schadd walrus 2: feast of the invisible cats (join biancospino walrus!)

[schadd_]

IN SHORT

• you send me 7 or 8 songs, one to fit each category i lay out below. i grade them based on how much i like them, how well they fit the category ("catfit"), and a couple other things.
  
• it's like song contest but with Themes of songs & i'm the only one that votes
  
• i will listen and grade the songs myself and then schedule reveal events in the discord on a weekly basis
  
• you should submit to this!!!
  
• this differs from my last walrus in that there are bonus points from "medals" and "invisible cats" to sporadically be awarded.

Spoiler:

Spoiler: ok, so what do i do exactly

you should aim to come up with 8 songs that each support a category described below. i tend to like songs that address the category in an artsy, unexpected, or funny way, and i also often just find ways to give something a high grade that you wouldn't expect (especially if i like the song, which can threaten to happen at any time). as well, i am dropping your lowest score, so don't feel bad if you don't have 8 killer ideas.

i will try to avoid finding out who submitted each song until shortly before each reveal, so i prefer that everybody sends me their songs via youtube link (i live in the US and almost never have region-restriction problems) through a PM on mafiascum (other places sometimes show a preview of the videos when you send the message). if a song doesn't exist on youtube, that's not a huge deal and you should feel free to link it somewhere else. avoid using the "youtu.be" links if possible. you can submit at any time until i have revealed the second category, and also change your submissions until then.

Spoiler: example of what a submission would look like:

cat 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWEZ0upMXu4
cat 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPWyePlywTI
cat 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKU7iz9RYV0
cat 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8UN_6AUgCw
cat 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpoOCv0MeKs
cat 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssql3nT4zVE
cat 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=141y8ikOsyE
cat 8, section 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKrb9ydJY6M, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOyDpzmi2f8

if you'd like to avoid submitting music i've heard before, my rateyourmusic page has a "search schadd's music for..." box in the middle, which will pull up substantially everything i've listened to while paying attention. you don't need to adhere to this religiously especially since i like to re-listen to songs with this new context, but you should avoid stuff from my very favorite albums as well as most of the material from those artists (i deduct points for particularly familiar music).

MUSHSHAGANA CLAUSE: you can include any number of supplemental comments about the songs in your submission, but preferably you would do those separately in a spoiler= box to make it easier for me to anonymize things

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categories

Spoiler: cat 1: songs i like

well, that's the name of the game. for this category, just send me a song that you think i'll like. the catfit points will just reflect my enjoyment.

here is the first walrus i did, where you can peruse the winning songs.

some songs i've liked recently:
deftones - be quiet and drive (far away)
cocteau twins - ups
toots & the maytals - pressure drop
horsegirl - world of pots and pans
mass of the fermenting dregs - ベアーズ (musically this live version is like worse than the album version. but youtube just keeps recommending it to me and don't i just keep clicking it)

Spoiler: cat 2: songs that make me scared to listen to them a second time

it's fun to have cat 2 be like an opposite to cat 1. in the first walrus i think i executed that vaguely and badly. hopefully the idea here is simple enough and also gives you different ways to approach it.

most of the time it's easy enough to click on a song and start listening to it, but plenty of things hit you with this flash of memory that makes you wince and think "i gotta emotionally prepare to listen to this again". these moments are increasingly rare for me after the several thousandth album i've listened to but, go on and have a go.

adrianne lenker - blue and red horses: man, this song. i think there's some cocktail where it's creepy and foreboding, and also strikes at the feeling of childhood vulnerability in a way that's hard to grok. there was this one time a few years ago i randomly listened to it in the car and i was like "i think i won't pick this back up ever again." nowadays i have the ability to say "this song is like skinamarink"

model/actriz - slate: just from an album that recently made me scared of the feral instinct it unearthed. the sonic intensity and gushing sexuousness build a powerful two-stroke engine here.

iris dement - our town: very thorough walloping of a song. i think it speaks for itself. rarely find myself able to sit through this one.

REVEALED HERE!

Spoiler: cat 3: novel musicianship

here, i am looking for music that

• demonstrates some kind of impressive technical or creative ability
  
• seems to be doing something different from music you and i usually hear

.

emahoy tsegue-maryam guebrou - the homeless wanderer: she's somebody that had an eclectic piano education and just uses some unique and remarkable approach to rhythm that feels less like a classical structure and more like the act of waiting for a meandering thought to resolve.

life without buildings - the leanover

(chickadee's past cat 1 winner)

: the vocal in this song is what they call "really something else"

REVEALED HERE!

Spoiler: cat 4: multiemotional

i'd like something that produces multiple different emotions in the listener, especially simultaneously or in the creation of a cohesive whole.

.

elizabeth cotten - freight train
isaiah rashad - 4r da squaw
big thief - black diamonds

REVEALED HERE!

Spoiler: cat 5: synchronized swimming

my brother's girlfriend coaches synchronized swimming at the local high school & we went to see a show. shortly beforehand, i was like "what kind of song do you use for synchronized swimming?" and started excitedly imagining a bunch of different ideas. after the show i was charmed by the little bits of expression and flair you can use to act out a certain song, as well as the high school-ness of it i guess.

send me a song that i'd want to see a synchronized swimming routine for, or at least see them try. it helps to have something that excites one's visual imagination.

.

autechre - cfern
alice in chains - rotten apple
billy woods & kenny seagal - red dust "it's how she arch her back when she-"
the free design - kites are fun
el chombo - chacarron

REVEALED HERE!

Spoiler: cat 6: forgiveness

forgiveness is complicated and i think lends itself to music well. send me something that engages with the idea of forgiveness, or the lack thereof.

i'll give 3 examples which aren't great
liz phair - divorce song
kendrick lamar - mother i sober: i kinda took issue with what i might vaguely call the "methodology" of this song but there's a lot of ways it thought-provokingly touches on the largeness of the problem of intergenerational trauma
boards of canada - over the horizon radar: mostly i just felt compelled to try putting in an instrumental song & boards of canada songs feel like they're about everything

REVEALED HERE!

Spoiler: cat 7: drums

it turns out that drumming is like maybe my favorite thing in music generally. send me a song where the drums (or generally, percussion) are good.

i had an identical category in my first walrus. in writing out the category proposal i voiced a mild distaste for drum machines, which i now think i don't care about as much as i dislike stuff where the drumming wasn't a primary consideration when building the song.

for my examples i'll name several songs which Happen to be some of my very favorite songs from 2022:
immanuel wilkins + elena pinderhughes + also other people - lighthouse
converge - they stretch for miles (redux)
pillow queens - my body moves

REVEALED HERE!

Spoiler: cat 8: grab bag

here's three funny little ideas for a category, choose one that you can submit to. when you are sending me the message, you should specify "cat 8, section 1 [or 2 or 3]: https://youtube.fart/song" (or two links for section 3) but

don't provide any extra info

.

if somebody submits to a section that nobody else does, they will receive 3.9 points.

section 1: pokemon dual type

send me a song that calls to mind a certain pair of pokemon types, especially in a funny or compelling way. you can pretty much do this without having played pokemon, there aren't many nuances to understand beyond the names of the types (i mean there are but you know.)

elliot smith - roman candle: fire/dark
boards of canada - diving station: normal/ghost
scene queen - 18+: fighting/fairy (my favorite song from song contest 200)

section 2: seasons

send me a song reminiscent of one of the seasons, especially via indirect or purely-musical ways.

cocteau twins - sigh's smell of farewell: winterㅡthere's a few things that just remind me in maybe a superficial way of instruments/melodic motifs typical of Winter Music, but it also feels like winter. the bass occasionally reminds me of a lower limb that loses heat and starts to feel numb.
hania rani - buka: winter. honestly both of these last two struggle to fully differentiate themselves from autumn
lil ugly mane & denzel curry - twistin: summer

section 3: paired songs

i am stealing a category from the tris hellbooks walrus, which involves just sending two songs who complement each other in an interesting way. i will grade the enjoyment points as some kind of average of the two songs, which is to say this section wouldn't be worth double.

in your submission you should put the first song link, a space, and then a second song link. i shall listen to them in that order, one after the other such that there is a clean track-transition.

.

you can peruse the past walrus for examples of submissions; you can expect me to look for vaguely similar things as what hellbooks explained. i thought

alameda riddle - my little rooster b/w devendra banhart - little monkey

from chevre was particularly brilliant and i revisit that pair of songs every so often.

around when that category got revealed i came up with

joanna newsom - peach plum pear b/w soccer mommy - scorpio rising

; two songs that survey the failure of a relationship due to the narrator ultimately not being appealing enough. both of them have a feeling of fatalism, peach plum pear has the period where it seems like the relationship is succeeding in spite of being fated to fail (which eventually happens) whereas scorpio rising seems more confident it was never gonna work out.

REVEALED in part here!

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Spoiler: scoring, medals and invisible cats

i give each song a rating out of 5, which becomes up to 7 points (i double the amount by which the rating exceeds 3). i give between 0 and 3 points based on its aptitude for the category. i will give 1 point for a song i don't know, and 1.2 for something particularly unfamiliar; there is a sliding scale downward if i've heard the song or artist before (possibly down to negative points). i try to guess who submitted each song and deduct 0.1 points when i am correct. the four top scorers in each category will receive 2/1.5/1.2/0.9 bonus points.

EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE IS BASICALLY FOR FUNZIES (but it does count for points)

---

medals

i will award points to submissions that do any of these random things, potentially multiple times (with different respective point values). sometimes it is worth negative points if that would be funny. two people can get the same medal in the same category and have different points because i e.g. listened to one song slightly sooner. these points do not contribute to the bonus points for 1st/2nd/3rd place.

laugh out loud from reading a song/artist award: 1.1pts / 1.5pts / 0.8 pts / 0.3 pts / 0.2 pts / 0.2 pts / 0.1 pts
grand slam award:

0.5 pts

/ 0.4 pts / -0.9 pts / 0.1 pt
exactly 3 minutes and 46 seconds award:

0.5 pts

/ -0.6 pts / 0.7 pts / -0.8 pts ... ad infinitum
chills award:

1.1 pts

/

1.1 pts

/ 1.1 pts / 1.1 pts
MUSHSHAGANA awardㅡ

make me think you are mushshagana

:

0.4 pts

/

0.5 pts

/ 0.4 pts / 0.3 pts; the

second

and fourth awards will include 0.1 pts awarded to MUSHSHAGANA
CALEDFWITCH awardㅡ

get 5th or 6th place two times in a row

: 4.0 pts / 0.4 pts
CHEVRE awardㅡ

submit after the first category has been revealed

: 0.3 pts / 0.2 pts / 0.2 pts
PANZERJAGER awardㅡ

have a placing in the bottom 3 and a gold medal in adjacent cats

: 1.6 pts / -1.8 pts / 2.2 pts
PANZERJAGER award 2ㅡ

get banned

: 0.3 pts / -0.5 pts / 0.1 pt

invisible cats

i had a bunch of ideas for categories, many of which don't lend themselves to being a full category because it's hard to ideate around them, or they are too specific, or too small in scope, or whatever. and so i am taking those ideas down in my notepad document and assigning point values which i will award to the first several submissions that successfully meet those cat ideas. whenever somebody gets an invisible cat bonus, i will publicize the description of the cat and the sequence of point values associated with it. like medals, they don't count towards 1st/2nd/3rd place.

[schadd_]

ego

players:

1. Majiffy
   
2. MUSHSHAGANA
   
3. Invisibility
   
4. Skygazer
   
5. DeathRowKitty
   
6. Pink Ball
   
7. ChannelDelibird
   
8. toolenduso
   
9. Cheetory6
   
10. T3
    
11. stinkycheesedan
    
12. Isis
    
13. biancospino
    
14. hellbooks
    
15. wgeurts
    
16. Aristophanes
    
17. Chickadee
    
18. Aisa
    
19. Chevre
    
20. ceejayvinoya
    
21. Infinity 324
    
22. fireisredsir
    
23. tris
    
24. PJ.

[schadd_]

i will plan to start listening to the songs in three and a half weeks: (expired on 2023-07-08 17:00:00). the first reveal will tentatively be on july 15th.

you can submit a few days after that and still have your songs graded fully, and then submit more than a week after that and still have 7 out of 8 cats graded fully.

i'll say that i don't fault anyone for seeing this and thinking "this looks like too much work" but i'll also say that it's completely fine and even good to have submissions where somebody skimmed the categories and thought about it for 0.1 seconds and tossed in a few songs

[schadd_]

nowadays i have the ability to say "this song is like skinamarink"

You've hit upon it exactly, well done you

its more like skinamarink did that

[schadd_]

im gonna go downstaiws

[schadd_]

you've been invited

[schadd_]

i think i didnt bother to do this last time but i'll try to get a translation of songs where its clear the lyrics have something to do with the catfit, though it's generally harder for something to land particularly well when there's that extra step btwn hearing a lyric in its musical context and understanding what it is

[schadd_]

pog

[schadd_]

the first submitter to my last walrus was chickadee who submitted 4 days after i posted the thread & i seem to have 3 submissions to this already

[schadd_]

as i receive my fifth submission i'll gently restate that you're allowed to change your submission any time in the next like 4 weeks

[schadd_]

am i allowed to reveal songs that i unsubmit when i realize i've sent them to you before

sure

[schadd_]

just the new thing is fine

[schadd_]

LOL i have no memory whatsoever of what prompted me to listen to seru giran but i did think they were great. also i liked the charly garcia song you did for song contest and had no idea he was in that. cool!

[schadd_]

do songs have to be from this year

they do not!

[schadd_]

rejected entry: cat 8 (seasons): nfl on fox theme

this would have no effect on me whatsoever

[schadd_]

Rejected because no one would do synchronized swimming to scream-raps. They should, but they never would.

its up to your judgement but this isnt necessarily a reason not to submit something to cat 5

[schadd_]

some more notes about music i like lately

• im not a metalhead but i believe in their beliefs
  
• i really like neat musical usages of a second interval (i.e. when you play piano keys that are next to each other)
  
• basically any musician who is a woman that releases music under her first and last name from before 2000 is like 1000% guaranteed to be good
  
• i seem to have logged about 8 times as much albums from the year of 2022 as in the decade of the 1980s
  
• ugh this is dope

[schadd_]

i don't really, though i have in the past a little bit. i think that there's like this big bank of music-that-people-from-the-internet-like that informs both my and his music listening a lot

[schadd_]

^she is right

[schadd_]

in particular, you should feel free to populate the 4-5 cats you're confident with & then just put whatever you like for 2-4 of them

[schadd_]

couple weeks!

[schadd_]

i dont think its spelled out in the rules anywhere that the songs have to be different, although "7 or 8 songs" does imply that there should be like more than 1 song. if somebody did that i would only penalize them via the unfamiliarity although that would be a somewhat large amount of points

[schadd_]

i will plan to start listening to the songs in three and a half weeks: (expired on 2023-07-08 17:00:00). the first reveal will tentatively be on july 15th.

i will be adhering to this schedule, there will be time to submit after the countdown timer expires but you should plan to be done around then if possible!

[schadd_]

We have to send in 7-8 songs per category?
Do we need to fill all categories right now??

one song per category! so 7-8 total. you have to fill them within a week to be perfectly on time

[schadd_]

:^)

[schadd_]

i liked her album from this year.

[schadd_]

in a parallel universe (mafiauniverse) somebody called shad is doing a walrus with something like 40 different people with something like 50 submissions

[schadd_]

it's typical on that site that people let you give two different submissions to the same walrus although conventionally you would do subsequent ones from an alt account. and i also think that people just don't use alts there as much and so as far as i understand people will just make a very straightforward alt account to send separate walrus submissions. you can see a list of submitters here. these might be like "i am submitting under this name with this list" or something i dont know.

[schadd_]

yes, for a few days!

[schadd_]

18 hours until deadline! at which point i will start cracking open the songs and listening to them. as i've said you'll still be submit and change your submissions but you'd expect to lose like 0.1 points because it'll be harder to anonymize things

[schadd_]

with that we get things underway! i will start gobbling up your links tonight and i will plan to do my first reveal on saturday at 5pm US central time, (expired on 2023-07-15 17:00:00). you can still submit before, idk like friday and still be counted in this category.

we will be going in the order of (don't laugh) cat 5, cat 4, cat 6, 3, 7, 2, 8, 1. i think you could call this "waterfall order." the point is starting on a category where i'm inevitably going to give high catfit points in synchronized swimming (cf. the 2021 walrus which started on cat 3 where i gave like a total of 2 catfit points all around, which i kind of enjoy as a starting point in a cruel way but we'll do it different), as well as finishing with 2 8 1 which is pleasant.

[schadd_]

[schadd_]

an important addendum to the second chart is that, in addition to the existence of at least one past submittant that left me shocked, 100% of submissions made me say something to the effect of LETS GOOO!!!! (fist pump) when i saw them in my inbox. very happy to see every face old and new here and also exciting that the number went up from 15 to 24+ this time around

[schadd_]

100% of submissions made me say something to the effect of LETS GOOO!!!! (fist pump) when i saw them in my inbox.

its just that with some of them i was like WHAT? first

[schadd_]

will there be variance the reveal times like before?

yes!

an important addendum to the second chart is that, in addition to the existence of at least one past submittant that left me shocked, 100% of submissions made me say something to the effect of LETS GOOO!!!! (fist pump) when i saw them in my inbox. very happy to see every face old and new here and also exciting that the number went up from 15 to 24+ this time around

I'm excited that you are excited!

What do I lose out on if, say, I work during a live reveal?

the live reveal consists of me playing the songs over discord in ascending order of points. all of the scoring and comments i write are also going to be posted in this thread

[schadd_]

i listened to all the songs today while painting. i briefly thought about this before starting but now that i notice the large number of songs that are in close competition for the top spots, i'm now giving points for 4th place. so it will be 2/1.5/1.2/0.9 for 1st/2nd/3rd/4th. the caledfwitch medal is likewise expanded to include 5th or 6th place.

[schadd_]

and i will plan to do my first reveal on saturday at 5pm US central time, (expired on 2023-07-15 17:00:00).

waba waba!

[schadd_]

category 5: synchronized swimming

Spoiler: 1st: cheeto

belbury polly - the willows

enjoyment: 6.3 (4.6+/5)
catfit: 2.8
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: cheetory6
submitter: lol -0.1
medals / ICs: gold +2.0 , chills medal +1.1

10.0 + 3.1

you'd definitely need to find girls with some gears installed to perform this. instant endorphins from the unbridled 6/8 swag here. reminded me of adrianne lenker's recording of terminal paradise. boobooba boobooba boobooba boobooba. is this keely's first gold medal? the numbers definitely could support a grand slam but i will narrowly choose not to award it. maybe the water would have to have gears in it too.. the comprimises we make..

Spoiler: 2nd: invisibility

the bothy band - old hag you have killed me

enjoyment: 6.2 (4.6/5)
catfit: 2.6
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: pink ball
submitter: INVISIBILITY GETS 2ND AND NOT 4TH LETS GO
medals / ICs: 2nd place 1.5

9.8 + 1.5

for some reason it occurs to me to call this a cheap shot even though the submitter probably doesn't know i'm irish. to be clear, this is a great song, even among the medium amount of irish folk music i've heard.

i really like the clavinet a lot, it does such an immediate rush of excitement (opens up the routine well!) and i get such a huge kick out of the the bass note in the middle of the phrases which is in sequence rather than simultaneous to the right hand. it has the sort of satisfaction of a handbell arrangement that emphasizes and individuates certain notes, which in turn gives it an ensemble feeling that's nice for the synchro idea. more importantly for the ensemble feeling is, i guess, the fact that This is an ensemble, with different instrumental voices and characters and just affords the whole thing a lot of shape that stimulates the visual imagination.

naturally, one imagines the swimmers doing an irish jig, but upside down with the feet slightly out of the water and splashing around. i pictured this immediately and very excitedly. maybe you could have a dress that floats well in the water somehow. i watched a (scottish) jig at this festival i went to recently and this reminded me of a parallel btwn that and synchronized swimming which is the sort of laborious smile you have to keep up for proper form

Spoiler: 3rd: aristophanes

michael bublé - higher

enjoyment: 6 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.5
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: aristophanes
submitter: yupz -0.1
medals / ICs: 3rd place 1.2

9.4 + 1.2

michael bublé is just such a fun name to say and this could have gotten the laugh out loud medal if not for the fact i've been saying that name to myself intermittently for like 20 years. another fact about michael bublé is that i could never imagine myself putting him in the top 3 of a 24 song category. like he was just some guy out of the factory where they make all the other grammy winners and like why would i listen to him on purpose. i guess i'm still allowed to think that. Anyway this is like really good lol. it is overwrought pop music where they have like 3 different obnoxious instruments accentuating a certain rhythm. the lyrics could come from any of the other latin-influenced white pop of the last 10 years. if you like the millenial whoop, They have it. and of course the song persists in having the juice

this is like an extremely conventional sort of song to have a big dramatic dance routine and is the one i would be least surprised to see in an actual olympic synchro thingy. to wit i was like "ok this is like possibly one of the songs they used at the high school show" and i messaged martha asking if they ever did a michael bublé song and she was like lol no. but like one has to admit that this just has a lot of the stuff you'd want, various lyrics about motion and position and like epic excitement sex love drama et cetera. and it's also like a good song.

noah bublé is listed as a writing credit who appears to be michael bublé's son. i knew he had a ghostwriter

Spoiler: tied 4th: stinkycheesedan

ayesha erotica - literal legend

enjoyment: 6.2 (4.6/5)
catfit: 2.3
unfamiliarity: 0.8
submitter guess: invisibility
submitter: DANNY BOY!
medals / ICs: 0.4 tied 4th place :nazar:, 0.1 not on spotify

9.3 + 0.5

whoooo submitted ayesha erotica lolll. i've listened to one EP from her as well as a smattering of tracks people link on tumblr. generally that would be a 0.9 unfamiliarity except for the bell biv devoe sample. but i'm very happy to be reminded of her

i definitely just laugh a lot listening to this. the synchro imagery adds to it by making me imagine a bunch of people going like whenever she's like "[the c word]" or "everybody knows i shit" or even the dut dutdadut dut dadut dadut bang. "i could give you bjork but i dont think youd understand it" lollll. i just really like how she pronounces words a lot of the time.

it helps a lot that poison is just an eminently danceable tune. the original fortnite dance was like plagiarized from donald faison doing a dance to it for scrubs did you know that. but there's a bit of limitation in how fast and abrupt it is, like you would probably get very tired trying to swim to this.

Spoiler: tied 4th: fireisredsir

aspidistrafly - landscape with a fairy

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: cdb
submitter: fire is red sir!
medals / ICs: 0.4 tied 4th place :nazar:

9.3 + 0.4

it is like this song is begging me to picture a small body of water teeming and shimmering with life. and i am obliging with an affected begrudging expression. hrumph! it almost goes too far, like you would need 100 swimmers to be working together and each is the size of a frog. so 100 frogs. big whoop there's 100 ponds that each have 100 frogs already doing a synchronized swimming routine to this song. Yes it's good.

the little major-2nd interval harmony is something that also appears in two of the example songs, rotten apple & kites are fun. i suspect there would be like 100 other reasons to submit this song (and they all go "ribbit") but if you happened to catch onto that specific thing, grand kudos.

there should be an invisible cat for songs my friend rebecca. instead all you get is the satisfaction of knowing i'm gonna send this to someone. well i guess i'm sending it to like 23 other people

Spoiler: 6th: chevre

meet me @ the altar - say it (to my face)

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: i can't guess ametrine can i. ok lets try chev
submitter: sorry bro who else listens to music from current year -0.1
medals / ICs: 0.2 honest songwriting

9.2 + 0.2

a song that makes you want to turn up the volume on whatever your device is

pop punk was something i listed as a disliked genre for cat 2 in 2021 and since then i've come around to it as some of the music that has the most fun with, like, the basic word sequencing aspect of songwriting. like they just yank you through all the lyrics of the song in their playful bullying sort of way.

while the general. . . shapeyness of the song isn't especially strong there's a lot of lines i can truly imagine the high school synchro team having a lot of fun trying to do some pantomime about, and otherwise a lot of poppy explosive moments. for that "hope you're ha ving fuuuun" part you would probably have to like try to freeze in place in the water for a second which sounds challenging but like something a good synchro team would want to try to do

the raw charisma of the group does a whole lot of work here. if they really are an industry plant like they say on the internet at least they are quite good. oh wow 2023 release awesome.

Spoiler: 7th: deathrowfroggy

augustin hadelich performs scherzo-tarantelle op. 16 composed by henryk wienawski

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: deathrowkitty
submitter: sorry -0.1
medals / ICs: 0.1 not on spotify

9.1 + 0.1

the big cascading motions in the melody definitely feel like they would be well represented by a bunch of limbs working together. there's a fast spinning / skipping feeling that you could probably get by like having a bunch of people work together to get somebody to spin and flail around really fast. And there's the segments of slower and more fluid motion for when they get you know tired and dizzy and stuff.

somehow the song creates a feeling of like, where is the surface of the water and when the melody bobs above and below it. maybe i am just describing the time honored phenomenon of the Key Center but i think its different from that

i like the stiff inhales you always hear in solo string recordings. like why do they all do that.

i think i've seen drk warbling around in that gustav holst planets thread or something. probably this will be minjae's favorite song of the cat (or something) but she is needed to be guessed elsewhere

Spoiler: tied 8th: hellbooks

北原ミレイ - かもめの３/４

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 0.8
submitter guess: PJ.
submitter: hellbuoks dang
medals / ICs:

8.9

this is a song i swear on me mum's car i've heard before in spite of it seeming to be like almost entirely unlistened on whatever platform i see it on. this is a symptom of a song belonging to hellbooks who has at various points in time made me listen to songs, and i accidentally found out she has listened to this album. but i had to guess her for something else.

whats that? the actual relevant substance of the song? ugh. i guess it's great. i just kept liking the chorus more as i heard it more times. i like the dramatic use of revolver that's in japanese pop sometimes for some reason. huh, i meant recorder. what did i say. revolver oh. well anyway.

one could imagine a very courtly and dignified synchronized swimming procession around this. very constant and pleasant swaying motion. "badam badam" is like a little sound of legs licking against the surface of the water.

Spoiler: tied 8th: infinity 324

E-40 - da bumble

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: hellbooks
submitter: infinity AWESOME
medals / ICs: +0.3 tony hawk eligible :skateboard:

8.9+0.3

i think that this should be performed by a troupe of beautiful black intelligent women thats sexy so that when he gets to that line they can go like :skin-tone-5:. there's a lot of lines like that which would enable some sort of gesture, like when he says zodiac sign scorpio there would be like 2 or 3 girls that raise their hand and make a little face. what else what else. when he's like "59-clip cizzartridge you know i'm pizzacking" it sounds like pazaak which is, um, which is the card game from star wars. so maybe the ladies would pretend to be playing cards. (looking around) anyone? alright. Well you get the idea. there's just a lot of imagery and you get excited trying to think of what the intelligent women would do with it. also that like little flick he does with his voice like "i flyipped a Lyeaxi, speed up an Ceatch me" wants to be represented with some excited jerking body movement.

tentatively calling this tony hawk's pro skater elligible. it just sounds like that sort of phonky production and in-the-moment lyrics that they like a lot with those games. the thing that gives me pause is that there's a slightly large amount of bleeping they'd have to do, especially depending on whether they bleep the word bitch which i don't remember.

this is an artist that i know minjae likes a lot and i think that she would send him for this. if i could guess shafted i would throw minjae out the window instantly

Spoiler: tied 8th: MUSHSHAGANA

clipping - enlacing

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 2.5
unfamiliarity: 0.5
submitter guess: wgeurts
submitter: msha!!!!
medals / ICs:

8.9

this is a claim that may not be supported by the charts, the history books, millions of people, or my own appraisal of his music, but it nevertheless needs to be said that hamilton was career suicide for this guy.

a lot of good rippling and wiggling and general motion in the beat. "get your ass down to the floor" ok well i hope the pool is reasonably shallow then lol. yeah you can really hear this thing hurgling. and gurgling. you would need to do a lot of tricky kicking and idk like blowing bubbles to get at the jagged rumblings in the production although maybe you just play it in the water with a big bassy speaker and the surface would start to look like a sawtooth wave. Ooh and you could put a big pane of glass on the surface of the water and it would be like audio clipping. ok well then they couldnt get out of the water. Its always something

man the lyrics would be like 30% better if i didnt know they were coming from a theatre kid. And a liberal

i havent listened to this song or this album but subtracting some unfamiliarity points bc clipping got submitted last time

Spoiler: 11th: tris

art school girlfriend - give

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: tris
submitter: triz. lol get guessed -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.7

the whole thing does feel very suspended in water, and a lot of the fun electronics are reminiscent of different ripples on the surface. for the routine itself, the song is maybe slightly lacking in juice but "you give me back... she gives me back..." is ripe for good choreography, like some person gets tossed back and forth btwn two people or otherwise passed through the water. good song. this ended up being the last song i listened to out of 24 which maybe slightly poisoned my ability to think about it in depth. hehe depth.

not the most resounding tris guess but it'll have to do. she kinda sounds like marika.

Spoiler: 12th: isis

apocalyptica - harmageddon

enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: msha
submitter: isis!
medals / ICs: MUSHSHAGANA award 0.4

8.5 + 0.4

this is sorely missing a lot of hallmarks of a mushshagana submission, specifically being a <2,000 views on youtube, self published 2020s release. but damn if the song and artist titles aren't there.

the really gritty cello pattern greatly pushes the image of people squirming and churning and swaying to it. though, the fact that there's a lot of repetition and not a lot of treble means they have to get a lot of mileage out of, like, writhing underwater for a large portion of the song which is of course difficult and not very spectator friendly. but there's a lot here. ends on a good flair.

Spoiler: tied 13th: aisa

fiona apple - i want you to love me

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.5
unfamiliarity: 0.2
submitter guess: aisa
submitter: aisa! -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.4

ah yes. i definitely thought about paper bag in my initial synchronized swimming bout of ideas especially because of the big ballroom dance choreography in the music video.

this album is represented in my top 110 songs thread, and i listened to it a lot and recognized this song instantly although i probably haven't listened to it in particular more than 4 or 5 times.

her classic glitzy ballroom style orchestration is great for this, one easily imagines a fluttering of leg movement for that initial standup bass + piano segment, there's lots of moments that ramp up in a way that feels very physical (like the big drum thumpies) and want to be represented by some dramaic fwish in the water while everybody thunderously opens up their body posture. and of course the chittering bit at the end is also very splashy

definitely an all around good submission, it's a fairly popular song but you did get a little unlucky that i knew it already

Spoiler: tied 13th: biancospino

igorrr - barocco satani

enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: biancospino
submitter: biancospino! -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.4

for the first minute i was like "this sounds pretty cool" and then i looked at the artist name and was like that is not something you would name yourself as a classical composer, when is this gonna turn into that sort of weird metal fusion thing i rarely like. the kicker here is that the non-metal portions of this are like cool and engaging, and then they give you this short intermission of bland metal while they cook up the next segment of the fugue for you i guess. that said the big upward chromatic motion and the drumming towards the end were a good little bit of payoff for the metal instruments

i have to give this credit for feeling like something that they would, like, actually do a synchro routine to in the olympics or whatever. it's got that, idk dramatic eurovisiony vibe, and the rigid segmentation sounds like it would be good pace to set up different styles of choreography to show off.

Spoiler: 15th: ceejayvinoya

gorillaz - DARE

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.3
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: infiny?
submitter: ceejayvinoya!
medals / ICs:

7.9

part of what makes me like this is the way the guy vocalist reminds me of the loserly charm of the vocalist of thank, which makes it hilarious that this person is like a Feature. you could not have convinced me that this is a song by gorillaz with hundreds of millions of listens. this song is like sooo farty. i like the "it's coming up it's coming up" thing for the swimming routine, although the swimmers would have to spend a lot of time you know coming up. you'd have to have a coed team for this because the two vocalists Definitely sound like they're going to different locker rooms after this is over

i have never listened to - oh my god i just realized i did listen to a gorillaz album all the way one time and completely forgot about it. ok well i'll still give you a 1 unfamiliarity.

