About the review

Title: Devil's Work
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Artist: thecanary
Genre: Electronica: IDM
Reviewed by: Spectra on October 22, 2007 (All reviews by Spectra)

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1Overall Description
Madly aggressive d&b, and it seems every new track by Canary is becoming darker and more "snakey" sounding, but also sounding more and more like they are rushed vs. The Canary's earlier masterpieces such as "Infinite Sadness" (IE this song isn't a reflection of the limitation of the artist's achievable or achieved musical quality).

Half the song sounds like a breakdown with loads of beat shifts and stops leading to an indeed IDM-ish sound. Lots of creative use of sounds and build IE the echoing metallic instrument at 2:15 (home-made?!) and a strong sense of darkness and production will make this song for some people and yet this song likely sounds remixed loop to others due to the way it appears to achieve its variation mostly through shifting a beat. On a side note the vocal sample is very well chosen for the piece and clever not just simply dark.
 
2Creativity Description
Mad props must be given for the simple fact this song achieves momentum by shifting short excerpts of a beat is something I've never seen done before (to note DJ IO, also on TIS, does this in parts of his tracks but not for an entire song's movement). The rest of the song's structure, however, has "remixed" drum loop with a few samples and filter fade-ins added on top written all over it, and that repetitiveness in many ways kills this song.
 
3Arrangement Description
Again, lots of people can justifiably say the tune sounds like a rotated drum-loop (even though technically I doubt an artist of The Canary's skill would actually do that). However the arrangement of instruments gives a token dark/empty/scattered feel that melds IDM scattered-ness with d&b darkness and the use of techniques adds to the mood. Some of the breakdowns, such as the filter sweep down of cymbals at 3:10 and the multiple filter sweeps around 0:28 are notably feel done, perhaps a bit of Nyje "filter funk" influence? Definitely not a bad thing.
 
4Sound Quality Description
Why, Canary, do you ask for this? No different than any of The Canary's other tunes of 2007, this is brilliantly clear, clean, and powerful.
 
5Does it work as a piece of music Description
It sounds far too much like a loop to ever truly thrive despite being loaded with production niceties over that remixed loop feel. Even though, since The Canary made it, I figure the "loop" was completely home-made I'm afraid many listeners won't be able to tell the difference.
This sounds like a half-way-done song missing things like an evolving melody (think Infinite Sadness's bass-line), rolling drum parts that don't sound like sporadic cuts (unlike The Canary wants to go 100% IDM), and some kind of emotional ground to make it distinguishable from any other pro's d&b (think "Sky Temple" with it's deep fills and strings) would make this one sound full force.
As of now though, it sounds like a rushed professional release. However, I'm convinced it could become something "deadly" given a bit of inspired emotional mystery and some time to propel it to the level of depth of "Sky Temple" and "Infinite Sadness" from this same artist.
 
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