I have to say, James, it's refreshing that someone went to the detail that you did to analyse this track. I was getting rather tired of hearing people bitch about "I don't like the singing", "Why does he sing like that??", people saying the track sucked, blah blah ad nauseum. And for the record, it says clear as day on the actual album sleeve that a mellotron was used, so leave the "There's no mellotron on this track!" crap alone.james0tucson wrote:
Well, Opeth is not my style, but I have been *quite* surprised at certain arrangement qualities that they work into their music. *Somebody* in that band went to school and didn't sleep through Jazz Theory. They may be 20 years too late for the whole Swedish Death Rock thing, but I'd put them in the same schema as, let's say, Phish circa 1994, on a couple of counts. They have a cult following and are extremely famous, in an unknown way, so secretly famous. And they put elements of every genre under the sun into their work. Even though I want to hate them, I'm forced to appreciate how *well* they do their thing.
As for the organs and mellotrons, I definitely hear a crunchy B-3 and overdriven leslie later in the track. I think I hear a mellotron string set padding the guitar around 1:01 thru 1:20, but there is a ton of stuff going on there. Around 1:55, that organ ain't nothin' but a Hammond sound!
I like the breakdown at 3:30 with the vibes and the nice piano and the tight, dry drumkit. What's not to like here?
5:59 I definitely hear a Mellotron choir, no question about it. Sounds just like Genesis from Trick of the Tail or whatever.
They go all power trio at 6:55 or so. 7:29 I hear the Tron strings again. Could be any of a thousand string synths these days, and let's get real -- you know it's just a Motif or a Korg or whatever production synth they happen to use.
In the 8:20's we get that really nice acoustic guitar and the toms, and then a bit later, the Tron strings are plain as day.
10:14 it comes in again, and the player holds a string chord to the end of the track.
Now my question is, what's the problem? These are bone stock sounds. What "mellotron" soundset *can't* do this choir and string patch???
I may not be a big fan of this genre, but I *like* this band because their *execution* is so damned good. And I want to know which one of them was the music professor from Stockholm or whatever. (It's not obvious in *this* track, but you will hear some things in other Opeth tracks that don't add up.)
It's a different style of music guys, get over it. Some of us have more diverse tastes than just electronica.
SOULARFLAIR
www.soularflair.net
