This is one of Damon Albarn’s side projects, kind of a supergroup. And it was sort of the record that convinced me that maybe Damon Albarn’s stuff isn’t really my jam. It’s not like I don’t like this or anything, but it doesn’t excite me either. And I think that’s mostly true of his other work: I have no objection to Blur or Gorillaz, but I don’t seek any of them out either. Just not for me (and not for lack of trying).
[Read More]No, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
A thing that’s cool about this song is how restless it is. They’ve gone through multiple ideas in the first minute of the tune, which is nice to see. This is a very fun album.
Kind of a throwback here, off of 2020’s The Day Before Halloween. Those sawtooth synths there are very primitive but nice.
[Read More]This is a track from Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Musik, where Q-Bert pretty much goes out of his mind. Some of the finest turntable work around, I highly recommend this whole record.
Goddamn, I’m a sucker for a loop built on a piano riff. Here, “Love Finds Its Own Way” by Gladys Knight & the Pips is the source, and the resulting beat is a thing of wonder. I just can’t get enough of this.
[Read More]There are times when I think we should just ban all rock songs longer than two minutes. If you can’t get your point across in two minutes, go play some jazz or something, loser!
I typed this first as “Beos”, and then thought, huh, I wonder what a veteran hip-hop duo was doing writing a song about a near-forgotten niche operating system. You all should be thankful I’m not going to even attempt a verse here.
[Read More]Hi Hell, I’m Dad.
It’s difficult to overstate how much this album sounded like the future when it came out. And while it sort of does represent a path not taken in hip-hop, at least by the mainstream, I suppose it did eventually find full flower with El-P’s work with Run the Jewels.
Mi Vida Local, Atmosphere’s 2018 record, continues their pattern of staying in the realm of the personal. Slug continues to mostly contemplate and explore his life in his lyrics. Supporting that, Ant’s production relies more and more on live instrumentation, giving again a more organic feel to things. It’s a decent album, but I’m not sure it stands out from their other 2010s work.
[Read More]A thing that strikes me about listening to early Atmosphere (this is from their second album, 2002’s God Loves Ugly) is how young Slug sounds on these tracks. He still sounds like the same person later, but there’s less weariness in his tone here as opposed to his latest work.
Medium Rarities is a compilation that Mastodon put out in 2020 to gather all the miscellany from their career. This track is a good example: it’s from a split with Feist where they each covered each others’ songs. Mastodon are a strong enough band that a comp of their random crap is still worth listening to.
[Read More]Hey man, have you ever tried to write something interesting about five random songs every single day? Now you’re really living!
I like this album just fine, sometimes I just want something tuneful and energetic. But I don’t really listen to it that often…on a stereo. On Rock Band? I’ve heard these songs a ton. I can just see the little colored lights if I close my eyes.
[Read More]Well, that’s very pretty.
A side project of Antibalas folks, Here Lies Man plays a meld of Afrobeat and psychedelic rock, often to pretty solid effect. This is from their latest, Ritual Divination, which pushes a little more towards the rock end of things, so depending on your preferences it’s either the place to start or the place to end up.
[Read More]This is the intro to Giants Jubilee, which is a comp album containing b-sides, EP tracks, and demos from the early years of the band. While there are some fun things on here, it’s really only for completists.
Uh, sorry about the song title here. I don’t really know what to do about this kind of thing, so I just leave it as is and trust my audience. Anyway, SPK were an industrial noise act led by Graeme Revell, who would go on to a long and successful career scoring films. Like a lot of early industrial acts, the ugliness was the point. There was little attempt to make this stuff appealing, it was all created as a way to get emotional reactions from people.
[Read More]On one hand, I think it’s admirable that Atmosphere is willing to experiment with their music and stray very far from the hip-hop that they originally made their names with. On the other, though, when they do too much of this kind of thing, it can get pretty old. This song, from Fishing Blues, is fine, but isn’t really why I listen to Atmosphere.
OK, let’s take a moment to step back and just admire the production job on this. Not because it’s great, or adds a ton to the music, or anything like that. No, just listen to how immaculate it is. It’s squeaky clean! Every sound is perfectly isolated, perfectly recorded. There’s not an iota of accidental noise anywhere in this. You could perform surgery inside this song, as long as you got the boys to, I dunno, put surgical masks on their junk or whatever.
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