If *ye*, Kanye West’s solo album released one week prior, was him proudly shouting about his superpower—bipolar disorder—from the peak of a snowcapped mountain, *KIDS SEE GHOSTS* is the fireside therapy session occurring at its base. Both Kid Cudi and West have dealt with controversy and mental illness throughout their intertwined careers. It’s all addressed here, on their long-awaited first joint album, with honesty and innate chemistry. Kanye’s production pulsates and rumbles beneath his signature confessional bars and religious affirmations, but, centered by Cudi’s gift for melodic depth and understated humility, his contributions, and the project overall, feel cathartic rather than bombastic and headline-grabbing. On “Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2),” the sequel to *ye* highlight “Ghost Town,” both men bellow, “Nothing hurts me anymore…I feel free” with such tangible, full-bodied energy, it feels as though this very recording was, in itself, a moment of great healing.
Seven albums in, Parquet Courts deliver their most nuanced, diverse LP so far. While their raw, post-punk side is amply present on tracks like \"Extinction,\" with its Fall-evoking riffs, that\'s just one among many arrows in the Brooklyn band\'s quiver. Between the children\'s choir on \"Death Will Bring Change,\" the trippy, dub-inflected touches on \"Back to Earth,\" the G-funk synth lines on \"Violence,\" and the polyrhythmic, disco-besotted grooves of the title track, Parquet Courts deliver on more fronts than ever before.
"Wide Awake!" is a groundbreaking work, an album about independence and individuality but also about collectivity and communitarianism. Love is at its center. There’s also a freshness here, a breaking of new territory that’s a testament to the group’s restless spirit. Part of this could be attributed to the fact that Wide Awake! was produced by Brian Burton, better known as Danger Mouse, but it’s also simply a triumph of songwriting. “The ethos behind every Parquet Courts record is that there needs to be change for the better, and the best way to tackle that is to step out of one’s comfort zone,” guitarist/singer A Savage says of the unlikely pairing. “I personally liked the fact that I was writing a record that indebted to punk and funk, and Brian’s a pop producer who’s made some very polished records. I liked that it didn’t make sense." It was Danger Mouse, an admirer of the Parquet Courts, who originally reached out to them, presenting them with just the opportunity to stretch themselves that they were hoping for. The songs, written by Savage and Austin Brown but elevated to even greater heights by the dynamic rhythmic propulsion of Max Savage (drums) and Sean Yeaton (bass), are filled with their traditional punk rock passion, as well as a lyrical tenderness. The record reflects a burgeoning confidence in the band's exploration of new ideas in a hi-fi context. For his part, Savage was determined not to make another ballad heavy record like the band's 2016 "Human Performance." "I needed an outlet for the side of me that feels emotions like joy, rage, silliness and anger," he says. They looked to play on the duality between rage and glee like the bands Youth of Today, Gorilla Biscuits, and Black Flag. "All those bands make me want to dance and that's what I want people to do when they hear our record," adds Savage. For Brown, death and love were the biggest influences. Brown has never been so vulnerable on a Parquet Courts record, and the band, for all their ferocity, has never played so movingly; it’s a prime example of Brown “writing songs I’ve been wanting to write but never had the courage.” For the two primary songwriters, "Wide Awake!" represents the duality of coping and confrontation. “In such a hateful era of culture, we stand in opposition to that — and to the nihilism used to cope with that — with ideas of passion and love," says Brown. For Savage, it comes back to the deceptively complex goal of making people want to dance, powering the body for resistance through a combination of groove, joy, and indignation, “expressing anger constructively but without trying to accommodate anyone.”
