There’s a ruthless, efficient logic at the heart of 400 Blows. The find their groove, riff, or idea and just hammer away at it. It’s not that they’re robotic or simplistic or anything, but they recognize that repetition has a power of its own, and are unafraid to make use of it. It’s the sort of music you can disassemble an engine to.
[Read More]The world is divided into two groups: those who think Mothership Connection is P-Funk’s finest moment, and those who think One Nation Under A Groove is. (I’m ignoring Maggot Brain perverts.) My opinion largely rests on whichever one I’ve listened to most recently.
No, but seriously, it’s Mothership Connection.
Official Version is the first good Front 242 album, the one where the menacing synths and icy vocals really came together. And I have to say, this stuff has largely aged better than a lot of their peers. There are elements of it that kind of presage the *wave bands of today.
[Read More]This seven-minute tune is the centerpiece of Soccer Mommy’s record from last year, Color Theory. This record showed up on a lot of year end lists, and while I think it’s good, I’m a little lyric blind at times, so I’m not sure it’s grabbed me quite the same way it did others. But take a listen, if you like this, you’ll like this album.
[Read More]The Arsonists’ debut album, released in 1999, was very much a throwback record. Not just in sound, but in the way it was created. By 1999, hip-hop had moved into an era of producers being stars separate from rappers. But the Arsonists did everything as a group, including the production, which was unusual for the time.
There’s something so abrasive and unhinged about Times New Viking’s particular racket that listening to them really kind of scrambles your brains. Strip away the fuzz, the overdriven amps, the squalls and washes of feedback, and what you get is pretty simple pop songs at the center. Personally, I don’t find the artiface all that convincing, so this is the only album I ever picked up from them.
[Read More]We’ve talked before about how “Block Rockin’ Beats” was (deservedly) a galactic scale hit. I have to wonder how people who bought the record thought about the rest of the album, which is excellent, but which gleefully throws genre after genre into the blender and is pretty all over the map. I’d like to think that people put it on and thought “fuck yeah”.
[Read More]De La Soul launched a Kickstarter in 2015 to record their new album using a new method. Tired of chasing and clearing samples, they decided to bring musicians in to the studio to record them playing a bunch of different things, and then used those sessions as their library of music to sample and construct the tracks. The resulting album, …And The Anonymous Nobody, isn’t one of De La’s best albums, but how could it possibly be? It is very good, though, and clearly a different record from the ones that come before it. If you haven’t listened to anything from De La Soul from after the Prince Paul years, you should listen to…well, Stakes Is High. And then The Grind Date. And then probably this one!
[Read More]Ghostface’s first solo record, Ironman, is very good. A RZA produced record from 1996 couldn’t help but be good. But I think Ghostface’s unique personality hadn’t quite fully come through, and the production hadn’t quite yet differentiated totally from the Wu-Tang Clan. So it doesn’t reach the heights of many of Ghostface’s later records.
The first Algiers record is a heady mix of gospel and murky post-punk, a combination that immediately stands out from basically anybody else out there. While there are moments when you can kind of see the seams, it’s a prety incredible record, especially for a debut.
[Read More]Last time, I described this band as sounding like a movie soundtrack from a Ninja Tune band. Not a bad description! But this sounds like maybe something that got left off of Music Is Rotted One Note. Still good!
Don’t listen to these assholes! This album is from 2013, which I picked up before a bunch of bad shit came to light about them, but fuck these guys!
[Read More]Third month in a row without missing a day! 94 day streak going here. NOT BAD AT ALL.
Well, here’s a ridiculous album from 2001. While obsession with sex has a long and storied history in music, it’s seldom quite so forward as with this record, and the focus on porn in particular is relatively unusual. But it’s not unheard of in hip-hop either, not with Too $hort around, so this isn’t even really breaking new ground. At any rate, outside of the outlandish lyrics, the record itself is a bit of a time capsule of that time in rap.
[Read More]“King of Pain” is the first song I can recall reading the lyrics sheet for in order to try and figure out what was going on in it (the lyrics sheet didn’t help much). While I’m fully on board with digital delivery for music, and I’m happy to not fill my house with CDs and stuff, I do think that there are certainly small pleasures lost without the physical packaging.
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