Melanie Martinez

[Salem 872]

2 minutes ago, sadness is a butterfly said:

I’ve honestly grown to love the standard cover. I really like the mushrooms and it’s one of the better looks she’s had in that costume imo. 

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.

[sadness is a butterfly 5,796]

4 minutes ago, Salem said:

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.

To be fair I don’t like the visual concept 99% of the time, but putting that all aside, I like the cover 

 

Its also one of the few pictures that isn’t somehow blurry or out of focus. So much of the artwork from this era has a weird blurred filter, I think they applied the same effect to the production on Evil 

[Pop The Balloons 2,645]

4 hours ago, pierre said:

hey guys.

wanted to share my concept art for the album portals.

Could I get a copy of these please omg these are beautiful 

[Salem 872]

1 minute ago, sadness is a butterfly said:

To be fair I don’t like the visual concept 99% of the time, but putting that all aside, I like the cover 

 

Its also one of the few pictures that isn’t somehow blurry or out of focus. So much of the artwork from this era has a weird blurred filter, I think they applied the same effect to the production on Evil 

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. 

[rabbit boi 269]

wait i was just going through the flac portals files i have and BOTL is capped at 16khz?????

all the others are fine, did my file somehow get fucked up or is there really an upscale in the cds 

[Salem 872]

5 minutes ago, rabbit boi said:

wait i was just going through the flac portals files i have and BOTL is capped at 16khz?????

all the others are fine, did my file somehow get fucked up or is there really an upscale in the cds 

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.

[rabbit boi 269]

4 minutes ago, Salem said:

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.

i took a closer look and it looks like the instruments were filtered really harshly on purpose but miss girl totally recorded her vocals with an iphone,, the end transition to contortionist isnt capped harshly either

[sadness is a butterfly 5,796]

@rabbit boi @Salem

 

Im curious what this means (16 kHz, upscale, etc). I definitely try and get into audio type stuff but my knowledge is limited and I’m curious 

[rabbit boi 269]

2 minutes ago, sadness is a butterfly said:

@rabbit boi @Salem

 

Im curious what this means (16 kHz, upscale, etc). I definitely try and get into audio type stuff but my knowledge is limited and I’m curious 

oo yea its def a tricky topic to get into, the basics of khz is its the measure of the frequency, lower numbers are bass freqs and higher are the more sparkly twinky sounds, think the contortionist. but downscaling happens to make lossless/highquality files smaller in size by compressing a lot of the higher frequencies into mushy sounding stuff thats a lot easier for the computer to store, if you know anything about pictures its similar to png vs jpeg. but once the file has been downscaled its permanently stuck like that, if you were to take that downscaled file and try to re-export it as a lossless file type that would be called "upscaling" because its not a true hq file, just a lq file disguised as a hq file. and ur able to visually see when its a fake lossless file/upscale through spectrum visualizers. all that high freq stuff i talked about gets cut off on lower quality files, theres a lot that can go into it tho and it can get really confusing, like how i found that its just her vocals that are cut off like that and the rest of the instruments are fine means her vocals were most likely recorded on a phone (bc the specific freq that its capped at matches iphones memo file types)

[Salem 872]

 

17 minutes ago, rabbit boi said:

i took a closer look and it looks like the instruments were filtered really harshly on purpose but miss girl totally recorded her vocals with an iphone,, the end transition to contortionist isnt capped harshly either

I'm not really surprised that she did this, but... come on Melanie, you have a mic that cost you over 3k, please use it ToT 

[LunaeManifestum 8,307]

41 minutes ago, rabbit boi said:

wait i was just going through the flac portals files i have and BOTL is capped at 16khz?????

all the others are fine, did my file somehow get fucked up or is there really an upscale in the cds 

Have u seen void and evil scans?? Lol 

[sadness is a butterfly 5,796]

16 minutes ago, rabbit boi said:

oo yea its def a tricky topic to get into, the basics of khz is its the measure of the frequency, lower numbers are bass freqs and higher are the more sparkly twinky sounds, think the contortionist. but downscaling happens to make lossless/highquality files smaller in size by compressing a lot of the higher frequencies into mushy sounding stuff thats a lot easier for the computer to store, if you know anything about pictures its similar to png vs jpeg. but once the file has been downscaled its permanently stuck like that, if you were to take that downscaled file and try to re-export it as a lossless file type that would be called "upscaling" because its not a true hq file, just a lq file disguised as a hq file. and ur able to visually see when its a fake lossless file/upscale through spectrum visualizers. all that high freq stuff i talked about gets cut off on lower quality files, theres a lot that can go into it tho and it can get really confusing, like how i found that its just her vocals that are cut off like that and the rest of the instruments are fine means her vocals were most likely recorded on a phone (bc the specific freq that its capped at matches iphones memo file types)

Thank you so much for explaining that makes sense! 

[ashnikkos daisy pepper 516]

Don’t know if this was posted yet. 
 

Edit: people in the comments are saying this is an April fools joke review? Should’ve known. 🤣

[sadness is a butterfly 5,796]

Battle of the Larynx for me is not holding up well against the other songs. Most of the reaction videos I’ve seen don’t like it either. It’s so sonically similar to Evil, and to a lesser extent Void. I think those each deserve a spot on the album, but I really wonder what she replaced by adding BOTL at the end of the process.
 

It’s very repetitive, seems a bit rushed, didn’t take enough time to fully flesh it out. And now learning she likely did the vocals on her iPhone. 
 

I hadn’t been listening to Nymphology on my own Portals version and gave it another shot, it’s a no . So my skips are Light Shower, Spider Web, and Nymphology (not skipping BOTL, it’s not bad, just not great)

[ImNoAngel 371]

omg lol

 

[The Siren 30,523]

6 minutes ago, ImNoAngel said:

omg lol

 

who can confirm?

 

 

[lanaismamom 11,545]

5 hours ago, ashnikkosdaisypepper said:

hiiii longtime melanie fan here… since dollhouse ep. I honestly don’t know how to feel about the album, some of the transitions are fitting, others are just…not it. TV, DEATH, EVIL, VOID and WOMB are stand outs for me and my favs. I’m not slandering by any means, I’ve been playing it on loop (the album) trying to love it in its entirety, but it’s not so simple. Maybe that’ll change over time, hopefully with a deluxe with sirens, DB etc, or even the film (if or when we get one) I love the album packaging though. I also don’t know how to feel about the look and going out in public with it? Is this a forever thing now? 
 

that’s my little two cents. 

omg have u listened to her unreleased? 

[Danny Milk 2,469]

Since we were talking about Portals reviews, here's one i watched that was good, he actually took an effort to look into each songs meaning and seemed to enjoy most of the album

 

[The Siren 30,523]

im really hoping Caitlin Marie Reacts posts her reaction to portals soon

[Danny Milk 2,469]

1 minute ago, The Siren said:

im really hoping Caitlin Marie Reacts posts her reaction to portals soon

oh she definitely will, she seemed excited about the album when someone mentioned it in a live stream recently, we'll probably get it in the next couple of days (it's just too bad we  probably wont see a reaction from Ajay or Dylan will not Participate, i miss their music reactions so much. Both of their melanie reaction videos got me into mels music in the first place)