I think these guys have always been underrated in my opinion. Some good ol' melodic death metal.

@Johnny_Bravo The guitars in that track are gorgeous!

This phonk track is mixture between traditional Slavic folk music and modern funk/electro beats.

@vesko_sims3 I would like the funk one better if they didn't use that 'throb' thing that they did with the levels. Sounds like the speakers are broken!

I went on a 7 hr road trip recently and spent the whole drive over there listening to Zemfira's discography and now I can't stop. I even shared this particular track with my dad since it reminds me of something out of The Beatles post-psychedelic phase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4azBUsD9s0M

"ЕСЛИ БЫ" and "пальто" have that same kinda feeling too, but you can also catch flavors of Depeche Mode and Radiohead amongst her records

@Simsample
Ha! I was just discussing The Police with my mother recently and how she can't stand "King of Pain" because one of her roommates used to play that record all the time . I absolutely love their records, but have to concede that at least 75% of that love is purely Stewart Copeland, aka my drumming idol.

I must admit that I love the music more then Sting's vocals! Copeland is one of my faves too, he was a really good friend with my drum hero, Neil Peart. He did this fun thing at his studio with Peart, Matt Scannel and others where he plays guitar! Have you seen it?

Absolutely! I don't like phonk that much either. The main characteristic of this genre is distortion and overly boosted bass, which is not very good for your ears and can "blow" speakers, as you said.

That's not really what I meant, it won't blow your speakers (unless you have crap speakers ). What I meant was that it sounds as though your speakers are broken when they do the 'throb' thing with the waveform.

Lemme illustrate-

Here is the waveform of the beginning of that track, you can see the first 17 seconds or so are quieter, then from 18s to around 28 seconds you have a really loud bit where the waveform is smushed up to the top of the range. This is compression, which is perfectly normal (unfortunately) these days (see Loudness War). In electronic music it's common to see a waveform like that because the bass is boosted and there are such a lot of individual tracks used in the recording and mixing. Like having an orchestra with a thousand instruments all playing at once! I don't mind that so much, but the bit I don't like is 28 seconds onward- see those white gaps that appear in the waveform?


Zoom in on that:


You can see that it looks like a heartbeat, or a pulse- it's throbbing, LOUD quiet LOUD quiet over and over. And it sounds just the way a blown speaker sounds! Now obviously that's the intended effect of that process, the person who mixed and produced that bit of music did it deliberately. But for some reason my tiny brain can't deal with it, so I have to turn off music that uses that effect!

Meanwhile, some music that doesn't have such a smushed waveform:

Sidechaining in action.

Sidechaining compression I think! Thanks for that @Johnny_Bravo I didn't know what they called it.

Here's another phonk track with even more dynamic "sidechaining" effect - the waveform is drifting between low and high volume several times. Also there is applied low-pass filter in the sections with lower gain.

The sidechain isn't as in your face as with the Slava Funk track. The spectograph shows it pretty good, with the black stripes being the sidechained parts, the rest is what it is; just quieter parts.

Here's a track with a 'slow' but intense sidechain:



And a snippet of waveform with some artistic rendition of the sidechain, with a drawn in volume curve:


Thanks to the 'slow' or 'long' sidechain it's easy to see what it does.
You can even hear that the compression on the bass is way shorter than the rest.

*simsample's head explodes*

Positively, I hope

Unfortunately not, I really can't take that effect! But please carry on posting them, all very interesting and I love to listen to music that's new to me! The technical bits are great too.

Meanwhile, for those of you mentally affected by the sidechain, here is an entire Rush concert to soothe your soul.


If anyone finds that even more disturbing, then I feel sorry for you so here's a cure:

Not a cure, but The Cure.




Insert "It's really simple once you understand it" comment.
Jokes aside, it doesn't matter anyway when you're just enjoying the music.

Before you know it you dive too deep into stuff, and started analyzing instead of just enjoying the music

Yes, it's not the music, just the effect that I don't like. I love Daft Punk but find this one really uncomfortable to listen to (I'd like it if they hadn't done the sidechain thing!):


I like the original version of this Death Cab for Cutie track, but this remix breaks my ears!


Anyway-
Here's a social commentary from early 80s UK:

Something very sensitive to young liberal minds... according to Spotify that had recently removed it ...which is very ironic given the lyrics.

Here's another phonk track

Bri'ish punk


And I just remembered this banger exists (But I can't remember if I've already posted it here).

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

A bit of fuzz

Life by Des'ree legit reminds me of Sims 2 pop music

As by George Michael and Mary J Blige is always a good song

Big Isn't Beautiful by King Adora and No Regrets by Uncle Outrage have been my favorite songs recently though my faves are always changing

Oh no!



I was on a road trip last week, and these tracks were among the ones that shuffled on my iPod.