Spoiler: tied 16th: PJ

autre ne veut - ego free sex free (live on kexp)

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 1.3
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: complete mystery. fireisredsir
submitter: PJ AWESOME LOL
medals / ICs: je ne sais chat -0.9, paired vocalists +0.5, not on spotify +0.1

7.7 - 0.3

this would have gotten a 3.0 in the inscrutable cat from 2021. what is up with: this person's voice, the weird landscape of trance/edm sample stuff, the lyrical content, and, not to invoke the trope of repeating a thing in a list but This person's voice. i might theorize that this person is like a weaboo for french people, with all the vocal idiosyncracies that entails. also apparently he was roommates with oneohtrix point never who is a person that wins the invisible cat for randomly showing up in people's wikipedia pages.

and like, what's the idea in the lyrics. i guess this guy is humbly and chastely admiring the person's sexy body. awesome love wins. all the imagery about body movement invokes the swimming image but doesn't give a lot of ideas for how to choreograph or whatever.

giving this the "je ne sais chat" invisible cat, which is for stuff that evokes some strong feeling deserving of a cat but i didn't already come up with a cat for it. in particular this song almost gives me chills but it's like chills in the heebie jeebies way. Unfortunately for you the first je ne sais chat is worth -0.9 points. as recompense i gave you the borderline paired vocalists cat. it's only the choruses that have it, but i like it a lot & i like that the backing vocalist is like louder during that section (which seems to be more true about this KEXP verison you sent than the album version which i listened to a couple times out of convenience).

guessing the person i know stone cold nothing about as the submitter

Spoiler: tied 16th: wgeurts

sigur rós - hoppipolla

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 1.6
unfamiliarity: 0.2
submitter guess: chickadee
submitter: wgeurts.... of course...
medals / ICs: +0.1 track transition (coming from megalovania)

7.7 + 0.1

i refuse to award this the *chills* medal because all of sigur rós' music sounds like they made it for the sole purpose of getting my chills medal. when i say i refuse to award it, i don't mean that i got chills and am withholding the medal but rather that i tensed up my shoulders and gritted my teeth and focused entirely on not getting chills whenever i listened to it. Sorry if there is a possibility that this reflected negatively in the score

while it strikes me that this is definitely a sort of song to inspire one to make a synchronized swimming routine, i don't see it giving one many ideas once you've committed to it. there isn't really motion or a set of features to chew on, it sort of goes up to 100 right away and then quiets down a couple times (though the "hoppipolla" parts work well). relatedly, at the top of the buildups for this song it gives me the image of a large vertical height which is like something thats hard to represent in the synchronized swimming form. man that gay little elf really can sing. (ok i checked jonsi's wikpedia page and it turns out that he is like gay. i didnt know that sorry. Gonna leave the comment)

chickadee has song gamed this and possibly more than once. if someone gallantly stepped in to prevent me from guessing chickadee correctly just like 8 people did in 2021 then so be it.

Spoiler: 18th: skygazer

herbie hancock - rockit

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 1.2
unfamiliarity: 0.8
submitter guess: skygazer
submitter: hiya -0.1
medals / ICs:

7.3

80s herbie hancock huh. This Could Literally be anyone. hilariously i got really into his other album mr hands from 1980 because somebody submitted it to a walrus on mafiauniverse. with this song (as with many of his more later-er songs) i'm like very happy that he's having fun with his synthesizers but kinda wish he were making uhhh jazz music.

this makes me imagine a big array of people swimming in the shape of space invaders. otherwise i could imagine people sort of grooving i guess but not in great detail. this and the other song about people being around and having fun in the 80s (referring to people lets dance which was released in 2021 yes)

you would probably like grace jones in case you haven't heard her music

Spoiler: tied 19th: toolenduso

thrice - the earth isn't humming

enjoyment: 4.9 (3.9+/5)
catfit: 1.2
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: tool...?
submitter: tool -0.1
medals / ICs:

7.1

sounds like a challenge to do a routine to this bc somebody has to drop underwater until the end of the song every time they're like "and another one must fall down". and then i guess its just over at 3:24 "i watch them all fall down". or maybe they just go :bubbles: for a few moments until the song stops

Spoiler: tied 19th: t3

queens of the stone age - go with the flow

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 0.7
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: this has to be majiffy
submitter: T3
medals / ICs:

7.1

this like has to be majiffy. right? he has that title and likes rock and roll music???? right??? if this is majiffy he might find it offensive that i kind of don't like the mixing of this. he would be like Oh you can't say that. the guitar feels, like, a little problematically indistinct or something. its not as bad with my bigger headphones.

the song kinda feels more like a constant forward movement than a dance to me. like if i'm picturing someone swimming to this they're swimming laps for sure. you could maybe build a routine for this song by having them do it while going with the flow in a river with a fast current but that's like mental effort to imagine that which i do not naturally do from the song.

i listened to their self titled album a couple weeks ago and since that was after i opened the thread you will not have the horrible penalty of losing 0.1 points of unfamiliarity. i liked that album a little better than i like this. Thats right i like their first album more. although it barely counts as a first album since like all of these people were already mid career musicians or something. "stoner rock" is maybe a pair of words you could use to most efficiently repel me from wanting to listen to something.

Spoiler: 21st: majiffy

incubus - state of the art

enjoyment: 4.5 (3.7+/5)
catfit: 1.1
unfamiliarity: 1
submitter guess: isis?
submitter: majiffy
medals / ICs:

6.6

cmon guys you can't have a metal name like that and then make this music. um not much to say about this one. it's got a bunch of those lines that you would want to interpret with a few funny little moves. it. there's just a problematically low level of juice

In January 2010, it was revealed that former turntablist Gavin "DJ Lyfe" Koppell threatened current turntablist Chris Kilmore in a store on December 28, 2009. Kilmore, who replaced Gavin Koppell in 1998, claimed that Koppell, "asked me to fight him right there and raised his fists to me."[25]

Spoiler: 22nd: channeldelibird

public service broadcasting ft. eera - people, let's dance

enjoyment: 4.9 (3.9+/5)
catfit: 0.5
unfamiliarity: 0.9
submitter guess: This. Could. Feasibly be stinkycheesedan
submitter: channel delibird
medals / ICs:

6.3

i guess there's not much rhythmic intrigue here, and overall its just not very inspiring. like people would do a synchronized swimming routine to it ONLY because the song is telling them to dance and not because they are possessed by the spirit. i like the lead vocalist and the big "come, dancennn...." hook.

listened to some other album of this group that i apparently didn't like.

unfortunately it looks like there's some sort of synchronized dancing thing in the music video & i don't watch the music videos and/or factor them into my score

Spoiler: 23rd: pink ball

toby fox (undertale soundtrack) - megalovania

enjoyment: 4.4 (3.7/5)
catfit: 1.4
unfamiliarity: 0
submitter guess: ceejayvinoya
submitter: pink ball sorry... oh yeah i remember that you have the dog in your avatar sometimes
medals / ICs: +0.1 track transition (going into hoppipolla)

5.8 + 0.1

the stairway to heaven of the undertale soundtrack. the problem is that i don't like how this is like the epic song about murdering sans. ok well i don't want to do that. and out of that resentment it kind of occurs to me to be like "no you can't synchronized swim to this." but one has to admit there's a lot to work with.

Spoiler: 24th: chickadee

the fratellis - chelsea dagger

enjoyment: 2.7 (2.7/5)
catfit: 0.8
unfamiliarity: 0
submitter guess: T3
submitter: CHICKADEE?????? LOL sorry
medals / ICs:

3.5

bwuhhh this song. so when i was growing up my older brother usually had, like, Ownership of the computer that we would use to play our special computer games and so usually he would get first dibs to play it and i would wanna sit in the room to watch and so he would use this as an opportunity to make me listen to the his annoying music. the primary songs i remember from this era are boston more than a feeling, the cars just what i needed, and the fratellis chelsea dagger. i think its cool when people do big pop songs for this game, especially with songs that i haven't listened to on purpose / with headphones, unfortunately not a lucky swing here. kinda like that last bridge toward the end

the lines with "little steven and joanna round the back of my hotel" would be pantomimed well, However those are like the moments where i make a face the strongest

i think it's really awesome that the url has sEXHeT. the submitter may like to be reminded that your lowest score gets dropped.

Spoiler: listening order

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgXwIIHAmaw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0MTqhf9xPo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZP0NFRKBbs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR_x0GH5c30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2_rV6gc6gc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf1-uRJN61E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpisFd7tzJA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N541HLPeG6Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt1tWBvgngo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hcV_RijKK8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i72EtNKud3I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgDZPqbNyHo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z4xuWGHZ7k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZSTI-xkXko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcHKOC64KnE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhD4PD75zY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qtNj9WG6z8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEXHeTcxQy4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb_5mJlVHPc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-px9MYLIhGo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FCvzsVlXpQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAYb8ZyjzD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOjXtyJXAUg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNOPjaMBK7U

[schadd_]

the reveal wallpost remains the same height as walrus 1 because of my new strategy of cramming all the spoiler= tags together like an irish catholic family photo

[schadd_]

SIX INVISIBLE CATS HAVE CHOSEN TO REVEAL THEMSELVES THIS DAY!

paired vocalists

:

0.5 pts

/ 0.5 pts / 0.5 pts / 0.4 pts / 0.4 pts / 0.4 pts
reanimating a cat from 2021. this is for a good pairing of vocalists.

honest songwriting

:

0.2 pts

/ 0.2 pts / 0.2 pts / -0.1 pts / 0.8 pts / 1.3 pts
for when the simple act of arranging words onto a melody is done well.

je ne sais chat

:

-0.9 pts

/ 0.3 pts / 0.5 pts / 0.9 pts
for when something is deserving of invisible cat points for a sharp and specific reason not otherwise covered.

good track transitions

:

0.1 pts

/ 0.2 pts / 0.4 pts / 0.8 pts (each)
when one song transitions into another song & makes me go "ooh!"

not on spotify

: eternal 0.1pts
this is because i don't really listen to things in sequence if they aren't on spotify & so they can't get the transition cat. and spiritually i think unspotified songs deserve credit.

tony hawk eligible

:

0.3 pts

/ 0.4 pts / 0.5 pts / -0.1 pts / 0.7 pts
for underrated punk/metal/hip hop songs from the 90s-early 2000s that have a certain iconic charm, still work no matter when you start paying attention to them & don't have too many swear words they have to bleep out

[schadd_]

-margaret thatcher

[schadd_]

;

[schadd_]

decided to push the next reveal to the weekend after next because i will be going to pitchfork next weekend. And also yall sent some long ones.

the cat 4 reveal will be on saturday the 29th at 9pm central US time. (expired on 2023-07-29 22:00:00)

[schadd_]

idk if we have any australians or other people in an eastern time zone which is who this theoretically caters to (other than the americas)

[schadd_]

last time it was N and sirius9121 who were in that ballpark and idt either of them ever showed up to a reveal although cheery dog did several times which i appreciated

[schadd_]

chelesa dagger could have and maybe should have gotten the honest songwriting invisible cat, if not for all the hatred i have for it in my heart. i like the little "of it" motif. the hate in my heart of it

[schadd_]

dont sleep enough dont sleep enough dont sleep enough dont sleep enough

[schadd_]

i HOLY SHIT A DEER like right in front od me i generally dont want to do spoiling or sclusing of any kind prior to the reveal & i only say this because i'm weak but i Truly like both of the TWO (2) f****s by s*********** that people submitted

[schadd_]

no

[schadd_]

no but you can sell them

[schadd_]

i won't stop you

[schadd_]

listen people if you need to buy something just go to https://shopping.com

[schadd_]

decided to push the next reveal to the weekend after next because i will be going to pitchfork next weekend. And also yall sent some long ones.

the cat 4 reveal will be on saturday the 29th at 9pm central US time. (expired on 2023-07-29 22:00:00)

should have mentioned this sooner but this is tomorrow!!!!

[schadd_]

i seem to be revealing cat 4 in 20 minutes! (that's the multi-emotional one)

[schadd_]

cat 4 (multiemotional)

Spoiler: one: fireisredsir

infinity crush - happy hour (happy hour)

enjoyment: 6.3 (4.7/5)
catfit: 3.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: aisa
submitter: FIRE IS RED SIR!!!!
medals / ICs: paired vocalists +0.5, chills +1.1, transition (into time in a bottle) +0.2, grand slam +0.5, 1st place +2.0

10.3 + 4.3

the thing about this song is that it's less than 2 minutes long and it's like couched in a bunch of other great entries bc of where it was in the playlist. and so it wasn't until like 6:50 pm today that i really focused on it and was like "yeah i guess this is just a grand slam."

so this is like about the knowingly futile attempts at placating an abusive partner. in that way it is actively cognitively dissonant, often determined or in a sense hopeful in the words it uses, while there is a horror and sadness directly baked in at the same time. something that really draws out this dissonance is the vocal harmony which sounds like it's on a quarter-tone interval, as well as the fact that the singers have a vocal timbre that, like, disagree with each other at moments.

and yet another orthogonal thing which is evoked by the vocal harmony, is the fact that there is this co-operation between musicians to depict the content of the song, as in, there's ultimately someone else that's willing to accept and affirm the narrator's reading of events. it initially struck me as kind of odd to have a pair of vocalists represent this but i think it works very very well.

i kinda wanted to have this at 2.9 because it's ultimately and undeniably a sad song, but there's just such a chillingly large amount of stuff that juts right out of it in that 2 minute runtime.

kind of awkward to pin this song on anyone in particular but the subject matter is at least something in common with fiona apple's music

Spoiler: two: tris

tatyana nikolayev - shostakovich's prelude and fugue in c major op. 87

enjoyment: 6.4 (4.7/5)
catfit: 2.5
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: hellbooks
submitter: tris... ok so both of you . . . ok
medals / ICs: 2nd place +1.5

9.9 + 1.5

here's the other f

icus

by s

arahsherman

. i have less to say about this one but i like it more and i guess its gonna get 2nd place or something. Deal with it!!!!

this one really gets into the feeling of mild but troubling disagreements between two voices (generally the left and right hand i guess). it's as if the bass is typically supporting the melody except for the times it's just not quite sure, and it deviates or wavers slightly. and vice versa, it is as if they trade off being confident and worried. i slightly struggle with why i would parse this as "multi-emotional", but the more i thought about it the more i just realized how much i like it. it's like those moments someone asks someone to do something and they just do something slightly different.

aw man that part in the fugue section where the left hand states the melody with like a big distracting tritone (i think). its like "no! this is how you do it! agh!"

hellbooks is another known shostakovich liker (at least i think i know it. i'm not gonna do anything to confirm this). this one feels like very slightly jazzy at times, in a way i would also pin to her.

Spoiler: three: PJ

saba - prom/king

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 2.7
unfamiliarity: 0.8
submitter guess: infiny 3.2.4
submitter: PJ.
medals / ICs: 3rd place +1.2

9.6 + 1.2

saba!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i specifically had the thought with his album last year that there's that chicago hip hop style of production that crams like twelve different emotions into the beat.

i've had the thought with the song shark smile that a song that ends on a harsh negative note will sort of instill the rest of the song with that feeling as you listen to it subsequently. lines like "i gave her the croissant or corsage or whatever the fuck" are fun and inhabit a certain moment of careless desire of the past, and they get pricked by the facts of the future.

it also helps that there's just a lot of different stuff happening in the song, and also individual lines that either directly provoke a mixed feeling ("my granddad gave me a condom and walked away didn't say nothing") or reveal information in a tense and gradual way, e.g. getting cornered at the party or like basically all the shit that happens in the last few minutes.

tragically theres no invisible cat for the chicago mention. um, it is surely not to this song's detriment that i'm kinda picturing all the stuff happening in chicago

Spoiler: tied four: deathrowkitty

dimitri shostakovich - (prelude and) fugue no. 24 in d minor

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 2.5
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: deathrowkitty
submitter: sorry girlie -0.1
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1, tied 4th :nazar: +0.4

9.5+0.5

of the two f

ugue

s by s

hostakovich

, this is the one that gets more of its multiemotional kicks from the fugue form. well i guess that's because the submitter seems to have had me skip the prelude part. alright, on with the fuguing. this is like if the fjögur piano submitter had me skip the piano and just get right to the fjögur. anyway.

a feeling that i got from this pretty quickly is that there is some proper and courtly melody being devised, and over the course of the song there's countermelodies that problematize it, like the king's advisers offering warnings or the peasants are rumbling. there's that motif that's like "f f c f... e f blah blah whatever" and sometimes the countermelody inserts itself in such a way that the motif seems to be "f f c f d" as if to be like "ehm... well there's this problem". at least i think that's what is happening in the fugue language that i very vaguely know

towards the end there's a ramping up in intensity as well as a mounting feeling of disorder, sort of akin to a revolution in my analogy although it doesn't really feel like that exactly. unless i'm paying attention to it closely that part can get muddled as just like "manic piano" even though i like it.

there's the fact that dmitri himself played this, who is like a person that i had to google to find out was alive during like most of the 20th century. the fact gives it a little bit of that "haunted recording" feeling, but in a kind of pleasant way.

i have a faint recollection of the DRK submission having a timestamp like this. i would pretty naturally assign one of the fugues to her and there's that very mild thing that makes me wanna put this one.

Spoiler: tied four: hellbooks

e+e - reinada

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: MUSHSHAGANA
submitter: hellbooks lol hi you were maybe my third guess
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1, MUSHSHAGANA award +0.5, tied 4th :nazar: +0.4

9.5 + 1.0

lol yup

maybe the one problem here is the way that my mind has gradually synthesized what i would call "noise music emotion" which is an emotion i get when i listen to noise music. and also maybe the fact that it sort of settles into a pattern for the last ehm 70 seconds. but the vocal samples do a good job of knocking it into a certain direction, and well there is quite simply a lot of stuff in it.

when i first saw the band name "gimme chevys" i was like "danny danny danny danny danny danny danny" and honestly the content could in some universe pass as stinkycheesedan but i was promised an obvious mushshagana song and i believe this may be it. i guess i'm also not sure if gimme chevys is the name of the band

Spoiler: six: isis

forever the sickest kids - she's a lady

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: PJ
submitter: ISIS!!!!!!
medals / ICs: honest songwriting +0.2, wan cat +0.4

9.3 + 0.6

there's the first minute or so of lyrical content that's like listing all this person's faults and evident negative traits, and then the next minute or so sort of recontextualizes it and makes it retroactively unclear whether they were meant as a criticism or as, like, an ode, or even as like a defense of this epic woman. and it sort of keeps flipping between attitudes as to whether the relationship is going to work out, in a way to make you go like "aww... wh- oop- aww"

"honest songwriting" is seeming like just the thing i give to pop punk songs. there's a lot of fun with words especially in ways that facilitate that quick turnaround (turnaround, turnaround) of emotional purpose. lookin at stuff like "a traitor, i'd trade her in a second".

"wan" is this great word for describing a certain kind of attitude/singing style in a lot of country folky stuff (like iris dement from the examples and also neil young) that resembles, like, a persona that keeps coming back to a mild sorrow. i'd draw a parallel to the dripping emo vocals in this as well as the slightly colorful guitar chord that the song centers on. i hope that this is in fact PJ so that he gets some invisible cat come uppance.

narrowly don't think this works for tony hawk and part of that is because it's like too much about this woman

Spoiler: tied seven: wguerts

basement revolver - circles

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: wogurt
submitter: srry -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.9

sometimes with this 'dream pop' millieu it feels like they duck away from any particular emotion at all in service of the medium - beach house kinda feels like that when i listen to them. but this song stays kind of concrete (and also has impressively discernable lyrics!), and it harnesses that feeling of straining against the big tidal wave of sound. i'd say it centers on that feeling of mental strain and sluggishness, but the refrain "do you feel guilty" helps a lot for the cat: it adds a tinge of spite, but it's also just generally rich in emotional content. the big and meaty downward melodic motion has the sound of genuine interest as well as a kind of spiteful self-satisfaction, and also just other stuff that i can't really put a name to.

accidentally re-noticed a wogurts post where they said they liked this song. sorry gurts i wont look at it again.

Spoiler: tied seven: infinity 324

eartheater - below the clavicle

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 0.9
submitter guess: tris
submitter: infiny!!!
medals / ICs:

8.9

there's a mild throughline of hot, dreary despondence that goes through this, especially via that slow and thick guitar. and the harp doesnt really add anything. but the singing wanders around enough to challenge any single emotional interpretation pretty harshly. of course when she goes eagle mode in the chorus there's just some deep hindbrain response that it provokes. its kinda like she's joan of arc summoning me to battle but only for like 1.5 seconds at a time. let's just get physical don't wanna die.

This Is Tris Sound.

Spoiler: nine: skygazer

matmos - lipostudio... and so on

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 0.9
submitter guess: cheetory6
submitter: skygazer..... yeahh.....
medals / ICs:

8.8

the operant pairing of emotions is "confident" and "confused". and at times "gooshy squishy" or sometimes "really goopy sopping wet squish". parts of the sound are all like, "we are going this way." and then 12 other things are like "huh? what? lol"

the first time i heard that line "now i know how it fits", when i was paying pretty close attention to the song, i somehow heard "i know outfits". and then i listened to it a second time kinda barely paying attention and i was like "ohhh.... why did i think it was outfits". now i know it's "how it fits". but i like having that interpretation on file. it's like this one girl that's confident and content in her knowledge about outfits while the building she's in is like squelching and warbling and melting. all the while matmos are trying to do their thing where they dissolve away at the meaning of a phrase by having a bunch of different people repeat it but they shrivel at the power of this one girl that knows outfits and/or how it fits. and so on.

watch this be the entry that gets dropped to produce keely's final score that puts him in 3rd place again

Spoiler: tied ten: chickadee

sigur rós - fjögur píanó

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 0.8
submitter guess: chickadee
submitter: FINALLY -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.7

this is the first of three piano songs to be revealed. this song isn't pure piano - there is in fact some fjögur in this song, more so as the song draws to a close. and i actually think the fjögur is of mixed effectiveness. the strength of this song for the cat mostly comes from the fact that there's this iterative progression that sounds a relatively confident and comfortable motion, like a stroll through a town. and there's little flecks of other things that float along with it, doubt, extra bits of glee, and just other orthogonal thoughts. i think this is particularly strong once there starts to be segments of notes that are meaningfully separate from the chord progression. and that weakens once there's the big bass that emphasizes it, compared to the other synths that that are just a little distractingly muddled. on the other hand i like the squeaking strings, especially at the end when they seem like they're sitting down to ruminate at the end of a walk.

i almost wanna say this is too subtle to be a chickadee entry. sorry that is a little bit catty. anyway i am just gonna guess her again anyway.

Spoiler: tied ten: pink ball

jim croce - time in a bottle

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: pink ball
submitter: ok i got one -0.1 lol sorry
medals / ICs: transition (from happy hour) +0.2

8.7 + 0.2

the language in this is pretty. the guitar & melody alternate between a sort of anxious minor key rumination, and then a galavanting downward motion in a major key, which seem to be in inverse to the content of the lyrics; that contented major key segment goes with the line "but there never seems to be enough time to do the things you wanna do" (although it reveals where the contentedness lies in the next line).

i would vaguely expect that somebody from south america would like the guitar, as well as this guy's mustache. although i wanted to say

Spoiler: twelve: invisibility

ought - the weather song

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: skygazer
submitter: invibility!!!
medals / ICs:

8.5

the singer has this classic lou reedy voice that i would say is like exploited in a fun way. it's sort of like i expect a shallower affect from him and then he bounces around and stretches his voice pretty thin and stuff.

one mild difficulty here is in placing the instrumentation as any particular emotion a lot of the time. it kinda reminds me of a pinball machine.

this sorta suffers from late-in-the-playlist syndrome LOL that's kinda just gonna be a thing with 24 people. but this is good. skygazer guess completely tossed out there for nearly no reason, somehow i didn't find anywhere else to put them.

Spoiler: thirteen: aisa

clairo - closer to you

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 0.6
submitter guess: channel delly bird
submitter: aisa...
medals / ICs:

8.4

clairo generally has a bit of an air of mystery. she has the scent of an industry plant although apparently she released like 70 EPs as claire cottrill in the mid 2010s.

in this song she as well as the listener are trying to figure out what her deal is. in the pre-chorus starting with "shut up", each line is like a new attempt at parsing her state of mind about this person. the statements in the chorus have this melodic motion that makes them feel begrudgingly admitted, like the fact that she wants to get closer to you isn't particularly helpful. and the general scantness of the sound and the autotune of her voice ask you to do a lot of the interpretation.

it's sort of funny at the end how the production track lingers on for like 30 extra seconds - they feel like this bespoke assembly of mellow dance synth and a simple trap drum machine that are supposed to last only as long as they're needed for the song, but then they hang out on their own for a while.

clairo is someone i could pretty easily imagine coming from mali. and i dont mean like oumou sangaré

Spoiler: tied fourteen: cheetory6

amy winehouse - rehab

enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 0.3
submitter guess: aristophanes
submitter: CHEETORY6???? CHEETORY6???? do i have that right...?
medals / ICs:

8.2

if you made a list of the things of all time that make you say "there's a lot to unpack here" this song would be in like the top 8. in case you don't know anglosphere pop culture, the singer died of alcohol poisoning about 5 years after the song was released, although she did go to rehab at some point. it definitely just brings up a bunch of complicated feelings about spectacle and the way we consume celebrity life. i imagine most people feel at least a little bit guilty and/or evil for liking this song.

producer mike ronson:
> And she was like, "He tried to make me go to rehab and I was like, 'Pfft, no no no.'" And the first thing I was like, "ding ding ding ding ding." Like, I mean I'm supposed to be like, "How was that for you?" and all I'm like is, "We've got to go back to the studio."

slightly didn't know how to find an aristophanes song without taylor swift being like "i was happy but i was also sad" but this looks like a reasonable bet.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3az ... 1_500.gifv
https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3az ... 2_500.gifv

Spoiler: tied fourteen: aristophanes

frank watkinson - i'll follow you into the dark, death cab for cutie cover

enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 2.3
unfamiliarity: 0.4
submitter guess: fireisredsir
submitter: aristophanes!!!!!! cool!!!!!
medals / ICs:

8.2

hilariously i have listened to this guy before (in fact he is linked in my top 110 post for the song *death with dignity*. i liked his singing & guitar in that one a little bit more), although i am not sure if i listened to this song. additionally, i've heard the death cab for cutie song a bunch of times. i would cite it as a song that did a lot to convince me about the value of, like, lyrics, when i was a high schooler that almost never listened to anything other than mellow and instrumental electronic music.

for a song that is very clearly about a certain thing, and generally pretty unambiguous and specific in its wording, it's impressive how open to emotional interpretation it is. i guess it depends on how you feel about dying with someone, and broadly accepting the feelings of aging and wearing down. obviously it's thought provoking to hear a 70-something guy sing it contentedly like this.

Spoiler: sixteen: mushshagana

fromjoy ft. iris.exe - seraph

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 1.2
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: biancospino
submitter: MSHA!!!!! DANG!!!!!!!
medals / ICs: mushshagana medal royalties +0.1

8.0+0.1

there's this thing i associate with song contest which is like, metal music that alternates with some other kinda genre mood thing. it's a sort of music i don't encounter on my own very often. i wanna call it "alternative metal". (*reads the existing genre label of like deftones and system of a down and whatever*) O.K. Well whatever. the sections transition very cleanly in a way that makes the key moods of each one spill into the other - the only problem is that those moods don't feel very different even though they are stylistically different. it's sort of like this urgent and despondent, uhh, metallic thing.

the hard and synthy metal + the soft breakcore + the band name + the 2023 release make me wanna say mushshagana. but it's needed elsewhere. i'll go with the person that sent alternative metal in cat 5.

Spoiler: seventeen: toolenduso

the dear hunter - in cauda venenum

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.3
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: danny?
submitter: tool lol
medals / ICs:

7.9

there's a little bit of stink here. i guess the lyrics sort of feel like they just fit into the prog .. hardcore .. post ... core .. situation this is. like it's about war i guess. Ohhh Ohhhhh woOooahh, isn't war so bad..... but then like at the end its like they forgot what they were talking about and start thinking about this chick for like a minute and a half. this is all to say, there's all sorts of swirling, emotive and specific choices that are made in the composition of the song but it kind of gets muddled together by the stench. but it's a fun song.

i think this is danny because of the energy and like the epic cowgirl coda. hilariously this & the alexisonfire song were right at the beginning and both are in a similar genre sort of situation and are gonna end up next to each other in the scores

Spoiler: eighteen: chevre

jay tholen - millenium anthem (2000 new years eve)

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 1.5
unfamiliarity: 0.9
submitter guess: invisibility
submitter: chevy ahhh......
medals / ICs: suburbs +0.1

7.8 + 0.1

i guess the song is about like somebody that hoped the rapture was gonna happen on y2k or something. there's a simple kind of thing for this cat which is a singer's substance which is kind of contrary to the mood of the music, and that's present here, in the kind of bummer, open-ended lyrics acting contrary to the fun and jumpy instrumental. i guess that doesn't do all that much for me, although what does work well is the fact that the idea of "y2k... you let me down" on its own gives a lot of interpretations. i would say that nostalgia doesn't count as an emotion unfortunately because that classic early-internet era cuica thing rly reminds me of the intro to this game "arcade and puzzle games" we had on the computer growing up.

i sort of wanna say this is invisibility even though i guess he's like a post millenium baby. like there's the surface level fact of being disappointed by y2k, as someone who grew up hearing about it and then learning that nothing happened and a bunch of people just kinda had to work overtime to correct the overflow errors and stuff. ok wow i found out like just at the end that this is from the hypnospace outlaw soundtrack. i played a little bit of that game and then dropped it.

Spoiler: nineteen: t3

alexisonfire - this could be anywhere in the world

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: tool?
submitter: t3!
medals / ICs:

7.7

drumming is great. you'd do great by submitting this to the drum cat although i have faith that whoever submitted this has more good drumming up their sleeves. basically all of the catfit points come from the two alternating vocalists, who swing between the kind of idly lamentative guy talking about the cityyy haunted by ghowosts and stuff, vs the manic growl vocalist who says things like juggernaut. at least i assume it's two vocalists but it could just be like alex before and after he isonfire. i also like that the vocalists make it sort of code switch btwn a hard rock / light metal thing and a harder metal thing. in that way it's interesting that there's a kind of narrow but still clear difference in the emotion, but it's not a particularly brilliant multiemotionality i guess.

Spoiler: twenty: ceejayvinoya

toby fox (undertale soundtrack) - bird that carries you over a disproportionately small gap

enjoyment: 5.3 (4.1+/5)
catfit: 1.6
unfamiliarity: 0.4
submitter guess: chevre
submitter: CEEJAYVINOYA LOL switched away from you at the last second
medals / ICs:

7.3

the mood here is somewhat straightforwardly something upbeat and encouraging, but because i like this as a submission i'll spot you the fact that this comes kinda out of nowhere in the middle of the mellow and emotionally ambiguous waterfall area in the game. at least i'm pretty sure.

not 100% sure i remember him liking this soundtrack but i keep coming back to chevre as the submitter just because of the vibe of it. this song is undertale's beware the friendly giant

Spoiler: twenty-one: stinkycheesedan

山崎ハコ - さいなら

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 0.3
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: ceejayvinoya
submitter: stinkycheesedan
medals / ICs:

7.1

i like her singing a lot. but i can't find any way to translate the lyrics (there's one site that seems to have them but they're unselectable) and otherwise idk how to get multi emotions from this. its somber and sometimes loudly somber. there's one moment i go like :O!!!!! when she says "yuri" at the 1:00 mark although idk if that's the word and also yuri seems to be more commonly the word for a lily.

Spoiler: twenty-two: channeldelibird

manchester orchestra - the silence

enjoyment: 4.9 (3.9+/5)
catfit: 0.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: majiffy?
submitter: channeldelibird
medals / ICs:

6.7

the vocalist slightly doesn't work for me, and it's a bit of a blow to the catfit that the song stays pretty stagnant for a long time. like i'm fighting a war of attrition to try to pick out distinct aspects of it. the most effective part is when he's like shouting "it's only a reflection" into the fog at around 4:50, as well as the couple of key changes.

Spoiler: twenty-three: biancospino

elvenking - skywards

enjoyment: 4.6 (3.8/5)
catfit: 1.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: isis????? idk
submitter: biancospino
medals / ICs:

6.6

i unfortunately dont really like that elecrtified acoustic guitar sound that the first half-ish of the song uses. most of the catfit point comes from the litany of lines that make me go "huh! woah". such as "i don't know why i am alive" around the middle. and there's just a bunch of stuff going on.

