Carl-Richard

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Posts posted by Carl-Richard

  3. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    3 hours ago, Nilsi said:

    Meaning is always incidental.

    The smell of rain rising from warm asphalt on a summer afternoon. The way a song drifts out of a passing car and for a moment feels like it was meant just for you. The unexpected conversation with the shop clerk whose words stay with you long after you’ve left. The new coworker whose presence won’t quite leave your mind. The shape of the clouds one evening that seems to echo a thought you didn’t know you had. The feeling of standing in an empty train station, watching someone disappear into a crowd.

    To believe in some absolute logos is confusion - a desperate attempt to anchor yourself in a fiction.

    And to create your own meaning is at best like trying to assemble a vast, intricate puzzle: for a while, you feel the satisfaction of progress, as if the pieces might finally form a clear image. But the further you go, the more obvious it becomes that they were never cut to fit together at all.

    Meaning is always fleeting, contingent, localized - an assemblage: a temporary constellation of impressions, gestures, fragments of memory, held together just long enough to feel real before dissolving back into the noise.

    But how fleeting? Are there not certain regularities, certain cycles, like the heartbeat, the rising and setting of the sun, the rising and fall of cortisol and melatonin, the cycles of anabolism and catabolism in relation to feeding cycles and physical activity? And are there not ways to better align with these cycles, in a way that is not simply random or fleeting, in a way which creates harmony rather than dissonance?

  5. Posted

    15 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

    I’m thinking your treatment at the final breakdown of Tool’s Third Eye would be perfect. You know, after the final pre-hook or whatever, when it gets quiet for a moment and they start jamming and then build it up one last time before the “PRYING OPEN MY THIRD EYE” climax. Because what you describe feels a lot like having one’s third eye pried open.

    That could work. I'm imagining it 🥸

     

    19 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

    Maybe you’ll find something similar in Autechre, or Noisia, or some other sound design nerds.

    I guess that Sophie record has some of those mind-bending breakdowns too - and incidentally, it’s one of the hardest albums I could think of:

     

    Damn, gimme more of these wacky artists 😂

  6. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    @Nilsi

    Here is an example of Meshuggah taking rhythmic dissonance so far that it essentially becomes "noise" (beyond mere heaviness), as the syncopating rhythmic pattern is so long that you don't have the attention span to decode it (maybe ever, certainly not on the first listen). Not coincidentally, the song feels mostly like noise to me:

     

    On the other hand, this riff is my favorite Meshuggah riff, and it uses rhythmic dissonance in such a beautiful way (which makes it really heavy):

    3:45 (and also the one at 4:16 which is the main riff of the song).

     

  7. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    23 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

    That's an interesting song. I can see your point on a certain divergent creativity informing heaviness. But this happens "within" genres as well, as well as without. It's really just a matter of scale. Structure is always there, hierarchy is always there, genre is always there. It's just how far can you jump. And it's also where you choose to focus. 

    These jumps happen all the time when making songs. If they don't happen to any noticeable degree, you get ideas like "bland", "stale", "unoriginal", "uncreative". For heaviness in particular, the jump can be as minor as introducing a different technique for how you attack the strings (e.g. "thumping", as popularized by Tosin Abasi, or the insane pick scratches by Gojira) or rhythmical elaborativeness (e.g. Meshuggah). Rhythm in itself is a Pandora's box of heaviness, and of course dissonance of rhythm especially. Or it can be inviting an entirely different sound than what is normal for that genre (e.g. strummed acoustic guitar layered on top of the distorted guitars; both Opeth and Nile has done this) or really music altogether (e.g. the nightmare-ish, silent but also loud amorphous wall of dissonance which is impossible to describe in the interlude of Steven Wilson's and Mikael Akerfeldt's "Storm Corrosion"; maybe a bad example of staying within a genre to be honest).

    I'm gonna do a Nilsi and quote myself: this is a better example of the "within genre" divergent creativity than the very last one (maybe not specific to heaviness, but divergent creativity nonetheless), also from Steven Wilson:

    Quote

    Steven Wilson has spoken regularly about his dislike of guitar players who don’t experiment with their tone. Back in 2023, he said he was “constantly disappointed” by it.

    [...]

    “A lot of old-school guitar players, they can play amazing – beautiful technique, beautiful feel. They can play beautiful solos. But sometimes they’re not so innovative with the actual sound,” he says. “The possibilities for sound now have become greater. And I think Randy understands that.”

    He goes on: “The obvious thing to say here is the sound very much affects the way you play, and I think sometimes guitar players forget that – or maybe they don’t, but the people who listen to guitar players forget that sometimes when you get sound it changes what you actually play.

