I was listening to A Thousand Suns today and I just can't help but finally complain about the interludes on the album. They never seemed to bother me until now. The Requiem - A necessary intro to the album but could've easily ended with the heartbeat fading into Burning In The Skies. The Radiance - This interlude serves no purpose other than the 45 second speech used within it. It really builds itself up but the next track dosen't feel as if it lives up to that buildup. Empty Spaces - The father of all segues. This track is supposed to "calm" the mood of BITS to help set up for WTCFM but the track gets cut off and interrupted by the metronome-like beat. This interlude seriously must be here just to make this album more risky and random because it serves absolutely no purpose. It looks progressive on paper going from 2min to 57sec to 4min 13sec to 18sec but it is really annoying when you listen to the album. Jornada Del Muerto - A good interlude, and I actually find this one necessary, but still it just feels like a filler to drag out the wait for WFTE. Wisdom, Justice, And Love - A cool interlude but once again it is just too random to be on this album. "noo dudes it's like really scarry and it has piano liek iridescent". Fallout - Robotic reprise of BITS. Is this really necessary? Come on. All in all if you really look and listen to this album you are just left four segues and a good intro and good interlude. I really loved them at first but now I am getting sick of hearing monotone Oppenheimer talk over this chaotic beat, crickets, MLK turning into a transformer, and R2D2 breaking out the mic.
The interludes are great, and except for Empty Spaces I think all of them have a purpose. The Radiance - The Oppenheimer speech sets the tone and the theme of the album. Wisdom, Justice and Love - A moving speech by MLK, who was murdered for defending what he thought was right. It makes a great prelude to a song that talks about letting go the sadness when you think everything is lost. I think the lyrics on Iridescent can be connected to the speech very easily. Fallout - If The Catalyst is the conclusion of the album, where the concept reaches its end, it makes sense to have a reprise of the first real song on the album to make everything up to that point come full circle. At least I think that's the idea behind it.
I forgot about the interludes until I saw this thread. The album flows seamlessly, and the interludes are there to lay down the context of the record.
That's the only part I agree with. How is Wisdom, Justice, and Love random? It fits perfectly with the multiple themes of the album. However, I won't argue with the people that complain about there only being 9 whole songs. That's the part that's starting to irritate me a little. "But Ben, ATS is the longest album LP has put out yet!" That's true, but not all of us want to listen to this beginning to end every time I play it. I just don't like only having 9 choices. The interludes sound great, but I don't get how after 3 years they could only come up with 9 songs. What would have been the problem with 12 songs and 6 interludes? And while I'm bashing my favorite album of all time, I hate how they extended WaK and WTCFM. It's just annoying sitting there listening to a not catchy mess. Ok, I got it all out
Ben I couldn't agree more. Three years huh? I can make The Radiance, Empty Spaces, Wisdom Justice and Love, and Fallout easily in 2 hours or less. So there you go, 4 tracks in 2 hours or so. I used to love the interludes but they are so lazy.
Seconded about Jornada. Empty Spaces was the only completely pointless interlude. It's not like it really set up WTCFM, or even flowed into it as WTCFM had its own intro. Empty Spaces was what it is ... an empty space.
TECHNICALLY, they'll make up for it with LPUX which supposedly will have Bsides from it. But we'll never know why they didn't just put the Bsides on the damn album.
Personally I think The Radiance and The Requiem put together would have made for a good intro, Empty Spaces has no reason to exist, Robot Boy should have been cut in half and mixed with Journada del Muerto, Wisdom Justice and Love is a good transition from balls to the wall Wretches and Kings to Iridescent so should stay, and Fallout should have been one of those tracks that starts at negative-1:23 before The Catalyst like a lot of Limp Bizkit songs had hidden intros.
Jornada is my favourite interlude. Empty Spaces is pointless. I don't want to listen to the album in one shot everytime, from the start to the end. Yes, as someone said, 9 choices is just...not good. I have high hope from LPUX.
Jornada can kick the whole albums ass with one hand. Empty Spaces I think is just really, really not necessary.
Polychromatic, whether or not you can recreate The Radiance, Empty Spaces, Wisdom Justice and Love, and Fallout in under two hours, is moot. In correlation with the entirety of the album, the interludes are necessary and every interlude serves a purpose logical to the themes of ATS. They were not created to showcase Linkin Park's musical chops, but instead the interludes work to emphasize a particular point during a play-through of the album.
Just have to point this out - Empty Spaces actually connects musically to WTCFM, it's not "interrupted" like you make it out to be. The marching/gun-cocking noises in Empty Spaces blend rhythmically with WTCFM. Empty Spaces itself is actually reprised in full near the end of WTCFM (4:00-4:18), just with additional instrumentation on top of it.
Heehee... It's not like they just wrote interludes in a span of three years. This isn't a big deal. Rly.
All I have to say is ... I'd like "The Radiance" more if it didn't try to build up like it did. The Oppenheimer speech that plays over the top doesn't help the momentum and building of anticipation that the track is obviously meant to try to create - the slow pacing of the speech just utterly destroys that for me. It drags -- it really, really drags -- and an intro shouldn't do that. When they play "The Radiance" live, it seems they remove that build-up aspect of it and they just allow the speech to play. That works a lot better in that it's far less irritating for me. ;P