Spoiler: twenty-four: majiffy

oingo boingo - change (live)

enjoyment: 4.1 (3.5+/5)
catfit: 0.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter guess: T3
submitter: majiffy
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1

5.8 + 0.1

danny elfman is this person that i've occasionally seen evangelized on tumblr but i haven't bothered to listen to him. Um, as far as i remember. anyway this song doesn't do it for me a whole lot. the song seems to interpolate the beatles kind of a lot, and the lyrics don't really communicate anything interesting or have a particularly strong throughline to me which means i just think of my dad playing music for me in the car when i was a kid. which is kind of just one emotion. there's a lot of stuff in the song though. not enough for 9 minutes but still

another thing that really did not help this song is that in the random order i made to listen to the songs, this was followed by like 8 of the best ones LOL

Spoiler: listening order

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyw6sdsJbs8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ2-hwVeO0E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgYfvD2-mDo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INj74XRTXbM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stE1g1llmTI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fi7JyliXcI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2TKqJ2FXGM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtQ4MEMGLo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GldUfwDEQQA&t=265s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avdiI_iYPXE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z51lfE2k7jU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJZUAnCuQuY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbpvKuIWn9k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY7mET5wpGI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt7vQ0JJJBk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q29sOLG8xGE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6ZsSWlcEDo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ui9umU0C2g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zFJZtwY4tM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGA0cx5eyjg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLHnqR-MTFU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sg5M9f8uMs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu77nn6UKao
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Qc1OL5oDc

[schadd_]

I figured I might scoot by uncaught with clipping., but the chances you'll miss me for the rest are zero. Nil. Impossible.

i seem to have unfortunately done the impossible in spite of precisely laying out the reasons i should have guessed your song. hopefully you would be happy enough with my substitute guess (hellbooks' entry)

[schadd_]

trying to put emojis in my libre office calc spreadsheet turns out to be a minefield and its possible that gets discontinued. hilariously it really wants PJ's shelf of emojis to be completely blank. sometimes i have to randomly bold or unbold some of them to make them render (especially the mute one). also when i open the spreadsheet it collapses all of fire's medals into one big pile and i actually wanted that to be in the screenshot but that one fixes itself before i can do anything

[schadd_]

TWO INVISIBLE CATS HAVE CHOSEN TO REVEAL THEMSELVES THIS DAY!

wan cat

: 0.4 pts / 0.1 pt / 0.1 pt / 0.2 pts
for music that embodies a certain kind of continually sorrowful state of mind, reminiscent of certain classics in country/folk, especially via vocal or sometimes instrumental timbre.

suburbs

:

0.1 pt

/ 0.1 pt / 0.1 pt / 0.1 pt / 0.1 pt / 0.0 pts / 0.1 pt

i tried to think of how this could be a regular cat & it didn't really work.

[schadd_]

i'll have cat 6 (forgiveness) reveal on saturday at 2pm central time: (expired on 2023-08-05 15:00:00).

in something like 24 hours i will stop accepting changes to your submission so if you want to do that you should do it today. its just that i worry about something in my spreadsheet getting inaccurate or whatever as time goes on

[schadd_]

i'm disappointed in myself too

[schadd_]

A bit of context for my submission, if you weren't aware of the story behind the song: Jim wrote that song when his wife told him she was pregnant, back on 1970, and was released on 1972 in his debut album "You Don't Mess Around With Jim". A year later, Jim died in a plane crash, eight days before his son's 2nd birthday.

Jim was going to stop touring and stop doing music so he wouldn't be forced to be away too much time from his family. He wrote a letter to his wife saying so, a letter that she received five days after the accident.

The lyrics of this song... I've always felt like he wrote them after dying. "But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them", it's like he knew what was going to happen. It kills me every time I hear it.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmhmmmmhmmmmmm

[schadd_]

um that would just mean that your second lowest score goes to 0

[schadd_]

revealing around this time tomorrow!

[schadd_]

trying out this strategy

Spoiler:

reveal in an hour!

[schadd_]

What is this schadd avatar

이상이

[schadd_]

cat 6 (forgiveness)

Spoiler: 1st: stinkycheesedan

korn - daddy

enjoyment: 6.3 (4.6+/5)
catfit: 2.5
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: stinkycheeseydanny ... (?)
submitter: stinkycheese dan... and yet somehow i put this in the wrong category. ok i'll have to figure out what to do about this. oh it looks like its both categorys.... thats probably my fault (POST REVEAL NOTE it was not my fault.) -0.1
medals / ICs: like killing of a sacred deer +0.9, 1st place +2.0
genre: post-old metal

9.6 + 2.9

So i'm thinking of guessing aisa...

this is specifically about the vocalist jonathan davis being sexually abused by his babysitter and his parents not preventing it (just out of apparent ignorance). which i found by looking at genius lyrics, something i generally dont do.. you'll have to forgive me for wanting context to this

there's a long history of like exploiting "taboo" subjects in metal music, where i would loosely say that the lyrical content is in service of the mood of the music, something that enables the Hardness of the music to go further. and i generally dislike that tendency. even failing the fact that this song is autobiographical, i think that it lacks that exploitative urge - there's not really a way that the singer is aggrandized by this, rather, i would say it represents a kind of large loss of social capital, flagging his music as ugly and the sort of thing liked by weirdos and losers. which is of course not a great or fully accurate way of putting it but you know.

most everything in this song seems to be in service of illustrating the difficulty of healing. instrumentally, i immediately recognized a few aspects that resemble Ugly metal music from closer to the present, like the sub-bassiness and overall suffocating atmosphere of e.g. chat pile. there's the segment where he's crying for a while and the instruments kind of awkwardly continue around him, which i wanna take as a metaphor for the way people kinda wanna ignore the difficult and uncomfortable emotions of an artist in favor of being more entertained by the music.

the song opens with a little bit on forgiveness; the invocation of forgiveness seems secondary to the feeling of the singer managing his own emotional state, but i'm still finding it.

what stands out about the thing at the end is that it's a drawn out argument more than a sharply harmful one. "don't tell me any secrets, be quiet"

Spoiler: 2nd: chevre

100 gecs - i got my tooth removed

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.7
unfamiliarity: 0.6
guess: chevy
submitter: chevy -0.1
medals / ICs: 2nd place +1.5
genre: hyperpost

9.3+1.5

i promise i only slightly like 100 gecs & people just do a good job sending their songs to the walrus. i actually listened to this album a few weeks ago (which i'm not penalizing you for, though i am for the fact they got subbed last time) and this was easily my favorite track on it. so go figure. maybe people get me.

i guess it's just very fun to read into this song an allegory/treatise/whatever on forgiveness. i mean i suspect that the authorial intent is, either partially or majorly, just about the tooth, and even the act of forgiving and reckoning with, the tooth. but, like, it surveys the feelings of how to deal with something that is causing you pain, and the opening bit sets you up to think in those terms.

different lines resemble resigned acceptance ("it doesn't hurt me every day so i just let it get away") as well as active denial ("i might grab the pliers and just rip it out myself :cowbell:") (the cowbell makes me go "eee!")

the chorus really takes on the classic emotional brewing of ska, which is an excited shrugging of the shoulders - the feeling of smoking weed while skateboarding - with the downwardly splaying melody to match.

i think that chev already likes this band and also current year music but even failing those two things it just serves chevre sub realness

Spoiler: tied 3rd: aisa

judee sill - jesus was a cross maker

enjoyment: 6.2 (4.6/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 0.6
guess: skygazie .. ?
submitter: aiza
medals / ICs: 3-way 3rd place +0.7, honest songwriting -0.1

9.0+0.6

ahhhh she's got that classic *woman who releases music under her first and last name from before 2000* voice. kinda sounds like carly simon. i really like her funny waddling melody for lines like "one time i trusted a stranger because i heard his sweet song" which affords them some unplaceable emotional character.

i have to admit to not really getting what she means by "..but jesus was a cross maker." i figure it means something like "his heartbreaker-ness is gonna be the end of him". but it really has that cadence. there's a lot of other stuff where she's like very actively using a lot of language that i don't get exactly but she sells it with her general songwriting deliciousness.

i actually listened to this album almost exactly two years ago, but i'm quite happy to be reminded of this song.

POST REVEAL NOTE: i decided to give this honest songwriting but not until after i gave it to invisibility which means she gets +0.2 and you get -0.1. sorry i don't make the rules.

Spoiler: tied 3rd: aristophanes

dodie - 6/10

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: fireisredsir
submitter: aristophies..
medals / ICs: three-way third +0.7

9.0 + 0.7

if there's forgiveness here i would say it's sort of . . willingly misappropriated to describe the nasty feeling of being unattractive. like it takes that same reassuring mood that several other subs to this have taken, but it applies it to the search of forgiveness for being a "plain girl" - which i think is a knowingly kind of absurd premise. and at the same time i think the song just offers that forgiveness as well as trying to point out that it's unnecessary.

i dont know if i'm doing a good job picking this apart, it's like a song that accomplishes a lot with subtext. or is it subtext, idk if i would even call it that, it's just like drawing on a lot of feelings indirectly. in any case it builds this idea that forgiveness is maybe not what you need, and draws out at how complicated it is.

though of fireisredsir before even listening to this tbh

Spoiler: tied 3rd: invisibility

the softies - charms around your wrist

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 1.0
submitter (unguessed due to spreadsheet problems): invisibilly
medals / ICs: honest songwriting +0.2, three way 3rd +0.7
genre: post-reveal

9.0 + 0.9

i accidentally overwrote this when i was supposed to overwrite one of mushshagana's songs that it revised. and i figured that out after the reveal because i did everything at the last minute. i was like "huh it feels like there's one too many metal songs". it's awkward that i know exactly what numbers i have to give it to make it be third place & i feel fine that tossing her into the pile of 3rd placers is an equitable outcome. the thing is that both of my numbers could go up.

i guess i just really like the confident and kind of unfazed attitude by which this person says "yeah sorry i'm gonna hang on to my grievances here." and throws it into the disappointments pile. the titular "charms around your wrist" analogy is umm. charming. i guess i'm familiar with the disappointments pile. "and it's seauuxx saaad" she says it just like vinny thomas at 0:13

Spoiler: tied 6th: mushshagana

left behind - 1%

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: msha :face_with_peeking_eye:
submitter: so... this has to be invisibility.??? (narrator: this is mushshagana -0.1)
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1
genre: moishe post-one

8.9 + 0.1

ahh, spite.

it starts out seeming to be about one person in particular, and sort of opens up to being about a class. which is interesting. i guess i don't really forgive rich people either. it's sort of easy to listen to this and lose the thread of a specific personal grievance. but it finishes strong.

Spoiler: tied 6th: hellbooks

조월 - 밤밤

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: hellbooks
submitter: its hellbooks -0.1
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1, songs that my keys would like +0.3
genre: boobies video... (alt: post tits) (lol sorry)

8.9 + 0.4

i like the big layered atmosphere in which the singer is meekly singing at the bottom with his hands crossed. something about it gets at a feeling of inevitability or unpreventability, the way you apologize for the rain. there's another entry where i also feel like a funny little low bass phrase makes me think like "ahh ... what can ya do..."

oh all right i'll crack open papago. "완벽하지 않아" / it's not perfect, followed by a couple lines that argue that's not a bad thing, uttered like a tasty little secret.

너를 만지고 싶어 하루종일 / 집 안에서 집 밖에서 매일 같이: songs that my keys would like

Spoiler: tied 8th: pj.

la dispute - king park

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pj
submitter: pj -0.1
medals / ICs:
genre: post-hardcore i guess

8.8

there's some special kinda sincerity in the singer's voice, like he sounds like someone that would have been a jock or whatever but then people liked it when he sung real loud. sorta don't have a lot to say about it... maybe i would say the climax isnt very umm convincing? even though you might not think so from looking at the score

Spoiler: tied 8th: cheetory6

dom mino' ft. panyiolo - shiroi

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: chickadee
submitter: cheeto!
medals / ICs:
genre: dittycore

8.8

the general mood is like comfort and reassurance, i suppose the feeling of being forgiven, or just like a representation of the positive feelings associated with the act. the instrument, which i would conjecture to be a saenghwang, that comes in around the middle, adds a little fog of emotional ambiguity, a faint and misty acknowledgement of the pain someone caused. i guess there's not much to analyze about this song, i'll just say that it works.

reminds me of the little miss sunshine songs chickadee likes.

Spoiler: tied 10th: majiffy

frankie miller - just a song

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: isis
submitter: majifty!
medals / ICs:

8.7

people from the 1970s would come up with some phrase like "you are just a song" and be like awesome this shits gonna be lyrics. and a song title too if i can swing it. it's like forgiveness by way of diminishment. it's fun to think of what meanings are contained in that. i'm gonna listen to you for two minutes and 50 seconds and move on.

i like how it's a big exciting revelation in the way the music presents it.

Spoiler: tied 10th: ceejayvinoya

the postal service - nothing better

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.3
unfamiliarity: 0.4
guess: cheeto 6
submitter: ceejay vinoya!
medals / ICs: paired vocalists +0.5, exactly three minutes and 46 seconds award +0.5
genre: post-pre-frank watkinson

8.7 + 1.0

this is a song that i've listened to a bunch, although not in the last 5+ years. i guess i really like the way it's a dialogue, a songwriting technique that feels decreasingly common. i get a big spark of joy and memory from "i feel i must interject here" [big dramatic orchestra swell but it's low in the mix] and her verse is just written very nicely. it's a little bit sitcom-y, there's never a particularly strong feeling that some genuine grievance is present, but i like that it has a sappy romantic guy asking for a second chance and the answer is just like "lol...!!! no!" and she resoundingly gets the last word. it feels very singsongy and yet also breaking with the typical logic of the sort of song it presents as.

Spoiler: 12th: channeldelibird

gang of youths - brothers

enjoyment: 5.0 (4.0/5)
catfit: 2.5
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: i guess i didn't guess invisibility
submitter: channel db!
medals / ICs:

8.5

there isn't a whole lot of magic to the songwriting and i think it might have been nice to cleave off maybe a minute and a half at the end (i.e. right before "lalalalalala"). but it exploits the strophic form that insists that there's some sort of emotional thread between all these verses that have the same melody. like when you iterate on the melody with all these little story fragments it places them as one single answer to "how does your family feel about your dad" which is "it's complicated". i like the low shimmer in his voice at the start of a few phrases, reminds me of the song blurred view

Spoiler: tied 13th: fireisredsir

knifeplay - lover

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 1.6
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: wgeurts
submitter: fireisredsir... yeah sorry about the lyrics
medals / ICs:
genre: post-discernability

8.4

one of several songs where i'll claim that it just doesn't have lyrics. i see that they are listed on bandcamp. great! thanks for publishing a little poem alongside your instrumental song that happens to have vocals as an instrument. one shining exception is the section with "you're an inhumane bunch of bastards and bitches and you're gonna get your asses nuked in the end." contrast that with the thing that's actually effective for me in conjuring forgiveness which is that repeating phrase with sudden low bass at "B... A#...", like the feeling of a begrudging acceptance, a forgiveness with terms and conditions. "ugh.. ok..". the song takes a few moments to establish that layered feeling and then just turns around on it with the vocal sample thats like "actually never mind it's all gonna burn to the ground lol." i enjoy that.

Spoiler: tied 13th: t3

tool - the grudge

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 1.5
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: majifty
submitter: t3
medals / ICs:

8.4

heard the 5/4 time situation and was like oh i guess this is the tool song. for a while i was like "why is this song in five quarter time. It doesnt have to be" like one of those guys that gets really angry at Diverse Characters in video games. but the breakdown (?) (just throwing that word out) at about 4 minutes made me go like Oh this is good and worthwhile.

man it is... so hard to choose to pay attention to the lyrics to this. sorry. thats kinda the tradeoff you take by sending an 8:39 song. mostly there's a handful of lines i'll latch onto and be like "yup that makes sense". but it's a good song. kind of hoping the submitter will just be happy that i listened to it all the way (and several times to boot!). "let go.. let go.." ok i thought we were holding onto the grudge. Which one is it.

Spoiler: 15th: biancospino

diablo swing orchestra - exit strategy of a wrecking ball

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1.8
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: t3
submitter: bianco spinho
medals / ICs:
genre: pre-megalovania!

8.3

diablo swing orchestra is like a walrus staple on mafia universe. i'd say their whole symphonic deal is kept in check for this song which is good. i kinda like those farty little horns. we're gonna have a bunch of metal songs that take the Not Forgiving route. there's something really wicked and sensual about that "this time you're coming cleeeean..." line, i guess it's basically expressing the joy taken in riding a conflict to its deepest conclusion.

Spoiler: 16th: isis

wicked (broadway 2003) - for good

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 1.9
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: aisa
submitter: aisis!
medals / ICs:

8.2

imagining one of the many huge fans of musicals that apparently exist, getting to the part of this song where she's like "i ask forgiveness" and being like Ok awesome sending this. although that line doesn't ... really establish the forgiveness feeling so much (and especially with that chaser "for all the things you blame me for" lol). i (and realistically, the submitter) see this more aptly as a moment where two people tally up the reasons they have to respect each other, and later choose to channel that into forgiving each other. it's kind of muddled with musical stuff, like if you wanna make three acts worth of stuff you have to belabor the point a lot with this "ohh you came into my life... and its changed forever... ohh.." business. ooh it has that stinky little kate bush bass.

taking 0.1 unfamiliarity points bc idina menzel was in uncut gems

Spoiler: tied 17th: toolenduso

mae - the fisherman's song

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 1.3
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: toolenduso
submitter: yeag -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.1

i guess i like the guitar. which i guess is the thing to like. And the drums. maybe generally speaking, i appreciate the big adventurous movement and through-composedness. this is the first of two eight minute songs that just really struggle to keep me reeling in the thematic content, so to speak. vaguely the mood is there, but it's just like, i'm sitting listening to him talk about this guy and the boat and some stuff about love and whatever and it's just hard to get there. the chorus seeks the feeling of being forgiven but it i'm just not feeling it tie into the music very well i guess.

when i saw the album cover i think i recognize this from tool's top 100 list and maybe even like the top of it... ourgh....

POST REVEAL: read what he says about it here!

Spoiler: (tied 17th: illusory mushshagana)

the gloom in the corner ft monica strut - black rot

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: biancospino?
submitter: msha darn.... this was closely my second choice...
medals / ICs:

8.1

i like that funny little difference in the wording "watch me bleed to those i love" vs. "bleed *for* those i love". at least that's what it sounds like. what it sounds like is the person (people i guess) arguing against the idea of being irredemable. it's hard to get a whole idea out of the songwriting, which is kind of disjointed and occasionally gets eaten up by vocals that are hard to pick up in the mix or done in a kind of indistinguishable scream. i'm not much of a lyrics reader unfortunately. good guitar tone. i like the name monica strut.

Spoiler: tied 17th: infinity 324

björk - its not up to you

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: -0.1
guess: pink ball
submitter: oh infinity duh
medals / ICs:
genre: post-post (and post-homogenic)

8.1

unfortunately you didnt send this to one of those weirdos that hasnt listened to everything from bjork. i know about this song and maybe this album being about divorce and stuff. i would say that doesn't really soak into the lyrical content directly. the thing about bjork is that like her songs are always about something but they're also bjork stuff. i'm listening to this song and thinking "ok i see your angle... but i'm fishing the forgiveness out of a shallow lake of bjork stuff."

regardless, the core ideas are there and the chorus does a great job. a lot of time is spent hemming and hawing, as well as gurgling and incubating. the title phrase (and the variations on it) argue about the limited capacity we have to absolve each other, and you could kind of take the big bouncy feeling of the phrase to be either said spitefully to a partner seeking validation they can't have, or said reassuringly to someone trying a bit too hard.

feeling pink ball here even though there's like 6000 people that could have submitted this.

Spoiler: 19th: skygazer

trey wellington band - pursuit of happiness (kid cudi cover)

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.5
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: aristophanes. not letting another one get past me
submitter: skygazer????? ok no problem
medals / ICs: post-pursuit of happiness by kid cudi

7.9

forgiveness serves as a fun little guiding idea for how to read the song, but it's hard to find it other than as like a little aftertaste and/or faint mood of some of the lyrics. maybe i would articulate it as "anything bad that happens to me is forgiven by the fact that i sought it all out in the pursuit of happiness"; it resonates in that way especially in that bittersweet "i'll be fine once i get it, i'll be good" line which has some bonus vocal harmony compared to the original (i think). but idk, the actual act of forgiving is more or less missing.

good instrumentalism. i haven't listened to the original in a while but there is now this strict minimum of 4.3/5 for how much i have to like it.

Spoiler: 20th: chickadee

the decemberists - apology song

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.3
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: cdb?
submitter: chickadee ah dang... dang...
medals / ICs:

7.8

the classic male indie girl. the way you know what you're in for as soon as he's like i'm really sorry stevunnn. i like the vocal harmony. it doesn't reeeally get at the forgiveness aspect of the apology paradigm. ok i seem to be losing my ability to say anything normally. sorry we're touching on a certain aspect of the late-in-the-list song paradigm.

Spoiler: 21st: wgeurts

joshua hyslop - everything unsaid

enjoyment: 4.9 (3.9+/5)
catfit: 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: infinity also because i somehow havent written the myet
submitter: ahh.... gurts
medals / ICs:
genre: post-office

7.6

this is specifically an act of apologizing which is, you know, the counterpart to forgiving. he mentions forgiveness towards the end and talks about it a little bit. he drops the f bomb so to speak. and that's all the song is, which i admire a little bit, but i guess i would say there's not much this song accomplishes by being a song instead of a handwritten letter. the guitar is pretty good.

Spoiler: 22nd: tris

patty griffin - forgiveness

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 1.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: throwing out tris bc i didnt guess her idky why
submitter: ok awesome -0.1 wait sorry
medals / ICs:
genre: singer/songwriter (where the slash is pronounced as "or")

7.4

if not for the name of the song and the three moments where she says it i would struggle to pull the idea of forgiveness out of this song, or really almost anything. she gets really busy with them metaphors. i can sort of see how the lyrics trace out a protracted argument and the feeling of trying to come out ahead of it. and it's kind of there in the guitar. it just feels like a lot of work to get there and not a whole lot of insight i guess.

Spoiler: 23rd: pink ball

eminem ft. nate ruess - headlights

enjoyment: 4.1 (3.5+/5)
catfit: 1.6
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: ceejayvinoya
submitter: pink bink sorry
medals / ICs:

6.5

the problem is how i just don't really like eminem. most of the enjoyment comes from the stinky little piano which has its charm, and the choruses are kind of good. the subject matter is fairly apt, like he's talking about the whole deal with his mom and whatever. it's funny that eminem eventually just kinda did this angry frantic delivery with like everything, because it ought to have a certain candor for this song and it sort of does, like he's angrily reckoning with the situation his mom put him in, but it also doesn't help that thats just his normal voice

Spoiler: 24th: deathrowkitty

24th within temptation - forgiven

enjoyment: 3.8 (3.4/5)
catfit: 1.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: deathrowkitty...........?
submitter: srry -0.1
medals / ICs:
genre:

6.1

there's a sort of ..... like ..... modern drama pop piano that i rarely seem to like. its hard to place what the key trait is, but there's a very simple and sorrowful and maybe overwrought piano as well as general instrumental accompaniment that feels like it's actively trying to convince me there's nothing really unique or noteworthy about this song. a bunch of the final fantasy songs from last walrus were like that. lol. i have to look up the lyrics to it as a supplement bc i keep noticing that i wasn't paying attention to them. yeah this is about forgiveness but none of the catfit points come from this really resonating with me. But her voice is good. sorry about my cruelness

Spoiler: listening order (very approximately...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvdV3W8Q1yU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YgpLL-0uAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rhb5wTCero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHnfYPiITDA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQZodBV39F4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNC4GWJwtI4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oCusLyAAy4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xw39KMMvQU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryfCwiwNTYQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNVBRu1cvIQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTAesI73E1U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em82TiCfggg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8YMfgu92hQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8BvLdEWXuY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BXyEUOuNds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEkxDCOK_xg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOkipeGjvvM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZb_OWlTYps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnRvgWvKZZI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiFLQklABUg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EloEMyAWXA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XajYqrPwQkw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvUqamxdMx0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpKaFSJ93wo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhhIU8NLhcs

[schadd_]

• this category was the last one i came up with and i would say i was in a bit of a delirium during most of the scoring process... so you'll have to forgive me for some under-reasoned results. like if your song got a weird score you can be like "oh scores were weird this time." granted, there was a pretty strong tendency towards the mean
  
• stinkycheesedan narrowly misses the panzerjager award by virtue of having gotten 20th last time. also, there are two people that may laugh in delight upon noticing that danny has the most enjoyment points
  
• i accidentally pasted over invisibility's song with a revision from mushshagana, so i listened to it and scored it after the reveal. the song i scored at 6th place is the correct one and the 17th place one is the other one.... Isnt that right mushshagana.....
  
• aisa tragically stands as the one with the most points lost from unfamiliarity at 1.6, suffering from sending me songs that i already liked but mostly forgot about...

[schadd_]

i'm taking next weekend off, so cat 3 will show in (expired on 2023-08-19 17:00:00), at 5pm central time on august 19th. i kind of expect to give some low catfit scores.

[schadd_]

TWO INVISIBLE CATS HAVE CHOSEN TO REVEAL THEMSELVES THIS DAY!

like killing of a sacred deer

:

0.9 pts

/ -0.9 pts / 0.9 pts / 1.0 pts
this is approximately my favorite movie. while the lyrical content of the korn song is tangentially related to the movie, i felt the commonalities lie in how the movie tries to thoroughly depict certain emotional responses and maladaptive traits past the point of being comfortable, or reflecting favorably on the filmmakers and viewers. i guess it is not easy to explain well.

songs that my keys would like

:

0.3 pts

/ 0.7 pts / 0.3 pts
original inspiration is i won't be found

[schadd_]

Look. I actually really think that Black Rot is a better option here. It's literally about both forgiving someone and not forgiving someone else, who just kind of happen to share a body. I also think that Gloom is the better band musically!

yes, i'm implicitly extending you the right to be the captain that goes down with the ship & double down on the gloom in the corner song. in spite of the big gap in placing, it only ends up being a 0.9 point difference. also i would like it to be noted in the ledger that i guessed the left behind song correctly and i bounced back and forth between that one and gloom on the corner

[schadd_]

noted

[schadd_]

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ryyh ... ykp17t.mp4 <- i would give this like a 1.9/3

[schadd_]

krabi

by václav mergl

[schadd_]

good heavens i'll get right on it

[schadd_]

tomorrow at 5pm central! 22 hours and 52 minutes from now !!!

[schadd_]

Spoiler:

reveal in a hour !

[schadd_]

cat 3: novel musicianship

Spoiler: 1st place: PJ

the number twelve looks like you - grandfather

enjoyment: 6.5 (4.7+/5)
catfit: 2.6
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: i want this to be msha so bad....
submitter: pj lol
medals / ICs: 1st place +2.0; MUSHSHAGANA award +0.4

10.1 + 2.4

here's the other Rhythmically Interesting Metal Song.

i could flippantly be like "this is jazz metal" but i will choose not to say that. this song also exploits that continuous kick drum thing, although i simply think this song does it more interestingly, using it alongside snare hits to strongly call your attention to a jagged and irregular rhythmic structure... Which is like exploiting metal for jazz purposes. i would say the rhythm of this song is just very, like, studious, similar to jjaksoe in that it just insists on getting some new sort of thing done every few moments.

another Metal Thing this song exploits is the ability to heighten and lower the energy very quickly, which it often does in this jerking-like motion, like the way a fishing pole will yank you around when you're reeling in a big one. This has been another episode of *barely-insightful analogies to a much less interesting subject*... signing off.

i like the vocalist, who also adds to the quick starting and stopping feeling with that thing where they alternate between a squawk and a screech multiple times within a phrase, and also have both styles multitracked at points. they sound like a little grunt enemy in a video game that you're like attacking but then hiding and so it keeps going aggressive but then back to normal. secret bonus episode... signing off.

i like the rhythm of this in general including other aspects not mentioned. i guess theres just a lot of stuff that happens very quickly. this is another one thats like soooo close to being grand slammable but i think that you can deal with just having the mushshagana medal

Spoiler: 2nd place: channel delly bird

fulu miziki music warriors - tikanga

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.6
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: enlisting wgeurts
submitter: channel delly
medals / ICs: 2nd place +1.5, not on spotify!! + 0.1

9.6 + 1.6

i guess the construction of the song is generally pretty familiar but yeah like every individual instrument sounds first of all really good and second of all generally pretty unfamiliar to western music. i'd speculate that this isn't based on a 12 tone tuning system (cant help but notice the metallophone thingy with 7 spokes) and well a 7 tone tuning definitely isn't "novel" (like it probably predates 12 tone by a millenium or something idk) but you know

mostly what stands out is the vocalists, it feels like harmony isn't the right word to describe a lot of the phrases because it often sounds like they're interpreting the phrase differently while singing simultaneously. and of course there's that lead vocalist. when i watched the video on mute i was like "yup i know her. lol." i've heard, like, "scream vocals" plenty of course, but there's a way she belts things out that preserves the sound of vocal strain and exertion, which some folk singers kinda do but the only real point of comparison i have for that would be petrona martinez. anyway this is good.

Spoiler: 3rd: pink ball

nano stern - carnivalito del ciempéps

enjoyment: 6.2 (4.6/5)
catfit: 2.3
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: bink ball
submitter: bink paul -0.1
medals / ICs: 3rd place +1.2

9.4 + 1.2

i guess i would call this impressively multi-stylistic. the one main sticking point of brilliantness for me is how it has that slight off-kilter rhythm that i think happens sometimes in samba, like a constant heart hiccup. usually when i hear that i would expect it to be in a smaller performing group that is more able to intuitively pick up on what each other is doing, but this sounds like very elaborately composed. it's very cool

in keeping with that feeling of imbalance there's this very emphatic moment where he's like "le le le Le le le" (which i think is like a secondary dominant or something) which is like this big dramatic overextension, it feels like a big swinging structure that tips just a little too far and catches itself every time.

idk this is just like obviously very good. plenty of the instrumentation sounds like things i've heard before but there is also a lot of it.

Spoiler: 4th place: chevre

actress & the london contemporary orchestra - voodoo posse, chronic illusion

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 2.5
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: channel delly
submitter: chevy!!!
medals / ICs: 4th place :nazar: +0.9

9.3 + 0.9

i guess the idea is that it's this fun clubby sort of song, but it's comprised of all the chaff noise an orchestra can make, the crunkling and squeaking of strings, like how they take all the gross and nearly discardable parts of meat to make hot dogs and chicken nuggets. overall i would say this strong is constructed cleverly and performed well -- it carves out a lot of moments to indulge in that string grinding sound, and i think it takes a lot of practice to do that really loudly and tightly without, like, squeaking and squawking in a way that sounds unfocused and unintentional. all the while, a drum beat i would describe as confident and charismatic guides the thing forward.

i'd contrast this with a few other high scoring entries by noting that it repeats itself a lot, which has a way of making something feel familiar and canonical in spite of having plenty of novel ideas. and i start to feel that around 2/3 of the way through, like, "yeah i get this". although around that time it does that harp pattern that lingers on a minor second interval, sort of like a fat-finger sound which is repeated very carefully and evenly. i guess i just like the song's commitment to rejecting a typical feeling of musical resolution.

in what is maybe my most cruel 0.9 unfamiliarity points yet, i'm subtracting the 0.1 because this person is a producer (who is listed as an artist) in a single song by inga copeland which has often made me think "i should check out something actress did" and by prompting me to finally do so after like 4 years, You have been punished

Spoiler: 5th (i added 0.1 point): aisa

the hermes experiment (composed by emily hall) - i am happy living simply

enjoyment: 6.4 (4.7/5)
catfit: 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: triz....
submitter: aisa
medals / ICs: like beloved +0.3

9.1 + 0.3

i guess that however you would describe the way this person is using this like classical operatic voice, it makes for a pretty new emotional output. it's hard to call any aspect of the music, like, completely novel, but idk its a very fresh and confident idea whatever it is.

today (of the reveal) i listened to it in the morning and then helped my family with moving & i found myself continually thinking Ïike a qloqk... or a calendar... (post-reveal note: i once again said like a qlock or a calendeur as i was going down to pour the rest of my smoothie)

it's very nice. i think it would be like an award winningly good paired song with cheeto's cat 5 winning song

post reveal: i wanted to give this some sort of invisible cat. lol. i have an invisible cat for that which is "je ne sais chat" when i wanna give it a cat but i don't have one for it. instead i'm giving this the beloved (by toni morrison) cat, in that you can take a kind of sad undertone to this song (me when the song literally says "i am happy") and read it into how sethe kind of loses the ability to aspire or live for her own sake. it's kind of tenuous but that's also a cat i think i would struggle to give to almost any song lol

Spoiler: tied 6th: chickadee

thao & the get down stay down - phenom

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: aisa
submitter: chicky dee
medals / ICs:

9.0

on top of a very conventional rock foundation, with the bass doing a pedal tone for like the whole song and the drums mostly following suit, the singer carves out some sort of cool anti-harmonic thing. sorry i derive no joy from having a point of comparison but it kinda reminds me of giacinto scelsi. (WHO i dont listen to very often...!). i lied i derive some joy from it. ANYWAY

sort of hard to describe what is exactly going on here - a confidently dissonant and maybe like microtonal anthem belts out in the chorus of "i am a known phenomenon", as if directly stating that whatever the harmonic identity of this is, it's exactly the correct and intentional one. it's like a mean girl who's also goth & she's like "on wednesdays we wear all black but with navy blue eyeliner and we also shave the middle of our hair off" and you immediately realize that if you don't do that it makes you the weird one. sorry this isn't the first or the last of today's many detestable analogies

anyway another part of the scelsi comparison is that there's a very constant and engaging, like, harmonic movement of some kind but it also doesn't reach a destination. i associate this with the act of ruminating on something for a while, which i guess is just funny with the subject matter of this song.

this islike an extremely hellbookable song. she's told me about thao 69 times. i seem to have never successfully listened to this person.

