LogFAQs > #963787519

37rd
Game: Battle Garegga
Title: Marginal Consciousness
Composer: Manabu Namiki
Nominator: @banshiryuu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJwgftd0m1E

(0 minutes 0 seconds)

starts with extra 2 8th notes in ostinato wtf?!?!? i love when that happen and a song has more numbers in it. I'm preparing for what will be one of the longest hours of my life right now. I've experienced this descent into a destruction of consciousness that can only be described as "an experience" before. removing all distractions. there's nothing but me and this song now. this is a song i like though, manabu namiki has been a composer somewhere in my favs ever since i first learned about them. i'm actually not confident where i did, but it may have oddly been as recent as Kokuga that geared me onto the idea that this musician was so cool. was exciting to see someone willingly use synth presets from the 1980s in a song from 2012, especially because that was before the explosion wave of 80s nostalgia, even vaporwave to me was like this "obscure thing", it hasn't hit the mainstream quite yet in my experience. i would always have to explain to people what it was and they thought it was this CRAZY niche obscure thing, i remember talking to people who i became friends with almost exclusively because they liked vaporwave, and we thought that was such a rare commonality we couldn't believe we had met each other. well now everyone knows what that thing is, it's so weird how things can gradually change, isn't it? I certainly find it striking. How at the start of this song it was actually noticably lighter out the window, but now i would say that i am seeing "dark blue" instead (this actually happened pretty fast somehow because i am only 6 minutes and 37 seconds into the song right now). It's part of the appeal and intent of Steve Reich. well, his real motivation was to create a genre of music where the system behind the music was perceptible easily to the audience (as he found other systematic music to be not something the average listener would be able to comprehend as a system.) In that regard, i would say Marginal Consciousness hits that mark, the change is so gradual that you don't really notice it, but it's not like it's mysterious what's happening. In THIS regard i'm actually surprised i haven't seen minimalist composers like reich play with constant key changes more as a mechanism. the stereotype is to literally just play like, the same notes over and over again, but it would be interesting if something repetitive and simple was transposed around like wacky as its method of systematically distorting something initially simpler. There probably is something like that that i'm not thinking of, or maybe even know, but i can't think of whatever that might be right now

(10 minutes 2 seconds)

has it really been 10 minutes? I feel like it's only been a number of minutes that is in the early half of single digits. I'm unsure if this is a relief or not. I actually have a severely poor sense of how long or short something is taking. I can't tell the difference between 1 hours and 12 hours; or 1 minute and 10 minutes. or 10 minutes and 45 minutes. this has actually had strong impacts on how i respond to music as it relates to this community even: i'm unfazed by long songs, or short songs. i sometimes complain about length but it's such an abstract complaint that doesn't really have that much to do with the actual number of minutes a song is for me. because if i'm not counting, and someone asks me how long something took, i likely won't be able to tell the difference between 1 minute, or 10 minutes, or 30. Is this a blessing or a curse? It depends on the circumstance, but in the context of a ranking topic, well, I can definitely say i am more tolerant of this nomination than most people would be. "37rd place" being a signifying factor of that that's pretty obvious i suppose. i LOVE this song, i love it as is, but i'm not sure it'd rank this high if it was just the normal version. As is probably related to what i just said; i have sort of an anti-short attention span. I don't dislike short music though (in fact short songs are often something I'm excited about when i see them show up on albums, because i love that transitional in-between status and just the 'weird feel' interlude type songs can have). but this does mean that actually one of the BEST ways for me to get really into a song, is to listen to it on loop, or do listen to a very long song. when i say anti-short attention span this largely just means i need to take a long time to get "in the zone" to any task, i do not easily switch modes of consciousness fast, so it's beneficial for my consciousness internal setup to be exploring something in a hypnotic slow way. This might, now that i think about it, be part of why i'm attracted to listening to things at half speed or 25% speed as personal recreational listening style a lot of the time[although also it is largely just because i like vaporwave that i do this...]

(15 minutes 29 seconds)

the notes are definitely starting to sound like crazy squeals of the aggressive plastic monstrosity. what was once a deep bass in a dance song, is now like a high synth constant 16th ostinato that sounds like a computer game. this song wouldn't really sound "wrong" to me at a glance yet, in this status, if i wasn't paying too much attention. I'd probably just write off the high sounds as trippy effects, and i'm not sure i'd be confused by the lack of bass because this could easily just be like, a transitional song where there's supposed to be a bunch of low rumbly sound effects they don't want conflicting with the music so they didn't put bass in. or maybe it's just go ichinose being charizard and mixing a song designed around handheld or nintendo switch speakers instead of your head phones. I've always liked high pitched sounds at least, i'm not really sure why, it seems like something i would not like, but i think it's because i associate them with strange overtones, or strange distortions in compressed music that are nostalgaic. They are comforting, in a way. It's definitely a factor in why i like Sega Genesis music, and FM in general (though these days i lean toward prettier FM sounds, it's not like i've grown out of stuff like this). At this point, really nothing is comprehensible other than the constant 16ths synth loop, and the drums. everything else is washed up like artifacts in the disposal unit of the dancefloor; the congruent washington portal of dreams and synapses. Well. Minor Clans. I mean, we've got my helmet here. MANABU NAMIKI'S HEAD KEEPS SHOWING IN MY VISION NOW

[continued...]