Today In Songs That Should Be Three Minutes Longer

Claude Young - Reborn: You wouldn't think that a song with a bass-driven backdrop, electro-African percussion, maracas, constant cymbal-clashes and permeating synth/soundscapes would actually qualify as atmospheric - almost ambient - music. Which only demonstrates how successfully ambient artists have misled listeners into thinking that atmosphere is a product of instrumental and compositional austerity. The steady build-up and the gradually frantic nature of the percussive structure acts as a musical counterfactual that goes out of its way to prove that atmosphere can be as readily evoked by compositional progression. It's an excellent song, even if I wish it were longer, it's difficult to see how the elements that stand out to me would be built on without needless repetition. Reborn gets the Q seal of approval.

Riow Arai - Inter: This. Song. Is. Awesome. I dare you to find as much awesome packed into less time. Inter starts off by entirely dismissing the concept of a "beginning" and just throws you into a fast-paced, layered and multifaceted, breakbeat orgasm. It's basically the musical equivalent of someone punching you with cement and then waiting for you to praise them after watching their arm fall off. Even still, I'd like to have seen whether more content could be added. In addition to sounding like nothing else on the album it's from, it basically gives you the taste of potential without giving you enough satisfaction to be fulfilled by it. My reaction to the song whenever it randomly comes up is "That's it?". It's a fair question. But no matter. Inter gets the Q seal of approval. 

Speedy J - Fill 4: Fill 4 is the only song in this post that feels genuinely incomplete to me. This sounds more like a contemplative intro to a moving and instrumentally rich piece than a standalone, self-contained ditty. The slow formation of the melody is finely crafted and almost beautiful, in its way, but it's a concept that feels prematurely aborted rather than wholly or even partially developed. That does little to diminish my fondness for the piece, though. It has a forlorn and imaginative quality, and its minimal length does nothing to tarnish its tangibly atmospheric tone. Fill 4 gets the Q seal of approval. 

That is all.