Unsurprisingly, I voted for my own contestant in this one. Here's what I wrote:
My vote won't surprise anyone.
You all saw what I wrote in description of the Tangerine Dream album, and maybe you read the original review I wrote of it two years ago as well. I just find the album beautiful and hypnotic, and as I said, I see it as as much of a concept album as a soundtrack, akin to albums such as Rick Wakeman's Six Wives of Henry VIII. I love the way one synthesizer will be playing something soft and lovely, and a second will suddenly come in and cut right through it (and right through me, as well.) And I particularly love the track "Charlie the Kid" as the musical embodiment of the character of Charlie McGee.
As for the Unreal City album, it's as tough a competitor as I would expect. My friend Jethro has always been a connoisseur of prog rock, and I've learned about many great albums from him. This is one of those. I particularly love the synthesizers in this one (especially in that first track), and the keyboards throughout. My only complaint is a minor one - I don't love the vocalist. His voice sounds a little strained and unpleasant at times. But he's certainly serviceable, and not enough to hurt my enjoyment of the album in any way.
Still, I will stick with the partner I brought to the dance. My vote is for Tangerine Dream.
After a little bit of a run that pulled me within one vote of the competition, though, the late votes all broke the other way.
Final Results: Tangerine Dream 5 votes, Unreal City 10 votes.
However, I have to say that in general, the album was pretty well received, and even several of the people who voted against rated it highly. In the end, though, it was up against a really tough competitor, that has a decent shot of winning the whole tournament. But my goal here was to expose the Firestarter album, which I love, to some more people, and to get it some more ratings on the Sputnik site, which I did. So overall, I feel pretty good about the entry.
On to Match 5.
