The Smashing Pumpkins - MACHINA/The Machines Of God POLL.

Not really a fan of this album at all but 'Glass and the Ghost Children' is proper epic.

Yeah, I love 'Glass and the Ghost Children', especially the first half of the track which has some fine Jimmy Chamberlin drumming. I'm actually undecided as to what to vote for here, because there's quite a few of these songs that I like a hell of a lot... 'The Crying Tree Of Mercury' and 'Blue Skies Bring Tears' are the two here that are guaranteed not to get my vote, but I have more than a soft spot for 'The Everlasting Gaze', 'Stand Inside Your Love', 'I Of The Mourning', 'Glass and The Ghost Children', 'Wound', 'With Every Light' and 'Age Of Innocence'.

Of all the Pumpkins albums, this is the one that I'm actually looking forward to being reissued the most... I think it'll be very interesting to see what Billy does with this one.

This could be another five CD/one DVD box easy.

It would be excellent if it was! I'm particularly interested in hearing how he's going to remix the tracks, and hearing how the album was originally conceived.

This is a patchy album but the best songs are really really good. I like the production sheen on it too. I'm going with 'Stand Inside Your Love', just over 'Age of Innocence'.

Imploding Voice, but there's 3 or 4 other songs that would've fit the bill. This album had its moments.

Damn. With Every Light i guess. it's full of amazing songs though that are hindered by the obnoxious production - gatgc, imploding voice, wound, try, siyl, iotm, this time....shame it didn't quite hit the mark

Went with 'I Of The Mourning', just coz.

man i haven't heard this since around the time it came out.

i saw them around this time too, my first gig without parents, a friend's dad dropped us off and waited outside the birmingham NEC arena. so billy came out in a white (wedding?) dress and played some lonely acoustic songs, solo, kinda rubbish, then disappeared off stage. then there was a nervy 30 minute wait, we were thinking that was it, end of the pumpkins (i think it was meant to be their second from last ever gig or something).

so anyway he then came out in a black dress and they launced into 'the everlasting gaze' and holy shit it was heavy. lost a shoe and ripped loads of buttons off my shirt in the mosh pit. we returned to the car, my friend's dad was laughing at us we got in and he put john peel on the radio and my friend and i heard what we called brazillian drum n bass (i think it was just some idm type thing - maybe squarepusher) for the first time and decided it was the best thing ever, a lot better than the gig we'd just seen. and so we sold our guitars, bought interfaces and started downloading all the audio software we could find.

so thanks for that billy!

Very LCD Soundsystem-sounding origin story.

Actually just threw this on last week to see how it held up or whether it sounded better than it did to me in the summer of 2000 when I really, really struggled to like it. Still can really only deal with the same set of "heart music, Echo and the Bunnymen" songs - "Raindrops + Sunshowers," "Stand Inside Your Love," "I Of The Mourning," "This Time," "Wound." I love imagining "With Every Light" as a musical theater number, Billy strolling down the Yellow Brick Road, swinging his arms and proclaiming "Look ma, the sun is shinin' on me!"

Except for "The Everlasting Gaze," which at least punches hard and keeps it brief, all the "heavy" songs are just awful, they smell like a car full of old french fries that's been sitting in the sun in the middle of a parking lot. TEG also just about collapses under the wretched a capella bridge, too - that went from WTF to "oh, that's kinda cool" to "nope, that sucks" in about five listens for me. The whole thing is such a damned shame because just a few years earlier, Billy had a clearer hand on the marriage of heavy rock and passionate teenage poetry than basically anybody in the game, and here he feels this need to separate them out and it leaves the heavy rock songs just adrift in their dinosauric self-insistence. Nothing there, unless there are secrets buried in the ridiculous booklet.

For all that, "Age of Innocence" is one of my favorite Pumpkins songs ever, would have been a perfect closer on any of their records. Desolation, yes / hesitation, no. Now that's some apocalyptic shit I can get behind. I sort of imagine an alternate version of this album where it's bookended by that and "Here's To The Atom Bomb."