Noname releases her highly anticipated debut album, Room 25. The 11-track album was executive produced by fellow Chicago native Phoelix and sees Noname return as a more mature and experienced artist. Room 25 has received early praise from The New York Times, calling her a "Full-Fledged Maverick" in their Critic's Pick review yesterday. Noname also recently opened up in The FADER's Fall Fashion issue about her life since the release of her 2016 mixtape Telefone. Rather than cash in on the hype around her extremely well-received 2016 debut mixtape Telefone, Noname took two years to play shows backed by a full band and refine her craft before releasing her follow up project. Over the last few months anticipation for her new album steadily built with Nonamedropping a stream of hints that its release was approaching. Telefone established Noname as one of the most promising and unique voices in hip hop, and with Room 25 she stakes out her place as one of the best lyricists in the genre and comes into her own as a fully realized artist as she achieves mastery over the style she developed with her first tape. Room 25 arrives a little over two years after Noname released her breakout mixtape Telefone. Upon its release, Telefone received nearly universal acclaim and propelled Noname to become one of the most exciting new voices in music. The intimate mixtape cut through the noise of an oversaturated musical landscape like few other releases have in the last several years. Since the release of Telefone, Noname has built an international presence, successfully touring the world and playing the top festivals. In 2017, she also touched the Saturday Night Live stage alongside collaborator and childhood friend Chance the Rapper to perform a song of his Colouring Book album. The New York Times called her SNL performance "a master class in poise, delivery, and self-assuredness." Noname (AKA Fatimah Warner) grew up in Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on the Southside of Chicago that famously attracted accomplished black artists and intellectuals of all types. Fatimah first discovered her love for wordplay while taking a creative writing class as a sophomore in high school. She became enamored with poetry and spoken word - pouring over Def Poetry Jam clips on YouTube and attending open mics around the city. After impressive appearances as Noname Gypsy on early Chance the Rapper and Mick Jenkins mixtapes, she gained a cult-like following online that helped set the stage for the life-changing release of Telefone. Coinciding with the album's release, Noname is also announcing her Fall tour, beginning next year in Detroit on January 2nd, she will play 19 shows across North America before concluding at Oakland's historic Fox Theater on March 15. Tickets for the tour will go on sale 9/21 at 10:00 AM local time and will be available at nonamehiding.com.
Though it strains the mind to wonder how, Death Grips manage to get a little further out every time. Lighter but a lot weirder than 2016\'s industrial-adjacent *Bottomless Pit*, *Year of the Snitch* finds the Sacramento trio absolutely in their own orbit, a dissonant burst of hardcore, hip-hop, trance, video-game music, and free jazz with few patterns and fewer precedents. Yeah, it’s intense. Kinda negative too. But it’s also strangely beautiful, filled with collisions of unrelated sounds (the new-age synths of “The Horn Section” or “Linda’s in Custody”) and moments of release (“Hahaha,” “Streaky”) that flash in the murk like diamonds in dirt. This is music that teaches you how to listen to it.
On robo-funk adventure “Get In the Mind Shaft,” Jack White recalls the wonder of first playing a piano chord by hitting three notes together. It’s a neat allegory for a record that feverishly forges disparate elements—hip-hop, country, gospel, electronic music, jazz—together to see what magic happens. Here, at his most playful, White obliterates any lingering notion of him as a garage-rock diehard. “Over and Over and Over” delivers a familiar but no less invigorating dose of high-voltage blues, but only after he’s successfully cross-pollinated rock and psychedelic funk (“Corporation”) and *rapped* through “Ice Station Zebra.” The cascade of ideas is dizzying, but two decades after White first committed himself to vinyl, his possibilities seem endless.
It was worth the wait for Colombian-American songstress Kali Uchis’s first full-length. A romantic collage of artists and sounds she’s encountered along the way—Tyler, The Creator and Bootsy Collins on “After the Storm”, and Gorillaz’ Damon Albarn on the surfy “In My Dreams”—the album draws on Latin pop (“Nuestro Planeta”), hypnotic R&B (“Just a Stranger”), and high-flying psych-rock (“Tomorrow,” with production from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker). It’s a sign of Uchis’ artistic vision that she pulled so many creative minds into a single body of work that sounds so distinctly her own.
Despite his presence at the forefront of South Florida’s lo-fi rap explosion—due in part to his meme-generating “Ultimate” single—Denzel Curry remains one of his state’s more under-heralded talents. Not unlike his standout *Planet Shrooms/32 Zel* project, *TA13OO* indulges the MC’s continuously shifting moods, this time separated into three acts Curry calls “Light,” “Gray,” and “Dark.” “I was in a dark space when I was working on the dark part,” he told Beats 1 host Zane Lowe. “I was trynna work on the light part when I was working toward my happiness.” The result—from the balmy funk of the Light act’s “CASH MANIAC” (featuring a standout chorus from newcomer Nyyjerya) to the lyrical pummeling of “BLACK METAL TERRORIST”—is an album that highlights Curry\'s uncanny ability to match mosh-pit-inciting energy with complex and flowery bars.