Spoiler: tied 6th: fireisredsir

julia holter - turn the light on

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: infinity 381
submitter: fire red sir
medals / ICs:

9.0

maybe you would call this "maximalist ambient", there's a lot of noises in it but they all kind of converge into an indistinct harmonic character. i say indistinct although the moments of distinction are what make this really good, there's that string-like sound that starts to peel out of the general noise about halfway through and it feels like it's like really insistent about something. and then it starts twirling around and arpeggiating and whatever.

the whole thing accompanies her voice well, there's a celestial sort of feeling of bending and warping, like she's getting pulled in by a black hole

WOW this is an album starter ok that's cool. for a while i assumed it was like, sending me this song is like just showing me the end of 2001 a space odyssey. ok that's awesome. i've had my sights on this artist a little bit for a while and i'm glad i didn't get like spoiled for this album

otherwise sort of don't know what comments to make. good song. kinda speaks for itself.

Spoiler: tied 6th: biancospino

merzbow, genesis p-orridge - kreeme horn

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: cheeto
submitter: byanco spino
medals / ICs: laugh out loud from reading the song/artist award +1.1; transition (from swallowing the rabbit whole) +0.4

9.0 + 1.5

ok so these people just collaborated because they're both in the copypasta. right? and next you're gonna tell me that boredoms and gerogerigerige and coil are like executive producers? internet music all star match? it may happen that i've listened to something like 3 albums with merzbow in them and one from throbbing gristle (genesis p-orridge's band).

in any case i assume its mr. akita thats mostly on the production side here. it's funny that he does like this raging and misanthropic sounding noise music and is also really good at collaborating with people. the big thing that sticks out to me is that big octavey bass thing which has a sonic character that seems to want to vibrate and change at a pace that is separate from the rhythm & the notes it's being forced into, which is a sort of noise thing i've heard a few times but not often and i always like it.

i unfortunately have a bunch of experience with like heavily vocoded mysterious and evil voices, from listening to boards of canada (et al.) but GP-O definitely does something interesting with it. like no i'm sorry i don't know the kreeme horne actually.

Spoiler: 9th place: mushshagana

sculptured - taking my body apart

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: tool
submitter: msha...!
medals / ICs:

8.9

this song as well as one other winning metal submission gets its kicks from the, well, the kick drum. in a sense. there's this thing in metal where you kind of want every moment in the song to have an injection of Hardness, which a lot of the time comes in the form of having the drummer mash on the kick drum every 16th note or whatever. sometimes you have them do that nonstop for 12 minutes and then put them barely audible in the mix; this is called "atmospheric black metal" (which i say with scorn and impudence).

this song takes that drumming tendency (and other features of the rhythmic character of metal) and exploits it to do something weird and interesting. theres some kinda bridge thing where they're like "you'll find the terms of god..." and i imagine sheet music for this having a "6/8" marking followed by "Enter The Fuck Tunnel". and of course it exits the fuck tunnel in equally interesting ways that feel suddenly very off-kilter but also structurally sound.

other than the rhythm i would say this mostly isn't breaking new ground although it is quite good. and there's something cool that happens towards the end.

taking 0.1 point off because i watched possession a few months ago. while i liked the pair of guys from the sample a lot, the correct person to put in would be isabelle adjani, which of course the metal guys aren't gonna do just like how kanye west wanted to take nicki minaj's verse out of monster. alternately you can view that 0.1 point as the way i'm penalizing the extended segment of the song that completely does away with the rhythmic intrigue of the song (in which the possession sample can be seen as a way to give me a little treat as an apology for the boringness of that part).

Spoiler: 10th place: toolenduso

maps and atlases - every place is a house

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: PJ
submitter: toolz
medals / ICs:

8.7

the guy kinda sounds like maroon 5. although there's a funny sound of the vocal harmonies he does because his voice kinda doesn't, like, blend with itself. But i mean that in a good way.

yeah there is a lot of cool rhythmic stuff and like goofy fast mashing on the guitar. It is cool. it doesnt really make the feeling that anything particularly new is happening in the song but it's very neat. i like how there's often like slight misalignments in the timing of a lot of guitar notes, it feels like the pattern-breaking movements of animals in a pond. this is a good song. great example of the many submissions where it's like fairly-cool-musicianship but mostly just a cool song. imean the musicianship is cool too. it also has the kick drum mashing intrigue of a couple other songs but with that particular technique it doesn't make a lot of, like, rhythmic intrigue. idk with the whole feeling of the song it feels hard to justify a middling catfit but if i zoom in on any moment it's kinda just like "yeah that sounds like rhythm"

Spoiler: 11th place: stinkycheesedan

code orange - swallowing the rabbit whole

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 1.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: biancospino
submitter: stinky cheese dan baby!
medals / ICs: transition (into kreme horn) +0.4

8.6 + 0.4

there's a great buildup in the first 40 seconds that like very slightly doesnt deliver.

the particularly interesting things in this are that goofy, like, curved delivery of the vocals at times, the sporadic shredding and squeaking sound of the guitar, that thing where it just stops for a second in the middle (although i can do that by accidentally covering my bluetooth earbuds for a second), occasional spontaneous and jagged rhythms, and overall a lot of extra production work and layering and stuff, etc

this one feels like it also has a large risk of being mushshagana which is like compelling me to give it a fair shake. Lol. i don't think the general construction of the song or the particular emotions of it are earth shatteringly new but there's plenty of cool material

Spoiler: tied 12th place: t3

system of a down - psycho

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 0.5
guess: t3
submitter: yex -0.1
medals / ICs: exactly 3 minutes and 46 seconds award -0.6

8.4 - 0.6

ok so... shortly after i opened the walrus thread i posted:
> if somebody submitted system of a down shimmy to thw novel musicianship cat i woyld assume it was about the vocals and give it $100 points
in the low effort posting thread. the submitter seems to have missed and sent the one two tracks later in the album. my current projection is that this is a complete coincidence as i am guessing t3 who famously doesnt have speakeasy access.

in any case, this song also serves to showcase the way serj tankian, like, spends all of each song trying to entertain you with a bunch of different approaches. it's sort of like if a proverbial morning talk radio host did metal vocals. except the thing about it is that he like barely seems to be a metal vocalist in particular a lot of the time he's just this guy thats saying a lot of stuff in funny voices. the central phrase "psycho groupie cocaine crazy" blurs the line between a coherent clause ("from the time you were a psycho groupie [who was] cocaine crazy") and some kinda jump rope rhyme for grownups.

majiffy is probably gonna link a nine minute song that runs counter to this claim but i just feel like his vocals are very singular, not relying on any particular trick to be engaging for the whole unfortunate 3 minute and 46 second runtime. sorry jiffy i'm not gonna listen to the song you will have linked at least until the end of the walrus bc i already have so much homework.

everything other than the vocals is like 100% standard fare metal from the metal store

Spoiler: tied 12th: hellbooks

bela - jjaksoe

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 1.9
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: hellbooks
submitter: yeag -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.4

i have like no memory of this song but apparently listened to it earlier in the year from a big list of hellbooks songs so uh that's something

i guess i've listened to like a lot of music thats centered on you know Computer Stuff. and Synths. however, when you are making music like that there is an eternal temptation to do a bunch of copy pasting, asking your Computer to spit out a bit more of the same to make the good part last longer or whatever. and that impulse seems to be almost completely missing here, it's like they're going to the trouble of coming up with a new slightly different but novel rhythmic idea every 10 seconds. and the same sort of goes for the general coloration of the synth stuff. And i like the spaciousness of the beginning segment

Spoiler: tied 12th: invisibilty

renaissance sound - derek's journey

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 1.5
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess:
submitter: invisibility (unguessed)
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1, paired vocalists +0.4

8.4 + 0.5

there's a slightly interesting suite of instruments, the vocalists pair with each other oddly but effectively, the drummer is good and cool, but as a whole idk the song is just kinda normal. i like the repeating bass lick but like repeating bass licks are sooooo normal songcore. and even a repeating bass lick that is friends with a vibraphone pattern, is still normalcore for the general jazz-inspired oeuvre, even if it is very good and cool. this song is cool

i did the mushshagana copy paste error with this one too. so invisibility is let on through

Spoiler: 15th: aristophanes

chance the rapper - same drugs

enjoyment: 6.2 (4.6/5)
catfit: 1.4
unfamiliarity: 0.6
guess: chickadee
submitter: arstophanes!!!
medals / ICs: honest songwriting +0.8

8.2 + 0.8

chance's voice is so cute. one time i was listening to it and there was a rabbit that ran in front of me and i thought "chance the rapper is like that rabbit." honestly i'm giving like 0.1 catfit point for that or maybe more

i would say this song is a hard sell for this cat in that soul music is idk like more than a century old or something. it's like a historical category. but this song racks up a lot of neat production stuff and otherwise cool songwriting ideas. i like how he does the "we dont do the we dont do the same drugs" thing that's like the chopped and screwed style being reified into an intentional way that he sings (i think, maybe its post production). i like the errant drum and string samples that kinda stick out as old and goofy. i like the round singing

i listened to this album like 4 years ago or more and i vaguely remembered this song. it's very good

Spoiler: 16th place: wogurts

black midi - sugar/tzu

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: gonna kinda spuriously recruit fireisredsir for this
submitter: wogurt!
medals / ICs:

8.1

i should have known someone would submit black country new road. Sorry i mean king gizzard lizard wizard. I mean swans I mean

have to admit to like automatically rolling my eyes at this band in spite of never having listened to it. i also don't really like the vocalist and think that they're not saying anything interesting. but it's hard not to be swept along for the rest of the fun

one big source of catfit points is that weird ass guitar arpeggio thing which reminds me of the attached tumblr post

Spoiler: 17th place: skygazer

mark applebaum - 3 unlikely corporate sponsorships: no.1, nestle

enjoyment: 5.3 (4.1+/5)
catfit: 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: chev
submitter: skygazer...!!!!
medals / ICs:

8.0

the second time i listened to it i literally specifically remembered half of a fig newton (the other half of a fig newton) and yet i still laughed at it. yes i suppose this has to be acknowledged as dissimilar to what i usually listen to (except for like steve reich). but the trouble is that i don't see this as very musically skilled, although it did grow on me as such.

a lot of it is kind of rhythmically uncreative, with the shining exceptions in how he enunciates the trailing consonants in some words like "dip", so that it sounds like "di di :bubbles: :bubbles:." i guess the general enunciation is really good, like this is generally better-than-audiobook grade speaking. and it just sounds like it was produced with a lot of care, like there's left-ear and right-ear panning and stuff.

Spoiler: tied 18th place: infinity

a million dead birds laughing - xen

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: stinkycheese dan ...?
submitter: infiny was the extra metal submitter ok lol cool
medals / ICs:

7.7

there was an F ton of metal songs that got sent this time and this one really struggles to stand out i guess. there's a few things i talk about with the higher scoring songs about the way they leverage the general rhythmic interestingness of metal, and i think this song kinda does that but i also think that i'm like primed to pay attention to that because the other songs uhh do it better. i'd say this song has a lot of the bonus bits of flair that i always like to hear in metal, especially in the guitar and drums, but idk as a whole it doesn't blow me away or whatever. there's an interesting sorta-microtonal thing in that chorus "masters keep falling eclipse the wooooorld".

Spoiler: tied 18th place: deathrowkitty

p.d.q. back - prelude to einstein on the fritz

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1.1
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: skygazeur
submitter: ohhhh drk lol
medals / ICs:

7.7

this got a few laughs out of me. the silvagunner philharmonic orchestra plays phillip glass. generally my favorite part is the circus sounds in the middle. this one is somber so it's alright to cry.

the thing is that i've listened to a you know medium amount of phillip glass. most of the novel musicianship goodies come from the way the arrangement and stuff interrogates the Phillip Glass Emotion, moments like the ending of the three stooges theme where the big last three notes triumphantly fade back onto the repeating string pattern. and several other things that are like simple musical jokes that have the full semblance of being "played straight".

if this is in fact gazer i admire the fact that they presumably have a big pool of like university art music to draw from and just forsook all of it in favor of this thing which is mostly just funny

Spoiler: 20th place: ceejayvinoya

wintergatan - marble machine

enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 0.9
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: arphistopheleps
submitter: ceejayvinoya !
medals / ICs: songs my keys would like :keys: +0.7

7.4 + 0.7

aristophanes is like the patron saint of this genre of "songs that are actually mostly a cool video"

i'd say the whole marble situation has only incidental effects on the musicality of the song, it's sort of like an animusic situation where it's set up to make just like a regular sounding song that mostly hides the marbleness from the output sound. before i watched the video on mute i figured that the bass and guitar were just like separate and i thought the actual setup was cool.

really the thing that motivates the points is the actual sound of the marbles rattling around. there's that moment in the middle which is like just the metallophone and the cranking and rattling sounds which actually has a little bit of bonus emotionality.

i think that my keys would appreciate the metallic clattering sounds, i imagine its like folk music for them

Spoiler: tied 21st place: cheetory6

electronicos fantasticos - 電磁祭囃子 in neo tokyo

enjoyment: 5.2 (4.1/5)
catfit: 1.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: ceejayvinoya
submitter: cheetory 6 ..! oh how the champions fall
medals / ICs:

7.2

one of two songs where it seems like there's some bizarre instrument situation they have that seems cool visually at least but i guess i don't feel like there's some particularly brilliant skill being shown off, or even that the little TV screen thingys make for novel music techniques in spite of the apparent weirdness and coolness. if i treat this just as a song and not like a visual demo, it's kind of straightforward as to how it's written and constructed although there's some cool pitch stuff and overall wiggidy wobbliness.

Spoiler: tied 21nd place: isis

cusco - flying condor

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 0.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: isis
submitter: isis -.1
medals / ICs:

7.2

ehm, a lot of the stuff here seems to be pretty straightforward unfortunately. like it sounds like it's a bunch of the instruments in a household synth keyboard. i like it though. i would say it has like a lot of the early-pop-synth style charm of kate bush's music even though it's from 1991 interestingly. i think i've described a "stinky kate bush bass" for another submission and this definitely has that. it could be a very nice theme song for a pbs documentary about science.

i found out by accident that all of the youtube comments seem to be korean. i guess theres nothing to make of that really.

Spoiler: 23rd place: tris

pierre-laurent aimard (composed by györgy ligeti) - musica ricerata, no. 1 sostenuto

enjoyment: 4.5 (3.7+/5)
catfit: 0.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: death row kitty
submitter: tris...! another person who could do another fuck by shit
medals / ICs:

5.9

assuming this is death row kitty in which case come onnnn girl!!! lol!!!! i was hoping you'd send me like brian ferneyhough or atleast another fuck by shitstainkovich. But no. you sent me this triple A shit... minor league material... ok sorry i am being very cruel again. (unless this is isnt drk in which case, i am being very cruel). it even has some of the energy of shostakovich piano trio no. 2 mvmt 4. But none of the freakin notes!!!

maybe there's an angle here of "you broke composition down to its barest essentials!" but like european djs the world over have already beaten ligeti to the punch on this sort of thing. and by that i mean european djs, europe over, did the thing ligeti did here 40 years later or whatever. and if the only distinguishing factor is like the expression and articulation and whatever of the notes, idk that is stuff that i've also heard before. so this is just not landing in this cat very well unfortunately. the ending is cool.

i'm like so certain i've listened to some album performance of ligeti and yet all i can find specifically is the 2001 a space odyssey soundtrack. Which i watched a couple weeks after opening the walrus thread so it doesnt count.

Spoiler: 24th place: majifskies

grateful dead - morning dew (winterland 10/18/74)

enjoyment: 3.9 (4.8)
catfit: 0.4
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: majjiffies
submitter: majiffy -0.1
medals / ICs:

5.0

i've done my time in the grateful dead mines. my dad played them in the car all the time and i listened to like 3 or 4 of their albums on my own believe it or not. they're good musicians sure but like, there's a bunch of people that sound like them and they sound like a bunch of people. maybe the big innovation in this song is how they took like 4 minutes worth of song tops and dwelled on it for 13:21. but it doesn't sound like the minimalist-style picking apart the salience of a certain musical bit, it kinda just sounds like self-assuredness to me. oh no i know a dirty word.

another thing is that like the on-draggingness of it makes me less attuned to whatever individual pieces of musicianship happen, especially in that big breakdown or whatever at the end where i assume they're all trying really hard to impress me and i'm just going like "yup that all sounds like instrumence to me"

Spoiler: approximate listening order

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be37-T72DNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOSDV0OeCMQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsHOnGF6_8Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpL0J5l5qEE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhetkYJlOtc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Sc9N_2YHI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bil1hxOxyyQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzbg95-UQ3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGwQZrDNLO8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvvUs0zpsFY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D3TrpQ_nFo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIs3jechQ_E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1ZAK-6wlNY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctn14oYz0qA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4fbfqULzPY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i7L_HcxiTs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2o-AmKLh_E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR5wc5aa1JA but only first song until 1:39
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7hm3Z57M6k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao5bDX_uKqE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpKQOvlDr-s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0VYsiMtrNE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ByC3QcWy4

[schadd_]

gunna put this in a separate post because i think it makes it harder to read the rest of the spoiler= tags on mobile

[schadd_]

ONE INVISIBLE CAT HAS CHOSEN TO REVEAL ITSELF THIS DAY!

like beloved (by toni morrison)

:

0.3 pts

/ 0.6 pts / 1.0 pts
this is my favorite book. i kind of threw this in as like a sort of thing that i would notice and like about a song, although i think that it's really unlikely that i award it another time. it's a book that doesn't really like being compared to things. as i stated in aisa's entry i kind of forced it with that song because i wanted to give it something although i think the emotional connection is kind of there.

[schadd_]

like a clock... or a hamburger...

[schadd_]

tentatively, i'll plan to reveal cat 7 (drums) at 2pm a week from today, which would be in (expired on 2023-08-26 14:00:00)

last walrus i did one of the categories (maybe 6?) at like 6 in the morning which was theoretically in support of the people in a UTC++ time zone, of which there were two in the game but neither of whom showed up although cheery dog did. i dont know if we have anybody in australia or somewhere temporally nearby but if you would like to have the reveal instead happen at 11am UTC please let me know. this is something i'd do with like exactly one vote in favor

[schadd_]

cat 7 (drums) reveals tomorrow at 2pm central time. i started making discord event thingys for them which have a time zone-neutral timestamp.

after that i'll take another extra week of intermission (wow i already did this twice... imbarrassing...) and then plan to close out with cat 2 and 8 and 1 WITHOUT more delay. i'll plan to do cat 8 on a sunday which would end up being the 17th of september, and that would want to be earlier in the day so as not to be too punishing for europeans that are staying up for it.

[schadd_]

You should make sure you didn't fuck up all of Invisibility's stuff with my stuff. Yes, there's only one other I switched over, but now is the time to make sure you didn't flub that one too.

I am curious what you thought about Sarpanitum, since you clearly listened to it too given the flub, but I also think it's a way more boring thing, just power metal by way of technical deathgrind -- which is really weird to ME, but probably does nothing for most people.

the invisibility thing is sorted (the other one for which it was a problem was cat 6 which i did already) although i screwed up a couple things in this cat separately from that LOL

i only listened to the sarpanitum song once and then mostly purged it from my memory because i already have so much song listening tasks. i remember finding out it was the overwritten song and thinking "whichever of these other metal songs is actually the mushshagana song is probably better". there was something about the noise profile i thought was cool

[schadd_]

Spoiler:

reveal in a hour! quick glossary because i use this term a lot, "fuck tunnel" is this term i Invented in mushshagana's entry last week which refers to metal drumming based on like a constant fast plodding of the kick drum

another thing i'll note is that like 1.0 catfit would be a baseline of something like "good drums" just because it turns out that there were some um pretty good drumming songs i got

[schadd_]

cat 7: drums

Spoiler: first is toolenduso

dave matthews band - rapunzel

enjoyment: 6.5 (4.7+/5)
catfit: 2.9
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: majiffy
submitter: tool!!!!!!!!!
medals / ICs: grand slam +0.4, first place +2.0

10.3 + 2.4

uhhhhhhhhhhhh So i have grown to understand that my general erm proclivities and lifestyle traits are generally incompatible with dave matthews band liking. Well here we are. yes i have heard crash into me and at various times thought "this is pretty good and also kind of stupid". yes he has a voice that just kind of sounds like an amalgam of popular male voices on the radio in the late 90s and early 2000s (although it seems like he made most of his music before coldplay started to his credit). Yes he sounds like that in this song too and yet i like it.

sometimes you need a 30 something guy to just force you to listen to dave matthews band (i think it would be irresponsible to guess anyone else even though i don't know affirmatively that he likes this band). although you could have just told me they have a jazz alum drummer and i would have been like "oh ok then". i lied that would not be enough to get me to listen to any of the guys name bands. another thing is that i don't think i really like dave matthews' guitar playing and that is for the most part delightfully absent which prevents me from having to say anything bad about it and offend the fans. oh whoops.

sorry describing the drums here is a lot of work and i have a lot of entries to write. OH Fine.. if i have too... so my general favorite drumming trait is the opening and closing of the hi-hat, that "ssst" sound. that is used to such a brilliant effect in so many places to take an extremely tight control over the rhythm but more so the general feeling of timing in the song, like even that very sparse "tssst... pat" pattern in the verses generates such a feeling of anticipation. and that same sort of thing mediates a lot of the fun rhythm switches like when the string hook suddenly comes in and sweeps the song onto its left foot.

idk like sorry you can listen to all the shit the drums are doing in this song. at the end of the day in this cat i'm always turning into an annoyed mafia player thats just like "read the thread. iso carter beauford."

i have to admit to really liking the little vocal fry "yahh.... ooh..." things between verses and i can justify it by saying those sounds are just part of the drum kit. it's like a little physical throat noise. to wit i basically don't care about any language uttered in the song. oh yeah i also make this comparison in the aaliyah song So there you go

Spoiler: second is aristophanes

the choral scholars of university college dublin - dúlamán

enjoyment: 6.7 (4.8+/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: invisibily
submitter: ARISTOPHANIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! cool youtube video duh ughh
medals / ICs: chills award +1.1, 2nd place +1.5

9.7 + 2.6

omggg yes this is the song for me because i always liked the between the lions theme song but wished it was Catholicer

it sounds like they have a slightly underbassed choral lineup which is supplemented by the low ringing of the drums. i always like the way that the pitch of a drum interacts with music, the way that it always has some kind of pitch which is less important than its other sonic qualities and yet always obstinately present in the music (the big stereotypical 808 bass drum is kind of an extreme example of this). i Think that the drums in this are specifically tuned to the song although there's only a tight range of pitches or something . . . one way or another it definitely has a little bit of that harmonically-tangential intrigue.

also of course the general percussive sound is great. even though its hard to open and close your hi-hats if you don't have them. the rapid hits at the beginning of a phrase emphasize that feeling that the harmonies are utterly spilling out at each moment

god i love that fourth chord when they're saying .. um well they're saying dúlamán. this is like a really really good song. my defense of it being the highest enjoyment song of the walrus is the content of the song

if this is invisibility i appreciate that she saw the reading of the irish radar and was like "well alright i guess he's like already heard enough of this awesome irish chorale writing so i won't send this to cat 3". and if its not invisibility i'm glad that the irish radars seem to be flying off the shelves

this song has the distinction of being like one of four of five songs from like my whole life that i've sent my mom and had her like

Spoiler: third is tris

jaimie branch - theme nothing

enjoyment: 6.2 (4.6/5)
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pj...
submitter: TIS
medals / ICs: 3rd place +1.2

9.6 + 1.2

yeah this is good. it has a big, jazz-like exciting maximalist drum style that defines the character of what is otherwise just a compelling-if-plain brass band song. i guess there's also that grindy cello thing which is like chevre's song from last week lol. it feels very physically intense while having a haunted psycheㅡthere's those parts toward the end where the trumpet triumphantly (hard pair of words to type correctly) wails out a melody and the cello echoes this lower and more pained and strained and also very sustained version of it. god that part is so cool. i listened back to it a couple times to see if i could justify hitting you with the "wan cat" for that sound and i instead wound up adding 0.2 points to the enjoyment score which is well twice as much as the wan cat would be worth

early on it introduces that motif of "... .. - " where the drum pops in on every 2nd repetition but gradually increases the amount of space it takes up until it just fills the next section which is like this very exciting promise about the amount of rhythmic grandeur the drums are gonna be allowed to have

there's a few moments where the drums aren't as interesting or dynamic but generally those just have the feeling of like sprinting forward on all fours. Which is good

another thing i should point out every time it's true, is that the mixing is just sooo friendly to the drums. in that part towards the end, it's almost as if the extremely cool cello stuff is this tiny little treat that you can just kinda hear under the huge drum stuff and all too often its the other way around

Spoiler: fourth is aisa

joni mitchell - the jungle line

enjoyment: 6.4 (4.7/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: aisa...
submitter: this is literally fricking aisa -0.1
medals / ICs: not on spotify (with distinction!) +0.1, MUSIC THAT MAKES ME SHIT +1.1, tied 4th :nazar_amulet: +0.4

9.3 + 1.6

i read that this is a sample of a burundian drumming ensemble (royal drummers of burundi) that joni mitchell "overdubbed" (which is like a great word to identify a recording as pre-digital). you can occasionally hear them yelling out and stuff. it seems like miss mitchell built a song that plods along at a constant swing rhythm which allows the indpedently-recorded drum track to occasionally predict, follow or emphasize the downbeat, and one way or another it works very well. it's particularly compelling in the "boo do do do (ba da da da) bo do do do (ba da da da)" section.

god i love the boo do do do ba da da da. it has to be said that like the farty old synthesizer upstages the drums kind of often. it's funny that this seems to slightly predate the era of arcade games because it really makes me imagine some procession of evil bug aliens marching down the screen.

i also just really like that completely blown out distortion for a second at the beginning & the fact that that sounded so modern as well as the "2022" in the youtube title (i missed the "remaster") tricked me into wondering if joni mitchell sounds like this in current year

i like that joni mitchell's famous guitar constantly sounds like it's struggling intensely to make any kind of mark on this song at all

after having a couple shots at it i will say that i generally don't get what the song is about. initially it sounded like it would build up to some kind of commentary about colonialism but when i look at the lyrics i can't really find that. seems like it's just some sort of abstract storytelling / theme building thing.

i am literally so obliged to guess aisa for this even though it would be so bizarre if she got like vocally nervous about her drumming sub. that idea made me think of the attached tumblr post. although, it's also extremely possible that this is tris or any of the likers of first and last name women from before the 2000s

Spoiler: also fourth is infinity 324

aaliyah - are you that somebody

enjoyment: 6.3 (4.6+/5)
catfit: 2.3
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: infiny ??
submitter: infiniy !!
medals / ICs: cat cat +0.5, transition (from

ca vera

) +0.4, tied 4th :nazar_charm: +0.4

9.3 + 1.3

great example of drum machinery used for good. there's that little extra-digital sounding drum hit which is just in the left ear (RARE example of audio panning being used for good) which kind of has the same effect as a hype man going "what?"

theres several aspects of the beat that i might call "drums", listed in descending order of how much i'd be able to justify that, which are that funny little beat box thing that i like a lot (which fires quickly leading up to the start of a new phrase, which pre-empts that bog standard trap hi hat style in a funny way), the little baby "waa-Aah" which is just like a brilliant sample in how it adds to the tone of the song; and the little croak in her voice at 1:35 in the phrase "nnd if you tell the world" which is in otherwise deliciously empty space

but even if you spuriously refused All three of those things, the drumming has such a tight control over the starting and stopping of the energy which makes this awesome pop-oriented nervous feeling which has like defined a lot of music of the last 25 years

ok this seems to be aaliyah's most popular song and i have like never heard it. i swear there is a discord joining-the-call noise at 1:15

giving this *cat cat*, songs that my cat would like, because the stinky little beatboxing makes me think of a little cat doing it due to shafteds commentary in the last walrus. and also some of the lyrics could be taken to refer to how my cat lately seems to want me to stand guard while he is performing a shit. this is a sort of invisible cat that i would want to spuriously give to a low scoring song because thats more fun however i seem to have failed to do that

Spoiler: sixth is isis

becca - i'm alive

enjoyment: 6.2 (4.6/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: isis
submitter: isis -0.1
medals / ICs: transition (from

universal

) +0.4

9.1 + 0.4

lol this has the instant goodness that has characterized isis songs. a lot of this is kind of standard support drumming and of course the key feature of this is the aliveness of becca. and damn if you don't hear her life functions operating at capacity. but there's a few moments where the drums do something really cool, like how they facillitate the quick changes of pace in the last 30 seconds ok those are like really good. they saved all of the awesome drum-led songwriting for all the way at the end of the song. i guess all of the really good drum parts are how they yank you to the next phrase of the song, like when they thunder in after that bass swell at 1:15 (which is like exactly what you would expect to happen) and also the various smashes on the snare and bonus little alternate patterns they do for one bar in precedent of some sort of Thing happening

also the really good interlude at like 1:50 where they add in a thumping of the kick drum which like sounds like the signal of "your invincibility period is almost over get ready"

ugghhh the little harmony in "reaching for heavun"

Spoiler: also sixth is t3

system of a down - toxicity

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 2.5
unfamiliarity: 0.5
guess: chevy?
submitter: t3 lolz good job
medals / ICs: transition (into

ca mira

) +0.4

9.1 + 0.4

last time i called the non-vocal instruments standard fare metal from the metal store. Ok well i have nothing against standard fare metal (although sometimes the metal store rips me off). anyway those time signature switches are sooooo great especially since they like only happen in the drums (like the guitar "dun dun dun dun dun" feels like a 6/8 riff which happens to be temporarily voiced in the 4/4 pattern and then lands in its home waters)

but even in the common fill / supporting drumming the drummer just has to add like little fun off kilter snare hits and other treats for me. good drummers are always doing that shit. like the guitar will be going like dun dun dun dun dun and it is made to sound interesting by the drums. ok sorry you've already heard that like several times by this point. I'm gonna proceed as though i dont really have to explain that system of a down is good. ok

hilariously i dont like the vocals in this alll that much. "the toxicity of our city" has that same feeling of a jump rope rhyme but less of the charm i guess

i listened to this album like 5 years ago before i liked metal at all and was like "this is kind of fine" and shortly before the walrus started i listened to the album again (prompted by hearing shimmy in tony hawk's pro skater 4 and liking it a lot .. lol .. also relevant fact for the walrus) and was like "this is pretty good!" and i guess you people are just gonna send me all of the songs from it one by one until i'm like yeah this is like a really great album or whatever. i mean this could just be t3 again which i would have no problem with but chevy outed himself as a system of a down liker and idk where else he goes. anyway this last minute refresher on system of a down spared me from having to give like 2nd or 3rd place or whatever to this metal band that everybody already knows and likes

Spoiler: eighth is invisibility

p.k. 14 - 你和我

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 1.9
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: gunna toss out cheeto
submitter: invibility!!!! good showing although i guessed you for second place obviously
medals / ICs:

9.0

really great supporting drums with uproarious mixing. much of the time it's a simple pattern that just sets up a slow and straightforward guitar riff to operate with a huge amount of weight - classic and good usage. it really gets a lot of joy just from the thick and methodical sound of drumming which almost poses a question like "don't you just like the basic physical sound of a heavy drum set". like it's not drum-focused at all and not particularly creative either but i just enjoy the sound of the drumming the whole time.

i also appreciate the overall drama of the song. i like the singer a lot and that, idk, almost-whiny style where it sounds like you're listening to all of the ringing in his whole throat.

this seems to be in mandarin - i always wonder about languages with a tonal inflection how that comes across in music where you don't get to do it, especially in this song that has the sound of a western "post-punk" sort of vocal style where if there's tonal inflection in it i don't notice it

Spoiler: ninth is wgeurts

paul elliot & shawn lee - bass sick bitch

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pink ball...?
submitter: wurts
medals / ICs:

8.9

i'd venture the word "charismatic" for the drums here and maybe you'd also try something like "smooth". i guess there's a classic drummer somewhere in there who is supplemented by like 4 or 5 tracks of bonus digital drum stuff such that the drums are like, the thing that makes the song interesting the whole time. although it has a bass guitar that it gets to be friends with for enrichment.

the drummer does a lot of the things that tend to make me go "oh yippee!!" whenever i hear them and the construction of the song seems to just aim for dense rhythmic satisfaction, and otherwise it doesn't do much else. it's sorta like frosting out of the can for me. there's just like so many rhythm layers stacked on top of each other that you're bound to latch on to at least one of them lol, it's like the thing where a pencil sketch will automatically look a little bit extra accurate because your brain traces whichever lines you drew that look closest to the right shape of something (i read that on tumblr i think)

Spoiler: also ninth is fireisredsir

mandy indiana - mosaick

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: fireisredsir
submitter: firs get guessed -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.9

cool!

this one also kind of scans as a drum show-off track like a couple of the ones revealed earlier, but idk the absurd noise and distortion makes it easier for me to read some kind of coherent character to it all. like we're getting "selected segments of Grime Drumming from the Dungeon". like there were 5 different session drummers that were each paid in eight dollars and a broken ram card. and they put the moldy chrome drum sets in a different corner of the dungeon each take.