Love the idea that the last days of o.g. Pumpkins convinced a thousand alt-rock youth to throw away their guitars and start learning to use Reason and Fruityloops or whatever....

ouch ;) xpost

so charmberlin is a monster, jesus. i still know too many words to these songs, i'm sure at some point recently i've (v drunkenly) sang the breakdown whining baby bit in 'the everlasting gaze'. gonna go with 'stand inside your love' serious early teens nostalgia here ~intense feelings~ can't really be rational about whether or not it's any good

There's only really a couple of songs on this record that I would class as "heavy", though! I still rate 'The Everlasting Gaze', and I think 'The Imploding Voice' is a decent enough song (although I'm not fond of the production treatment on that particular song, hence why I'm looking forward to the remix so much). I'd say 'Heavy Metal Machine' was the worst of all the "heavy" songs, though.

even as like a middle school ultra billy corgan stan i thought "heavy metal machine" was ponderous

"the imploding voice" however is good fun. doctor casino otm generally still

oh my god! heavy metal machine SUCKS

between this and machina ii is probably the best smashing pumpkins record but it feels like billy wanted to pull off a rock pose after adore and it just makes parts of the album incredibly stagnant

the good thing is the songs that actually drift away from this forced narrative actually continue to surprise: "wound" "age of innocence" "with every light" "raindrops + sunshowers"

"i of the mourning" of course is a "rock" song but it finds this purchase naturally, like, say, the material on siamese dream. the last minute or so of it is super thrilling

oh my god! heavy metal machine SUCKS

― yellow jacket (spazzmatazz), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:18 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When I listen to it, I usually find myself thinking that the main riff is good but wishing that he'd taken the time to write a better song with it. Production/mix leaves a lot to be desired on that one too, I think. Also, is it just me that cringes a little when Billy sings "If I were dead, would my records sell?"

Suspect my reception of "I of the Mourning" is heavily colored by Pitchfork's review and the comment to the effect of "When was the last time anyone heard their favorite song on the radio?" Classic P4K indie snob posturing obviously but I was vulnerable to that at that moment, and it did contribute to the sense that Billy Pumpkin was aiming for this resonant imagery but just trying too hard, and that rang true for the whole album in a way.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11829-machinathe-machines-of-god/

that line is super dumb but yeah it gets at the record's larger issue

machina ii curiously unaffected by any of that grandiosity but it kinda sounds like shit

oh i should clarify i'm a fan of the production on this album

Voted "Imploding Voice" but after listening I think it's probably "This Time"
More than any other song from the album it really felt like a goodbye note from Billy/the band. I was an obsessed fan and emotional teen at the time and it really felt like the end of an era to me.

Did we do a Machina II poll ever?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

VERY surprised 'The Crying Tree Of Mercury' got a vote and 'Wound' didn't!

for some reason recently I found myself thinking that D'Arcy Wretzky and Jimmy Chamberlain were both dead (my wife was asking me "whatever happened to the Smashing Pumpkins")

Billy Corgan carried on the name with a new line-up (Oceania came out last year), Jimmy Chamberlin has his own band (The Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, which is a bit more jazz-fusiony), James Iha put out his second solo record last year and is apparently going to continue working with A Perfect Circle, and D'Arcy Wretsky generally keeps quiet... although the odd picture over the years has surfaced of her looking incredibly rough, and was arrested a couple of times a couple of years ago for drink-driving and not being able to control her horses on her farm. She was jailed for a few dates for missing court dates for the latter. She may still be doing a huge amount of drugs... who knows!?

whoa, every song on this is suddenly amazing, on par with the first four. this is a big breakthrough for me. "The Sacred + Profane" just caught me way off guard. this thing is rock solid, even if it's imperfect. even more excited for the proper reissue with I & II combined into the intended meta-rock opera (lol... no but im really excited)

ugh, i just reached "heavy metal machine." nevermind

ahhh, "This Time"...yup this record is two excellent halves sandwiching the worst track of Corgan's career

ugh "the sacred + profane" is incredible

I fucking love 'Wound'.

"Wound" is aces

I need to break the album out

Raindrops + Sundrops still does it for me. probably the only track on here that benefits from the glutted production.

Raindrops + Sunshowers that should read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVZfKiYOgJM

i blow the dust off my guitar
in the attic with the star
i read your letter to feel better
my tears upon the fading ink

Just had a long drive and decided to listen to this all the way through for the first time since, oh, 2002?

I'm still convinced that a 10-12 track album combined out of the best of this and "Machina II" would be pretty wonderful - some absolute highlights here - but as it stands the pacing and length of this record manage to cut it off at the knees.

Being past the 60-minute mark and having to sit thru both "Crying Tree of Mercury" and "Blue Skies Bring Tears?" is simply brutal.

