects! All old reviews are also currently being moved there.

I will keep blogger up but I doubt there will be new updates.

sunnuntai 15. maaliskuuta 2015

Yerzmyey - FREAKuencies & Interphase // NMMREM XXXI


Yerzmyey has been composing his chiptune / micromusic / lo-fi electronica since 1989. Both releases in question have been composed with a ZX Spectrum clone. Not with an emulator, but with an actual retro computer.

The original ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit home computer released in 1982. ZX Spectrum was especially popular in Eastern Europe, mostly because of unofficial clones that were produced en masse in the former eastern block.

I first came across Yerzmyey from Grooveshark recommendations and randomly took two EP's, FREAKuencies and Interphase for listen. It proved to be a great decision.

Especially FREAKuencies is nothing short of damn awesome. It is composed with a Timex Computer 2048 - the American/Portuguese ZX48K clone that came out in 1984.

The sounds may be nostalgic for the 80s generation, but the songs are as fresh as ever. With bit-pop being on raise Yerzmyey is bound to keep finding new fans. His tracks and melodies are simply excellently composed. A lot of hooks and a lot of variation and playful but complicated melodies. Yerzmyey masters the use of distortion which adds so much variety and poise to his catalogue.

FREAKuencies (2008) contains 3/5 killer tracks. Yerzmix 4: melodic ear candy. Fuck off: I really hope the name comes from the chord progression that seems to vocalize "Fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off". Escape From the Spaceship: the "magnum opus", a long track with a hint of retro sci-fi action and melodies strong enough to only get better during the 6.43 track length. Weird is also a good one, albeit a bit too long, Picturesque however is under the high par the other tracks set. Not bad though.

The top 3 tracks are top notch even compared to any uncompressed Higher-Fi 16 speaker Dolby Surround / 320 000 000 Gbit/s FLAC standard. The retro sound chip sounds as amazing as ever. I can see myself listening them for years to come

Interphase (2009) is plainly more uneven but there are great tracks and ideas. Oxygene (a short Jean-Michel Jarre cover) being the shining example. Parts of almost every track, especially 16Kb, Juh and 5th channel, shine through. But in total the long tracks don't seem to have strong enough founding idea for this amount of variation. Interphase also contains two tracks which I'm not fond of, It's only a joke (not funny) and 16 Kb tune 2 (too long, too slow). Compared to FREAKuencies Interphase may be disappointing, but it is still a good release, better than many metal albums I decide to give a listen to.

Yerzmyey's tunes don't even need a game in the background to function! A sign of a great composer. There are a lot of free download EPs and albums on weblabels (I can also recommend his 2013 release, Brutal and Aggressive). Finding great music has never been easier.

FreaKuencies 9/10
Interphase 7/10

http://www.8bitpeoples.com/products/520268-yerzmyey-freakuencies
http://archive.org/details/dwd-006