Spoiler: eleventh is ceejayvinoya

linkin park - the little things that give you away

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess:
submitter: ceejayvinoya (unguessed)
medals / ICs:

8.7

this was the first song in my listening order and for the first couple minutes i was like "umm... hmm... did i grab the wrong stack of songs or does this person just really like that krrt sound" and i kind of mentally prepared to write an entry for it in the editorial voice of "blathers when you give him something he already has". and then they started laying down the offbeat triplets lol. hoo! hoo i say. i mean i don't mind the beat in the first couple minutes, it's kind of goofy and morose in a way that supports the song.

i really like the moment where most of the instrumentation drops out but the drums stay mostly the same, like "yeah it turns out the drums are here to stay." still, there's some moments where they're done dirty by the mixing and other than the big sea change in the middle they're a little bit stagnant, in spite of being a very catchy and well-performed beat.

i like the chords that linger into the next bar for a second, it's something i like doing whenever i'm just randomly playing my guitar. i don't really mind chester bennington's voice (which i probably would not have said a few years ago lol) but i guess it's not especially compelling to me. i like how he shapes the words "truly look"

cjv randomly caught a stray in the debacle about skygazer's song & i accidentally found out this is their song

Spoiler: also eleventh is chevre

高田 雅岠/ danganronpa soundtrack - box 15

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 1.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: ummbm tris ??
submitter: chevy! next guess dang.... or maybe like my 3rd guess... its game soundtracks...
medals / ICs:

8.7

i think this is drum machinery and while they did a good job of it i think this shows off the limitations of drum machining in a jazz context (in addition to a couple of the perks, like that snare drum that rings out for a variable amount of time). like there's fun and elaborate phrases but it kinda feels too orchestrated, like it's not really responding to the rest of the music or something. maybe there's just a part of me that wants to rebel against accountant's signature. there's a good bit of extra flair, like not often is the pattern the same two measures in a row. i think the cymbals in particular feel like they don't have a lot of character, it's more like ya gotta have the cymbals.

a fun minigame is to try to figure out if that trumpet is synthesized because it's very shimmery and elaborate and it has a lot of those bonus vibratos and slurs and articulations but well most of the rest of this seems to be synths and there's a lot of moments where it just feels like it has bonus digital effects

maybe

i seem to have written the word maybe on a new line and i dont remember what was gonna happen with it

Spoiler: thirteenth is mushshagana

mithras - worlds beyond the veil

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: mushshagana
submitter: GET GUESSED FINALLY -0.1 (finally as in the other time i got you it was under beneficial circumstances)
medals / ICs: transition (from

the hypocrisy

) +0.8

8.6 + 0.8

when they whip out that bowser's castle guitar.....

this song expands the fuck tunnel cinematic universe by making me imagine riding on a minecart and occasionally busting into this big dark expanse thats like swallowing up all the light from the torch i'm carrying (and all the while the fuck tunnel rumblings of my minecart continue although sometimes they get swallowed up by the hugeness of the cave). and sometimes the fuck tunnel drumming does that little descent down the tom toms which is like when the minecart goes downhill.

there's a lot of kind-of interesting stuff the drums do, they insist on a certain rhythm (or maybe even a couple of them) while the guitar feedback is going you know "woaw weow wewowawa". i would say generally it feels like the guitar wins outㅡa lot of the flair and dynamism and general protagonist energy comes in the flickers and shreds and echoes of the guitar sound. Which i enjoy but well you end up with a 1.7

brilliantly the transition from fleshgod apocalypse the hypocrisy creates like a perfect continuation of the pace of the drumming without any lapse, which only goes to show that you truly cannot escape the fuck tunnel

Spoiler: also thirteenth is majiffy

chant - universal

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: tool
submitter: majifty ... darn...
medals / ICs: transition (from

i'm alive

) +0.4

8.6 + 0.4

i would want to say jiffy for this just because this is literally sooooo much drum mixing. lol. it makes me picture a big vertical height whenever there's a big weighty kick drum + snare hit, which is i guess something that the blue man group accomplishes by having that ray of paint fly out of it or whatever.

i guess there is like never anything particularly brilliant accomplished by the performance of the drums but they literally just go so hard with them in the mixing room that it's impossible for me to listen to this and not be like "soooo true bestie". like you could not mistake anything else for the protagonist of the song including the singer whom i do not really like. sometimes you have to just trust that the sound of drumming is really good because well it is.

burn through the stitches of my dragulehh and whatnot

Spoiler: fifteenth is cheetory6

林英哲 - 金団雲

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: channel delbird
submitter: cheeto was my nth guess
medals / ICs: songs my keys would like +0.7

8.4 + 0.7

last time i got some drums-only songs and basically gave them catfit points in exact proportion to how much i liked the song. and i don't really have a reason in particular not to do that here. i guess there's the occasional people yelling and i like them a lot. maybe there isn't a whole lot of particularly interesting rhythms or most of the stuff i generally thinking of in this cat but i like how the song is constructed. like all of the joy is in just finding a new flavor of percussion really (like the little thing that comes in around 3:20 that sounds like the junimos from stardew valley. or maybe they sound like that instrument rather...) and i guess the little melodies that come from things that you could argue are like not drums. idk thats the score i wrote down. ok i guess all i've done so far is explain why i gave this 1.7 points instead of uhhhh 2.61 points. idk i like what you did here. i like traditional drumming. and it should be said that the general, like, pattering and slapping and stuff is very pleasant. you know what i'll give you most of those 0.91 points back with the songs my key would like cat. there's a lot of little noises my keys might latch onto but i imagine them hearing the big bells and thinking "wowww that must be a really big set of keys rattling around"

Spoiler: sixteenth is skygazer

louis cole - drum solo

enjoyment: 5.3 (4.1+/5)
catfit: 2.2
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess:
submitter: this is skygazer
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1

8.3 + 0.1

i'm gonna very lazily give this the same score as ukiyo so that the write-up can kind of spill over onto this one. i mean like like the drumming here slightly more and the synth thing gives me more to chew on but i also just kinda find it obnoxious. dont have a lot to say otherwise. hes good at druming

this was a submission change from skygazeur that i seemed to have accidentally pasted on top of deathrowkitty's entry. and so this song and her song and also accidentally ceejayvinoyay's song have to go unguessed as a result. a simple google's search reveals this as the knower guy and so i uh probably could have guessed the submitter but alas. dont you, like, like herbie hancock

Spoiler: also sixteenth is pj.

oceans ate alaska with josh manuel - ukiyo

enjoyment: 5.2 (4.1/5)
catfit: 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: wurts?
submitter: pj...!
medals / ICs: suburbs +0.1

8.3 + 0.1

it's kind of a shame that the rest of the song seems to be kind of bent on ignoring the stuff that this drummer is doing lol. what's extra funny is that i guess the drummer is the feature. ok so we're going to do our own thing with the whiny reverb guitar and stuff and then you do a drumming session along with the recording and we'll pay you 600 for every impact you can make on that thing within eighty seconds. i like this drumming a lot and i'd greatly suspect that in a different environment he could blow me away with something but this kind of doesnt even sound as much like a song as it does "stuff to let the drummer show off" and it doesn't produce a lot of memorable moments for me to latch onto.

i like the defiant little kick-snare-kick after 1:00 thats in the middle of the bar

Spoiler: eighteenth is biancospino

fleshgod apocalypse - the hypocrisy

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1.5
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: spino?
submitter: bianco spino. that is unfortunately minus 0.1 points for you.
medals / ICs: transition (into

worlds beyond the veil

) +0.8

8.1 + 0.8

millions of metal bands
_______________________
:palm_up_hand: :palm_up_hand:
the word "apocalypse"

[ok well the underscores made a formatting problem on discord and the site doesnt have the palm up emoji. so this thing was just an overall failure. i'm leaving it in]

yeah see the thing about the fuck tunnel is that it's not a tunnel if you never get out of it. it's like there's this mole that just keeps digging forever at full speed. it has a little bit of that intriguingly jagged metal rhythm stuff i kept talking about last week but i'd say that a lot of that is actually facillitated by the bass tugging up and down a tritone. its like this is a bunch of um pleasant and, idk, simple? ish? 6/8 rhythms that are performed by... hrm... well let me give you a pick of analogies
a guy that overheard the "600 per drum hit" deal from the entry i'm revealing next and like sprinted out to the studio sweating profusely
several giant woodpeckers
a conner o'malley character really trying to impress jk simmons in whiplash
the keys in my pockets when i'm trying not to wake people up
the keys in my pockets when they hear a song that would win the key cat
a grandma from cookie clicker

does that count as writing enough for this song... i feel like a guy that just overheard a deal for 0 per word written about this song. and i'm sweating because its hot

Spoiler: nineteenth is channeldelibird

foals - albatross

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 1.5
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: t3
submitter: cdb
medals / ICs:

7.9

there's a lot of fun with different timbres of the drum, i really like how they underline the buildup of a phrase by opening the hi hat slightly (so it jingle jangles for an extra moment after they hit it. at least i think that's what people do). and otherwise there's just a bunch of slightly different sounds, like the random little digital rattling sound in the middle. but i guess the drums feel very chained to this constant da . . da . . da da dada rhythm. yeah get ready for a lot more transcriptions like that everybody. i guess i would say the song has a lot of semblances of drama but the musicality only backs it up enough to sell me on the drama a little bit.

Spoiler: twentieth is chickadee

yo la tengo - you can have it all

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1.4
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: chickdee
submitter: yup sorry girlie -0.1 but you won last time
medals / ICs:

7.8

it sounds like somebody read the "drum machines are fine" clause in the cat description and rooted around in their attic for the stinkiest little casio drum machine or whatever they could find. i'd actually guess that this is like a drum machine that makes the quiet little click sounds and the goofy hi hat that sounds like an empty pipe hissing, but an actual drummer playing the snare hits and kick drum and maybe something else. i mean i like the sound of it all. it interacts pleasantly with that little handbell-like "ba ba ba" harmony (not gonna try too hard writing that out). but well it's the same thing for 4 and a half minutes excepting a couple emphatic snare hits and stuff.

i guess this is pleasant comforting music. great for walking around and seeing random townspeople.

Spoiler: also twentieth is deathrowkitty

imperial circus dead decadence - 謳

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.2
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess:
submitter: this is drk
medals / ICs:

7.8

instead of a traditional fuck tunnel, a lot of the time this opts for a tunnel based on like one-two punk drumming or something. idk this has good moments but it has about as many of them as a typical four or five minute metal song does and there's a lot of space between them filled by sort of plain drumming. i like the big winding chord sequences a medium amount. occasionally there's like a really good and wild vocal moment but i'm not particularly compelled to go back and try to pay attention to it better bc i have this 9 minute song to get through. Hrmph there is enough of those to get me to kick this up to 4.3 Instead of 4.2+ Which is where i had it for a while. behind the scenes.

this got hit by a copy paste error so i had to go hunt down drk's song. she's probably gonna be like "oh yeah this song is like nearly unlistenable but i like some of the drums" or something. i really like the band name

Spoiler: twenty-second is stinkycheesedan

angel - tower

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 1.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: stinquey chease dan
submitter: danny brown -0.1
medals / ICs:

7.7

let it be known that i listened to this and was instantly like "this has to be danny." and then later this week i like accidentally saw that it listened to this artist. yeah i'm like attempting the "try to describe whats good about the drums without comparing them to led zeppelin but slightly worse" challenge and failing. there's the fun that these sorts of smelly old rock songs frequently have which comes from using a quick snare -> kick/cymbal or vice versa to build up the shape of a guitar riff which is melodically pretty simple. there's some extra flair the drummer unlocks towards the end like only during that part where they are being drowned out in the long wet fart synth solo

Spoiler: twenty-third is hellbooks

daniela pes - ca mira

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 0.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: this is hellbooks
submitter: yex -0.1
medals / ICs: transition (from

toxicity

) +0.4, transition (into

are you that somebody

) +0.4

7.4 + 0.8

girl today's modern drum cat consumer demands dozens nay hundreds of drum hits by the 2 minute mark (and offers dozens nay hundreds of thousands of dollars for them...) and you give me zero. like oh sure this is a creative entry and stuff. well you are coming fresh out of a metal song as the invisible cat states. yes you are kneecapping yourself.

yes i appreciate the art of this song but i am truly not primed to give drumming points to this. maybe if i like listened to it twelve times in a huge empty room i would be like ah i see the brilliance... but not if i'm listening from the big playlist or hurriedly writing up entries (yes this is close to the end). pardon me i am just further padding my word count. beg pardon. i mean i like the rattling and clattering that seems to be opposing in the ears. sure. but maybe you had this fantasy that i would be like "oh brilliant.. oh finally.. a song which has revolutionarily chosen to NOT have drums in almost any ofit... how creative... this is what i was envisioning this whole time" then i must shatter it. your transition points will prop you up anyway so i have no particular desire to add extra icing. however i do have a particular desire to add extra word count.

Spoiler: twenty-fourth is pink ball

conan grey - people watching

enjoyment: 4.5 (3.7+/5)
catfit: 0.9
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: aristophany
submitter: pink ball
medals / ICs:

6.4

i kind of stop liking the lyrics as soon as this guy starts making them about himself. LOL. i notice the drums at a few moments and they're definitely a little more fun than replacement-level radio pop (especially the extra emphatic hits towards the end), but well they don't really inspire me to write about them, suffice it to say. i like the bit of distortion at the height of the "love and emotion" phrase.

Spoiler: listening order

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuxzWqkyo0k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahu068_oyHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTMuqL0qx08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SD7hXdDrig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYOQ2FeCET8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MszWj039ZvA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noJ4I3RBoEY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TStvoYQCH7c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs0t8LXH6lw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iRfI1ezYjA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yReRjgTp9s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmX1SwOVfX4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlP9vcvhSs0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iywaBOMvYLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV_BIjhVsIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuxzWqkyo0k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-QC8QNXqwA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sABTXb2ks4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJGmjqjghOs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0vcoepvW9g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReEfkAubDKk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-eZGoPtRDg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kebuMklKkFo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8i6A-k2ShY

[schadd_]

[schadd_]

That's all live, not retracked.

Oh

[schadd_]

TWO INVISIBLE CATS HAVE CHOSEN TO REVEAL THEMSELVES THIS DAY!

MUSIC THAT MAKES ME SHIT

:

1.1 pts

/ 1.0pts / 0.9pts
about a month before i started really writing up the walrus opening post, i wrote at the top of my list of potential invisible cats "MUSIC THAT MAKES ME SHIT". and by the time i started i kinda forgot exactly what i meant by that. i'll choose to leave it similarly ambiguous here.

songs my cat would like

:

0.5 pts

/ 0.7 pts / 0.4 pts / 0.6 pts
obligatory

other notes:

• i decided that i'd give some sort of medium-low amount of points for extra invisible cats once i run out of scripted points. what i did here is i gave the final 0.8 points to the first and best one i noticed which is biancospino's
  the hypocrisy
  to mushshagana's
  worlds beyond the veil
  which i would recommend trying out if you have a way to listen to them smoothly back to back. and then i handed out 0.4 to the rest of them
  
• the next grand slam is gonna be worth -0.9 points, and so i'm reaping the benefits of how absurd that idea was now. another thing is that it kind of fails to make things more exciting because it means that it's like harder for someone else to have a sudden breakout placing that moves them up the leaderboard. lol

[schadd_]

I listened to that song exclusively for this contest thinking that the lack of drums at times was more interesting than the drums themselves

yeah unfortunately i like it more when there isnt a lack of drums

[schadd_]

cat 3: novel musicianship

Spoiler: 23rd place: tris

pierre-laurent aimard (composed by györgy ligeti) - musica ricerata, no. 1 sostenuto

enjoyment: 4.5 (3.7+/5)
catfit: 0.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: death row kitty
submitter: tris...! another person who could do another fuck by shit
medals / ICs:

5.9

assuming this is death row kitty in which case come onnnn girl!!! lol!!!! i was hoping you'd send me like brian ferneyhough or atleast another fuck by shitstainkovich. But no. you sent me this triple A shit... minor league material... ok sorry i am being very cruel again. (unless this is isnt drk in which case, i am being very cruel). it even has some of the energy of shostakovich piano trio no. 2 mvmt 4. But none of the freakin notes!!!

maybe there's an angle here of "you broke composition down to its barest essentials!" but like european djs the world over have already beaten ligeti to the punch on this sort of thing. and by that i mean european djs, europe over, did the thing ligeti did here 40 years later or whatever. and if the only distinguishing factor is like the expression and articulation and whatever of the notes, idk that is stuff that i've also heard before. so this is just not landing in this cat very well unfortunately. the ending is cool.

i'm like so certain i've listened to some album performance of ligeti and yet all i can find specifically is the 2001 a space odyssey soundtrack. Which i watched a couple weeks after opening the walrus thread so it doesnt count.

ok ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm well i just watched eyes wide shut which uses musica riceroni no 2 as a motif like 30 times and i was like "wow this is so cool"

[schadd_]

but you know how it is with györgy

[schadd_]

i see that youve collectively decided that my job in the commune is gonna be "radio dj that gives content warnings before every song"

[schadd_]

after that i'll take another extra week of intermission (wow i already did this twice... imbarrassing...) and then plan to close out with cat 2 and 8 and 1 WITHOUT more delay. i'll plan to do cat 8 on a sunday which would end up being the 17th of september, and that would want to be earlier in the day so as not to be too punishing for europeans that are staying up for it.

ok i remembered i'm going to riot fest on the 16th and 17th. lol. i thought about sticking with this plan anyway and just going to the festival later in the day but literally the single band that i'm most interested in seeing on the whole weekend is probably playing at exactly 2pm on sunday. i'll let you know how they are. anyway let's say i'll aim to do cat 8 on like the thursday or friday of that week? and then say fuck it and do cat 1 on a sunday which would be the 24th. bc i dont wanna fart around for another extra week. how does that sound...

[schadd_]

ok sooooo cat 2 is getting revealed this sunday at 2pm. (expired on 2023-09-10 14:00:00). i guess this is gonna have a bunch of content warnings which i plan to say aloud and also post along with the songs. i'm also planning to reveal this in a bizarre order that i might bizarrely call "shotgun order" where i spread out the top 4 submissions across the rest of the songs.

cat 8 is gonna be the thursday a week from tomorrow at 7pm. this one is gonna take bonus time to reveal because like 40% of the submissions contain two songs. also i might have to awesomely cancel it and maybe absurdly do it the next monday or something.

cat 1 is going to be the sunday that is uhh after all that. probably at 2pm. i will be revealing these songs in the order i listened to them.

[schadd_]

these all happen to be non-saturday days which is no longer out of an interest of spreading out the days or whatever and is just because that happens to be convenient for me

[schadd_]

and then its gonna be over and i stop listening to music

[schadd_]

ok sooooo cat 2 is getting revealed this sunday at 2pm. (expired on 2023-09-10 14:00:00).

tomorow...! or today for some ....!

[schadd_]

Spoiler:

reveal in an hour!

[schadd_]

cat 2: afraid to listen to them again

Spoiler: 1st: ceejayvinoya

i described this song as being about the epic horribleness of sex in various ways, although i don't think i can get anything from it that would be definitively Triggering or whatever. but you know be forewarned

bent knee - dry

enjoyment: 6.3 (4.6+/5)
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: maybe wgeurt
submitter: ceejay vinoya debuts in the podium list awesomeeee
medals / ICs: first place +2.0

9.7 + 2.0

yeah so theres another bent knee and i guess this one did better.

as much as i complain about indistinct lyrics, this song does use them to good effect. it wasnt until the third listen until i picked up "leaving trails *in your throat*", which is of course a gross mental image, but the first two times i just heard "you suck hot wax leaving trails [unintelligible]" and it was one of those times where the blurry and darkened horror movie monster is scarier than the visible horror movie monster.

generally the lyrics fall into a winning camp for this cat which is "strong and teeming and figurative language that really makes you think it is about epic horrible sex but gives you precious few concrete details to work with." you get a little piece of it a minute and a half in with "curse the first creature that realized the stick slides into the hole (Ohhhh)"

another winning feature is the general slow plodding orchestration that gives the feeling that the song is revelling in something, like there's some sort of hedonism or like anti-hedonism (hurtonism...) living in it and it really gets you to grasp desperately onto the lyrics for an answer to whats going on in this opaque *eyes wide shut* sex party situation the strings are doing. and its like grasping onto barbed wire i guess.

i'll once again let the strength of the vocalist speak for itself. i bet their concerts have cool lighting. really this just loses points in that i'm like "again again again!"

Spoiler: 5th place: chevre

cali cartier prod. umru & yungskrrt - fastlane

enjoyment: 5.9 (4.4+/5)
catfit: 1.6
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: infinty
submitter: chevy breaks up the chain of gotten girlies!! i had you and infinity switchd
medals / ICs:

8.4

god yeah there's a funny little dude and he's yelling at me so hard. i mean in large part the song is just, like, fun, and also i might flippantly say that it sounds like a slightly tamer variant of jersey club, but the sheer power of the little dude cant be shrugged off. i would say that the aggressive and ambiguous hyperactivity analogizes to a puppy where you're like "i'm um hesitant engage with this creature right now". i mean yeah idk it classically exploits multi tracking and stuff (as well as just like some goofy vocalist guy) to make it feel like there's a bunch of language being thrown at you that you cant process and its overstimulating. good submission!

i seem to have listened to exactly one thing that featured umru on it which means i'm gonna need you to hold this -0.1 unfamiliarity thanks.

Spoiler: 6th: pink ball

ganon rosario - dale, zelda, dale

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pink ball i guess lol
submitter: hey girlie -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.2

ok so it looks like this is like a zelda themed parody of a song dale vieja dale which i think is about the guy having a hangover and like asking his wife to like bring him water and whatever. and its like ganondorf is asking zelda to bring him the triforce ??? because he has a hangover

i forgot to translate it before listening to it the second time but after like learning what a wild confluence of ideas it is i definitely had a chilling feeling towards listening to it a third time so i'll count that. i guess the whole ganondorf zelda thing is spooky bc i dont really know about it at all & this injects the concept of Ganondorf As This Weird Guy.

fun song!

Spoiler: tied 7th: aristophanes

i think this song is about a suicide attempt and/or being suicidal

malinda - a song about the scariest moment in my life

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.5
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: aristophanes coded
submitter: hey girlie -0.1
medals / ICs: ok purely out of obligation i admit to having laughed at PURELY the title of the song BEFORE THINKING MORE ABOUT THE CONTEXT AND SEEING THAT THE DESCRIPTION SAID CONTENT WARNING. LIKE I THOUGHT IT WAS GONNA BE ABOUT SHE SAW A FRANKENSTEIN. anyway +0.8, not on spotify +0.1

8.0 + 0.9

i guess a very large part of this is that i felt like i missed something basic that like clarified what this was about which felt kind of embarrassing. i think the phrasing of "thank god i'm one more success story" pretty strongly implies that it's about suicidality and there's several other things that support than (including like the extra annotations in the video) but at the same time the second time i heard it i noticed "since the eaaarthquake" and i was like Wait is this about an earthquake... is it content warning earthquake...

in any case, that aforementioned refrain is touching. there's plenty of simple and strong songwriting in this in fact. good song!

i keep getting so rattled by "my palmreader told me i'd be lonely" like isn't that the number one effing rule of palm reading that they don't say that.

Spoiler: tied 7th: chickadee

m83 - lower your eyelids to die with the sun

enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 1.8
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: chickdee
submitter: hey girlie -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.0

i appreciate what you were getting at with this. i listened to m83 when i was like 13-14 and just getting into my epic music listening roll and i got swept away fairly easily by their thing of just trying to fit as tall of an emotion in the music as it'll let them. now, the song doesn't really present a lot of difficulty for me in clicking it again but i still feel compelled to give you points for the idea & for the fact that i was hoping there would be a song that completely aims above the belt, so to speak.

something that holds this back is that it's like the sigur ros song from cat 5 where it's like, they are literally just trying so hard to get a frisson reaction out of you to the point that it's like kind of annoying. wait WHAT this is 10 minutes how did i not notice that holy shit. anyway yeah it's like they are just waging a war of attrition against you & getting the reps in. they're giving into the vain temptation of the electronic music maker, which is pressing copy paste 100 times. Ohhh i worked really hard on this melody and Ohhh i have to get my moneys worth... yeah right buddy.

this feels like it's gonna be chickadee but it's also gonna turn out that she was thinking something copmletely different when sending it like "oh yeah the chorus of voices in this are really creepy to me lol"

Spoiler: tied 9th: cheetory6

swans - i was a prisoner in your skull

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.9
unfamiliarity: 0.5
guess: this i think is cheetory6 coded ultimately. oh right he likes swan even.
submitter: hey girlie -0.1
medals / ICs:

7.9

i did listen to this album a few times and got the intended cat 2 feeling at various points in it. i've listened to volcano a lot but you still would have probably done well if you sent it. that said, the parts of it that purely come from production don't do as much for me - maybe it's just that i've listened to a bazillion albums from the 20-something years where people have been able to take inspiration from it. really the thing about this song that gets me is the interlude in the second half which just makes me very sad. it's sort of like, literally what the person is describing just sounds like the person in question has some kind of disability which isn't made clear, in a way that interferes with domestic life. but that just like doesn't match up with the way this person is talking, in a way that's very uncomfortable. also he makes gross mouth sounds. and like the cliffhanger ending leaves you with this simple and yet kind of troubling question "what did he have to show him about the car."

Spoiler: tied 9th: skygazer (it looks like i gave these two songs the exact same score distribution

paul mcfartney - temporary secretary

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.9
unfamiliarity: 0.5
guess: um i wanna say i've seen skygazeur use this as an avatar or something
submitter: hey girlie -0.1
medals / ICs:

7.9

i've heard this before from seeing it posted on tumblr, like "this song is so uncomfortable to listen to". i guess i hadnt rly been paying attention & assumed that it was supposed to be about the production and not the vocals bc it didnt really get me that time

a strong entry of the cat 2 genre of "songs where i worry about something i'll pick up from the lyrics the next time i listen to it", although the kicker here is that he's speaking very clearly (milking all the words with that goofy affected drawl) and like the innuendo in it is truly so vague as to barely register as anything if not for the fact that he's like nearly drooling and going "AWOOGA!" as he says it. i guess if nothing else it really gets at that "creepy boss guy and secretary" paradigm, where it revels in an exploitative sort of relationship for no particular reason.

my shoulders tightened at the notion of listening to this again. like yes plainly i'm like "ugh i guess i gotta keep clicking on this"

Spoiler: 2nd: hellbooks

kahimi karie - all is splashig now

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: fireisredsir
submitter: hellbooks was like my second or third guess lols....
medals / ICs: 2nd place +1.5

9.5 + 1.5

this song is probably the queen of "i'm like so worried i'm gonna hear something in the lyrics that i missed" style catfit, though it bears mentioning that the unmistakable aspects of it definitely hint at something either sad or frightening, in spite of the song's constant forward resolve. i guess flowers are kind of a classic symbol of death, and the compelling "all is splashig now" refrain makes me think of a catastrophic flood or something, but she says it as though looking forward to it, in a way that specifically makes me think of a water deity or something thats saying like "you guys are all fucking around and you're gonna get the flood thats coming to you". it's gonna rain after all.

i guess the atmosphere building in this song is really good and is surely what earns it the big bucks (rather than just medium bucks). the really chilling thing the first time i listened to it was the warbling and splashing. hilariously this song came right after primitive struggle in the playlist (which in turn came right after the winning song).

Spoiler: tied 11th: biancospino

unexpect - the shiver (a clown's mindtrap)

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.2
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: bianco
submitter: sorry i keep getting you :X -0.1
medals / ICs: this seems to confusingly be on spotify as "another dissonant chord". so +0.0

7.7 + 0.0

it loses a little bit by having a lot of straightforward symphonic metal sort of stuff and by being basically lyricless (yes i see that there's lyrics in the description but i can't parse them in the song and Famously don't read lyrics) (maybe if i announce that i don't read lyrics often enough i will become Famous and enter Hollywood). but there's enough assorted creepiness (including in the album cover and whatever) that i'm not just like clicking on it effortlessly. dont have much else to say. fun song. spookey.

Spoiler: tied 11th: wgeurts

bryde - to be brave

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 1.3
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: erm aisa maybe but i dont really know
submitter: wgeurts was my freakin first guess and i backspaced it
medals / ICs:

7.7

in between my first and second listens i visited my friend in minneapolis & we watched the simpsons episode 12 of season 2 where homer & marge talk about their prom & there was some line where marge was like "can't i just use blush for my cheeks" and her mom was like "no you have to pinch them or else you're a hussie. try to bust a few capillaries." which was one of those simpsons moments where the writers take their observational comedy skills and do something thats like suddenly very incisively uncomfortable (many of such moments involve marge lol). i think i didnt know about pinching your cheeks before that. anyway the opening lines of this one were a gut punch the second time around and i dont think i made anything of them the first time. lol.

otherwise... how do i put it... i guess the song falls a little short in being evocative for me. i'd say it's clear enough that this song is about like mental health and especially when womanhood makes it hard. but a lot of the writing feels a little subservient to lyricism and sometimes it relies on you to come up with what the problems actually are, e.g. "going through it" "the darkness" etc.

idk, the song is thought provoking enough but doesnt really make me scared of it beyond that surprise body blow at the beginning

Spoiler: tied 13th: deathrowkitty

you should play this song loudly right next to your coworkers

martha burns (composed by erwin schulhoff) - sonata erotica

enjoyment: 4.9 (3.9+/5)
catfit: 1.6
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: death row frog
submitter: yes -0.1
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1

7.4 + 0.1

idk i can deal with some sex sounds especially when there's like a laugh track. but of course theres something mysterious and unsettling going on with this song especially when it sounds like there's some kind of wet and cavernous audio filter towards the end. oh yeah and when she pees into the bowl. another thing is like the very basic aspect of how this was only on youtube which means i have to have my phone on and i'm worried somebodys gonna see it or whatever. and i'm also worried that the censors are gonna come after it in the reveal

mostly just guessing drk because its called a sonata but i think im gonna be right

Spoiler: tied 13th: toolenduso

death grips - up my sleeves

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 0.9
unfamiliarity: 0.4
guess: ceejay vinoya
submitter: toolz
medals / ICs: transition (from

the computers stopped exchanging information

) +0.4

7.4 + 0.4

i think mc ride hit on a really good way to express a certain kind of angst and paranoia which is like like an important feeling of the 21st century. and one gets the impression that he approaches songwriting in a manner that's very honest and vulnerable even if it's like generally not clear what he's talking about exactly. i think i kind of poisoned my ability to really lean in and get affected by it because i was mostly just interested in production when i started listening to them (and the state of Modern Online Death Grips Discussion didn't really help me to try to take the lyrics at face value). i wonder if i'll see anybody wearing like a propellor cap or whatever at riot fest next weekend

this is a great song, i remember listening to it in the shower at one point (the only thing i specifically remembered was bjork going "ah uah uah uah" and also the up my sleeves refrain i guess). i guess it inspires a lot of sympathy.

