WALRUS (congrats to the winners / go join heltris walrus)

[schadd_]

i think what would be interesting is like after all cats have been revealed except for the last one (or last two) the contestants without any top 3 placements get some sort of like turnaround boost like in mario party when the last place player gets a random bonus

sleepykrew spins a wheel and shafted has to give him the grand slam

[schadd_]

i do think the top three bonus points create a positive feedback loop that just makes the top entrants have an even more impossible lead

idk if a positive feedback loop is something that makes sense since all the subs are already in, but i agree its not a brilliant mechanic as far as the playing of the game goes. it serves one purpose which is making individual reveals exciting

[shaft.ed]

you could just give out Olive Garden vouchers for first place instead

[SleepyKrew]

i think what would be interesting is like after all cats have been revealed except for the last one (or last two) the contestants without any top 3 placements get some sort of like turnaround boost like in mario party when the last place player gets a random bonus

sleepykrew spins a wheel and shafted has to give him the grand slam

whatever it takes

[shaft.ed]

i'm not giving my grand slam to the Final Fantasy soundtrack

[schadd_]

[schadd_]

cat reveal will have to be slightly delayed while i quickly finish some writeups but otherwise we're ready to reveal in about a half hour

[schadd_]

this is starting!!!! head on over 2 discord !!!!!!

[schadd_]

cat 6

Spoiler: 1st place: hb. (this is our 2nd grand slam)

senyawa - kabau

good?: 6.3 [4.6 wd/5]
apt?: 3.0
new?: 0.9
who?: hellbooks????????
who: hellbooks -0.1
1st place: 2.0

12.1

from the first moment of the wickedly resonant bass sound at the beginning, there is an overwhelming feeling of texture just pouring through absolutely everything here. i almost want to take catfit points away because my mind is running too wild for it - it makes me think of the efforts of people, the foreboding of an event, the colors black and maroon. but its got all of the stuff i'd want for this cat, combining the feeling of a wide and hostile expanse with the specific and clear characters of people and the animate natures of objects that inhabit the space. auditory locationality is immensely present, as well as musical elements which cooperate or don't cooperate with the whole, as well as an endlessly engaging set of instrumental choices.

this is good as fuck and i probably havent even given enough time (i think i've just listened to it 4 or 5 times bc its not on spotify). it gets the extra 0.1 unfamiliarity point bc i'm not sure what language it is (sounded like arabic to me initially, but the group is indonesian).

Spoiler: 2nd place: tris

tricot - おちゃんせんすぅす

good?: 6.0 [4.5/5]
apt?: 2.5
new?: 0.8
who?: pj?
who: tris?_????
2nd place: 1.5

10.8

really fast with an elaborate musical shape, giving the feeling of being taken a lot of different places quickly. feels like being on a subway that keeps starting and stopping and suddenly popping out into a whole different environment with new scenery. guitar/bass will establish a riff, then retrace it adding extra notes, adding to that feeling of a space with different levels of detail to behold (maybe like the skeleton of the riff is a view at a distance, then you see it more busy and up close). the vocalists rly feel like they are at location & part of the action rather than in a recording studio, being mixed in a way that either blends in or is starkly close at different moments. do i need to say the drums are good? there's great use of cymbals as something as a background element which is still active and has character, a vibrant piece of the atmosphere.


POST REVEAL NOTE: turns out this one was supposed to go to cat 7, the drums one. i will give that song catfit points for that cat as if it were submitted to this cat - without thinking very hard i would say that this song would get approximately 2.5 points for drum quality so i'll just leave it where it is. she will be penalized by 0.1 point in that next cat bc i'll have to look up which song is hers to score it properly

Spoiler: 3rd place: cheeto

tim hecker - live room

good?: 6.1 [4.5 wd/5]
apt?: 2.8
new?: 0.3
who?: tris????
who: cheetory6
3rd place: 1.0

10.2

most of the song has a reproduction of the melody from piano phase and lemme tell ya, i'll tell ya one place that reminds me of which is music schools, HA! i think everything in this song does great work, emphatically including the title - just feels like this evil little room full of horrible objects. that central music box sound has so much clicking and crackling (as do many other noises going on here) that makes the physicality of the space so unavoidable in spite of all the wild stuff going on - though unfortunately the song does have to lose out in catfit ever so slightly due to some of those moments of intense indulgence in that abstract electronic stuff. in any case whoever submitted this probably knows that this is the shit i like & was looking for here.

unfortunately for you i listened to this album several times and liked it a lot - though that was close to 2 years ago and this track isn't really familiar. in isolation i would pin this to cheeto before i would pin it to tris, but chuckie was needed elsewhere.