“this time” is a really really really good song by the smashing pumpkins

this would've been an amazing instrumental album.

"raindrops + sunshowers" getting 0 is whack. textbook example of chamberlain's drumming on fantastic display.

I haven’t heard this album in 20+ years. Things I remember about it are the singles (mostly the music videos tbh), the sort of Elephant trumpeting sound on “crying tree” and yeah the drums on “raindrops + sunshowers”. Oh and I also remember t-shirt my father bought me (I guess at hot topic?)… the artwork was actually the highlight of the album for me and I loved wearing that shirt despite not being a fan of the album. Love the typography, the illustration, and those autumn-chic tones that were very late-90s, goth-starbucks aesthetic.

I remember the mix sounding very saturated and lifeless but I guess that was the trend those years.

the mix is pretty terrible, horribly muddy and flat, even by the standards of the time. a real shame because some of the songs are actually quite good beneath all that.

it’s a really strange mix, super blown out and dreamy

i'm a freak and i have always liked the way this record sounds

Oof tried to give this one a second chance and the mix sounds even worse than I remembered. Couldn’t make it past two songs, sorry.

Yeah, can I just vote for the album art?

I was so into that in grade 10. I made a cosplay of Plate VIII for art class. (Even worse: a little folding triptych based on "Bullet With Butterfly Wings", lol)

one of the big issues i have is the way the vocals just sit so far on top of the rest of the mix, which is heavily compressed and pretty muddy. just burying the vocals a bit would be a decent improvement but i doubt that's gonna happen

he's talked about how he's overdubbed demos for some of the previously unheard stuff on here which i absolutely don't trust will sound ok at all lol

shoot... there was enough space to fit "heavy metal machine" on this

there was even enough space to fit both versions of it on there, unless "HMM" is somehow something completely different

i'm skimming through machina now and i'd truly forgotten just how ugly some of it sounds. what the hell is the mix on "the imploding voice", it's so bizarre

the only Pumpkins song I have time for from era is "White Spyder" and the mix on that is just all clipping

Ratatat

i hope "whyte spyder" will be audible on the box set, that's the track that needs a new mix/master more than any other

something that's obviously missing from this is the deranged, near unrecognisable "once in a lifetime" cover that was a staple of the machina tour

"slow dawn" is definitely my favorite of the volume 2 tracks

does anybody else remember watching them premiere "cash car star" on some stupid fox show in 2000/2001?

hmm maybe it was The Tonight Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B5fB8b41Qc

guessing that's just a flat Jay's holding

It’s amazing that this appearance happen for a record no one could even buy

"you can download it on the internet!"

the machina reissue is on streaming (just the reissue, NOT the box set yet) and it's kinda strange. some of it sounds pretty much identical, some of it is clearly new mixes (not just the ones labelled 2025 mix on streaming) of varying quality, and "raindrops + sunshowers" now has an extra minute of drums at the end?

the piano + phone call bit in "glass and the ghost children" has confusingly been replaced with some sirens and there's some sirens added to the end too. it's noticeably less brickwalled too although hardly revelatory

Huh

That’s… why?!

Because.

from skimming through it the new mix of "this time" is the most noticeable improvement

not sure why “try” was remixed so the drums sound like they’re underwater

extra drum bars on “raindrops” are pretty dope

i am a little miffed that he made the drums sound notm on the implosion voice lol

lmao replacing the “le deux machina” part of “glass and the ghost children,” adding extra reverb onto the coda… what is going on. well i know what’s going on to some degree. june dies in a car crash during “glass,” so it makes sense there are just sirens now. but… still… the fuck???

… so it was all very obtuse…

he made the drums sound notm

normal* !!! lol

“wound” remains the greatest song of all time

age of innocence sounds great but also the original mix was good too

i should cover that song

it’s still so much a perfect description of my life of complete romantic failure lol

apparently a lot of the changes are just because they lost the original tapes for a lot of tracks so for those billy just went with some alternate mixes he liked that they still had access to. only the ones marked "2025 remix" are the ones that were deliberately remixed for this project. that makes sense i guess but still makes for a strange listen.

it sounds like most of the machina 2 stuff on the boxset is going to be entirely new mixes though

looking forward to when the original masters get “rediscovered” and they try to convince me to buy this for the 30th anniversary.