Spoiler: tied 13th: infinity 324

bent knee - battle creek (spare room session)

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 0.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: chev?
submitter: infiny
medals / ICs:

7.4

i guess this is just so slow to rope me in with anything that it's hard to get any particularly visceral scaredness reaction to it. the drawn out melodic passages get unsettling, just in that way where it's like "hows this sentence gonna end", but it kind of didn't build a lasting impression. yes the vocalist is great and the intense parts in the middle are what is strongest, but at that point i'm like a little bit less receptive. famously people remember the beginning and end of stuff and like if everything scary happens in the middle, that just kinda shoots the song in the foot a little bit. there's a funny thing where she (apparently) says "death never felt so real before" but there's like a spike in the instrumental noise there and it sounds like she's saying "fuck never felt so real before"

i'll be cagey and say that this song is like a white peg from mastermind

Spoiler: 16th: stinky cheesedan

theres like assorted Freaky Shit in the video

soap&skin - sugarbread

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5)
catfit: 0.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: stinky???? no idea
submitter: stinky (cheese dan) -0.1 awesome. why was i right
medals / ICs:

7.1

the first 40 seconds arent easy to sit through but i guess the song doesn't follow up on them very much. maybe the central tragedy is that the phrase "try to break one's heart in perpetuity" is kind of a flop for me, like what do i do with that. maybe another thing that's kind of funny is the fact that, any time there's a genuine-sounding despair scream in a song, nobody can make themself put it very loud in the mix. it's like... if this is anything other than really quiet it will be upsetting to people. Uh huh. well i guess it doesn't end up being very upsetting to me then.

i like that off kilter swaying rhythm in the first few minutes

Spoiler: 3rd: tris

this song is like centered on somebody throwing up

pharmakon - primitive struggle

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 2.6
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: there's some name i'm thinking of that starts with m and ends with ushshagana
submitter: ok this is tris lol
medals / ICs: mushshagana award +0.3, third place +1.2

9.4 + 1.5

so i don't listen to these songs while i'm actually eating but this song got lent a hand when my second time listening to it was while i was *preparing* my lunch. there's that thing somebody said about upton sinclair's *the jungle* about how "it aimed at the public's hearts and it hit their stomachs". and i guess you aimed at my stomach and hit my stomach

i think the worst thing about this is like how little comes out. if there was just a bunch of like splashing it'd be like "ope there it goes." but you just get like one tiny little drip every 10 seconds and it like really wants to trigger a dry heave reflex (i dont think i did ever dry heave about it but like it is hard for something which is a song to make me do that).

the heartbeat drum thing really gets at the primitive struggleness of it. yeah i wince kind of a lot just at the cough at the beginning

i have to think this is msha. right? there was a handful of other mushshagana-symptomatic songs but it's those industrial drums for me. and also the thing it said in the thread.

Spoiler: 17th: PJ.

newfound interest in connecticut - the computers stopped exchanging information

enjoyment: 5.2 (4.1/5)
catfit: 0.9
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pj
submitter: pj..! -0.1
medals / ICs: transition (into

up my sleeves

) +0.4

7.0 + 0.4

i'd say the title and the beginning of the song do a good job of creating some enticing mystery of what's going on here, and then the ensuing 6 minutes of post-rock style belaboring of the point take the mystery away. it's got a lot of semblances of intense music but without much in particular for me to latch onto. but it's still not a complete cake walk to sit through it and it gives a lasting impression that there's something difficult going on here. i like the bass pattern in those last few minutes, like when it does a big sudden drop. and the band is like "well if you like that pattern, do i have the thing for you".

Spoiler: tied 18th: isis

eastnewsound - lucent wish

enjoyment: 5.0 (4.0/5)
catfit: 0.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: is this isis .. ?
submitter: yex -0.1
medals / ICs:

6.7

https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Lyrics:_Lucent_Wish

my first guess is that i'm supposed to hear this song and like think of the big horrible web of bullets in the touhou. ok well i dont think that. i believe that touhou is this big huge computer game where everyone is a girl and they are shooting you badly. and other than that i feel like i dont understand it. for example i feel like i am going to find out that this song isn't from touhou it just comes from the touhou cover making comunnity because touhou gives you bonus points and extra girls if you make a cover of the songs and enough people listen to it. you get extra points in touhou equal to the number of points schadd gives your song in the walrus. all these unknowns are scary!!! but well the music itself only takes it so far.

i looked up the translation after listening to it the first time, and there's a bunch of poetic/intense sorts of lines that are very scattered, and don't really coalesce into any particularly scary concept for me to sink my teeth into. when i came into it the second time i was kinda worried that the atmosphere of the song (which i didnt really remember) would be something glum and difficult but it's just kind of that neutral dance style that doesn't really get me. perhaps there's some sort of cool tears for fears style emotional duality there but it's harder to resolve that when its not my native language.

enough food for thought that this isnt a dud

Spoiler: tied 18th: channeldelibird

jen cloher - hold my hand

enjoyment: 5.3 (4.1+/5)
catfit: 0.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: tiris...?
submitter: cdb
medals / ICs:

6.7

there's a little problem which is that the songwriting doesn't quite knock me dead. the guitar in the verses doesn't really do much for me though i like the interludes. and i guess insofar as i like it it's like a little bit pleasant? the "our love is more" chorus is like anti-scary, it's like gently and sort of vaguely reassuring. i can see a sort of fragile and vulnerable emotional frame of the song but that isn't really dominating how it feels.

thought hard about applying an even eviller -0.1 unfamiliarity points because you could argue that this artist is like interpolated in the line "jen insists that we buy organing vegetables" in courtney barnett's *dead fox*. i've been very vaguely intending to listen to something from this artist since i heard that song like 7 years ago

incidentally i listened to that song right after i pulled this out of my spreadsheet and heard the line "my hay fever is turning up" and thought what even is hay fever anyway. anyway later that day my nose started running and got really sore

Spoiler: 20th: invisibility

at about 2:20 this song suddenly becomes a detailed description of rape.

heavenly - hearts and crosses

enjoyment: 4.0 (3.5/5)
catfit: 1.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: invibility..
submitter: invibility -0.1
medals / ICs:

6.3

i sort of want to call this tasteless even though that's not a great word when i don't know what this singer's story is or what compels her to write this song. i've experienced in various media this kind of pairing of upbeat/pleasant aesthetics, along with something violent or odious, which i very rarely like. of course mood contrasts are generally crucial for exploring some complicated feeling, like the fact of having to return to your typical life after something horrible happens to you, but oftentimes i get a feeling like "i, the author, think that i am above this & am happy to exploit it for entertainment." an extreme of this is something like happy tree friends.

this song is way closer to resembling a an exploration of complicated feelings but it still doesn't really get me to like it. it also doesn't help that i spend 80% of the song not really being able to parse language from it and well that kind of prevents the mood from being able to build other than in the most abstract way. but there's various things i might call interesting. was kind of uncomfortable listening to it a second time.

Spoiler: 21st: majiffy

the cure - labyrinth

enjoyment: 4.5 (3.7+/5)
catfit: 0.5
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: delly bird
submitter: majifty who i think i didnt guess anywhere
medals / ICs:

5.8

this is one where i give it 0.5 points because i'm worried i'll understand something about it the next time i listen to it that makes it scarier. but um i guess i failed to do so. sure it has some musical intenseness but i usually don't really like it when there's a bunch of instruments kind of indistinctly doing the same thing.

and the central thematic principle of the song uh doesn't really do a lot for me either unfortunately. i don't mind being a different person i guess.

Spoiler: 22nd: aisa

content warning suburban malaise ALSO FLASHING randomly in the middle of the video

phoebe bridgers - garden song

enjoyment: 4.7 (3.8+/5)
catfit: 0.3
unfamiliarity: 0.5
guess: gonna throw out a stone cold dud guess which is hellbooks LOL bc i dont have her anywhere else
submitter: aisa danggggg
medals / ICs:

5.5

i liked her first album but at some point she said "i refuse to have any lyric thats not like a vignette." in particular the part where she talks about a dream she had is like a caricature of phoebe bridgers lyrics. um what else do i have to say about this... oh yeah content warning suburban malaise which i said at the top. well i'm saying it again.

i like the really low bass singer during a few of the bridges or whatever, it reminds me of i get lonesome by beck (and some other guy whose name i dont remember). slightly below the paired vocalist cat threshhold.

Spoiler: 23rd: t3

radiohead - karma police

enjoyment: 4.4 (3.7/5)
catfit: 0.3
unfamiliarity: 0.6
guess: t3
submitter: this is t3 -0.1
medals / ICs: laughed out loud at the song/artist +1.5

5.2 + 1.5

the reason i laughed at this is that i have a slightly established dislike of radiohead. shaft.ed submitted them to my first walrus's cat 2. i always kind of worry that i'm gonna suddenly like them a lot and have to go back on my word, like every year i get more tolerant of music and more willing to meet it where it's at and maybe at some point i'm gonna cross a threshhold where i suddenly get it, which would be embarrassing. but i also don't really think that's gonna happen. and it didn't happen the first time i listened to this and so things looked safe for the second time.

there's like nice morsels of music in this but it just feels very bland and there's precious little drive for me to root around in these words to figure out what this song is even about. sure i could read any of the million paragraphs written about it... well it turns out im not even going to read the lyrics. i dont like reading lyrics. you kind of have to admire this guy's hatred of consonants, which like poisoned 26 years of vocalists. i think it's very admirable that he recorded that "i lost myself" segment in the middle of a dentist appointment

Spoiler: 24th: fireisredsir

i think that this is about suicidality

xiu xiu - apistat commander

enjoyment: 2.9 (2.9/5)
catfit: 0.1
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: i dont know who i have left and i guess i wont guess anybody
submitter: fireisredsir lol sorry
medals / ICs:

3.9

the whole thing here unfortunately runs face first into the fact that i just dont like this guy. a while ago i had vaguely wanted to listen to this album because i knew it was, well, the sort of thing you'd send to cat 2 (i had listened to girl with basket of fruit and not rly liked it) and then i read the interview about the album cover and really hated it a lot. the story is that he hired a sex worker in vietnam and took pictures of him, which i wouldnt say is necessarily like an immoral thing but i rly disliked the way he talked about it and it didnt sound like the guy knew his dick was gonna be an album cover. and unsurprisingly when i did hear this it mostly just failed to elicit sympathy from me, nor to prompt me to be charitable to the various kind of interesting pieces of the production.

i wanted to give this a perfect 0 catfit because i was like "i'll happily come back to this just to verify that it doesnt really do anything for me" but i did end up kind of feeling like "urgh." oh another thing is that idk what he's saying mostly. hilariously this song was first in my playing order. and i almost laughed at it just in the classic way that the walrus forces you to listen to something, like the Promise i made to myself not to listen to this album was immediately broken. i suspect that this isnt chickadee so this score probably gets dropped with little issue

Spoiler: 4th place: mushshagana

there's like an auditory jumpscare at the end of this

helio - painmaker

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 1.9
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: tool?
submitter: msha!!!!! dang!!!!!!!!!!
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1 , 4th place +0.9 :nazar_amulet:, mushshagana award royalties +0.1

8.7 + 1.1

a big part of this is that goofy little gunfire sample which very strongly reminds me of this wolfenstein-like game i played as a kid called "nitemare-3d" which had a segment where there was a ceiling-mounted turret that would kill you instantly & i was like very scared of it. and then yeah there's that jumpscare at the end. me when i get hit by a horror villain: "nnoo!". the intervening music is just intense enough to like bridge the gap beween those two things without gaining or losing fright power.

idk good song. the not on spotifyness and like various aspects of the music could very easily be mushshagana. sorry i just always have to say when that's true.

Spoiler: approximate listening order

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s2_sTA-Gyk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm__PTYbrjs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EeTkF-SLxE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAXdWnbFTf4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-IudKVVEnA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djW4bIMoiCc <- 1st place
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKJOPutzmH8 <- 3rd place
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0DgOyIWiZw <- 2nd place
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIOaMQojM_Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_u5iCHi0Jo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Akbo0VEKw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGLuH19hwE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMYPpY7Mrt0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uYWYWPc9HU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYSXpSKvyPs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6gDQQuqcrA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH4Vx5zz7Go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za2D21YMv5Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDinXI0bxM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xUFjl8LzmY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee6WP7bAdFk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj7pYaTnT4Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u8rIx65QgA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9BYCJUEMFc

[schadd_]

[schadd_]

could have very feasibly liked that song if i didnt dislike it

[schadd_]

alright. so. the plan is that on thursday evening i will reveal:
-cat 8 section 1
-cat 8 section 2
-two random pairs of songs from cat 8 section 3
which adds up to 17 songs. on monday evening i will reveal the remaining pairs of songs from cat 8. this lets me split the reveal time (and like writing up work i guess) over two different instances and also preserves this cool thing where there's pairs of songs mixed in with single songs which i thought was funny (although it's just two pairs mixed in). thursday will just be like "here's 1st place for today" but monday will have medals announced which may well include some of the top several scorers from thursday.

[schadd_]

thursday reveal: 7pm central US (expired on 2023-09-14 19:00:00)
monday reveal: 7pm central US (expired on 2023-09-18 19:00:00)

[schadd_]

Spoiler:

reveal in an hour! hoping to start asap at 7pm although who knows if i'll be able to

[schadd_]

cat 8: section 1, 2, two pairs from 3

Spoiler: section 2: deathrowkitty

pretty balanced - halogen lamps

section: 2
enjoyment: 6 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.9
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: has the feeling of a cheetory6 zinger
submitter: deathrowkitty zinger lol awesome
medals / ICs:

9.9

this is just definitely very spring for me. there's those little murmurings and whisperings and hissings in the background that are like little bugs starting to figure out that they get to freely hang out outside or whatever, just in general it has the feeling of lifeforms starting to teem and temperatures coming up (bass always makes me think of heat and this song occasionally has it and occasionally doesn't, which is like an erratic spring climate).

another thing is that the number one thing i think of with spring is that sudden intensity of emotion you get from breathing the suddenly oxygen rich air, which isnt necessarily like a positive or negative thing it's just ramped up a lot. and i think the lyrics match that, there's like a bunch of drastic statements that sound endorphin-laden more than anything, and the most remarkable moments in the song are when the vocalist just suddenly gets really boomingly loud.

the refrain mentions dark space and bright light also make me think of like the quick change in daylight hours during spring - although you could sort of take those lines to refer to the day and night situation in pretty much any season if you wanted, but just the mentions of active light and darkness make me think of Seasons in General and thats still worth something

we're going with 2.9 and not 3.0 probably because i'm still paranoid the submitter comes in and says oh yeah this is like obviously supposed to be winter

Spoiler: section 2: stinkycheesedan

nada surf - popular

section: 2
enjoyment: 6.7 (4.8+/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pj
submitter: danny lolll fukkkk my ass
medals / ICs: suburbs + 0.1, tony hawk eligible :skateboard: +0.4

9.7 + 0.5

i think i'm gonna be hardened old coot and decline to give this higher than 4.8+ but good god is this song addicting lol. i'm like smiling insistently the whole time i'm listening to it. there's something about the way it refuses to state affirmatively/non-ironically what the song is about and yet there's such an brilliantly clear tone. that "unless he's a jerk or a crybaby!" line which is interrupted by the start of the drudging and indignant chorus, the statement "i'm popular" which has this like slight melodic upward motion which only barely nods at the fact that it's supposed to resemble an excited and fulfilled statement. idk there's like 30 lines in this song i could just restate here with no commentary needed but probably my favorite thing is "my mom says i'm a catch" like that line simultaneously makes me smile at the Alt Kid anti-statement being made by it as well as, like, just the statement at face value.

i can't find it but there was this image set on tumblr from the show too hot to handle where two of the guys were talking to each other like "would you ever go long term with a girl" / "do you mean like getting married? ...i dont think so" / "when i say long term i mean like. six weeks" / "...no, bro"

it's kind of hard to justify any particular place in the year where teenage angst lives, and yet i'm pretty comfortable saying i get a spring feeling from this, just because i feel like the end of the schoolyear is where all the Popularness in high school is calcified (like this is something they would play at like the goth prom or the graduation afterparty for all the rejects or whatever) and this makes me think of something like "the weather and the atmosphere i'm in make me feel like i'm supposed to be happy but that's just not how it is." like you get all those spring endorphins that build emotional intensity that cant go anywhere. still, i'm not giving this more than a 2 bc i feel like i'm doing the thing where i like the song so much i'm trying extra hard to find good catfit stuff

would be very embarrassing if this is stinkycheesedan and i didnt gues it even though it told me "ive been getting into 90s emo lately"

Spoiler: section 3: isis

2ne1 - ugly B/W 中須かすみ(CV.相良茉優) - 無敵級*ビリーバー

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5 and 4.4+/5
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: cjv ?
submitter: isisss
medals / ICs:

9.2

ugly lyrics
無敵級*ビリーバー lyrics

even with the extra translating steps this is a super straightforward and so great pair. i mean i get the gist of ugly just by listening to it lol but you know. and i actually also kinda get the gist of the love live song. the part that knocks em dead is how they both have the mirror bit, and that kinda appears in english in both songs (although i dont think i noticed it in the love live song before translating it).

in particular, ugly is like, Im ugly and i wish i wasnt. this mirror sucks. and the love live song is like i'm so awesome i love looking in the mirror.

the musical aspect i noticed is how they both have this triumphant upbeatness, although with *ugly* the chorus is this strong and concrete and maybe like singable hook, whereas the love live song dances around the chorus very elaborately and giddily, which in turn makes it feel brilliantly self assured and confident.

i guess when i was listening to them i got the feeling that the love live song was gonna be about being in love (because its called love live i guess) and thought "thats kind of nice." but then when i saw that it was jsut like this awesome self celebration song i was like ohhhh thats like a way better negation lol

i feel a little bit worried that i'm just going to like the paired song situations a lot more on average because of how simple of an idea this was but Well it was freaking good

Spoiler: section 3: hellbooks

tierpark - hiccup breakup B/W inabakumori - rainy boots / レイニーブーツ

section: 3
enjoyment: 5.9 (4.5/5 and 4.4/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: hellbooks
submitter: get guessed i guess -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.8

hiccup breakup lyrics (untranslated...)
rainy boots lyrics

hiccup hiccup... take a brush and put a little breakup breakup

the contrast i notice btwn the two songs is in the general time signatureness, not only that the first one is 7/8 or 13/8 or whatever and the second one is 4/4, but generally in the sort of wobbly off kilter feeling of the first one and the surefootedness of the second one. in particular there's a lot of like dotted eight note + sixteenth note rhythms in the vocaloid song that it does very precisely because its a vocaloid. i remember being in orchestra class in 7th grade and mr. carrillo pointed out how we were playing that dotted note rhythm as if it were like in 6/8 time, like two tied triplets + another triplet. and i think of that as an example about how people just kinda like doing triplet rhythms more, or will sligthly screw up exacting and unsyncopated 4/4 rhythms, which makes it stand out when the vocaloid very distinctly does it exactly as it would be written in sheet music or whatever. sorry for rambling etc.

anyway, this pairs with the subject matter interestingly, where the first song is about breaking up amicably and sort of loosely speculating about what went wrong, whereas the second song is like a point of acute emotional discomfort (being unhappy and uncertain, with pooling rainfall being a symbol for it) but also it seems like the singer is trying to take solace in someone else (although i think that the someone else might be the boots or something). i guess i dont really have comments other than just describing whats going on but its cool.

kind of want to minjaephobically give somebody a je ne sais chat award if they succeeded in framing hellbooks with this korean indie song and vocaloid

Spoiler: section 1: aisa

laura marling - night terror

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 2.2 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: infinity..?
submitter: aiza. yup. good night
medals / ICs:

8.8

sure, there's a pretty solid fighting and dark type, mostly just from a direct reading of the lyrics: dark type from that idea of night terrors and mosters and stuff (you could also get ghost type, but it feels less of a Spooky Mysterious situation and more like actively frightening and evil) and fighting from, well, how she's like "im gonna fight them". there's a little bit of support in the orchestration for a haunting feeling and a bit of support in the vocal songwriting for the feeling of a rugged fighting instict, and i guess both of those naturally come from the fact the song is about that.

it's sort of goofy to think of this as like a "dual type" when the two things are in opposition to each other, but at the same time it compellingly gets at the coolness of fighting being super effective against dark. like literally the feeling of the song is like ... physically fighting off night terrors. and i guess that's what fighting type pokemon do day in day out. and on the other hand that idea enriches the song a little bit, it's a nice thing.

Spoiler: section 1: channeldelibird

lets eat grandma - eat shiitake mushrooms

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.9 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: um..... w'geurt?
submitter: cdb
medals / ICs:

8.6

this song leans a little bit on the fact that it gets you started thinking about mushrooms because of the title (which is you know a little bit cheating) as well as the fact that for some reason various video games have instilled the idea of a certain kind of melodic motif thats associated with mushrooms. but yeah this is like all bouncy and stuff Which reminds me of mario kart wii mushrooms gorge. which is in turn like grass type. there's some kinda metalness to how you'd describe the instrumentation, a common thread is the glockenspiel and the cowbell and of course the distorted guitar which is of course like "metal" music although it kind of makes me think electric type by default. One of them magnemite types... but definitely a more obvious steel reading.

i like that guitar tone which feels like it has very little of the actual guitar sounds and is just the electricy part (and maybe its like synthesized or whatever..)

Spoiler: section 2: chickadee

agnes obel - run cried the crawling

section: 2
enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 1.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: chickdee maybe...
submitter: get guessed -0.1
medals / ICs: chills +1.1

8.5 + 1.1

something that definitely gives me a wintery feeling is a very meek bass that feels like it's constantly on the verge of wearing out, a body's heat source slowly giving way to the cold. various things also have the feeling of a sudden chill, or just like the aesthetics of something shimmering untouchably icy. where it runs into difficulties are in those texturally rich and crunchy strings, which immediately made me think of fallen leaves. and otherwise it sort of doesn't have the feeling of smooth snow cover or the like. and i guess those like lyrical mentions of frozenness and winter (she name drops winter...! how gauche...!) don't do all that much to help it for me. but this is still good. somehow i think you'll be able to deal with any mild shortcomings in the score Because of your chills medal.

Spoiler: section 2: t3

rammstein - armee der tristen

section: 2
enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: bianco maybe
submitter: ahh t3
medals / ICs:

8.5

lyricques

the lyrics are about like lets all join hands and be sad losers together. i get a summer feeling from this, it's like a very plodding bassy thing that feels like having to keep working in the heat. i guess the rly straightforward metal thing that rammstein do (du) works well with the feeling of being like very conscious of your physicality (because its so hot) (in da summer). i guess that the hopelessness theme doesn't very strongly make me think of summer nor does it seem unlike summer, sometimes summers feel hopeless.

something entered my mind unbidden while i was listening to this which is KOMM MIT i feel dirty DU HAST your own child BAL LONS neun und neunzig. which i say purely because it would theoretically make danny laugh and danny is like not gonna see this

apparently rammstein have this song "dicke titten" from recently

Spoiler: section 1: pj

giant claw - deep thoughts 002

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.2 (4.1/5)
catfit: 1.6 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: is this like chev...
submitter: pj !
medals / ICs: MUSIC THAT MAKES ME SHIT +1.0

7.9 + 1.0

i can definitely get a psychic type out of this - there's those moments where there's suddenly this big wide synth voice going like "wuahhhh" (they made me look up whether this was like an alias of oneohtrix point never...) and you can definitely imagine those big red waves from when claydol uses psychic. or like a big purple eye opening. i think the second type (or first type i guess) wants to be grass... but i'm kind of struggling with that. like that funny little arpeggio melody makes me think of some kinda cave full of mushrooms and like slime mold or whatever... but i mean caves have a lot of different stuff in them. famously flying and poison types for example. and there's like a lot of funny alternating vibraphone and marimba that kind of muddles the type aesthetic.

psychic type isn't an easy one though and i am going to cautiously assume you tried and succeeded to do that

Spoiler: section 1: ceejayvinoya

大槻 ケンヂ と 橘高 文彦 - 踊る赤ちゃん人間

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 0.9 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 1
guess: triz????
submitter: ceejay vinoya
medals / ICs: like beloved +0.6

7.8 + 0.6

lyrix

um this one is a hell of a puzzle. so the lyrics are about like attempting some world domination plan by leveraging the innocent appearance of a baby. its not exactly clear how that would work. i think that the innocent baby stuff is supposed to represent fairy type - like nowadays those baby-type moves like sweet kiss and charm are fairy type. that connection is kinda tenuous in my head, i still think of those as normal type and i guess being a baby in general as a normal type thing (like how azurill was just normal type and not water type). and Um, you'll have to forgive me for not really getting a normal type feeling out of this song as a whole. on the other hand you could get a dark type feeling from the world domination thing (which is kind of supported by the manic and evil instrumentation) as well as a fighting type. and i also can't help but feel like theres some completely other type i've missed.

so this ends up being super muddled but i can't help but give it a bit of catfit just for the amount of fun i had trying to puzzle this out.

there's a great commitment that the vocalist has to being engaging, there's that "ababa ababa" thing which is injected into the chorus and other such pure bonus vocalization stuff. i wanted to give this "honest songwriting" just because i'm otherwise predisposed not to give that to non-english music, although the reason for that is how i can't really judge the interaction between lyrics and melody very closely. instead i'm gonna go ahead and hit this with a ridiculous "like beloved" cat which would possibly make somebody laugh if they've read the book (and equally possibly just make them groan at my inanity)

Spoiler: section 2: toolenduso

erik satie (performed by daniel varsano) - gymnopedie no. 1

section: 2
enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 2.3
unfamiliarity: -0.1
guess: i kinda gotta go with drk but this could easily be like a stray ari
submitter: toolz
medals / ICs:

7.7

i don't even know for sure that i've listened to this a bunch of times - i remember listening to it on an ipod in my room when my pet roly poly died in like third grade. and it was just about to graduate too. but anyway i just looked at it and was like "yup i know gymnopedie. bum dum.... bum dum... etc etc". and even the middly parts too.

but you know its like a good song and whatever. i even think that most people would think of it as wintery (i asked my mom who likes it and she was like yeah definitely winter) but it's pretty comfortably fall to me. both of those seasons want to have the spacious landscape of wistful seventh chords, but this song makes me think of hanging out outside and thinking about stuff and maybe looking around at the empty trees and whatever as an accessory for your thinking. and i do that sometimes during the winter sure but not for long. fall lets you hang out outside for a long time and not start to have your fingers and toes freeze up.

Spoiler: section 1: pink ball

david gates - suite: clouds, rain

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.0 (4.0/5)
catfit: 1.4 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: channeldelibird. however i remember seeing cdb sent "section 1" and thinking like, well yeah like ice flying i guess. so i'm not gonna take away a point if i'm right just bc i remember that
submitter: ok well. this is pink ball
medals / ICs:

7.5

i guess it's somewhat clear to me this is supposed to be water/flying type. like the water is a pretty clear motif, and then there's like those sounds of wind and occasional mentions of flight. the problem is this song is kind of a slog and in my first impression i really just came away with water type and like maybe normal type because this is just like a normal ass song. long-type? ballad-type? elton john-type? like you spend a lot of time sitting through the prog organ solo or whatever to get just one more morsel of some kind of Type. of any kind.

the one fact about this is that those little choruses e.g. "on this airplane comin home to you..." are really great.

Spoiler: section 2: aristophanes

mary hopkin - those were the days (live 1969)

section: 2
enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 1.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pink bwall...?
submitter: aristophs...
medals / ICs:

7.5

i can very easily imagine that one could listen to this and immediately think of a certain season, and i could also easily imagine that season being spring. i think that spring is the one you'd associate with freedom and open-endedness and generally being the target of nostalgia (maybe summer i guess? only if you're specifically thinking of being a kid on summer vacation). but i guess this slightly misses in that it doesn't do anything to prompt a specific season directly. it's sort of like this song is saying "man what a great period of time that was... you all know what i'm talking about" and well different people in the audience just come away thinking different times. another thing is that there's the sort of frame narrative where she's talking about being lost and confused in the present and maybe that could be like a fall or a winter compared to the spring or summer of the rest of the song. well i guess you're usually not like waxing nostalgic like this about like six months ago but still.

i like the gentle accelerando for the refrain and the way it eventually adds mandolin or whatever that is.

easily the best part of this is when she says something in welsh and he's like ehmm can you say that slower

Spoiler: section 2: infinity 324

pokemon black/white - alder encounter

section: 2
enjoyment: 4.8 (3.9/5)
catfit: 1.1
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: erm isis perhaps
submitter: infiny ahh
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1

6.8 + 0.1

maybe the feeling here is like "surely not winter" and "surely not fall" and then hrmm probably spring i guess. its got a little bit of the spring-like florid and vivacious feeling. maybe this is a classic problem where i'm not super engaged by the song to begin with and so i'm not really hunting for thematic content. it doesn't help that i never really liked the sound font on the ds games. like i started out with the stinky little midi instruments on GBA and then when i heard a slightly more modernized version of that sound i was like "boo this sucks!!! yells at cloud!!!"

oh yeah i briefly got an aneurysm from this being in the seasons and not the pokemon part which is maybe the intention

Spoiler: section 2: chevre

green gills - make it all shine

section: 2
enjoyment: 4.8 (3.9/5)
catfit: 0.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: aisa..?
submitter: chevy...
medals / ICs:

6.5

this tragically falls flat into a problem where its general shiny optimism, which might generally want to be associated with spring or summer (which is a little bit ambiguous to begin with), but also hits the problem where i'm not like the other girls and i usually get a little pumped up during the winter and probably also at various points during the fall. sure theres like that sunshine motif and thats really all that does particularly well.

this earns back some of the enjoyment points it loses from me getting tired of it, during that little ukelele + clarinet piece at the end

this is late belle and sebastian to a tee. And yet i don't seem to be taking off 0.1 unfamiliarity points. i need to get more evil

[schadd_]

couple notes:

• i gave 0.1 extra catfit points to the section 1 submitters because there were only 5 of them & it seemed hard. i feel like this is probably too slight of a margin even
  
• if there was any single song where the types/season i was thinking matched the types/season the submitter was thinking, none of them piped up about it. on record i have that deathrowkitty and stinkycheesedan were thinking of fall and t3 were thinking of winter, which are each exactly opposite to what i said. everybody else can also step in to say oh yeah i was actually thinking of other thing. no skin off my nose.
  
• ONE INVISIBLE CAT CHOOSES THIS BELATED MOMENT TO REVEAL ITSELF:
  
  biking music
  :
  4.4 pts
  
  i decided that there would be just one award for a song i test out and see if it's good for bicycling and give it a kind of unreasonable amount of points. i am choosing to retroactively award it to isis
  forever the sickest kids - she's a lady
  . a small part of that is because i think i underrated it a little bit (i could be persuaded up to the hallowed number of 4.8+/5) but mostly because it just works extremely well with air whipping past your face.
  

• monday reveal: 7pm central US (expired on 2023-09-18 19:00:00)

  this reveal of the remaining songs in cat 8 (all paired songs of section 3) is actually going to be on wednesday. in (expired on 2023-09-20 19:00:00)

[schadd_]

• the final rankings for this cat and an updated standings chart will be posted after the next reveal - this is all one category (with only one set of 1st-4th place medals)
  
• to reiterate, cat 1 reveals the sunday after the next reveal, which will be sunday the 24th at 2pm. which is like (expired on 2023-09-24 14:00:00). in order to support a 2 month limit on going steady . .