Spoiler: 4th place: george bailey!

clipping + la chat - run for your life

good?: 6.0 [4.5/5]
apt?: 2.6
new?: 0.5
who?: jun????????
who: george bailey

9.1

do i have to give all these points to a clipping song ugggghhhhhhh. whats worse is that the thing holding this song back slightly is that i've listened to it and liked it before. i think the beats briefly emerging from passing cars is really brilliant. the one at 2:00 sounds like the doppler effect is digitally enhanced (although it would probably be easy enough to just record it from a car). in la chat's verse in particular the arrangement of the voices feels really positional - like a bunch of people placed in a way where they're covering each other. lin manuel miranda's vocals are also sort of like that. the continuous white noise as a backing track also does a lot of good work here. obviously there's plenty of vivid details to go around in the content itself.

there's a little bit of sleight of hand for me in the race traitor's verses which is that the intonation he uses sounds like the jay rock verse in money trees, which is like 3.5/3 catfit level evocative

Spoiler: 5th place: mushshagana

cuneiform - conciliator

good?: 5.8 (4.4/5)
apt?: 1.9
new?: 0.8
who?: mushshagana?
who: -0.1

8.4

the reverberant massiveness of the song is what's doing most of the work here (which i imagine was what the submitter intended) but it does a good job. moments like 2:00 feel like an entrance of some huge and busy atrium that the vocalist is just shouting into. ughh this song is literally just a bunch of long echoes but its so good. there's this really good cinematic feeling that comes from the interaction btwn the vocalist and the space, like a dude holding a sword standing up against a huge dragon. metallic texture.

Spoiler: tied 6th: chevre

jens lekman + tracey thorn - hotwire the ferris wheel

good?: 5.0 [4.0/5]
apt?: 2.4
new?: 0.8
who?: chevre??
who: chevre -.1

8.1

this does a pretty good job here, by setting out a locale and then telling a grander story about it - lines like "we climbed over the wired fences / you dropped one of your contact lenses" do a lot of good work. some of the establishing qualities of the song are kitschy and even confusing - like the piano (and later, string) motive which is in the background for the choruses, which is a pattern that i associate with, like, a cliché tropical island setting (same goes for what sounds like a ukulele) - but neither of those things really work to the song's detriment, rather it forces me to think thoroughly about what's being communicated, as though the song's trying to sneak something past me. really like the secondary vocalist here, like way more than the guy. lol. "when he was younger, he had other ambitions" is spoken with such a delicious timbre that squeezes so much intrigue out of the moment.

Spoiler: tied 6th: sleapy sue

final fantasy 600,000,000 - amaurot overworld

good?: 5.4 (4.2/5)
apt?: 2.1
new?: 0.7
who?: sleapy
who: sleapy -0.1

8.1

sleapykrew's obvious time to shine here - jrpgs are quite famous for having locations. initially i had reservations about the sort of kitschy video game setting-establishment; in the context of the game, this song cheats at this cat by virtue of, like, showing you a place on the screen that you're thinking about. and i on the other hand am refusing to look at that footage. you can think of this song as getting most of its points from two sources: the quartal ?? chord which sort of forms the harmonic center, which is bizarrely colorful in spite of only having 4 notes that i can pick out (E A B D) - it feels like one of those stacks of signs thats like <:arrow_left: fuckerburg> / <pisserville :arrow_right:>; and then the tk-tk-tk sound which does soo much work by virtue of sounding like footsteps, raindrops, turning signals, so many epic establishing features. it works up a little bit more as well via the cello swells and key change-y thing that give the feeling of a painted landscape.

Spoiler: 8th: dave stew

the zombies - beechwood park

good?: 5.0 [4.0/5]
apt?: 2.2
new?: 0.8
who?: davsto? ...
who: davsto -.1

7.9

pretty straightforward & solid catfit. "and the breeze would touch your hair / kiss your face and make you care about your world" is the sort of line that does well here, being sensory and comprehensive as to the experience of being in this place. the version i'm listening to on spotify has a little bit of stereophonicity which also does the song favors (even though it's like marked as the mono version ???). the droning organ kind of feels like it's emerging from the ground. also plenty of good moments of vocal harmony (as is coming to be the expectation for davsto subs) which feel like they're coming from a wide choir.