There had always been a burning sense of resistance baked into SOPHIE’s experimental soundscapes, which simultaneously honored and rejected the tropes and rules of mainstream pop. But the Scottish producer’s visionary debut album is an exhilarating escalation—a work that not only exploded expectations around song structure and form but conventional notions of gender, identity, and self, as well. *Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides* is sweeping and defiant, pinballing from glitchy rave cuts (“Ponyboy”) to ethereal pop elegies (“It’s Okay to Cry”) to ambient passages that feel practically spiritual (“Pretending”). Each left turn is an invitation to slip further into SOPHIE’S neon universe. In the hands of any other artist, such dizzying digital distortions would appear to warp reality. Here, though, they clarify it. Every synthetic vocal, slithering synth, zigzagging beat, and gleefully warped sample brings us closer to SOPHIE\'S truth. Some of the project’s headiest questions—those about body, being, and soul—seem to rest on a distant horizon the rest of the world hasn’t caught up to yet. “Immaterial,” a fizzing, maximalist hat-tip to Madonna, moves the goalposts even further, proposing a version of consciousness in which the material world is, in fact, only the beginning.
MGMT’s music has always pinballed between accessibility and experiment, pop, and psychedelia—a tension that has produced some of the catchiest, most synapse-stretching music of the young century. Reining in the freak-outs of 2013’s *MGMT*, the band’s fourth album plumbs their (relatively) accessible side, refracting ’80s-style synth-pop (“Little Dark Age,” “One Thing Left to Try”) and ’60s jangle folk (“When You Die”) through a warped, surrealistic sense of humor—a sound at once cheerful and violent, eerie and inviting, light and thrillingly dark.
HORRENDOUS explode out of the underground with their incredible new album 'Idol'. Drawing inspiration from both personal and national crises, 'Idol's' music is a methodical and unapologetic take on dynamic, progressive death metal. The highly anticipated new album sees HORRENDOUS at the highest echelon of their musical creativity to date. Thematically, the ambitious new album is an exploration of defeat, of the gods we build in our minds to escape the responsibility of action and change as we relinquish our agency. The music in 'Idol' mimics this act of deity building, with sprawling compositions that are imposing in scope and mirror the great turmoil of our times. Tracks such as "Soothsayer", "Golgothan Tongues" and the monumental "Obolus" position the band in a league of their own, as one of the death metal's leading new entities.
Sleep’s *The Sciences* begins with a three-minute warm-up of the same name. As though revving a long-dormant engine of feedback and distortion, it’s a fitting start to the legendary doom trio’s first album in almost two decades (released on 4/20, no less). Unlike their hour-plus stoner meditation, *Dopesmoker*, *The Sciences* is divided into six colossal tracks, anchored by the comforting familiarity of sludgy riffs and rumbling percussion. Throughout, you’ll find some of their greatest guitar solos (“Marijuanaut’s Theme”) and lyrics (“Giza Butler,” an homage to Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler), while stunning, reflective closer “The Botanist” is among the best songs in their genre-defining career.
