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 it ain't over until the 5'7 filipino dude sings

alright so update: yes, the jlog has been dead for 3 weeks. i literally have made a total of one real post even when i said i'd be posting once or twice a week. it was kind of expected for the high schooler to procrastinate and not finish the spontaneous passion project. i have a draft of a post but it's complicated to talk about and it might turn out to be another long one. so while i'm working on that, here's the final essay i did for my english 101 class: an album review of Camellia's Chimera Dragons. (note that i gave a more nuanced take than usual because i didn't just want a thousand words of glaze. i do like his hardcore songs a lot. i also wrote this like an ai. i didn't use ai. just looks like i did because i was tired and it was the end of the quarter so i stopped trying to make it sound good. also i cut off the introduction, it was a lame one about a dude playing ddr). read it if you want or skip to the end.

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When you listen to Camellia’s music for longer than a couple seconds, you’ll realize that it’s more than just the lazy drum loop and bass boosted remixes like you would typically find at a rave. There are layers behind each song, various sounds and samples 2 meticulously crafted and purposefully placed, like a man completing a thousand-piece jigsaw. Don’t get me wrong; it still nearly sounds like nonsense, but his listeners appreciate his technological arrangement skills and his choice of samples. On top of that, his musical knowledge carries him to a new tier of quality, higher than any other producer in his field. His fast, ascending, beautiful piano solos are works of art by themselves, impossible to create without an extensive background of music theory. After conducting a thorough breakdown of any of his songs, you can practically hear the countless hours that went into it. 

Chimera Dragons is no exception. Every song is a technical masterpiece; none were half-baked in terms of production quality. Everything between the prologue to the epilogue is thought out, and even the title has an appropriate meaning. The album is dedicated to an uncommon subgenre of EDM called Full Flavor, a blend of several different genres into one song. A Chimera Dragon is a mythical mashup of several different creatures, such as a lion, a goat, and a dragon. 

Speaking of mythology, Camellia tends to assign a theme to each of his albums, with past albums such as Blackmagik Blazing, U.U.F.O, and Ashed Wings having themes of witchery, aliens, and Judgement Day, respectively. The theme of this album is supposed to be a dragon slaying, fantastical legend, like a D&D campaign come to life, but on steroids. His albums rely on specific sounds or genres to give each album that vibe. Blackmagik Blazing uses chiming bells and spooky electro swing, U.U.F.O features The8BitDrummer to contribute to its jungle and drum ‘n’ bass, and Ashed Wings relies on record scratches for hip-hop. Chimera Dragons features a lot of metal to paint a dungeon crawling landscape, although I can already imagine metalheads complaining about the programmed guitar and drums. 

While Camellia has tackled several different genres in his previous albums and songs, such as “REX”, this album feels like the first time he’s combining them all into one. He tries his absolute darndest to cram a new genre into every song, and it partially pays off. Fans will be delightfully surprised to hear Camellia experiment with completely new genres, such as synthwave in “NAGALOKAH / Prologue: Realm of Dragons” and color bass in “Backbeat Revenge”. The insertion of UK garage into “MAMBO COMBO” is one of my personal favorites. Its minimalist drums combined with a funky Think break are like Altoids for your ears, a new and refreshing mint taste. Not to mention, he combines these genres so well that you’d be convinced this wasn’t his first time working with them; testament to his experience and finesse. 

The problem with this gamble is that the gimmick eventually wears off on you. He can’t keep you entertained with new genres at every corner because that’d be way too much work; he needs to cut corners somewhere. Unfortunately, because of the expectation that every song will be different, listeners are disappointed when Camellia sticks to his familiar bread and butter genre: hardcore. Hardcore is considered a lazy genre due to its repetitive nature. It’s a genre you would expect to hear at a rave: exactly the type of music listed earlier. A good chunk of the songs in Chimera Dragons is hardcore, with the remaining being purely full flavor. It’s almost as if Camellia strategically placed the hardcore tracks alongside the full flavor tracks to make his uniqueness stand out more. The album is like Mario Party or any other party game. It’s a collection of minigames that are just long enough to keep your attention but not fleshed out enough to stand by itself as a game. Old-school listeners will appreciate him for sticking to his roots, but progressive listeners will wish he expanded the tiny snippets of subgenres into full-length songs, proving his dominance in the EDM scene. 

Fans will still ultimately enjoy this album, though the album does very little to welcome or invite new listeners. Long time fans of Camellia will love that he’s still producing hardcore music and sticking to his roots while progressive fans will acknowledge his continued exploration into new ideas after 11 years of producing and applaud him for not entirely staying within his comfort zone. However, new listeners lack the context of these fans and won’t see the same magic in a full flavor album if this is their first time listening to Camellia. Additionally, a fan of UK garage won’t like that they get to hear their subgenre for just ten seconds and will most likely not continue listening. Essentially, this album is made for Camellia fans and Camellia fans only. The best example of this is in “magical, very magical world”, where Camellia samples dozens of previous songs that he’s made, creating an ode to his musical career. This will no doubt incite nostalgia in all his fans, especially with the ending being one of Camellia’s first songs, “crystalized”. However, this won’t have the same effect on a new listener, making many of the album’s songs much less powerful. 

The overall purpose of the album feels like it’s trying to suck you into a world of epic, perilous battles, but something that new fans might not expect is the amount of humor injected into the album. His music is designed to make you feel like the main character, but his songs will break the immersion here and there. Listeners could potentially find themselves laughing at Camellia’s miniature jokes, like the musical equivalent of oneliners. These subtle jokes range from internet culture references to some “if you know, you know” samples that will make any long-time producer chuckle. “Hottest Take Machine” stands out as the funniest song due to its backstory and execution. Camellia asked his community for some “controversial” opinions for him to put into his song. In this song, he records a voiceover of each hot take. He then tries to accommodate each opinion through the song. For example, a fan wrote, “We need some more bass in here!” to which the song responds with pure 808s. Another fan wrote, “1 BPM is the best BPM!”, and Camellia slowed the song down to a painful 1 BPM. The song is topped off with the chorus repeating the same, self-aimed lyric, “Camellia sucks”. His concept is executed rather well and does some icebreaking to cushion new listeners into his music through humor.

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i don't blame you if you ain't reading allat. i think it's okay at best, i'd rewrite a lot of things if i could.

honestly, i want to continue the jlog and not let it die; i have a lot more topics i want to talk about. it's not a motivation issue, it's a time issue. hopefully you guys continue to enjoy reading the jlog.

if you're wondering, i got a 98%. teacher was chill and lowkey glazed my paper because i'm pretty sure he just liked me. probably because i improved a lot over the quarter. or because i'm just a high school kid. or because i didn't use ai. probably the last one.