Spoiler: 9th: chickdee

the weakerthans - one great city!

good?: 5.0 [4.0/5]
apt?: 2.0
new?: 0.8
who?: is georgebailey canadian???
who: well it is chickadee in any case

7.8

really funny idea here. it actually loses out a little bit on lucidity just because i can imagine people just about anywhere having a similar laundry list of complaints about their city - was funny to hear the same phenomenon exists up north. mostly the appeal here is the interesting and even kind of refreshing take, both as a sub to the cat and as the song among the pool of songs explicitly about places. singer definitely feels like a member of a place - his voice sounds faintly like he's got somewhere to go after the song. the "golden business boy" comment alone gives this like 0.5 points.

look and despair!

Spoiler: 10th: shaftie

seven mary three - punch in punch out

good?: 4.8 [3.9/5]
apt?: 1.8
new?: 0.8
who?: shafty???
who: shafty -0.1

7.3

just so blindsided by this one. literally what do i do with this song? it's got like nothing at all that would traditionally work well for this cat - there's like nothing in the lyrics that evokes the idea of a place other than in the abstract (e.g. referring to "home" or "work") and there's precisely two musical components, the drum and the vocal, which are like directly in front of the microphone. BUT IT LIKE WORKS. i'm like grasping for straws as to what i'm getting here and i like keep ending up with straws in my hand - there's this strong epic american heartland vibe here that i will just keep picturing to try to figure out what's going on here (and like i'm struggling even to continuosly pick out what the vocalist is communicate). i end up with shafted as a POE here and the intractability of this song for me makes that feel like a good guess.

//post reveal note: i listened to a version with a drum track that was a little more scant. i gave more ponits for the actual version

Spoiler: 11th: ariel

the postal service - this place is a prison

good?: 4.6 [3.8/5]
apt?: 1.7
new?: 0.5
who?: cheetory6?
who: ariel !!

7.0

bit of a sprawling feeling. the chime instrument does a lot for it - sounds like a windchime, and hearing windchime is always a telltale sign of being at a place. i wanna say the accordion (?) which appears gently in the background and comes to fade out, has the feeling of a landmark passed by and departed. at which point you go to drums town. the lyrics themselves are pretty explicitly about places but they don't actually do very much for me here unfortunately. interesting sound of a distant but less whispery track of the vocalist during choruses. wanna say i listened to this album several times 7 ish years ago but don't really remember this track

Spoiler: 12th: sirius

fripside? - only my railgun

good?: 4.6 [3.8/5]
apt?: 1.3
new?: 0.8
who?: sirius9121?
who: sirius9121 -0.1

6.6

this struggles a little bit because of the limitations of a mostly digital + dancey production as something which is evocative of some physical thing, but it's so animate and busy that i can't help but get the feeling of a auditorium/dance hall/roaring crowd of people from it. i think the guitar solo is like hilarious in this song, definitely another one of those things which gives the vibe of some important thing going on.

Spoiler: 13th: Pj

wavves - post acid

good?: 4.6 [3.8/5]
apt?: 0.5
new?: 0.8
who?: chickdee????
who: pj

5.9

i think the way this song is constructed doesn't work well for me in this cat - the lo-fi feel (specifically the electronically distortd instruments) takes it into the realm of showmanship, putting the focus on the musicians and on the act of performance. which is a value neutral thing to do in general, but it makes it hard for my mind to wander and picture a locale that gives rise to what i'm hearing. the vocalist is also pretty focused on their own affairs. there's a couple interesting moments like the sort-of-reverb effect of the vocalist in some of the choruses

Spoiler: 14th: N

odette - watch me read you

good?: 4.6 (3.8/5)
apt?: 0.5
new?: 0.8
who?: N??
who: N -0.1

5.8

1:50 lifted your shirt to find nothing there BOOBS????? a lot of the vividity in this song is focused on people's details and relationships which makes it kind of hard to get a location out of it. the modulation for the chorus is neat. the production is a little bit cookie cutter-y. this person sounds british (and seems to have been born in britain) but somehow i recognized this as australian & was gonna guess N before looking this person up

Spoiler: 15th: jun

phum vipruit - hello anxiety

good?: 3.6 [3.3/5]
apt?: 0.7
new?: 0.8
who?: ariel???
who: jun

5.1

"hello anxiety" me at the beginning when it sounds like my earbud is broken. its kind of a romantic/sterile account of the anxiety narrative which doesnt do a lot for me. each of the instruments is like gentle or muted in a way that i find funny. like there's a guitar solo which is mixed at such a wickedly medium volume. i think the only thing that rly works for the catfit is the spaciousness of the vocals at some moments - everything else feels like it clearly emerges from several musicians and their thoughts

[schadd_]

cat 7 reveal: 10PM saturday central US time / 3am sunday UTC.

