Friday, September 18, 2015

Midnight Tyrannosaurus | Midnight Snacks Vol. 1

Continuing with the hard music theme, here's a collection of some ridiculously heavy bass music.  If you're looking for the next Beethoven, I suggest you read no further.  But, if you like fun and can handle music with a little edge, I highly recommend you give this album a shot.


Background

A self-proclaimed maker of "loud screechy robot fun noises" with a support list riddled with famous names, Midnight Tyrannosaurus has been producing for 4 years and recently came out with this album, of which the artwork is modeled after a cereal box.

Review

Listen to "Midnight Snacks Vol. 1"

Right off the bat, it's clear that "Midnight Snacks Vol. 1" isn't a field full of daisies - jump to any time in any track and there's a ninety percent chance that a heavy, gritty bassline will meet your ears.  And, in this case, that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Midnight Tyrannosaurus is a master at what he does, and every track on the album is perfectly balanced on the fine line between hard and obnoxious.  It's so easy to get carried away and make tracks that push too far into obnoxious territory, but Midnight Tyrannosaurus's ability to balance these two traits is what makes this album stand out in an era where 13-year-olds who just downloaded their first Digital Audio Workstation spam their tracks everywhere.  Another thing that I love about this album is the magnificent sample work.  Almost every song uses samples from various media to tell a story, enhance the track, and make a funny, overall enjoyable listening experience that breaks up the what would otherwise be a rather repetitive, generic dubstep album.  My favorite example of this is probably "The Good, The Bad, and The Gecko," a track in which the last minute of it is solely dialogue that actually had me laughing out loud.  "Headzipper" is another track with great sample usage.  At the drop, or the climax of a song usually riddled with intense bass, the song takes a pause, comments about the big red button accidentally being pressed, and then the wobble bass resumes, this time with more intensity then before.  It's the little details like this that separate this from a standard run-of-the-mill album.  But possibly my favorite part about this album isn't the overabundance of music harder than a rock, it's the interlude tracks that part the sea of bass and not only add a little bit of a respite, but also create the atmosphere of the record and tell a little story while they're at it.  Among the 25-track album, at least 4 of them are just atmosphere tracks, and there are more where a little bit of bass seeps back into them.  One of my favorite ones, "Alphabet Cereal, Bong Rips & Playstation," there's no music whatsoever.  It's just ambient sounds, like the sound of cereal pouring into a bowl, and personally, I think it's interesting and, surprisingly, fitting on a record like this.  These interludes, combined with the samples of the other tracks, give the album a bit of a human feel and turn something that would've been somewhat repetitive into a coherent album with an idea and flow.

At the end of the day, this album is bass music and thats it.  None of these tracks are genre-shattering, nor are they doing anything new.  It doesn't have to, though, and that's ok; this album is great to listen to while working out or doing work.  For what it is, this is a fantastic collection of heavy-hitting dubstep and much better than any similar-length collection of bass music currently.  6.5/10

Notable Remixes

Listen to "Midnight Snacks Vol. 1: The Sweet Tooth Remixes"

There isn't one remix, not even 2, but a whole remix album filled with even more heavy hitting bass music from established names like Figure, Spag Heddy, Nostalgia, The Frim, and more.  There's even a VIP remix of "The One From Dark" (VIP stands for Variation in Production, it's the term for a remix by the original artist).  Since this is a full length album which I enjoy, I'll be reviewing it later on, but, if "Midnight Snacks Vol. 1" left you with a hunger for more, "Midnight Snacks Vol. 1: The Sweet Tooth Remixes" is exactly where I'd start.

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