    “Randy’s a great example of someone who understands that, so we spent a lot of time actually looking for the right sound before we even approached how he was going to play and the kind of scale he was going to play.”

    Despite playing the majority of guitars on the album, Wilson “left these sort of expanses” where he didn’t really know what he wanted. “I knew I wanted something that wouldn’t be obvious,” he elaborates. “I play one very brief solo in the middle of side one, but the rest – there are three big solos – are Randy. I do like the guitar, but it’s always been part of my tool box, if you like. My love affair is with making records, and guitars are a part of that.”

    https://guitar.com/news/music-news/steven-wilson-explains-why-guitarists-should-regularly-change-their-tone/

    Steven Wilson is a very "within genre" kind of guy, but on his newest album, you can really see this come into play. There are some interesting guitar sounds there I've not really heard before.

  8. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    23 hours ago, Nilsi said:

    A good example of this is someone like Trent Reznor. He’s not just working within rock as a stable set of instruments and conventions. He’s operating more like a composer or sound designer - recording, manipulating, reconfiguring, layering elements that aren’t bound to the live, band-based structure. He’s already in a “post-” position, where the frame itself is no longer given in advance. That’s why this outside element - this alien residue, the Real - can slip into the music. It’s no longer just an extreme point on a genre’s continuum; it’s something that interrupts and exceeds the continuum altogether.

     

    That's an interesting song. I can see your point on a certain divergent creativity informing heaviness. But this happens "within" genres as well. It's really just a matter of scale. Structure is always there, hierarchy is always there, genre is always there. It's just how far can you jump. And it's also about where you choose to focus. 

    These jumps happen all the time when making songs. If they don't happen to any noticeable degree, you get ideas like "bland", "stale", "unoriginal", "uncreative". For heaviness in particular, the jump can be as minor as introducing a different technique for how you attack the strings (e.g. "thumping", as popularized by Tosin Abasi, or the insane pick scratches by Gojira) or rhythmical elaborativeness (e.g. Meshuggah). Rhythm in itself is a Pandora's box of heaviness, and of course dissonance of rhythm especially. Or it can be inviting an entirely different sound than what is normal for that genre (e.g. strummed acoustic guitar layered on top of the distorted guitars; both Opeth and Nile has done this) or really music altogether (e.g. the nightmare-ish, silent but also loud amorphous wall of dissonance which is impossible to describe in the interlude of Steven Wilson's and Mikael Akerfeldt's "Storm Corrosion"; maybe a bad example of staying within a genre to be honest).

    However, you did make me have some interesting thoughts pop in my mind about ways of producing music that are so divergently creative that it scares you socks off. It's hard to describe, but I got a "vision" (rather a "listen") about somewhere in a song leading up to a type of breakdown, you do a severe surround sound effect where you quickly flip the entire soundscape to the back of your head and then pan it violently upwards and forward (it would be so much easier to show you with hand movements, but whatever). I would have to create it to show what I really mean. It's a bit like the vision I had with the meditation movie idea. You would know more what I mean when you see it. There are actually many such visions/listens I have about music that if I were to pursue and create in a song, it would either sound amazing or I would never be able to recreate it.

  9. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    On 21.6.2025 at 6:16 PM, Nemra said:

    I'm glad that I took a psychedelic before weed, which helped me compare the experiences of both.

    I don't understand why people consider weed a psychedelic. Yeah, you might have some non-ordinary experience, but you won't get incredibly conscious or have some transhuman experience, at least that's the case for me.

    To this day I'm much more moved by the psychedelic experience that I had than weed could ever give to me.

    Weed was making me less motivated not because I realized something but because I was just forgetting stuff.

    I'm not gonna lie, the first few times I got high, it was like a new world opened up for me. The level of interconnectedness of mind and stream of insights I got and which I would spill in raving rants like Terrence McKenna on speed was something else. The euphoria and sense of profundity was unmatched. One the other hand, LSD opened it up even further and also crushed the previous world I lived in. And seeds were planted there for meditation to take over and bring in a new world again which recaptured the older one.

  10. Posted

    2 hours ago, Nilsi said:

    Fair enough - going into amelodic territories definitely does create some of the heaviest stuff in metal, no argument there. But personally, I have a bit of a different concept of what I’d call really heavy.

