Entry 238 - Oblique Occasions - Anathema

 

I was pretty iffy when I first got this album. I had a bit of buyers remorse, largely because I found that part of the album fell into the typical vaporwave tropes. I forgot I ordered it and it showed up some time later and sat on the shelf.

I put it on the turntable today and I gotta say that the vinyl mix for this really helps enhance the album. Some albums sound better digitally, others sound better on vinyl and whatever they did with the vinyl mix here really enhanced the mix. All the instruments are a lot cleaner here than they were on the digital versions I heard, and that helps this album a lot.

The style here is kind of all over the place. I think at it's heart it wants to be a chill album, but there are tracks that up the tempo to a range that are decidedly not in the "chill" range of tempos. This doesn't really help the album, but at the same time it doesn't hurt it either... the album just is kind of there. A collection of different ideas stitched together into a release named Anathema.

I don't normally talk about the record or mix quality unless it has a huge difference on the music, and Anathema is one of those albums where it helped it quite a bit. Whereas I was iffy on my purchase at first the mix here really helped bring out the best in the music, and in doing so upped my enjoyment as well.