the machina box set is out there at last. just skimming through it so far but the machina 2 tracks are indeed a lot cleaner than the existing versions, so that's nice to have at least

"blue skies wrought tears" is a new mix of the machina 2 "blue skies bring tears" and still sounds bizarrely alien just in a different way to before

this is such a weird project but it would have been fascinating if he'd somehow managed to get a label to release something like this 3+ hour mess (not including the bonus tracks) back in 2000. not that it would have been possible given how a few things here have more recent overdubs (largely new additions to a few of demos as well as the "whyte spyder" drums)

extended "if there is a god" with a lengthy piano solo (is it mike garson playing?) is a highlight

wow, what a pleasure it is to finally hear this, corny interludes and all

tracklisting seems to be, afaict, the linear chronology of the machina story. sort of impressive how well it works

"blue skies wrought tears" is a new mix of the machina 2 "blue skies bring tears"

sounds like a totally different recording and tbh i wouldn’t be surprised if they’d managed to record the fast “blue skies” in the original machina sessions and this is it

“put a flanger on everything” is certainly a machina i-ass production decision

probably the biggest revelation is "hmm" is a version of machina 2 "heavy metal machine" that actually works? like it still doesn't need to be 6 minutes but it's a lot better than i'd ever expected that track to be

I note all this for future reference

listened to the album proper (not the bonus tracks) in sequence and it kinda works for about the first third before starting to run into too many demos & instrumental interludes and also it's just absurdly long, a completely ridiculous artifact

there's probably a rather good single album in here and a decent double album. never going to listen to this 3+ hour version in full again though lol

"untitled" is really funny, corgan setting out to prove he could still make stuff that sounds like siamese dream if he wanted but hadn't because he really wanted to... sound like u2 and also experiment with extremely harsh digital distortion?

i think i've come around on "heavy metal machine" overall, it'd be good if it wasn't 6 minutes (let alone the 12 minute versions they used to do live...)

i think of "untitled" as the first zwan song

finally got through the whole thing. i don't think there are all that many instrumental interludes, but it certainly consolidates itself into "rock" and "ballad" sections as it goes. need to refer back to the map

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/thumb/4/49/Machina_chart.jpg/494px-Machina_chart.jpg?20160219173934

i think it (surprisingly) works until that final run of ballads, starting with "winterlong" (the new overdubs on this song are amazing btw). the early version of "try" doesn't need to be here. i was obsessed with sp for a long time so many of the "new" tracks here i've heard before, like "one less moment," but it was funny to realize i'd never known there was an interrelated song called "one moment"!

unexpectedly touched by "here's to the atom bomb too" and "try" appearing right after "speed kills" (ostensibly the point in the narrative where glass' true love june dies in a car crash). "try to hold on to this love alone" means something pretty heartbreaking in that context

is billy really embarrassed by the voice recording in the original "glass and the ghost children"? because personally i miss it

oh finally the new "white spyder" is awesome ;_; amazing to hear that song with a real drum part

"dross," similar to "blue skies wrought tears," is a recording i didn't know existed!!! even has the "razorblade" bridge

*almost inaudible* corgan's lyrics were really good in this era

“ unexpectedly touched by "here's to the atom bomb too" and "try" appearing right after "speed kills" (ostensibly the point in the narrative where glass' true love june dies in a car crash). "try to hold on to this love alone" means something pretty heartbreaking in that context”

The Machina 2 version of “atom bomb” is both the better version and also should’ve been the last Pumpkins song ever released

I won’t say it’s my favorite Pumpkins song but it’s in that company

Really hope Billy decides to do a CD version after this sells out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJsaDJOa-N4

revisiting this excellent tv performance from 2000 and discovering maybe i don't hate "heavy metal machine"? if it had been recorded at this tempo with this configuration of the band it would be the best song on the record lol

I really like the og album version of “hmm”. It sounds bitcrushed to death or caked in cyberphlegm or something. It would have been a fun confusing first single from Machina. I can’t hang with the corny vocals on “the everlasting gaze” (the shoegazey part is great, tho, obv).

"heavy metal machine" is just too long and slow on record, the song itself is alright but it's better faster like this and didn't need to be 6 minutes (or any of the ridiculous 12 minute live versions they do)

"the everlasting gaze" is ridiculous but really fun, it's got a real groove. the acapella bridge is probably the silliest musical moment of corgan's entire career