    For me, metal is like a meticulously constructed topology of discrete elements: the guitars as a textured plane of distortion, the drums as a pulsating grid of time, the voice as a vector of human aggression, and the scales as a navigable harmonic landscape. Heaviness emerges when all these layers are configured almost alchemically - aligned in just the right sequence of acceleration, saturation, and rupture. You start with melody and structure, and then you progressively fracture them, increasing speed, loudness, and dissonance until you reach a point of symbolic excess. But no matter how extreme it becomes, you never truly leave the map; all the elements remain recognizable. The experience is intense, but it’s still inscribed within a symbolic universe where everything has a place and a role. Heaviness, in this sense, is not the annihilation of structure but its maximal overloading.

    The kind of heaviness I’m drawn to is a bit different. I’d describe it as something closer to the Lacanian Real - the intrusion of something that isn’t structurally implied from the start, something that can’t be fully mapped in advance. That’s why noise, for me, is the archetypal form of this. It isn’t just a negation of melody or an extreme configuration of familiar elements - it’s a rupture that feels alien, unassimilable. You can’t fully locate it in a scale or a rhythm grid. It doesn’t resolve into a recognizable pattern of tension and release. It just erupts, and that’s why it feels genuinely heavy in a way that’s fundamentally different from the symbolic heaviness of metal.

    Some of the most unexpectedly heavy things I've heard is that one Poppy scream in that Knocked Loose Jimmy Kimmel performance (I hadn't heard the song before watching that). It didn't sound like a "metal" scream, but like a "scream scream", like from a horror movie. And also that moan inflection at the end. That was something that broke the standard metal mould but which also made it more heavier.

  11. Posted

    56 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

    By the way, I think your use of the term “amelodic” might actually be a bit misleading. What you’re describing seems more like what I’d call “immelodic” - still referencing melodic structures but breaking or distorting them in a controlled way. For me, “amelodic” is closer to genuine noise - something that doesn’t even operate in relation to melody at all.

    Amelodic in the Western classical music sense where if you play outside or jump too much between Western music scales, you're deemed a heretic. Like if you watch Doug Helvering's earlier music reaction videos, he will be like "ooh, that is a weird place to go to an E". Basically all music theory jargon is just Western imperialism 😆

    The most amelodic music I can think of that uses tones and is not just random sounds is some of Frank Zappa's earlier records:

     

     

     

  12. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

    Wouldn’t it be an interesting thesis to explore why we tend to perceive music written in Phrygian - the so-called Arabic or “oriental” scale, which, as I guess, is what Nile use here to create these sinister progressions - and whether this perception goes beyond purely scientific explanations (like “the flat second creates tension, therefore it sounds dark”)? Maybe it also reflects a kind of latent cultural colonialism, where the Orient is imagined as something mystical, archaic, barbaric, and threatening - a projection that gets repressed and then resurfaces unconsciously in the aesthetic experience of music.

    They seem to use a lot of Phrygian in their intros when doing their nods to Egyptology and just generally, but I think that particular chord progression is more amelodic than anything (missing a true tonal center), which is a typical thing in death metal, but this was just pulled off so beautifully. "Death" is a band that uses very much Phrygian, certainly in Chuck Schuldiner's solos (it's virtually in all of his solos).

    I think for a chord progression to sound heavy, it must have moments of incredible dissonance that is unpredictable in a way, but which is also used strategically and in a larger melodic context that is not as dissonant. Or else it just becomes "ugly" or "just noise". Phrygian as a scale seems to make a good general template for this, but going into amelodic territories is where you find the really heavy stuff.

    Another example of a really heavy chord progression is Opeth's Blackwater Park intro riff (0:07-1:10). The final chord in the progression is so dissonant, both in comparison to the previous chord but also especially as its own chord. But honestly, the riff just after that (1:15) is honestly just as dissonant and generally the most genius riff ever written:



    One thing is for certain though, Nile's style being centered around Egyptology gives it a mystical and sinister vibe, because Ancient Egypt has always given me that vibe. Images of being deep inside a pyramid and running from mummies and ghosts of thousand year old kings casting magic spells.

  13. Posted

    @UnbornTao

    Health is unironically the best aphrodisiac. It's a holistic aphrodisiac. The term is often used in reductionistic way to describe things that work like a drug that you can boil down to a very specific mechanism of action (which is generally what they do with all kinds of food). But if you take an aphrodisiac drug and you're unhealthy, it might not even work that well. You can't get a boner if you can't get blood to your dick despite taking 2CB or whatever.

  18. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    13 hours ago, mats-2 said:

    @Inliytened1I see everybody uses  the word deconstruction here. how does it work ? Do you question things with questions like "Who am I?". How do you know the deconstruction works? Do you have cognitions, falling away of beliefs etc. ?