It\'s not enough that rising Spanish star ROSALÍA ingeniously blends traditional flamenco with contemporary pop on her second album—she also gets a narrative based on medieval literature in there, too. Inspired by *Flamenca*, a 13th century book about a woman imprisoned by her jealous fiancé thought to be the first modern novel, each of the 11 songs on this collaboration with producer El Guincho (Pablo Díaz-Reixa) serves as a “chapter” of a running story about a doomed relationship. ROSALÍA went through the album track by track with Beats 1. **MALAMENTE (Cap. 1 Augurio)** “It’s a premonition—this moment when you know in the beginning of the story how it’s gonna end, but even then you go and do it. I was trying to compose a song everybody could understand, doing experimentation with electronic sound but also connected with my roots and flamenco. It’s combining these worlds.” **QUE NO SALGA LA LUNA (Cap. 2 Boda)** “This song is about commitment and that feeling you get when you get in a relationship with somebody. Sometimes you lose something of yourself in the process. It\'s the dark side of getting engaged—it\'s something beautiful but at the same time, there\'s another part, right?” **PIENSO EN TU MIRÁ (Cap. 3 Celos)** “It’s ‘Thinking About Your Gaze.’ This was a song that started from a sample of Bulgarian voices. I did the bassline on an island in Spain, El Hierro. I was so inspired in this place.” **DE AQUÍ NO SALES (Cap. 4. Disputa)** “It’s the most aggressive part of the record...and one of the most risky. I wanted to use the motorcycles in this song with this crazy rhythm that combines \[chapters\] three and four. Khalid told me he liked the song—I would love to do music with him.” **RENIEGO (Cap. 5. Lamento)** “It’s a traditional melody from flamenco. \[Spanish singer\] Camarón was singing with an orchestra; he created the arrangement. I think it sounds very magical.” **PRESO (Cap. 6 Clausura)** “You can hear Rossy de Palma’s voice—she’s an iconic actress from Spain. You can feel the experience in her voice. It’s heavy, you know?” **BAGDAD (Cap. 7 Liturgia)** “I was very inspired by an erotic club in Barcelona called Bagdad and by ‘Cry Me a River’ by Justin Timberlake. He heard the song and said, ‘Yes, you can use the melody’; I was so excited because he never approves anything.” **DI MI NOMBRE (Cap. 8 Éxtasis)** “It’s a very flamenco vibe, very traditional, \[but\] the structure is very pop. It’s about this connection between two people; the sexual moment. The lyrics—\'Say my name, say my name\'—I\'m such a big fan of Destiny\'s Child. \[It\'s\] paying tribute to all these artists I heard when I was a teenager. ” **NANA (Cap. 9 Concepción)** “This is a traditional flamenco melody used when you have a child you’re trying to make fall asleep. I was very inspired by what James Blake does—the space and the production he uses in his songs. I feel like in 50 years, people in universities will study him.” **MALDICIÓN (Cap. 10 Cordura)** “We’d been working with Pablo on the production and composition for a year and a half, and I didn’t like it enough. Then: This Arthur Russell sample—I think it’s perfect in this moment.” **A NINGÚN HOMBRE (Cap. 11 Poder)** “The last song of the record is the first I composed. Pablo was very excited by it and we saw that we sound good together, so I was like, ‘Let’s do the entire record together.’ It’s about the power of a woman.”
The sophomore full-length from Kero Kero Bonito, Time ‘n’ Place is an album ineffably shaped by the subconscious. Lead singer and chief lyricist Sarah Bonito (who was raised in the suburbs on the Japanese island Hokkaido) found herself rattled in recent years by recurring images in her dreams: a water park from when she was little, a hallway in her primary school. After those dreams started, she also received an unexpected photo from her brother: a picture of a plot of bare land that once held her childhood home, the house now demolished. (“I felt like I’d lost something, even though I didn’t know I needed it,” she says.) And in another heartbreak for Sarah, 2017 saw the death of her beloved childhood pet, a boy budgie named Nana whom she received soon after moving to the UK at age 13. At the same time, Sarah’s fellow KKB members experienced some life-changing upheaval, including the loss of several close family members. So when the London trio began writing again, they felt compelled to diverge from the carefree sensibilities of their early work (a form of kitsch electro-pop that jumbled up lo-fi dance music with bilingual lyrics, British TV references, and stories about animals). Resuming a very teenage and visceral approach to making music, KKB effectively morphed into a band, with Sarah on vocals, Jamie on bass, Gus on drums, and their friend James Rowland on guitar. Their debut for Polyvinyl, Time ‘n’ Place is a document of that band finding its voice, a coming-of-age story told in warped guitar solos, shining melodies, unnervingly tender lyrics about yogurt and seafoam