[schadd_]

my mom says im a catch
im popular
im never last picked
im cheetory6

[schadd_]

nada surf guy annoyedly while his significant other is in the bathroom: i propose we support a 1 month limit on getting ready

[schadd_]

riot fest walrus diary:
-warpaint (which chickadee sent last time) played but i didnt wake up soon enough to be there for them. nor did i grab a brush and put a little makeup
-saw death grips who did not play up my sleeves which was weird because bjork was sitting there sidestage and i thought she'd come on and do it but she never did
-i saw pup for 40 seconds. dont know if they played the song chevre sent last time
-100 gecs played i got my tooth removed as well as hand crushed like a mallet which pj sent last time although it wasnt the remix with fallout boy and whatever
-dont know whether queens of the stone age played go with the flow. i left 20 minutes in to go see insane clown posse. however they didnt start for 15 minutes after their schedule time so i left and saw the last 3 minutes of queens of the stone age who were continuing (or possibly starting) to not play go with the flow
-postal service played nothing better & just had jenny lewis do the girl part. when she was like "say goodbye" at the end i left

[schadd_]

tomorrow is the cure which i will not watch as well as godspeed you black emperor which was probably submitted in cat 1 by a member of the burgeoning walrus post rock community. also code orange played yesterday which i didnt attend

[schadd_]

note that cat 8 part 2 is happening tonight!

[schadd_]

I’m here were do I have to go!!

the reveal is on discord! there is a "channel-sign-ups" place where you can get the "live games" and "music" roles which i think you need in order to look at the relevant channels. i always ping everybody on discord as well when it's about to start

[schadd_]

although, problematically i ping people from the live-games channel which i guess some people don't have access to and never find out about it

[schadd_]

Spoiler:

i also ping people on mafiascum. This is starting at the top of the hour, maybe very slightly late

[schadd_]

cat 8 full

Spoiler: 1st, section 2: deathrowkitty

pretty balanced - halogen lamps

section: 2
enjoyment: 6 (4.5/5)
catfit: 2.9
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: has the feeling of a cheetory6 zinger
submitter: deathrowkitty zinger lol awesome
medals / ICs: 1st place +2.0

9.9 + 2

this is just definitely very spring for me. there's those little murmurings and whisperings and hissings in the background that are like little bugs starting to figure out that they get to freely hang out outside or whatever, just in general it has the feeling of lifeforms starting to teem and temperatures coming up (bass always makes me think of heat and this song occasionally has it and occasionally doesn't, which is like an erratic spring climate).

another thing is that the number one thing i think of with spring is that sudden intensity of emotion you get from breathing the suddenly oxygen rich air, which isnt necessarily like a positive or negative thing it's just ramped up a lot. and i think the lyrics match that, there's like a bunch of drastic statements that sound endorphin-laden more than anything, and the most remarkable moments in the song are when the vocalist just suddenly gets really boomingly loud.

the refrain mentions dark space and bright light also make me think of like the quick change in daylight hours during spring - although you could sort of take those lines to refer to the day and night situation in pretty much any season if you wanted, but just the mentions of active light and darkness make me think of Seasons in General and thats still worth something

we're going with 2.9 and not 3.0 probably because i'm still paranoid the submitter comes in and says oh yeah this is like obviously supposed to be winter

Spoiler: tied 2nd, section 2: stinkycheesedan

nada surf - popular

section: 2
enjoyment: 6.7 (4.8+/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pj
submitter: danny lolll fukkkk my ass
medals / ICs: suburbs + 0.1, tony hawk eligible :skateboard: +0.4, tied 2nd +1.2

9.7 + 1.7

i think i'm gonna be hardened old coot and decline to give this higher than 4.8+ but good god is this song addicting lol. i'm like smiling insistently the whole time i'm listening to it. there's something about the way it refuses to state affirmatively/non-ironically what the song is about and yet there's such an brilliantly clear tone. that "unless he's a jerk or a crybaby!" line which is interrupted by the start of the drudging and indignant chorus, the statement "i'm popular" which has this like slight melodic upward motion which only barely nods at the fact that it's supposed to resemble an excited and fulfilled statement. idk there's like 30 lines in this song i could just restate here with no commentary needed but probably my favorite thing is "my mom says i'm a catch" like that line simultaneously makes me smile at the Alt Kid anti-statement being made by it as well as, like, just the statement at face value.

i can't find it but there was this image set on tumblr from the show too hot to handle where two of the guys were talking to each other like "would you ever go long term with a girl" / "do you mean like getting married? ...i dont think so" / "when i say long term i mean like. six weeks" / "...no, bro"

it's kind of hard to justify any particular place in the year where teenage angst lives, and yet i'm pretty comfortable saying i get a spring feeling from this, just because i feel like the end of the schoolyear is where all the Popularness in high school is calcified (like this is something they would play at like the goth prom or the graduation afterparty for all the rejects or whatever) and this makes me think of something like "the weather and the atmosphere i'm in make me feel like i'm supposed to be happy but that's just not how it is." like you get all those spring endorphins that build emotional intensity that cant go anywhere. still, i'm not giving this more than a 2 bc i feel like i'm doing the thing where i like the song so much i'm trying extra hard to find good catfit stuff

would be very embarrassing if this is stinkycheesedan and i didnt gues it even though it told me "ive been getting into 90s emo lately"

Spoiler: tied 2nd, section 3: cheetory6

siriusmo - 123 B/W graeme miller & steve shill - and now the record

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.3+/5 and 4.6+/5)
catfit: 2.9
unfamiliarity: 0.9 (0.9 and 1.0)
guess: cheetoire
submitter: yup -0.1
medals / ICs: laugh out loud at the song/artist (

and now the record

) +0.1; songs my keys would like (

and now the record

) +0.1; grand slam (

and now the record

) -0.4, tied 2nd +1.2

9.7 + 1.0

in the last walrus i had been confronted with the occasional complaint that i always seem to like really artsy and abstract approaches to the categories and like that has a way of making things feel inaccessible for the general musically-unobsessed population. and this has weighed in my mind a little bit, mostly the effect that it has is that i get excited when i really like an aristophanes style song (though i would say his high performance is generally just from his own merits). anyway, Tragically we have run face first into a cheetory6 zinger.

this gets a big boost from the juxtaposition of the titles, which sounds like a complete statement "1, 2, 3, and now the record". but then the actual content of the songs just like dance around that in a kind of ridiculous way - 123 has these two segments where the first feels like this weird demo, or kind of like the music that would be playing in an ad before an actual song (i think that part is what kraftwerk sounds like?), and then it transitions into another section which feels much more like serious electronic music, which feels like the "and now the record" moment - which only lasts like 50 seconds. and then it kind of unceremoniously bounces into the next track which feels considerably more just like another section of the first song. and the way the second song just like rambles and wiggles around definitely raises a feeling of "is this supposed to be the real song? is this the canonical part?" which in turn is just this aspect of music i've happened to think a lot about lately.

so, it has all the snazzy shiny pieces of a cool pair of songs and also just made for an extremely fun listening experience (including for other stuff not described here). i basically have to keep checking if the track changed whenever i listened to it. i decided i would give a grand slam only to the second song especially bc that means i get to halve the negative points associated with it. also i imagine my keys listening to it and thinking "i think it's cool that this song uses a sample of opening and closing some weird mysterious metal trunk instead of the door opening and closing and locking i always hear on the radio"

Spoiler: tied 2nd, section 3: fireisredsir

hana stretton - come home B/W felix - death to everyone but us

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5+/5 and 4.4+/5)
catfit: 2.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: fireisredsir
submitter: so it is -0.1
medals / ICs: tied 2nd +1.2

9.7 + 1.2

for some unknown effin reason i listened to this hana stretton album like in the midst of listening to the cat 4 songs i believe. i feel like i randomly plucked it up from tris's spotify activity or something but idt this is her. anyway traditionally i don't count unfamiliarity from after the start of the walrus and also like listening to an album during walrus season is like not listening to it at all anyway

i would say these songs represent the elaboration and the sound of two different kinds of solace, especially solace offered from the singer to the listener. come home has the sound of unconditional acceptance, like, you can do whatever you want and come back here or you can take me with you and it's alright. whereas death to everyone but us is like unconditional rejection of everything i guess. the songs nestle into each other nicely, there's that snazzy thing where the first song is about, Well, offering for you to come home & the second track starts by saying i'm coming home. it makes them feel like they're in dialogue with each other as well as with you.

and there's other ways they answer each other, both of them have a kind of constant comforting drone sound, the cantering horses in the first and the gentle synth in the second - where both of those things sort of resemble the feel of the vocals in the other song. and there's also the fun thing where the start of the second song feels like it's scooping up the first song and modulating it up a little bit.

i guess the thing that supercedes almost all of these things is that the pairing of these songs just makes me very happy.

Spoiler: 5th, section 3: isis

2ne1 - ugly B/W 中須かすみ(CV.相良茉優) - 無敵級*ビリーバー

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5 and 4.4+/5
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: cjv ?
submitter: isisss
medals / ICs:

9.2

ugly lyrics
無敵級*ビリーバー lyrics

even with the extra translating steps this is a super straightforward and so great pair. i mean i get the gist of ugly just by listening to it lol but you know. and i actually also kinda get the gist of the love live song. the part that knocks em dead is how they both have the mirror bit, and that kinda appears in english in both songs (although i dont think i noticed it in the love live song before translating it).

in particular, ugly is like, Im ugly and i wish i wasnt. this mirror sucks. and the love live song is like i'm so awesome i love looking in the mirror.

the musical aspect i noticed is how they both have this triumphant upbeatness, although with *ugly* the chorus is this strong and concrete and maybe like singable hook, whereas the love live song dances around the chorus very elaborately and giddily, which in turn makes it feel brilliantly self assured and confident.

i guess when i was listening to them i got the feeling that the love live song was gonna be about being in love (because its called love live i guess) and thought "thats kind of nice." but then when i saw that it was jsut like this awesome self celebration song i was like ohhhh thats like a way better negation lol

i feel a little bit worried that i'm just going to like the paired song situations a lot more on average because of how simple of an idea this was but Well it was freaking good

Spoiler: 6th, section 3: invisibility

camping in alaska - c u in da ballpit B/W mason jennings - soldier boy

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.4+/5 and 4.2+/5)
catfit: 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: invibility
submitter: IT IS bility -0.1
medals / ICs: suburbs (

c u in da ballpit

) +0.0

9.0 + 0.0

this is one where i just felt like the songs worked together interestingly before i had any particular reason to explain why. but i read the songs as the contrast of the feeling of aimlessness versus unquestioningly feeling like you have a purpose. and i guess they carry typical means of conveying those feelings in different genres, where the first song is like some kind of "emo" or "midwest" or something and the second song is like countryish. but what stands out is that the subject matter of the first song is like very mild and lacking danger, compared to the often intense way the singer describes their circumstances - lines like "your face is burnt in the back of my fuckin eyelids" have some kind of anger to them which overstates the simple feeling of just being very used to someone. compared to the very comfortable and self-assured language in the second song which spends time just going like "ba ba ba", while discussing the fact that the person is like gonna go to war (with a fatalistic and poignant framing).

Spoiler: 7th, section 1: aisa

laura marling - night terror

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 2.3 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 0.8
guess: infinity..?
submitter: aiza. yup. good night
medals / ICs:

8.9

sure, there's a pretty solid fighting and dark type, mostly just from a direct reading of the lyrics: dark type from that idea of night terrors and mosters and stuff (you could also get ghost type, but it feels less of a Spooky Mysterious situation and more like actively frightening and evil) and fighting from, well, how she's like "im gonna fight them". there's a little bit of support in the orchestration for a haunting feeling and a bit of support in the vocal songwriting for the feeling of a rugged fighting instict, and i guess both of those naturally come from the fact the song is about that.

it's sort of goofy to think of this as like a "dual type" when the two things are in opposition to each other, but at the same time it compellingly gets at the coolness of fighting being super effective against dark. like literally the feeling of the song is like ... physically fighting off night terrors. and i guess that's what fighting type pokemon do day in day out. and on the other hand that idea enriches the song a little bit, it's a nice thing.

Spoiler: 8th, section 3: hellbooks

tierpark - hiccup breakup B/W inabakumori - rainy boots / レイニーブーツ

section: 3
enjoyment: 5.9 (4.5/5 and 4.4/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: hellbooks
submitter: get guessed i guess -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.8

hiccup breakup lyrics (untranslated...)
rainy boots lyrics

hiccup (hiccup)... take a brush and put a little breakup (breakup)

the contrast i notice btwn the two songs is in the general time signatureness, not only that the first one is 7/8 or 13/8 or whatever and the second one is 4/4, but generally in the sort of wobbly off kilter feeling of the first one and the surefootedness of the second one. in particular there's a lot of like dotted eight note + sixteenth note rhythms in the vocaloid song that it does very precisely because its a vocaloid. i remember being in orchestra class in 7th grade and mr. carrillo pointed out how we were playing that dotted note rhythm as if it were like in 6/8 time, like two tied triplets + another triplet. and i think of that as an example about how people just kinda like doing triplet rhythms more, or will sligthly screw up exacting and unsyncopated 4/4 rhythms, which makes it stand out when the vocaloid very distinctly does it exactly as it would be written in sheet music or whatever. sorry for rambling etc.

anyway, this pairs with the subject matter interestingly, where the first song is about breaking up amicably and sort of loosely speculating about what went wrong, whereas the second song is like a point of acute emotional discomfort (being unhappy and uncertain, with pooling rainfall being a symbol for it) but also it seems like the singer is trying to take solace in someone else (although i think that the someone else might be the boots or something). i guess i dont really have comments other than just describing whats going on but its cool.

kind of want to minjaephobically give somebody a je ne sais chat award if they succeeded in framing hellbooks with this korean indie song and vocaloid

Spoiler: 9th, section 1: channeldelibird

lets eat grandma - eat shiitake mushrooms

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1.9 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: um..... w'geurt?
submitter: cdb
medals / ICs:

8.6

this song leans a little bit on the fact that it gets you started thinking about mushrooms because of the title (which is you know a little bit cheating) as well as the fact that for some reason various video games have instilled the idea of a certain kind of melodic motif thats associated with mushrooms. but yeah this is like all bouncy and stuff Which reminds me of mario kart wii mushrooms gorge. which is in turn like grass type. there's some kinda metalness to how you'd describe the instrumentation, a common thread is the glockenspiel and the cowbell and of course the distorted guitar which is of course like "metal" music although it kind of makes me think electric type by default. One of them magnemite types... but definitely a more obvious steel reading.

i like that guitar tone which feels like it has very little of the actual guitar sounds and is just the electricy part (and maybe its like synthesized or whatever..)

Spoiler: tied 10th, section 2: chickadee

agnes obel - run cried the crawling

section: 2
enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 1.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: chickdee maybe...
submitter: get guessed -0.1
medals / ICs: chills +1.1

8.5 + 1.1

something that definitely gives me a wintery feeling is a very meek bass that feels like it's constantly on the verge of wearing out, a body's heat source slowly giving way to the cold. various things also have the feeling of a sudden chill, or just like the aesthetics of something shimmering untouchably icy. where it runs into difficulties are in those texturally rich and crunchy strings, which immediately made me think of fallen leaves. and otherwise it sort of doesn't have the feeling of smooth snow cover or the like. and i guess those like lyrical mentions of frozenness and winter (she name drops winter...! how gauche...!) don't do all that much to help it for me. but this is still good. somehow i think you'll be able to deal with any mild shortcomings in the score Because of your chills medal.

Spoiler: tied 10th, section 2: t3

rammstein - armee der tristen

section: 2
enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 2.0
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: bianco maybe
submitter: ahh t3
medals / ICs:

8.5

lyricques

the lyrics are about like lets all join hands and be sad losers together. i get a summer feeling from this, it's like a very plodding bassy thing that feels like having to keep working in the heat. i guess the rly straightforward metal thing that rammstein do (du) works well with the feeling of being like very conscious of your physicality (because its so hot) (in da summer). i guess that the hopelessness theme doesn't very strongly make me think of summer nor does it seem unlike summer, sometimes summers feel hopeless.

something entered my mind unbidden while i was listening to this which is KOMM MIT i feel dirty DU HAST your own child BAL LONS neun und neunzig. which i say purely because it would theoretically make danny laugh and danny is like not gonna see this

apparently rammstein have this song "dicke titten" from recently

Spoiler: 12th, section 3: wgeurts

cold war kids - water and power B/W black midi - near dt, mi

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3/5 and 4.4+/5)
catfit: 1.9
unfamiliarity: 0.9 (1.0 and 0.9)
guess: gurt
submitter: IT IS gurt -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.4

going to once again apply the standard of 0.9 unfamiliarity if you are the one who already sent me this artist

i can see these songs as being about trying to be more social and co-operative vs. renouncing society and feeling paranoid. and they both incidentally draw upon water as a symbol of those modes, the first song mentions water in a reservoir in a way that touches on the co-operative usage of water in a society, contrasted with the second song which describes water in this fearful and problematic way - i could see it being about the flint water crisis.

i think that basically all of the conceptual pieces are there for this to be a great pairing but it just kind of doesn't have the feeling of one - part of that is that the lyrics are kind of rambling as well as hard to hear in both songs and it took me a while to notice the water thing (which i have to assume is the main thing the submitter was thinking of). and so i guess they songs just don't feel so united as a story. but cool idea. i guess i like the guitar in the black midi song.

Spoiler: 13th, section 3: mushshagana

zaliva-d - eastern sigh B/W rna - homunculi

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.3+/5 and 4.5/5)
catfit: 1.3
unfamiliarity: stone cold 1.0
guess:
submitter: mushshagana
medals / ICs: not on spotify (either) +0.1

8.1 + 0.1

i sort of failed to forget that mushshagana was the only one to send me two bandcamp links (i think fireisredsir had a bandcamp link and then changed that submission) so i will just leave it unguessed here. bandcamp doesn't make it very easy to have gapless sequential playback unless you own the songs so i bought the zaliva-d track for $1 and i bought the rna album for $3.69 and i would keep adding them to a two-song queue on my phone. i half suspect that both of these bands are like friends of mushshagana and theyre gonna message it like "hey somebody bought our stuff, was that from you?"

i'm not finding a lot of threads to relate these songs really, the best thing i have my hands on is that they both have this feeling of dread and that the first song represents the machine which is causing the dread whereas the second song is like shouting into the void about it. specifically that little low-mixed and echoing voice over a huge distorted sound wall reminds me of panopticon https://dreamcrusher.bandcamp.com/album/panopticon-3 which is like close to my favorite album and i think i've bizarrely never told you about it

another thing is that one time i accidentally queued up the whole rna album one time and i listened to the first song and it had this like almost-power chord thing that i spent like 20 minutes trying to remember what it reminded me of & it was pretend friends by mr. phylzzz but ONLY in the show where i saw them live opening for boris and melvins bc in the album version the guitar is much crummier. Anyway this has been a nice diversion

Spoiler: tied 14th, section 3: biancospino

sigh - messiahplan B/W opeth - all things will pass

enjoyment: 5.4 (4.2/5 and 4.2+/5)
catfit: 1.6
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: bianc ospino
submitter: biancos pino -0.1
medals / ICs:

7.9

i feel like bianco's been suffering a little bit from the fact that i don't read lyrics so i looked over them with these songs - although her songs are kind of unavoidably going to perform a little worse just because i value specifically hearing the lyrics within the mix of a song and get a little bit annoyed when musicians don't care about whether you can do that. still, there's a handful of themes hiding in those tangentially-related documents labeled "lyrics" for these songs which were a little bit beneficial

idk if you would call either of these songs death metal, i think you probably wouldn't actually, but they get at the different attitudes metal seems like it often has about death itself - messiahplan seems to be excited and voracious about death (maybe sort of playing with the idea of cult suicides or wahtever) and all things will pass takes a more dreadful and frightened approach to it. and i guess having the songs side by side causes you to notice the differences in tempo, orchestration, etc. that accompany these differences in attitude - although, it takes a little bit of work to look for these and i guess the songs don't scream out at me what their compelling aspects are (though they do scream out in general)

Spoiler: tied 14th, section 1: pj

giant claw - deep thoughts 002

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.2 (4.1/5)
catfit: 1.6 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: is this like chev...
submitter: pj !
medals / ICs: MUSIC THAT MAKES ME SHIT +1.0

7.9 + 1.0

i can definitely get a psychic type out of this - there's those moments where there's suddenly this big wide synth voice going like "wuahhhh" (they made me look up whether this was like an alias of oneohtrix point never...) and you can definitely imagine those big red waves from when claydol uses psychic. or like a big purple eye opening. i think the second type (or first type i guess) wants to be grass... but i'm kind of struggling with that. like that funny little arpeggio melody makes me think of some kinda cave full of mushrooms and like slime mold or whatever... but i mean caves have a lot of different stuff in them. famously flying and poison types for example. and there's like a lot of funny alternating vibraphone and marimba that kind of muddles the type aesthetic.

psychic type isn't an easy one though and i am going to cautiously assume you tried and succeeded to do that

Spoiler: 16th, section 1: ceejayvinoya

大槻 ケンヂ と 橘高 文彦 - 踊る赤ちゃん人間

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 0.9 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 1
guess: triz????
submitter: ceejay vinoya
medals / ICs: like beloved +0.6

7.8 + 0.6

lyrix

um this one is a hell of a puzzle. so the lyrics are about like attempting some world domination plan by leveraging the innocent appearance of a baby. its not exactly clear how that would work. i think that the innocent baby stuff is supposed to represent fairy type - like nowadays those baby-type moves like sweet kiss and charm are fairy type. that connection is kinda tenuous in my head, i still think of those as normal type and i guess being a baby in general as a normal type thing (like how azurill was just normal type and not water type). and Um, you'll have to forgive me for not really getting a normal type feeling out of this song as a whole. on the other hand you could get a dark type feeling from the world domination thing (which is kind of supported by the manic and evil instrumentation) as well as a fighting type. and i also can't help but feel like theres some completely other type i've missed.

so this ends up being super muddled but i can't help but give it a bit of catfit just for the amount of fun i had trying to puzzle this out.

there's a great commitment that the vocalist has to being engaging, there's that "ababa ababa" thing which is injected into the chorus and other such pure bonus vocalization stuff. i wanted to give this "honest songwriting" just because i'm otherwise predisposed not to give that to non-english music, although the reason for that is how i can't really judge the interaction between lyrics and melody very closely. instead i'm gonna go ahead and hit this with a ridiculous "like beloved" cat which would possibly make somebody laugh if they've read the book (and equally possibly just make them groan at my inanity)

Spoiler: 17th, section 2: toolenduso

erik satie (performed by daniel varsano) - gymnopedie no. 1

section: 2
enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 2.3
unfamiliarity: -0.1
guess: i kinda gotta go with drk but this could easily be like a stray ari
submitter: toolz
medals / ICs:

7.7

i don't even know for sure that i've listened to this a bunch of times - i remember listening to it on an ipod in my room when my pet roly poly died in like third grade. and it was just about to graduate too. but anyway i just looked at it and was like "yup i know gymnopedie. bum dum.... bum dum... etc etc". and even the middly parts too.

but you know its like a good song and whatever. i even think that most people would think of it as wintery (i asked my mom who likes it and she was like yeah definitely winter) but it's pretty comfortably fall to me. both of those seasons want to have the spacious landscape of wistful seventh chords, but this song makes me think of hanging out outside and thinking about stuff and maybe looking around at the empty trees and whatever as an accessory for your thinking. and i do that sometimes during the winter sure but not for long. fall lets you hang out outside for a long time and not start to have your fingers and toes freeze up.

Spoiler: tied 18th, section 1: pink ball

david gates - suite: clouds, rain

section: 1
enjoyment: 5.0 (4.0/5)
catfit: 1.4 + 0.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: channeldelibird. however i remember seeing cdb sent "section 1" and thinking like, well yeah like ice flying i guess. so i'm not gonna take away a point if i'm right just bc i remember that
submitter: ok well. this is pink ball
medals / ICs:

7.5

i guess it's somewhat clear to me this is supposed to be water/flying type. like the water is a pretty clear motif, and then there's like those sounds of wind and occasional mentions of flight. the problem is this song is kind of a slog and in my first impression i really just came away with water type and like maybe normal type because this is just like a normal ass song. long-type? ballad-type? elton john-type? like you spend a lot of time sitting through the prog organ solo or whatever to get just one more morsel of some kind of Type. of any kind.

the one fact about this is that those little choruses e.g. "on this airplane comin home to you..." are really great.

Spoiler: tied 18th, section 2: aristophanes

mary hopkin - those were the days (live 1969)

section: 2
enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 1.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pink bwall...?
submitter: aristophs...
medals / ICs:

7.5

i can very easily imagine that one could listen to this and immediately think of a certain season, and i could also easily imagine that season being spring. i think that spring is the one you'd associate with freedom and open-endedness and generally being the target of nostalgia (maybe summer i guess? only if you're specifically thinking of being a kid on summer vacation). but i guess this slightly misses in that it doesn't do anything to prompt a specific season directly. it's sort of like this song is saying "man what a great period of time that was... you all know what i'm talking about" and well different people in the audience just come away thinking different times. another thing is that there's the sort of frame narrative where she's talking about being lost and confused in the present and maybe that could be like a fall or a winter compared to the spring or summer of the rest of the song. well i guess you're usually not like waxing nostalgic like this about like six months ago but still.

i like the gentle accelerando for the refrain and the way it eventually adds mandolin or whatever that is.

easily the best part of this is when she says something in welsh and he's like ehmm can you say that slower

Spoiler: 20th, section 3: skygazer

thundercat & louis cole - i love louis cole B/W scarygoldings and louise cole and john scofield and mononeon - louis cole sucks

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.4/5 and 4.3+/5)
catfit: 0.8
unfamiliarity: 0.8 (0.8 and 0.9)
guess: skygazeur
submitter: omg -0.1
medals / ICs:

7.2

i kinda want this to be the token paired songs that i kill as sacrifice to make the other sections feel like they didnt miss out on the awesome winning paired songs idea & i feel like skygazer wouldnt mind especially if i tell them that i enjoyed the idea (ALTHOUGH i didnt laugh at it or at least i didnt laugh from just the titles. actually i saw the first youtube video and thought about it for a second and was like "oh i bet the second song is gonna be like i hate louis cole or whatever")

the general reason for the dearth of points is that the pairing here mostly feels like it comes directly from the musicians (although i kind of expected that i love louis cole would have come after louis cole sucks). and like i wouldnt give points to two songs that are next to each other on an album. i'll say it's funny that like this offers the pro-louis cole standpoint which is something like "we got extremely fucked up together" and the anti-louis cole standpoint is "i have to listen to louis cole's drumming". i'll also say that like each of the 20 times you've made me type louis cole i've accidentally typed louise and had to backspace it. and now i'm free forever. louise louise louise louise louise louise louise. oh and the drumming is coot. good*.

Spoiler: 21st, section 3: majiffy

the beatles - she's leaving home B/W oingo boingo - mary

enjoyment: 5.3 (4.6/5 and 3.7/5)
catfit: 1.6
unfamiliarity: 0.3 (-0.4 and 0.9)
guess: jiffy
submitter: omg! -0.1
medals / ICs:

7.1

tragically we have come to my favorite song of yours which is also the song i've listened to the most out of everything i've been sent. like this is the comedic payoff of all the times i talked about my dad playing music in the car: He Played This Song in the Car. there's a certain segment of beatles songs i would describe as "oddly domestic" (maybe

a day in the life

is the most famous one but this song as well as

for no one

and

fixing a hole

are more like the "glum and goofy little song" archetype i'm thinking of) that somehow ended up making a strong impression on me, and i don't even think i've listened to this very much as an adult but i realized that i could kind of audiate all of the little strings in this and i remembered basically all of the lyrics (although i still got taken by surprise with the thing where there's like only 3 notes of the strings before each verse)

i can see how these two unite into a story - in fact i wouldn't be surprised if oingo boingo was like directly thinking about the beatles song when they wrote mary (also i feel like the chorus is interpolating baby you're a rich man but if it does they at least added a harmony to it). and that aspect of it bores me a little bit.

the main cool thing is how i just enjoy the beatles' storytelling of this a lot more - their song doesn't name its character (although the second time i listened to it i kind of thought i missed her name explicitly being mary) and it starts in the middle of the story, with this goofy little chorus that zooms in on a specific parental feeling. the oingo boingo song spends a kind of boring verse setting up a little biography for her and goes on to try to make this big epic story about her with epic hooks and stuff and it just works much worse for me. and in that way the contrast is like pretty funny, even if it comes at the expense of me particularly liking one of the songs

Spoiler: 22nd, section 3: tris

clark powell - flare B/W suzanne ciani - the fifth wave - water lullaby

enjoyment: 4.9 (3.7+/5 and 4.2+/5)
catfit: 1.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: trizah
submitter: yes -0.1
medals / ICs: not on spotify (

flare

) +0.0

7.0

ok so that suzanne ciani song just has a bonus dash in it that screws up the way i write artist and song title combos. but whatever.

the main thing i notice is how flare is comprised of a lot of sounds with a sharp attack (except the times where that piano is played backwards, and it has a sharp decay), which gives the feeling of stiffness and unyieldingness, whereas basically everything in the second song is smooth and even continuous often (except for the hi hat sound). and both of them have a bunch of arpeggios. maybe they represent the moments before and after you accomplish an epic video game thing. the problem comes in that neither song really particularly feels like it's about anything to me and it's like i'm reaching into the nuts and bolts to try to find something in common - i guess i just don't feel like i'm getting a story or anything out of the two songs although i can easily imagine one could feel that way

imagining this is tris amending her statement in heltris walrus that "both songs can't be homestuck songs" to be like "ok but one of them can"

Spoiler: 23rd, section 2: infinity 324

pokemon black/white - alder encounter

section: 2
enjoyment: 4.8 (3.9/5)
catfit: 1.1
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: erm isis perhaps
submitter: infiny ahh
medals / ICs: not on spotify +0.1

6.8 + 0.1

maybe the feeling here is like "surely not winter" and "surely not fall" and then hrmm probably spring i guess. its got a little bit of the spring-like florid and vivacious feeling. maybe this is a classic problem where i'm not super engaged by the song to begin with and so i'm not really hunting for thematic content. it doesn't help that i never really liked the sound font on the ds games. like i started out with the stinky little midi instruments on GBA and then when i heard a slightly more modernized version of that sound i was like "boo this sucks!!! yells at cloud!!!"

oh yeah i briefly got an aneurysm from this being in the seasons and not the pokemon part which is maybe the intention

Spoiler: 24th, section 2: chevre

green gills - make it all shine

section: 2
enjoyment: 4.8 (3.9/5)
catfit: 0.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: aisa..?
submitter: chevy...
medals / ICs:

6.5

this tragically falls flat into a problem where its general shiny optimism, which might generally want to be associated with spring or summer (which is a little bit ambiguous to begin with), but also hits the problem where i'm not like the other girls and i usually get a little pumped up during the winter and probably also at various points during the fall. sure theres like that sunshine motif and thats really all that does particularly well.

this earns back some of the enjoyment points it loses from me getting tired of it, during that little ukelele + clarinet piece at the end

this is late belle and sebastian to a tee. And yet i don't seem to be taking off 0.1 unfamiliarity points. i need to get more evil

[schadd_]

[schadd_]

this is now with everybody's lowest score dropped. it seems to be our rising star fireisredsir's game to lose... though each of the people in that cohort have the threat of sending me a song i like a lot.

our final category, the so-called "cat 1", reveals this sunday at 2pm central US time (UTC-5) ((expired on 2023-09-24 14:00:00)). these songs will be revealed in the randomly generated order in which i listened to them. the catfit points will be based on the enjoyment points, where the range between 3/5 and 4/5 is worth one point and the range between 4/5 and 5/5 is worth two points. so a song with a rating of 4.4/5 would be worth 1 + 0.8 = 1.8

the "honest walrus" column ignores the dropped score (as well as medals and invisible cats). you'll note mushshagana having a shocking second place in that column, partly due to its walloping 8.2 minimum score. it is also based on my bookkeeping of the medal and IC points which is something i spent like 8.2 seconds doing total across all the categories

[schadd_]

if you have had any thought like "i should do my own walrus!", you should do that now!

if you open signups now it will still take you kind of a while to start, so you might as well get going. i will say that i set a kind of silly standard as far as amount of writing / bells and whistles / etc., as well as the pacing of the reveals. people do walruses on mafiauniverse with like little to no writing and sporadic reveals and they work perfectly well, not that you needed my permission to not write 3 paragraphs about each song for no reason.

you should start a walrus! i'm pointing at you through my computer!! you don't need permission from me or god or your mom to scramble together whatever categories you want and click post. if you do it i will cheerlead your thread and link everybody to it and call in reinforcements or whatever. several persons responsible for walruses in the past are out of commission - hellbooks is like extremely busy, shafted is tragically not using the website and also didnt finish his other walrus, i just did a walrus in fact And i will not do another one for like a year. tris is still here and listening to music all the time and is one of the people i'm addressing with this post i guess. all of the high placers of this walrus who listen to music all the time: i am looking at you too! AND THE LOW PLACERS don't think you can just sneak past me! anix too, as long as i have your attention by saying your name - i have a great idea for a way to win the trust of the restless and paranoid userbase! zoraster - um you can go back to mowing your lawn or whatever

[schadd_]

my dog wants to play catch
i'm popular

[schadd_]

ok umm i forgot that dogs play fetch and not catch

[schadd_]

i had fun reading that. i guess i didnt get a particularly celebratory feeling from either song although i would describe the first one as like "revelling in something." i liked the weird bassy lurches yes.