    Sit comfortably but upright, close your eyes and then imagine that what is now behind your eyelids is actually a completely different room than the room you think you're in. And then drop the notion that there is a room there at all. Just sit with what is actually there: greyish darkness, small visual sparkles. Then drop the notion that you are sitting on a chair (or whatever you are sitting on). Just stay with what you're sensing, the feeling of pressure under your butt, the sensation of your arms on your sides. Just stay with the sensations. Then drop the notion that you have a face or a head. Just stay with the sensations that supposedly make up the face and head. Then drop the notion that you have a body at all. You're just sensations floating in consciousness. And even that is a notion to be dropped at some point.

    Keep doing this with whatever notion that pops into your head and that is keeping you tethered to some constraint or limitation.

  19. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    On 22.6.2025 at 3:31 AM, Basman said:

    It so boring and dry to worry about how music affects your health. There so much bigger fish when it comes to the mental health than worrying about whether or not you should be listening to Slipknot. Not that I necessarily buy this stuff about vibrations and shit. 

    It's kinda silly to try and maintain this "positive vibe" 24/7. That is just not how humans work. It's natural to feel negative feelings something. Like, why is it such a problem if you feel sad or angry throughout your day? It strikes me as this New Age dogma of "positive vibes only".

    Try hanging around depressed people while listening to depressing music while watching depressing TV shows and eating depressing food. Then do that 90% of your time (PS: it's a joke, don't self-harm yourself 😊).

  20. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    I really noticed this too when I was revisiting Linkin Park (the music of my childhood). Like, that stuff is really heavy. I really noticed it influencing my thoughts so I chose to stop listening to most of it.

    But nothing beats the beauty of calm, melancholic music. This doesn't really make me feel sad, just "moody":

     

    EDIT: Watch me use "really" in literally every sentence next time.

  22. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    On 14.5.2025 at 4:48 PM, SwiftQuill said:

    That being said, I do feel bad about animal suffering. And I do intend on becoming vegetarian again, but I will seek help from a nutritionist first.

    It can be much simpler than that. Ask what the healthiest people eat (not the banana girl youtubers or whatever — people who actually measure their health). If you've tried this diet and it doesn't work, then you're free to complain:

     

     

  23. Posted · Edited by Carl-Richard

    On 12.5.2025 at 11:03 PM, Majed said:

    Why i am not a vegan? I am not a vegan for simplicity sake. I value having a simple life, and i think that an omnivorous diet is way easier to have than a vegan one. As well as being culinarily richer and more refined. Veganism is an insult to thousands of cultures and their unique cuisines around the world. Thousands of years of culinary practice, wisdom, and experience, thrown away in the name of equality, isn't this tragic? Thousands of plates and recipes, with the richest of diversities, from all continents, have to be butchered in the name of animal rights. As well as veganism being an unbalanced worldview, one that doesn't see compromise, doesn't appreciate the value of animal based food. I'm sick of the old vegan rhetoric, i want new rich and diverse experiences, this includes culinary experiences. Throwing away thousands of years of culinary wisdom, rituals, traditions and habits, is a tragedy. And for this veganism will never win, because at heart the human soul desire novelty, wisdom, diversity and richness. At heart veganism makes you hate humans and their traditions. Also as a non religious person i refuse to be part of this religion and cult which is veganism.

    How often do you eat out?

    Eating out is already complex. You have to take time out if your day to plan where to eat and maybe order a table, you have to coordinate with all your friends (presumably), you have to work out transportation, maybe parking, you have to walk a lot, you have to maybe look for directions or use Google Maps, you have to find the restaurant and then wait to get a table. Then you get the menu and you have to choose between sometimes over 100 options. At least when you're a vegan, there are fewer options to choose from which makes it simpler. The food part is arguably the simplest part of the whole activity.

    As for limiting your culinary scope, you probably only order spaghetti bolognese like the last time anyway (jking). Of course, this is a frivilous thing compared to what meat entails. It's like you don't want to let go of slavery because it limits the variety of slaves and the richness of human labor. Slavery also makes things simpler. There is a long tradition with slavery stretching back many thousands of years, so many cultures, so much wisdom, rituals and habits. It's a shame it all went to waste, right?

  25. Posted

    1 hour ago, Lise said:

    What do you mean. There are multiple groups in the culture war, and blue-orange vs. green isn't the only one. Are you insinuating that I confuse FrP for yellow? That's quite hurtful coming from somebody who is a moderator.

     

    1 hour ago, Ulax said:

    I think Carl was just kidding around haha

    The best jokes rarely land.