and feral parakeets. Though much of Time ‘n’ Place was self-produced in Gus’s bedroom in the London suburb of Bromley, it was also partly recorded by Jimmy Robertson (Arctic Monkeys, Fuck Buttons) and Stereolab drummer Andy Ramsay (King Krule, Wire) at Ramsay’s Press Play Studio in South London. Along with Rowland, the album features contributions from noise/electronic musician Jennifer Walton, a string arrangement by composer Calum Bowen (aka bo en), and a three-part choir made up of Cecile Believe, Oscar Scheller, and Crying’s z (aka Elaiza Santos). Built on the same volatile energy that’s made KKB’s live shows famously mosh-heavy, Time ‘n’ Place collages those elements together in a sound that’s both chaotic as punk and symphonic as ’60s pop. For KKB the urgency of Time ‘n’ Place was imperative—they needed to process their pain and confusion in frantic, kinetic movements, and bashing away on drums and guitars felt more fitting than assembling songs on a laptop. It’s also much more true to their upbringing as musicians, back when Gus and Jamie were growing up in the South London suburbs and played in garage bands together all during their school days. With the added vision and otherworldly voice of Sarah—who spent her adolescence in the UK town of Kenilworth, and met Gus and Jamie on a web forum five years ago—the classically dissident music of their indie-rock forebears takes on weirder and more wonderful textures and colors, giving way to something dreamy and transcendent but not without its nightmare moments. While loss of innocence is an overriding theme on Time ‘n’ Place, the album is weighted with existential reflections of all kinds. “Make Believe” is partly about lucid dreaming, but it’s also about self-inflicted anxiety, and the danger in slipping into fantasy as a way to escape fear. “Time Today” is about waking up early and feeling determined to make the most of the day, and the sad/sweet naïveté of that optimism in the face of self-sabotage. “Only Acting” follows a social-media-age identity crisis, the song itself coming unhinged as its narrator spins out of control. And on “Dear Future Self,” KKB examine their worries about the state of the world, bending time by including a line about global warming in a song styled toward Brill Building pop. Elsewhere on Time ‘n’ Place, KKB look into multiverse theory (on “If I’d Known,” a Randy Newman-inspired song featuring a verse rapped by Jamie) and the shift in perspective that comes with getting older (on “Swimming,” a bittersweet tribute to singer-songwriter Yumi Matsutoya). Recorded with a gang of their dearest friends, all singing together in a ragtag chorus, “Sometimes” is a tear-jerkingly hopeful song about pushing through depression. An album concerned with the sanctity of physical space in an increasingly virtual world, Time ‘n’ Place also speaks to the thrill of going outside (on “Outside”), the tranquility of the town dump (on “Dump”), and the surreal stillness of a deserted rest stop (on “Rest Stop,” a track that finishes the album in a beautifully glitched-out non-ending). Within the cartography of Time ‘n’ Place, the most important space is the suburbs, an aspect of their shared past that KKB find infinitely formative. As kids, each member quickly learned the need to invent their own wildness and excitement, embracing misfit status in a place where any form of self-expression could be seen as aberrant. That iconoclastic spirit has carried over to KKB’s current role in the musical landscape, with Time ‘n’ Place partly conceived as a reaction against the sterility of playlist culture. It’s a sublimely untidy album, anarchic but balletic in grace, music born from willful imagination and a sense of purpose best captured in the band’s own words: “More than ever music needs to be set free, because it can be anything, so we just decided to do whatever the fuck we wanted.”
A distillate, by it’s very nature, is purified, clearer than that which is left in it’s wake. When we talk of finding the heart of something, what to make of the rest, of everything that is flayed away searching for an imagined greater truth. Then comes Victor Frankenstein in the boneyard, with a Tesla coil and a wooden wagon with a creaky wheel. Looking for freshly turned earth. Chances are they’re only a few feet deep, it’s cheap work, and they get lazy, same as anyone. The spade sinks right in, the ground is soft. It’s been a wet spell. The townspeople will be raging soon, but tonight, they sleep. Backwoodz Studioz will be releasing Paraffin, the new project from Armand Hammer (ELUCID & billy woods), on August 30th. Paraffin is less a follow up to 2017’s Rome than an un-guided tour through the labyrinths beneath it. Paraffin features production from Messiah Musik, ELUCID, Ohbliv, August Fanon, Willie Green and Kenny Segal, along with a blistering feature from Sketch185. The digital version of the album differs in certain ways from the vinyl , and makes for what we hope is a more expansive listen.
