Saturday, June 27, 2009

dotlineline - Confused Ballad (Mastered version)

Hear The Track Here

Not sure whether dotlineline is a band or not although its for sure the main mover and shaker is Andreas Skoglund from Norway. Whatever both are new names to me, and Soundclick too by the looks of it. Judging by the very nice list of influences Andreas would like his rock to pop, if you know what I mean - and on one level he succeeds because one of the first musical references I got from this was how much it reminded me of the early work of Big Ship. Definitely lo-fi and kinda sloppy in execution, which is IMHO always going to be a bit of acquired taste.

After a while, it's true that I did settle into Big Ship's style and - I suspect - I may well do the same with dotlineline but it will probably be an uphill struggle. As you know I am not a complete stickler for technical excellence but I do require that if I am going to listen to 'demos' they had better have something else on the ball for me to like them, like a great idea or, God forbid, a memorable tune. While I wouldn't go as far as to say that dotlineline misses this target, in fact I spent much of the reviewing time being confused. Definitely seemed to be a long while warming to it and that was worrying.

I am, of course, well aware that there is a market for this kind of material and as Ras (aka Rascal Theorist) remarks 'nobody's tryin out for 'Idol' here' All well and good, I say, until I think to mention the elephant towering over this review. Certainly if the only thing you had to do to get this track was to download it, I don't think quality would matter overly much. When, however, you have to fork out hard earned coinage for it, it puts a whole new slant on things. Now, don't get me wrong here, I like this track and I think it has great charm and yeah some good ideas; truth is I wouldn't want to pay almost a dollar for owning it and I think that will become evident to dotlineline that a rethink is in order. Check out the competition, ya know?

Strange but compelling rock, worth a listen at least.

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