(expired on 2021-04-17 22:00:00)

[tris]

drum video is now unavailable!

[tris]

no, you left off a U at the end

[shaft.ed]

no, you left off a U at the end

lol, he left a U off the link of my song as well
I think all the links are cropped

[schadd_]

i seem to have screwn this up in the previous one too, i started using a script thingy for th posts

[schadd_]

think i affixed all of them

[tris]

now i get to hear them!

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Okay, now that one surprised me. There's gotta be something to my submissions that they have in common now and I can't draw a throughline from Ed Rush to Loathe to Psychic Graveyard to Cuneiform. You'll need to explain this to me.

Also, I think you might have missed that that song had a lot of digitized instruments intended to sound vaguely ethnic (gong or temple bell or unusual trumpet?) but not belonging to any culture, a Middle-Eastern flavor to the songwriting, and that the lyrics, while admittedly mostly indecipherable, do mention things about place in the majority of the parts in which they're audible. The massive reverb drowning everything was actually only a small part. The place I personally get out of it is actually the ashlands of Vvardenfell in TES3:Morrowind -- somewhere between Molag Amur and the Dwemer ruins of Dagoth Ur. It's vaguely desert-feeling, but choking, dark, desolate and strangely beautiful.

[Sirius9121]

there are multiple songs i would have changed if this was held one month later

sad that the japanese strategy isn't working really well

[shaft.ed]

there's this strong epic american heartland vibe here that i will just keep picturing to try to figure out what's going on here

this song always makes me imagine a hard scrabble town where all the jobs are based around the same backbreaking labor like a steel mill, or a mine, or a factory, or a meat packing plant etc.
But reviewing the lyrics, it seems to more tell the story of a 90s cubicle drone juxtaposed onto the above esthetic


EDIT: also I think a couple scores are wrong. tris and cheeto math don't work out at least.
didn't check all

[caledfwitch]

ok i have a new idea for a walrus twist: at 2-3 categories left each participant is given the opportunity to change ONE of their submissions
they have to indicate which category they are resubmitting for and what their new song is. they are not required to change any songs. the new song may receive a higher or lower score than the original

[shaft.ed]

ok i have a new idea for a walrus twist: at 2-3 categories left each participant is given the opportunity to change ONE of their submissions
they have to indicate which category they are resubmitting for and what their new song is. they are not required to change any songs. the new song may receive a higher or lower score than the original

I think it'd be fun to design a WALRUS, but I don't think I have the regularly needed time to make it such a great group event like schadd

really want to run a Taskmaster themed WALRUS

[schadd_]

Okay, now that one surprised me. There's gotta be something to my submissions that they have in common now and I can't draw a throughline from Ed Rush to Loathe to Psychic Graveyard to Cuneiform. You'll need to explain this to me.

Also, I think you might have missed that that song had a lot of digitized instruments intended to sound vaguely ethnic (gong or temple bell or unusual trumpet?) but not belonging to any culture, a Middle-Eastern flavor to the songwriting, and that the lyrics, while admittedly mostly indecipherable, do mention things about place in the majority of the parts in which they're audible. The massive reverb drowning everything was actually only a small part. The place I personally get out of it is actually the ashlands of Vvardenfell in TES3:Morrowind -- somewhere between Molag Amur and the Dwemer ruins of Dagoth Ur. It's vaguely desert-feeling, but choking, dark, desolate and strangely beautiful.

if i had to like blindly throw out a term for your songs it would be post-industrial (probably minus the ed rush one). or just generally, like, "core". it's mostly a contrast with the rest of the group.

yea i didnt notice the things you're detailing here but dwemer ruins seems apt for it

EDIT: also I think a couple scores are wrong. tris and cheeto math don't work out at least.
didn't check all

oh jit. so it seems that i messed up 2nd vs 3rd. Lol. thatll have to be fixed. thanks

[schadd_]

cat 7 reveal: 10PM saturday central US time / 3am sunday UTC.

(expired on 2021-04-17 22:00:00)

extending this by a half hour to match the deadline from the last evening session. Also to give myself a half hour to check the math here. Lol

[Ariel]

Spoiler: how good is schadd at guessing who submitted the song?

[schadd_]

said WOW out loud at the empty chickadee bar