[schadd_]

i can't find it but there was this image set on tumblr from the show too hot to handle

Spoiler:

[schadd_]

CAT 1 REVEAL IS TOMORROW!!! that is SUNDAY at 2PM CENTRAL US TIME which is UTC MINUS FIVE

which is SLIGHTLY LESS THAN 21 HOURS AFTER THIS POST

it all ends here!! will this new kid "fireisredsir" take home the belt??? that would be odd because i didnt offer a belt!!!

the songs are revealing in a random order which means the first placer could be announced at any moment!!

be there!! any enjoyment of these 24 songs experienced by persons other than myself will be purely accidental AND YET highly likely!!

[schadd_]

Spoiler:

CAT 1 IN A HALF HOUR! DAWN OF THE FINAL DAY!

[schadd_]

cat 1

Spoiler: 9th: channel delibird

fenne lily - lights light up

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 1 + 0.8 = 1.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: fi reis?
submitter: channel delibird!
medals / ICs: chills +0.4

8.6 + 0.4

somebody might have looked at that list of 5/5 albums i have and noticed the five big thief albums there. i definitely like the thin & pattering drums that are like james krivchenia and the light harmony in that chorus is definitely optimized to stimulate the central nervous system (although i'm sort of happy to be able to give a discounted version of the chills medal since i'm fresh out of them). in particular the arrangement of the phrase "do you even wanna be here?" really gets at the feeling of, well, do you even wanna be here, but in a reassuring way.

the song does a lot of good building of mood in a straightforward way, but maybe it sort of lacks in what specific things it accomplishes beyond the chorus though. the ideas are a little bit scattered, there's a bunch of emotional vignettes that oftentimes don't catch me as expressing anything in particular very brilliantly. but the general presentation is very beautiful, it has the feeling of a big inviting space where a story unravels. i guess i would have largely described big thief in the same way for the first year i was listening to them, lol. regardless there's a few things about this that'll stick with me

Spoiler: 8th: stinkycheesedan

tied 8th: the sugarcubes - ammæli (birthday)

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 1 + 1 = 2
unfamiliarity: 0.7
guess: do i just go with known bjork submitter infinity...
submitter: ok danny lol awesome
medals / ICs:

8.7

this song briefly made me think about whether i wanted to subtract from the catfit somehow in the event i know the song, even though i'm like not 100% sure whether i've listened to this song or if i'm just kind of hearing the venus as a boy melody in it. the thing is that it feels so safe to submit a bjork song to me even though its not like i went around posting about how much i like bjork everywhere & i'd also appreciate the notion of "hey you might have missed out on sugarcubes even if you already like bjork". anyway. i've definitely listened to some sugarcubes, davsto said about them something along the lines of "bjork's singing is obviously great. don't really care for the bloke."

something about the weepiness and droopiness of the instrumentation lends this the feeling of vulnerability, not just in the social sense but in the sense of an organism leaving itself in danger, and bjork's shimmering and glottal-squeaking voice feel like she is straining and over-extending, but in a way that is joyful. it's a very emotionally full song, that 1-5-2 bass progression feels like a tall thought is being dwelled on.

i've definitely liked her icelandic singing whenever i've heard it. i had a thought "maybe this person submitted the icelandic version because they didnt want me to look at the lyrics... but i've generally been translating lyrics". um i think there might be merit to that idea.

Spoiler: 22nd: deathrowkitty

ladytron - time's arrow

enjoyment: 4.5 (3.7+/5)
catfit: 0.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: danny?
submitter: drk
medals / ICs: that's a PJ medal babes +1.6

6.3 + 1.6

this kind of relies on the very thick synth atmosphere to give shape and character to the melody which is kind of annoyingly stagnant and simple (with the exception of the occasional cool surprise major cadence thing it does in the chorus). and the atmosphere is pretty cool but often doesn't have anything in particular that grabs me. i guess generally the song just doesn't compel me to have much of a reaction to it, the lyrics are kind of distractingly figurative (and when you think about the idea of time being strong or whatever, you think of things changing over time . . .).

but i guess the moments of particularly strong transformation (e.g. the big beat switch thing at 2:30) and the general glitz and mystique of the production make this fairly interesting

Spoiler: tied 16th: pink ball

parcels - bemyself (live from hansa studios)

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1 + 0.6 = 1.6
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: gweurts?
submitter: ok awesomely this is pink ball and somebody else down the line submitted a song by a chilean band. i guess theyre chilean-american.
medals / ICs:

8.2

i like the indulgent pair of guitarists doing all sorts of hammerings on at the beginning but it also kinda makes me think alright whens the song gonna start lol. i guess that i shockingly spend a lot of time waiting for this thom yorkic vocalist to come back - or maybe i'd rather say the vocals in general are nice. the contrast of head voice and chest voice and the emphatic falls into and out of unison are what make e.g. iceblink luck a really good vocal performance, and they have a lot of fun with it here.

maybe i would say this is like 7% of the way towards feeling distractingly corny or indulgent & it doesn't have much to offer beyond the feeling of those choruses, but they're truly very nice

Spoiler: tied 2nd: ceejayvinoya

the pillows - last dinosaur

enjoyment: 6.3 (4.6+/5)
catfit: 1 + 1.3 = 2.3
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: invisiblitatively
submitter: known 3:46 submitter ceejayvinoya... ourgh
medals / ICs: exactly 3 minutes and 46 seconds +0.7, tied second +1.2

9.6 + 1.9

obnoxiously i will start by saying that i like the mixing in this a lot. it feels like there's gentle distortion on everything, i tend to like when there's a slight feeling like the recording medium is losing it only when the sound is at its most intense. the vocalist feels that way, there's a couple of those moments where they glisten a little bit in a particularly strong "oh" sound (although that might just be what the pre-production vocals sound like). and yet the vocalist is very cleanly audible, which i gotta give props to even though i don't speak the language (and don't have all that strong of a reaction to the lyrics when i read them alongside the song). there's just various production aspects that make this feel like it's glistening.

the sudden really meaty and full drumming as well as the gentle glide guitar in that bridge at 2:00 are sooooo good

there's this very nice thing where the little vocal treats towards the end of this song sound like bjork (& what's also nice is that i can say that & know that you heard that song just a few minutes ago although that would probably be true in a typical reveal order.)

and i also Obviously like that album cover a lot.

Spoiler: tied 6th: skygazer

bernard wright - haboglabotribin

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 1 + 1 = 2
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess:
submitter: this is skygazer
medals / ICs:

9.0

it's so awesome that this is from 1981 because it sorta feels like it's riffing on the herbie-era funk with a funny modern hip hop sensibility, like the music box thing is Easily something a producer would be proud to come up with in 2023

it occurs to me i say i like the personality of this song even though the personality of this song is "what if there was an awesome and unsettling carnival". i get a huge kick out of that line "all the rides are fifty cents so take the ladies all you gents" i guess just because it sets down this unquestioning assumption that guys generally arent willing to spend more than 50 cents on their girlfriend at once

One has to call out a good hi-hat closing when one hears it & well there are quite many of them in this. maybe this doesnt really produce any like transcendentally great Music Experiences but like its a great song to which one might wiggle and wobble whilst cooking. and i could see this producing transcendentally great music experiences for some listeners. this is of course the most stone cold obvious skygazer song in the world but i think i did my thing where i copied this an extra time and so i saw it as hers & im not allowed to guess it

Spoiler: tied 13th: fireisredsir

gazelle twin - glory

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1 + 0.7 = 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: is this a tris
submitter: this is fire's reds!
medals / ICs:

8.4

mhm so somebody noticed i like kate bush. You are correct in that. and i also like fka twigs.

this has a lot of feelings of teemingness, various kinds of life sprouting out of this e.g. the huge elaborate and sprawling vocal phrases that feel like roots and branches growing out forcefully, and all the little rumblings across the frequency spectrum.

maybe there's mild shortcomings in that they slightly overuse that big low "bwooo" (especially that part at the end that just keeps doing it for a bonus minute... its the electronic music makers folly, it sort of makes it feel exploited) and that this is maybe even too dramatic for any of the lyrics to really take hold on me. i guess i also just hear a lot of the cool parts of the vocal production and think "woaw this is like kate bush" which isn't really a good or a bad thing (especially since i dont have a way of knowing directly if this the musician is inspired by kate bush, nor the submitter for that matter) but it does make it a little harder to get to a transcedent goodness. i mean the vocalist is self evidently great.

Spoiler: 21th: chickadee

albert hammond jr. - spooky couch

enjoyment: 4.9 (3.9+/5)
catfit: 1.0
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: chickdee... jiffy isnt the only member of the household who likes to send the long ones
submitter: i seem to have guessed more than zero of your songs this time -0.1
medals / ICs:

6.8

there's a lot of nice details, the pattering of the drums and the squeakings of guitar. maybe my favorite part of this is that droning cello which proceeds at a gentle dissonance during the segment where the chord changes - and later gets to have a handful of (still gentle) moments in greater focus. but the details don't add up to an astoundingly engaging 7 minutes. there's that section of payoff at the end that makes me say "ok, like, payoff for what . ?"

that said, i feel like i'm on the verge of being affected by the guitar enough that this would be a very pleasant song. like there's some version of it where i give this like 69 points instead of 6.9. edit 68 points instead of 6.8.

Spoiler: 23rd: toolenduso

minus the bear - animal backwards

enjoyment: 4.3 (3.6+/5)
catfit: 0.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: cjv ?
submitter: tool & duso
medals / ICs:

6.0

for a while i heard this as "she is a moth looking through my window" spoken very britishly which was cool. like does she think you're a light bulb or something. um, this has a really clubby vibe that falls a little flat for me, probably the best part of it is the harshness of some pieces of the drum machine. i almost think i'd like this with an even more straightforward 4 on the floor beat

Spoiler: 5th: invisibility

prince nico mbarga - sweet mother

enjoyment: 6.1 (4.5+/5)
catfit: 1 + 1.1 = 2.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: hellbook maybe
submitter: INbility!
medals / ICs: paired vocalists +0.4

9.2

possibly the submitter gambled on whether i have a good relationship with my mom. and i do! the vocal harmony is great, the layered drum section works well until the end, there's a few moments that make me a little emotional. i suppose it mostly speaks for itself.

Spoiler: tied 11th: T3

(occasional flashing warning) mitski - townie

enjoyment: 6.2 (4.6/5)
catfit: 1 + 1.2 = 2.2
unfamiliarity: 0.1
guess: aisa... song that i already know from artist who uses her first name at least
submitter: T3??? Awesome
medals / ICs: laughed at the song/artist +0.2

8.5 + 0.2

i got a little bit startled by how dirty the guitar was and i somehow didnt remember the particular refrain "i want a love that falls as fast as a body from the balcony" (great line obviously) but like i've seen her perform this song. the only song where i did that before it got sent to me lol (she headlined one of the days at pitchfork 2022).

erm what do i say about this... mitski's singing is reminiscent of wringing out a towel. there's all sorts of fuzz and bristle in the production of this but i think it's telling that the tiny desk version of this is just her and an electric guitar. i guess there's just a lot of lines that make one stew on them for a while. the first time i noticed that thing where she says "i don't wanna be what my daddy wants me to be" as well as "..body wants me to be" i thought about it a lot. like what's left.

there's a lot of times i mention music having some kind of "shape" which is impressive or elaborate and this is a good example of that. which is to say that trying to like picture this song (or like create some mental model of it) is very thought intensive, it feels like a big winding path.

Spoiler: tied 13th: mushshagana

tenops - seven bullets

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1 + 0.7 = 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess:
submitter: mushshagana ;;;;;
medals / ICs:

8.4

tragically when i double copied skygazer's song this got trampled over and so i know this is msha. this could have maybe gotten a jiffy guess out of me or something

i think i know of mushshagana liking deftones or at least knowing about them well enough to take advantage of the several times i was like "I Like Deftones now". and this compares reasonably well to, like, post-y2k deftones which i tend to enjoy at erm the 4.3+ level. the thing is that beyond the fur in particular has the songwriting sensibility of a petulant and squirming baby seal & the guy refuses to do any kind of vocals in a manner that is sustainable for him to keep doing for 25 years. i should say both of those are me describing reasons i like that album and fall a little short on the albums that just have their big soaring drama and thick mixing

and yeah there's big soaring drama with this, i like the big lurching bass movements a lot and the shiny vocal harmonies that get at a feeling of wideness. the drumming is good. whatever pedals they have work. i guess there's just not anything in particular that's home run level good

Spoiler: 24th: aristophanes

half alive - still feel (with an uncredited orchestra)

enjoyment: 4.4 (3.7/5)
catfit: 0.7
unfamiliarity: 0.7
guess: aristophanes ;__..;?
submitter: yes....-.1
medals / ICs: laughed out loud from seeing the song/artist +0.2

5.7 + 0.2

the original version of this got song contested and i really disliked it when i heard it like 2 or 3 years ago. i sort of wonder if you went and looked at my rateyourmusic page and found this in my 1-star ratings - if so i guess you knew what you were getting into. i guess i sort of like the orchestra? probably my favorite part of it is when they do a big upward movement to fake out a key change before the chorus. but i would probably like it if they did an actual key change for it. and maybe swap out the vocalist too while they're at it actually. have to call out good hi hat closings. it's funny that they kind of do a trap drum machine style hi hat during the verses. i think the drumming has a large amount of makings of a better song if the vocalist didnt force me to dislike this

Spoiler: tied 2nd: tris

pom poko - follow the lights

enjoyment: 6.3 (4.6+/5)
catfit: 1 + 1.3 = 2.3
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: this almost feels like i'm trying to snipe but pj
submitter: trizzz
medals / ICs: tied 2nd +1.2

9.6 + 1.2

each of the several times i've seen the name of this song i've thought "follow the lights(follow the lights) womp wompwompwompwomp Womp womp wompwompwompwomp" which is a testament to nothing more than the fact that basically just the opening passage of all of the lights has been stuck in my head for like 5 years and mostly just comes out to cannibalize a similar sounding phrase.

in fact this song definitely makes you wanna say the title phrase in the way it says it. follow the lights :^) weowww follow the lights :^) follow the lights :^) livin it urp! follow the lights :^) follow the lights :^). the thing about it is that the weowww actually plays a huge part in it even though i only typed it once. they just have so much fun with the squeaky and noisy situation they got their hands on - the guitar tone has so much like variance and shape that it never feels quite aligned with the bar (and i also think they're just not playing it aligned with the bar a lot). but then you suddenly get this clean Weowww in the chorus... and that surprise 6 chord that only the bass is communicating while the guitar and the vocalist do the same dang thing. theres so many great pieces here. and the pace change at 2:20 wahoo!!!!

Spoiler: 20th: majiffy

finger eleven - come on, oblivion

enjoyment: 5.1 (4.0+/5)
catfit: 1 + 0.1 = 1.1
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: t3
submitter: jiffy lol
medals / ICs:

7.2

kid named finger:

i like the guitar tone at various times and the drumming at various times. not really grabbed by the lyrics very much, it's all like guy with huge voice yelling at fate. big deal. but i mean the general bigness of the song is laudable. don't have much other comment, it's pretty slow to get moving and i don't get swept up by the epicness enough to have a whole lot of takeaways

i initially wrote majiffy because i can imagine him gently affirming my mild dislike of the vocalist while also providing no evidence that he has anything other than high regard for them. but i narrowly decided to have jiffy go next. i say that but dont even really mind the vocalist

Spoiler: 1st: aisa

laura nyro - luckie (mono version)

enjoyment: 6.4 (4.7/5)
catfit: 1 + 1.4 = 2.4
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: jiffy ??
submitter: aisaaaaaaaaaaaaa first and last name woman.......... 1968... what was i thinking...
medals / ICs: 1st place +2.0

9.8 + 2.0

so come on luckie and stick it up yo yeahhh

this woman has a serj tankian style commitment to entertaining the listener at all times at all cost. it's like she has 5 different vocal styles and like has an advanced linear learning model pick the right one to use for every new word she speaks. or maybe she's just getting lucky. but she'll like fly up into head voice and back down and be a conventional doo wop singer or ramble ridiculously and she pronounces the word "nobody" like "nwody". or maybe that's her nickname for her friend ego nwodim & you're not supposed to go falling for her. i have no idea what this song is about even a little bit but i figure that what luckie says goes. tragically i can't give it honest songwriting because she might be lying and i would have utterly no idea

the orchestration also deserves to be mentioned honorably. they like very eagerly enable her hundred code switches, the drummer could have gone on to be in converge with how often there's like a sudden change in the beat. like this is a classic walrus phenomenon of "song that would be great in the drums cat but the drums aren't the best or maybe even the second best thing" (such as the second place entry in the drums cat).

i see that (mono version) tag and i just know that there's an unlistenable stereo version where the singer is like only in the left ear or something so thank you for that

maybe i should say this is chickadee because this definitely has leanover swag

Spoiler: 18th: wgeurts

nothing but thieves - do you love me yet

enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 1 + 0.5 = 1.5
unfamiliarity: 1
guess: cdb
submitter: wogurstststss
medals / ICs:

8.0

the drums are good, they tend to have a straightforward pattern but the song gets driven by them. i like the little snare drum patter on beat 4 that signals "this is our little prog rock breakdown" at around 3 minutes (reminds me of the final board by curren$y & the alchemist which i liked a lot). i guess theres a lot of good snare drum patters

i guess i like the energy of this song but it doesn't give me a lot to grip on to very tightly. mostly the vocalist is a little bit uninteresting. i like the big lasery synthesizer

it's really this artist name that makes me thing cdb. like i've seen 30 phrases indistinguishable from "nothing but thieves" in song contest

Spoiler: 19: chevre

kevin atwater - jacob killed a cat

enjoyment: 5.5 (4.2+/5)
catfit: 1 + 0.5 = 1.5
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: chev
submitter: ok i can count on chevre to get gotten by me in these rough times -0.1
medals / ICs:

7.9

man they really do not bury the lede as far as the killing of the cat. they are not trying to get you to go to page 8 for the main article in order to find out about the cat death. i spend the first like minute of this song frowning really deeply with a very mild pang of excitement because it reminds me that there's the new yorgos lanthimos movie coming out in a few months.

this is like a great opposite of the last song where the vibe is like so bad but the core of it is interesting, the story scoops me up really fast and makes me wanna know what a truth leader is supposed to be (it sounds truly very mormon). i want to describe this singer as a guy version of phoebe bridgers except i'd recoil in shock at scoring this considerably higher than actual phoebe bridgers. I LIKED some of phoebe bridgers more than that song and i guess this song.

the guitar is good, it sounds like finger strumming which exerts a very fine control over the exact sorts of contact and like texture of each chord. very emotionally fraught!

Spoiler: tied 11th: isis

aisha / guilty gear strive soundtrack - bridget's theme

enjoyment: 5.8 (4.4/5)
catfit: 1 + 1.8 = 1.8
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: isis
submitter: i can count on isis lol -0.1
medals / ICs:

8.5

i really really like how this like completely doesnt pass as a video game theme in any other moment than when she's like saying "me without me blah blah blah". like its so brilliantly hookless and swagless songwriting. i hate the alarm oclock i chose. there are so many moments where i'm like "girl what does that mean. why did you say that"

i guess close to all of the entertainment comes from how this alternates between being like an epic video games anthem sort of thing with a big horn section and twelve unnecessary instruments and then just this woman who i guess is supposed to be bridget, putting her vague and unlyrical 2011 tumblr posts to song. i'm entertained

Spoiler: tied 6th: infinity 324

kiltro - curicó

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 1 + 1 = 2
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: pink ball
submitter: infinit!
medals / ICs:

9.0

it's impressive that i like this so much because it has this sound which reminds me of "gamyga" from subspace emissary busting out of the ground & that borders on making me sick to my stomach. i guess the atmosphere of this song is really very good - things like the guitars and drums stick out very easily but it feels like it's in this big enclosed and haunted space. the album cover helps with that slightly.

a lot of the fun in this song comes in trying to piece together what the tone of it is - even the rhythm section often feels like it has multiple different readings, as a straightforward dance like song or something more complicated and ambiguous. the content of the lyrics is often explicitly vague, describing things in terms of negation like "the beach no others can find" (and the lyrics are often slightly indistinct to begin with lol) and it just really compels you to figure out what to make of it

i guess it would have been a hard sell to pick somebody other than pink ball but i accidentally found out this artist is chilean lol.

Spoiler: tied 16th: cheetory6

tomoko hojo & rahel kraft - melted into darkness

enjoyment: 5.6 (4.3/5)
catfit: 1 + 0.6 = 1.6
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: drk? more like idk!
submitter: cheetoire
medals / ICs:

8.2

this is cool. i bet it could be great in an album context. as an opener or maybe a middler but probably not an ender. this could be tris or you know several people

Spoiler: tied 13th: hellbooks

kid creole and the coconuts - no fish today

enjoyment: 5.7 (4.3+/5)
catfit: 1 + 0.7 = 1.7
unfamiliarity: 1.0
guess: tool ?
submitter: hellbooks cool lol
medals / ICs: paired vocalists +0.4

8.4 + 0.4

god this is like such a bummer lol! or maybe it's mean spirited, or something like that. i just know that like each of the verses gives me a frown that rivals the cat killing frown. like when he's like "sorry if i were you i would simply obtain fish" i'm like girl why did you say that. what does that mean. you were in your own shoes and you didnt obtain fish.

i think the vocal harmony great, there's like an opening-up feeling in the voicing of the phrase "i'm sorry ma'am". and i greatly enjoy ma'am's verses, especially in her last go at it where she just restates her case in the same words but with a much more elaborate and flowery harmonic phrasing. i guess i wish she got the last word.

Spoiler: tied 2nd: biancospino

fleshgod apocalypse - the day we'll be gone

enjoyment: 6.4 (4.7/5)
catfit: 1 + 1.4 = 2.4
unfamiliarity: 0.9
guess: bianco
submitter: i can count on bianco in these trying times -0.1
medals / ICs: transition (into the song i'm playing next) +0.2, tied 2nd +1.2

9.6 + 1.4

the classic dilemma of epic symphonic metal and other similar sorts of things is that you both want to always be building up and also always be at like an extremely high intensity. like the whole idea of a speaker that wants to go to 11. (i guess i have wanted my computer's volume slider to be past 100 while listening to this). anyway sometimes a song completely nails the feeling of a ridiculous buildup, like it just keeps adding stuff into the mix and you register the intensity of all of them as it keeps going. this is one of those rare songs. (another one is katamari on the rocks). another thing is that you can think of biancospino's tenure in this walrus as one extremely protracted epic symphonic metal buildup that epicly pays off with this song

i guess i will mostly let the actual song speak for itself but good heavens those key changes

Spoiler: tied 6th: pj.

fire-toolz - window 2 window 2 window 2 window

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 1 + 1 = 2
unfamiliarity: 1
guess: cheeto ?
submitter: hello pj..!
medals / ICs: transition (from the song i just played) +0.2

9.0 + 0.2

i'm just going to lay bare Last Track of the Playlist Syndrome and write basically nothing about this. the submitter may enjoy patricia taxxon's *wax under wolcnum*. i was thinking fire is red for this bc i kind of get an ada rook feeling from this... but then why would they recommend me ada rook like right before i saw this thus blowing up their spot... anyway cheeto is like the person who introduced me to black dresses and also this sounds like cheeto.

[schadd_]

congratulations to fireisredsir. more closing ceremonies to come on a different day

[schadd_]

as well as just like finding as many unanswered comments as i can and well answering them

[schadd_]

nobody:
aristophanes:
tris:

[schadd_]

viewtopic.php?t=91704

this is biancospino's walrus. it turns out that you are legally obligated to join this. i dont make the rules. convenient pagetop.

[schadd_]

congratulations to:

majiffy:

winner of submitting first and doing discord emoji reacts (which is i guess a pithy way of saying i appreciated your presence in this game & the reveals a lot in general). also highest ratio of song enjoyment to catfit lol

pink ball:

winner of being betrayed by the devilish english language (9.4 spanish language average vs. 7.5 english) AND being betrayed by my devilish self for magically already knowing the artists you like AND being betrayed by my devilish self for putting my reveal at a time where you can only get there for the last song

skygazer:

winner of evidently having fun with the categories lol AND making me not quite laugh but experience a bunch of various laughing-adjacent emotions whilst listening to the song and figuring out how the hell im supposed to score it. and unfortunately there wasnt a medal associated with that

chickadee:

winner of biggest differential of getting guessed between walruses AND 45 minutes award (medal for taking about 45 minutes to pick your songs) AND the last walrus

t3:

winner of confounding me with submissions (specifically the two times i laughed at the song and the time i laughed at you being the mitski submitter and the time i had the exact opposite season for rammstein and the fact i got duped by the second system of a down)

wgeurts:

winner of lowest standard deviation AND most honest walrus (i.e., highest ratio of honest walrus score to regular score at 1.13). which is to say they just submitted a bunch of solid songs and only placed low bc i saw their signature and made 2 rules against wgeurts which are "dont give them my stupid medals" and "dont give them invisible cats"

channeldelibird:

winner of "other" points i.e. unfamiliarity and not being guessed, which was almost a perfect score except for that i had heard one stray album from public service broadcasting. the funny thing is that i felt like i had a confident guess for cdb every time, like i know them from song contest and whatever. i think its fitting that the medal you got was in the novel musicianship thingy. oh AND winner of running song contest.

toolenduso:

winner of being a 30-something man (by an EXTREMELY narrow margin) AND (tied for) highest honest score of a single song (and i think that that one should win the tiebreaker because i just seemed to be less willing to award rly high catfit scores as the thing went on) AND not submitting the band tool

infinity 324:

winner of convenience as a name i could like throw around as a theoretical submitter for basically any song AND best hellbooks frame of all time in cat 5 like literally there were so many things that aligned that made me like 98% sure that was her AND strong ceejayvinoya frame in cat 2 AND best soundboard usage

deathrowkitty:

winner of worst performance

mushshagana:

winner of most mushshagana award royalties received AND most words written about the submission AND most words read and liked by me about the submission AND honest walrus 3rd place :X

biancospino:

winner of most epic walrus-wide symphonic metal buildup AND most reveals attended maybe (i didnt keep track) AND first person to open their own walrus AND most aesthetically pleasing trophy case:

chevre:

winner of self restraint for not sending me another song from crazy ex girlfriend in spite of getting a gold medal from it last time AND greatest variety of encouraging comments levied against other contestants AND, as always, winner of spiritual presence and support whilst i'm working in my spreadsheet

hellbrooks:

winner of honest walrus :X

invisibility:

runner up of honest walrus :X AND first submission to make me listen to the album (bothy band) AND first submission to make use of the irish radar (bothy band) AND quietly thought provoking catfits. like frankly by the time of cat 8 i was like "ok i'm pretty sure this one is invisibility so there like definitely has to be something interesting here"

isis:

spiritual winner of song unfamiliarity because i took a total of 0.1 points away from the wicked song due to it containing idina menzel who was in uncut gems and also did that frozen song that i guess i know. but you sent me like 8 songs that are like generally a sort of thing that i rarely listen to (and one kpop song). Music for Women in a Hurry

ceejayvinoya:

easy winner of sending songs that are 3 minutes and 46 seconds AND runner up for being a name i could throw around as a submitter guess (but only bc i didnt really know what kind of music you listen to and kind of still dont)

pj:

winner of making me shrink his Damn trophy case to the smallest font to make it fit & also they kept wanting to collapse in on each other because of the crappy open source version of excel i'm using & it looked like this until i clicked on it or something. also winner of middest standard deviation (1.7244 which is 11th out of 24)

cheetory6:

winner of .. there's various things i could serve up here but the thing that sticks out in my mind is the fact that you submitted rehab. idk how to word that as a "winner of" statement. but it was cool. i was like "woah cool."

aristophanes:

winner of . . . . . i dont know how to put this but music that i can give medals to such that it seems like i am capable of touching grass AND most points from medals

stinkycheesedan:

winner of songs i liked the most, quite simply. which probably includes my favorite song of the walrus. AND winner of article writing for the school newspaperrr

tris:

SURPRISING winner of being tris! AND song i listened to the most times in general (shostakovich prelude) AND largest amount of top 4 placings AND most points earned from top 4 placings AND possibly the only perfect paper of 8 (actually 9) completely unfamiliar artists

aisa:

winner of ... being rooted for by me if we are being honest

fireisredsir:

winner of highest single song score AND lowest single song score AND best newcomer AND the walrus

[schadd_]

WOW this is an album starter ok that's cool. for a while i assumed it was like, sending me this song is like just showing me the end of 2001 a space odyssey. ok that's awesome. i've had my sights on this artist a little bit for a while and i'm glad i didn't get like spoiled for this album

daniela pes ca mira

also this entry made me remember that i had plans to listen to julia holter and i listened to two albums from her at some point however both of them were not aviary. i feel like there's something like "winner of me listening to your albums in the wrong way" because i also listened to the hana stretton album fireisredsir sent, during the walrus about a month before i got to cat 8. however i am partially choosing to award this to infinity because when i listened to the julia holter albums i went back to thinking they were the submitter

[schadd_]

did any invisi cats go unrevealed?

basically no. i would say that the beloved one was an example of a cat that should have been unrevealed but i just handed it over to two people i wanted to give bonus points

you have sky gazer's drum solo in the drum cat listening order twice and are missing someone else presumably

well it is approximate listening order

[schadd_]

ok i guess thats the one where i didnt write approximate for some reason

[schadd_]

laffed although that song was so digestive its unreal

[schadd_]

randomly got the word "sostenuto" while trying to swipe type something else & i was like ooh no but very good guess

[schadd_]

very nice song pairing i stumbled on: laura nyro - emmie (demo) -> fka twigs - cellophane (particularly good directly back to back)

[schadd_]

in emmie demmie at 2:45 there's a funny thing where you can hear like a pre-echo of her singing out "emmieeee"

[schadd_]

cat 1

Spoiler: 8th: stinkycheesedan

tied 8th: the sugarcubes - ammæli (birthday)

enjoyment: 6.0 (4.5/5)
catfit: 1 + 1 = 2
unfamiliarity: 0.7
guess: do i just go with known bjork submitter infinity...
submitter: ok danny lol awesome
medals / ICs:

8.7

this song briefly made me think about whether i wanted to subtract from the catfit somehow in the event i know the song, even though i'm like not 100% sure whether i've listened to this song or if i'm just kind of hearing the venus as a boy melody in it. the thing is that it feels so safe to submit a bjork song to me even though its not like i went around posting about how much i like bjork everywhere & i'd also appreciate the notion of "hey you might have missed out on sugarcubes even if you already like bjork". anyway. i've definitely listened to some sugarcubes, davsto said about them something along the lines of "bjork's singing is obviously great. don't really care for the bloke."

something about the weepiness and droopiness of the instrumentation lends this the feeling of vulnerability, not just in the social sense but in the sense of an organism leaving itself in danger, and bjork's shimmering and glottal-squeaking voice feel like she is straining and over-extending, but in a way that is joyful. it's a very emotionally full song, that 1-5-2 bass progression feels like a tall thought is being dwelled on.

i've definitely liked her icelandic singing whenever i've heard it. i had a thought "maybe this person submitted the icelandic version because they didnt want me to look at the lyrics... but i've generally been translating lyrics". um i think there might be merit to that idea.

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_s5mt ... qeenqg.mp4