Salem

I just took a look in Spek because I was curious, and it does look like a 16khz cap. If it actually is an upscale on the album, that kind of explains why it sounds so strange.

Evil has weird EQ, I know someone here was able to make it sound a lot better (I don't remember your user I'm sorry ToT) which is what gave me the idea to do some EQ work and general edits to make an album I'd stream more often. That aside, I think the visuals being blurry is a stylistic choice, but it comes off weirdly to blend what looks more like an alien than a faerie with old tech. I feel like if she wanted to give a sort of comforting nostalgia with some low-quality visuals shooting on 110 film could've given a taste of nostalgia while keeping the image quality clear enough to really see some of the composition. Lomochrome also makes several colored film varieties that would've allowed for unique effects like lilac or red scale that could've really added a lot of dynamics to the images. I also find it a bit odd that no editing was done to the album cover (at least according to the photographer, but at least some had to have been done to add the text), since it would've made the creature look a little less strange, but that's not a big deal either way.

I feel like the outfit is really nice, but the new creature (I can't tell if she wants it to be a faerie or some kind of nymph honestly so I'm just going to call it a creature) has a certain distance it looks correct from, and if you get too close or too far it begins to look a bit uncanny. I also just don't like the composition of the cover image but that's just a personal gripe with not liking how hard it can be to make out her face.

I like this better than the official cover, I'm honestly not sure why she went for the full body shot now that I've seen it compared to some of the closer ones. I guess she wanted it to match previous covers more, but it doesn't really go with them either way (since it's kind of the point to be different). EDIT: Does anyone have lossless files for the portals tracks? I want to change some of the EQ on them to make the mixing feel a bit less odd, but it's not worth it to do with youtube rips.

I've seen claims of the listening party CDs having super grainy covers and the audio quality on them sounding bad, like some sort of manufacturing error. I'm curious more than anything, but if these are low quality I'm a bit concerned about the new Cry Baby pressings since I wanted to buy one.

Does anyone know if all the CDs for this era are low quality, or only the listening party exclusive? I know someone on this thread also mentioned their vinyl sounded odd. I'm not sure what's going on with the manufacturing this era...

OH MY GOD I was literally joking that she would do this like a week ago ToT Melanie has been like... so hilariously predictable this era I cannot.

I feel like there are some songs that are a lot worse than others, like Faerie Soiree is over half transition instead of being it's own track, and in other cases there's the Amulet thing that would sound better if placed at the beginning of Evil instead of the end of Nymphology. There's some like Death/Void where it's certainly less noticeable, but for some tracks it takes away from the track significantly and feels more like a way to force songs to feel more cohesive even though they were already fine without the transition. I hope Melanie eventually does an abridged version of Portals on streaming so people can listen more casually to the tracks that have long transitions and moving the vocal transitions onto the tracks they fit with (TV outro to FS intro, FS outro to LS intro, etc)

If you mean Spider Web, Melanie said (I believe it was on Apple Music) that the sound was actually something CJ recorded with his mouth. It is honestly one of the more unique parts of that song and as much as I don't like the lyrics that went with it, I feel like it had the potential to be something way cuter than it ended up being.

Literally ToT She should've put a trigger warning on that, I swear. I feel bad for all the people who have had neighbors like that in the past or who have trauma and heard that unprepared.

To be fair, many of the songs that made the final album were skips for a lot of people. I would find it difficult to make a track list using more than 3-5 of the finalized tracks because I wouldn’t want to force in a song like Moon Cycle or Nymphology that I would end up skipping. There’s also consideration for making a more cohesive plot (as some of the songs on Portals don’t fit the theme of past life regression, I’d honestly say the only ones that really do are Death/Void/Womb) or don’t blend well with some of the sessions I’d want to include. I don’t really see any harm in people making their own track lists that fit their personal taste.

Moon Cycle is right there

After a few hours of sitting with Portals, I don't see myself returning to it beyond the occasional listen of 1-2 tracks. I tried to give it as many chances as I could (listening through it a few different times on different headphones) but I just can't get behind the way they've handled not only the production but the mixing and mastering. A lot of tracks feel both like they've been overworked but also unfinished (the worst of this being Void). Songs I loved the demos of like Tunnel Vision and Faerie Soiree seem over-sterilized in a way that removes much of their charm, while Leeches had so much added to it only to remove a lot of what I loved about the session in the final mixing process. There's also the transitions, which remove a lot of the replay value songs like The Contortionist otherwise would've had. I had hope for this project after hearing she had worked with a few different people during the sessions, but ultimately what was released was another sole-producer project that, in my opinion, is on par with the quality of K-12 despite there being so many career-best tracks within the Portals sessions.

