Laboratory of Mathematics and Writing

Dance with the Dead Driven to Madness Generally speaking, if you're a fan of synthwave, you've probably heard of Dance with the Dead (DWTD). They've been around for quite sometime and are generally regarded as early pioneers in the darksynth style. They where among the first, perhaps even the first, to fuse hard rocking metal guitars with flowing snythesizer melodies. This album continues in that vein and offers fans of the style more of the same dance worthy rythms with distorted guitar crunch. The only flaw, if we can even call it that, is that it's not a huge step forward in terms of sound or style. DWTD hits every trope we have come to expect from them, and that's not a bad thing. It seems like a lot of these veterans of synthwave have locked in their trademarked style and are now refining it with a few minor additions. Here we have DWTD employing the same horror movie inspired electronics propelled forward by h...

The Crying Ogre Only in the deep blue lake will you find the seven colored fish that will feed the hungry ogre that is starving for just one ounce of meat. Yes, ogres have feelings, too. Its rotted heart cries out for deliverence. But it can't cry out to the stars, or the moon, or the sun, or the clouds in the sky. The same way you learned to despise the ogre for it's strange appearance and cannibalistic ways is the same way the ogre curses every thing you believe to be beautiful. So, it cries out to every terrible omen; to the eclipse, to the will-o-the-wisp, to the serpent of Eden, and to the volcanic eruptions that spew lava onto the Earth and into the sky. Sulfuric black clouds cover the sky and the ogre is pleased. Molten rock covers the ground and heats up the water. The seven colored fish gets cooked alive. So the ogre sits down for a delicious meal of boiled fish.

Lyde - Resurgance There's only one thing that bothers me about Lyde. The majority of his releases are short EP style albums. Resurgance here only contains three songs. I kind of wish he would save his songs and compile them into a much longer and larger album. I think I find this annoying only because I grew up in the era of CDs that contained full length albums. Now we live in the era of digital audio and playlists. It's not necessary to release full length albums anymore. Really, these short bursts of music is accomodating to people's ever decreasing attention spans. Less songs but more frequent releases allows such people to digest the music easier. Besides, this is a perfect example of quality over quantity. Too many artists release full length albums with a bunch of filler songs just to pad the running time. You will never experience such a dip in quality with Lyde in large part because the albums only cont...