Other Animals - Midnight 76

 Ladies and gents be warned: the album I have for us tonight was pitched to me as "weird, killer... blending elements of Electronic, Industrial, Psychedelic, and Triphop driven by an uptempo Rock sound."Now I don't know about you, but with a description like that, I am immediately cautious. I know most of these elements work pretty well together, but I have never been one for psychedelic, and full disclosure I have no clue what triphop is, so I guess the only way for me to find out is to just dive right in, right? (I suppose I could Google it, but that's no fun for me, and what's worse is that I would be depriving you the joy of reading this brilliant intro while you're sitting on your toilet.)

What is really cool about reviewing this album is that it's another first for Synic Spins. Tonight we have an instrumental concept album. And as a brief aside, I have to quickly mention what a thrill and an honor it is to have you guys be sending me your music spanning all different genres, different parts of the globe, etc. It's really humbling and I want to thank you all for continuing to support me and grant me this opportunity to continue doing this.

Moving on, to quickly sum up what this concept album makes me think of, it would be like an action-packed sci-fi video game soundtrack. It's hard, powerful, and inspires action. I could easily see someone working out at the gym to this, or a LAN party of high school friends shooting aliens together.

I do find that some of the single compositions on this album seem to last for quite a while, with a handful of them exceeding 7 minutes in length, but I can't fault this artist for that, with instrumentals and concept albums alike that is just the nature of the beast. However, song lengths aside I find this album to be the ultimate background music. Like I said in the previous paragraph, it just instills action and power. By its very design it is meant to inspire and motivate.

Some of you might recall me saying in an earlier post (but then again, maybe not, I'm not even sure which of my posts I said this in...) that I don't usually care much for instrumentals. With that said, I bet you would expect me to be bored of this album. I certainly would have expected that. However, the opposite is true. I never once throughout the whole listening experience wished that there were vocals accompanying the instruments. Not once. There's no need for that. There's no room for it. The sound the band has achieved here is so full that it never feels like anything is missing. And the mixing is damn near perfect. I did wish the drums were a hair louder at times, but that could just be because I'm a sucker who has a big fondness for prominent drum parts.

Oh, and one last thing; I have some GREAT news for you all. Do you remember that old one-hit wonder with the specific dance that went along with it, "The Cotton-Eyed Joe?" Well lucky for us, Midnight 76 found Joe's brother: "The Whole Eye Doug." 

Other Animals - Midnight 76

4 - 13 - 2020

1. Just Another Animal (Tracker)

2. Just Another Animal (Imaxx)

3. Just Another Animal (Genetic Lab)

4. I Dig

5. Waxx (Wane)

6. The Whole Eye Doug

7. Just On Other Animals

8. 28

9. Rounds (Imaxx)

10. Waxx (Solstice)

Favorite Track: The Whole Eye Doug

Least Favorite Track: 28

Inside Outside - Reckless Velvet & Gabriel Kanka

 Guys you have no idea how incredibly humbling and thrilling it is to have an inbox full of requests that just keep on coming. And what is even more exciting is the handful of artists who have liked what I have done here and decided to come back for more. As you might have guessed, tonight I'm featuring a new friend of mine who just can't seem to get enough of the Synic Treatment. The guitar virtuoso Reckless Velvet is back, this time on the album Inside Outside, featuring the vocal stylings of the one and only Gabriel Kanka.

Upon my initial listen of the opening song, it is exactly as I expected. Hard driving rhythm with incredible guitar work to match. I find it very rare nowadays where I hear a new guitarist that consistently writes fresh and exciting riffs that just continue to surprise me. But on that short list of guitarists and riffmasters, you'd most definitely find Reckless Velvet among them. But again, this is hardly surprising.

What is surprising to me, however, is the style and range of the vocalist featured on this collaboration record. In his email to me, Velvet made sure to specify that Gabriel Kanka is indeed a male vocalist. At first read, I thought this was a very odd thing to include in a correspondence. Like yeah, okay... so is Mick Jagger, what's your point? Well a couple songs into the record, and I get why he felt he needed to clarify.

His vocal style on the opening track is almost misleading. His tone and the recording effects give his voice  a certain way about it that reminds me of one of my favorite male vocalists, Gary Cherone. (Extreme, Hurtsmile, my long rant about the 3 frontmen of Van Halen, etc.) In the tracks that follow, however, I find his tone and style morphs into something else, and the closest voice I can immediately relate it to is Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. It's truly quite impressive.

So now we know that the instrumentation and the vocals are working wondrously, leaving the question, is there anything that isn't working on this album?

The short answer? No.

The long answer? Well, I could get really picky and delve into the subjectiveness of music, and talk about how I really don't care for much for ballads and say that the slower songs such as "Headlong" "Sing My Sunshine" and "Subject of Interest" start to lose me as a listener. But the style and technique of each member of this duo compliment each other spectacularly in a way that just carries it through these slower songs. I will say, however, that if I were arranging this record I would consider separating these 3 songs. I find it really tough to stay engaged with an album if there are more than 2 slow songs lumped together on an album's track listing. I'm working on refining my ability to describe what I mean to my readers, so I hope that explanation made sense to you guys. BUT, if you were able to make it through that and understand what I was trying to say, then you would know by the end of "Subject of Interest," my interest was almost completely lost (that sounds more insulting than I intended, but alas). However, if there were any song on this record that was perfectly engineered and placed on the track listing to regard my attention, it is definitely "Fool's Gold."

The last thing I'll say, is that the opening riff to "Note To Self" reminds me very much of the opening riff to Pantera's "Walk" and I absolutely love that song, so that little (probably unintentional) nod to it was very cool. Even though the overall tone of both songs are wildly different from one another.

Inside Outside - Reckless Velvet & Gabriel Kanka

1 - 2 - 2021

1. Scratch That

2. Inside Outside

3. Rock My Way Out

4. Junior Year

5. Headlong

6. Sing My Sunshine

7. Subject Of Interest

8. Fool's Gold

9. Voices

10. Note To Self

Favorite Track: Voices

Least Favorite Track: Headlong