/mu/ - The Best Of /mu/ Volume 1
Before the shills of the early ‘20 decade got together to network and help one another grow as artists, the shills of mid ’10 developed a poor reputation for the /mu/ board by consistently circle-jerking and disapprovingly spamming the board. Before that, though, shills were admirably quite supportive of one another and networked unlike any community since. An interesting glimpse into the earlier days of /mu/ shilling, The Best Of /mu/ Volume 1 is an inconsistent, yet surprisingly smooth listen.
This is partly to do with the attention of care given to the track-listing. Sure, there’s a lot of filler, though many songs bleed into one another beautifully. Some of the transitions, such as between the opening two songs and Watersmelon into Floating Water are marvellous. There are some truly great songs throughout, as well. One might be delightfully excited to listen to the Artificial Sun Project thinking it was the Artificial Pine, only to be equally disappointed and shocked to realise it’s someone better. So is Your Warm Bones is incredibly sweet, with an admirable vocal performance. Christine is a solid head-pumping electronic-rock song in the vein of Health. Pale Beneath a Brilliant Sky is perhaps the biggest standout; a warm, captivating shoegaze song with elements of folk. The follow-up, Trust, is emotionally honest and quite captivating. Awake in Sleep is a neat closer, despite being a retread of most post-rock inspired black metal of the last decade.
There’s a disappointing amount of filler, though. Water Gun Water Gun Sky Attack’s Kelper is a boring four tet knock off. Mitsuo and The High Road are both lame generic hip-hop filler, as is Ninja Showdown and its lame sampling of kung-fu. Radford Banks Gets a New Volvo is a generic disco/funk suite, which would have sounded repetitive and boring even when the genres were fresh. Another poor disco song, Viktor Disque - Frank (Ft. A Problem Like Maria), barely deters away from its sample. It wouldn’t be a boring compilation album without the generic punk songs, such as A Pattern and Things I Hear In The Streets Of Manchester In The Early Hours. Somnitone’s Charnel House very lazily relies on Eastern aesthetics and melodies; if the vocalist wasn’t so passionate, one could easily assume it was a parody. The remaining songs are so boring and void of life, they’re barely worth mentioning.
It’s evident the curator of The Best Of /mu/ Volume 1 wanted to include all his friends, sacrificing quality in doing so. Based on the quality of some of the songs here, it’s obvious /mu/ was capable of so much more, though sadly the compilation is more concerned with being appealing, as opposed to being creative. Regardless, the genres themselves were still incredibly stale for their time. An interesting glimpse in time, for sure; though The Best Of /mu/ Volume 1 is a shining example of why shills never were able to get their feet off the ground on 4chan in the past.
Average
Listen to it here:
https://bestofmu.bandcamp.com/album/the-best-of-mu
/mu/ - The Best Of /mu/ Volume 1
