I guess this isn’t really something about the music, but man does this guy put out a lot of music. Well, I say “this guy”. From the credits given from Apple, it’s just this one guy, Dante Lamar Zimmerman. More than that, I have no idea. My internet stalking skills are poor, but as far as I can tell he’s got no real online presence outside of his music, at least not under that name.
He’s clearly a busy guy—everything I just listened to these last couple weeks he’s published (composition, playing, and production all nominally done by him) about a dozen hours of music in the last year. Not even a year, less than a year. It’s all good, too. I like it, and kinda a lot. I’m not gonna say it’s the least formulaic stuff out there, but it’s well made and thoroughly enjoyable.
It is this constant outpouring, to the point that frankly I can’t help but wonder if it’s all human made. I want to think it is; I certainly don’t think it’s an impossible amount of music, and I’m enjoying it enough that it would seriously bum me out were it to be slop, or stolen somehow, or whatever. I want to believe that it’s legit; if I had to put money one way or the other, my ear’d tell me to bet on it being legit, and again, while it’s an impressive output it’s still a very believably human output. I’ve got no way of proving it one way or the other, anyway, so. Fingers crossed and the benefit of the doubt, I guess.
There were 17 records that I treated as albums, that I recorded my feelings on like they were albums, and about three days left of singles and EPs that were too short for me to count. My album distinction is something I still find problematic, but I’ve still yet to come up with and implement a better solution, so for now it is what it is. Anyway. Most of the albums were between 25 and 30 minutes, and I was enjoying myself listening to them, so I ended up listening to about three a day (still twice through each). That’s why this took me a week instead of three. I think that worked out okay here, but I don’t think it’s something I’ll be able to do for all bands with a lot of music. It worked here because much of the music sounded similar and I enjoyed it a lot, so I wasn’t inclined to tune it out and it didn’t take all that much attention for me to decide if I liked it or not because I pretty much always liked it.
And I did pretty much always like it. The first couple things that Dysmn put out were a little weaker, but from Himeko’s House on I’d give pretty much every single record a solid 8/10, which is pretty dang high. None of them felt special or interesting enough to give better than an 8/10 to, but they were all just so solid, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to each of them the whole time.
That said, there were a couple of albums that I didn’t enjoy quite as much. It was bizarre and fascinating because I could not for the life of me tell you why. It’s kinda frustrating, actually, to have such stark difference of feeling toward two different EPs while feeling like they’re kinda the same. I have no idea what I’m hearing, clearly. I have no idea where my feelings about my experience are coming from. I need more practice, I guess. More listens, more of this kind of music.
I remember thinking that it was neat that I was going to listen to Dysmn, which was recommended to me as J-Metal, basically, right after listening to Metallica, who are widely recognized as ushering in metal as a genre. They really are worlds apart. They’re both fast and crunchy, I guess, but other than that they’re totally different. Metallica has a face where it’s frantic and desperate and raw (and almost feels more to me like what I associate with punk), and then a phase where it’s crunchy and dramatic (and feels more to me like just hard rock). Dysmn has super crunchy and crisp guitar playing, lots of interesting stuff happening rhythmically while keeping the pace up that works well to hold my attention, and lots of trappings from pop and electro production with regard to bass effects, some synth use (or maybe just effects and distortions on the guitar? Kinda the same effect/role, I think), some percussion stuff. They feel super different, and yet are clearly kinda following the same historical line, holding to similar musical traditions. Across long spans of time, which is significant, but still. Interesting.
Anyway! Lots of rambling. Lots of words that don’t really matter much, that’s my bad. Remember when I used to not let myself write more than a short paragraph about each artist because I wanted to make sure that I could leave only my basic impression and maybe one or two notes, because I so much never wanted to overstep and get into the habit of saying something about the music instead of something about how I experienced the music? Pepperidge Farm remembers. I dunno if that was better; I don’t think so, but I still think that there’s a clarity of purpose to the idea that is somewhat appealing to me. I dunno. I never know. Spaghetti on the wall, I guess. I dunno that I’ll ever find out what sticks, but I can keep on throwing it.
Anyway anyway. All of that to say that I really did enjoy this a lot, all the way through. I’m gonna give it an easy A. Nothing crazy; I don’t think I actually have anything particularly interesting to say about the music itself (despite my ramblings). It’s just right up my alley and very well done.
Dysmn complete, now listening to: Gracie Abrams
tunafruitsandwitch 