Someone send me the CD rips and I'll take them into FL and remove them (and make the Emerald-Esque one it's own interlude type thing)

It’s out? The Japan release isn’t for another 9 hours.

I’ve made a few jokes about things she’d do this era that ended up coming true (ex: the dancing around Crybaby’s grave out of legit nowhere during the breakdowns in DEATH), but I didn’t think she’d ACTUALLY make a promotional appearance as the new creature, vocal modulation and all, I just thought it’d be funny if she did (and it absolutely is).

Proton VPN on IOS is free if you want to go for a Japan VPN. You have to make an account though so it's kind of a pain but it only takes about ten minutes to set up.

This works too, I prefer Spotify because you can turn the VPN off once you're done to avoid slower buffering. If you go the YouTube route just make sure you fully close the YouTube app before you turn on your VPN or it'll realize you're just using a VPN.

If you change your Spotify region to Japan, you'll be able to listen to the official album release at 11am EST tomorrow. I think a few other time zones will have it before Japan (namely New Zealand or Australia) but free Japan VPNs are easier to find. Note: Just turning on your VPN won't change your region, you have to go to the open.spotify site and change your account settings manually while your VPN is on. It'll be a bit of a pain because it'll be in Japanese but it's not too hard to figure out.

I am still in love with my Sirens > Tunnel Vision (Demo) > The Contortionist > Faerie Soiree (Demo) tracklist I made.

After listening through void twice in HQ (with different headphones the second time to figure out if it is just mixed weirdly) it feels very... incomplete? It sounds to me like a demo she should've taken to someone else to be finished up with new elements instead of just adding more effects. I especially find it odd how most of the song doesn't have background vocals and the basic guitar thing follows the whole song, seemingly in place of a bass line? I hope the rest of the album isn't like this, but I think pretty much all of the songs are going to have some of these same issues if they weren't fixed with Void before release.

Never mind I’m dumb and thought it was a local release.

I see where you come from with fearing a single-producer album for MM4 (I actually fear that as well), however, my biggest fear currently is more so the idea of an entirely self-produced album for MM4. Melanie clearly has some great ideas for what to do with her projects, and has strong intentions for what she wants each one to be, but we all know she sometimes makes some very questionable sonic decisions (ex: the sneezing/coughing in Nurse's Office and just... Moon Cycle) and I think having an outside opinion from a producer working with her, even if she only had them working with her on a final product after she'd made her own demos, we'd see fewer of these things making their way into a final. Another thing... I don't know who was doing her mixing and mastering work for Portals, but a lot of it so far has felt almost unfinished? It's especially bad in some of the heavier sounding songs where her vocals seem almost lost in the mix. I hope with the next project we see from her, be it a single, a deluxe, an EP, or really whatever else, this is one of the things that is improved.

I hate to say it, but so far the only tracks from the new content I can see myself listening to for more than the next few weeks are The Contortionist and Death. In terms of Faerie Soiree I'll be sticking to the demo since I'm not too interested in the new intro/outro. I've not decided if I'm going to just edit Tunnel Vision to remove the transitions or continue to stream the demo, but Leeches remains cute in the final so I'll stream that as-is. I had made my own tracklist before, but I'm definitely going to rework it to remove Light Shower and Womb because I had initially only added them to stay more true to what Melanie intended Portals to be.

Yeah that was another thing I picked up on with a lot of the finished album. Songs that would've benefitted from having extra runtime were extended with long transitions to/from the surrounding tracks instead of truly adding new content to the song. In a lot of ways, Portals embodies being an album length version of After School, with a lot of the same problems, but I think the biggest thing that is going to turn off casual listeners is that the album is pretty clearly intended to be listened to in track list order. The transitions being on every song really deter just putting them into a playlist with whatever else you want to listen to, because hearing a minute long transition from Faerie Soiree into a random Britney Spears song or something would feel really goofy. Yeah, I'm definitely glad she's making longer tracks but I seriously hope going forward she begins making them longer by adding more verses or bridges instead of more chorus runs.