Earl Sweatshirt’s second album, 2015’s *I Don’t Like S\*\*t, I Don’t Go Outside*, is a masterwork of efficiency. At just 10 songs over 30 minutes, not a word is wasted nor a note held a second too long. Brevity, specifically, is a concept Sweatshirt cites in interviews as a guiding principle in his art, one he leans into even further on *I Don’t Like S\*\*t*’s follow-up, *Some Rap Songs*. At an even brisker 15 tracks in 25 minutes, the project is mineral-rich, Sweatshirt losing himself in a relentless pursuit of clever and complex bars. His rhymes are marvels of non sequitur, rarely tracking a theme or singular direction for more than a few lines, all delivered over subdued and unrelenting soul loops. The former Odd Future standout handles the bulk of production as well, though *Some Rap Songs* also includes contributions from frequent collaborators Denmark Vessey and Gio Escobar (of NYC art-jazz duo Standing on the Corner), among others. Vocal guests include two of Sweatshirt’s oldest inspirations—his mother, UCLA professor Cheryl Harris, and late father, South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile.
Even before Playboi Carti’s breakout single, “Magnolia,” early fans were expressing an insatiable demand for new music from the rapper. *Die Lit* comes a year after the self-titled album that brought us that hit, with 19 tracks to make up for the wait. Having joked openly about being called a “mumble rapper,” Carti aggressively leans into the distinction here, thickening his Atlanta accent and even pitching up his delivery on songs like the spacey “Fell in Luv” and “FlatBed Freestyle,” where his couplets devolve into rhythmic yet indecipherable vocals. On the whole, *Die Lit* is a collection of earworms built on minimal and bass-heavy production from Pi\'erre Bourne, assisted occasionally by contributors like Lil Uzi Vert, Skepta, and Nicki Minaj.
Kanye doesn’t shy away from darkness or drama on his eighth solo album, written and recorded while holed up with an extended circle of friends and collaborators amid the snowcapped mountains encircling Jackson Hole, Wyoming. As expected, he mentions recent controversies—including that notorious “slavery was a choice” comment—and possibly sparks some new ones, name-dropping the #MeToo movement and Stormy Daniels. Even those headline-grabbing asides, however, don\'t overshadow what are arguably the most candid lyrics of Kanye\'s career. His mental health is a constant theme: Kanye confesses to suicidal and homicidal thoughts within the album’s opening minute, then admits he’s bipolar on “Yikes”—but proclaims the condition is “my super-power…ain’t no disability.\" He praises wife Kim Kardashian for standing by him through \"the worst times” (“Wouldn’t Leave”) and reveals how his daughters have changed his views about women (“Violent Crimes\"). Like G.O.O.D. Music president Pusha-T’s *DAYTONA*, released a week prior and produced by Kanye in Wyoming, the album has just seven songs, most under four minutes—his most focused and concise project yet, even with yet another impressive, sprawling guest list (Kid Cudi, Ty Dolla $ign, Nicki Minaj, Charlie Wilson). And the production, as always, is often remarkable: Kanye’s political beliefs may have changed, but his ear for skillfully chopped-up samples and uplifting, gospel-informed vocal arrangements hasn’t.
Having vaulted to new heights with 2015’s *Blurryface*, followed by nearly two solid years of touring, twenty one pilots were in need of a break. Recorded primarily in the band’s Columbus, Ohio, studio during a yearlong public silence, their fifth album *Trench* picks up where the band left off in both sound and subject, exploring rugged emotional terrain in a style by turns cathartic and cryptic. If *Blurryface* was, as Tyler Joseph told Beats 1 host Zane Lowe, a “mirror” for his insecurities, *Trench* is a place where he could go to regain control—or, as he puts it on the tender, album-closing “Leave the City”: “But this year/though I’m far from home/In trench I’m not alone.” What continues to resonate is Joseph’s ability to turn his personal pain into shared experience, his inner dialogue into public art. “Surrounded and up against a wall,” he sings on the disco-ish “My Blood,” “I’ll shred ’em all and go with you.” Whoever he might be talking to (his fans, his wife, his friends), you get the sense the words double as a promise to himself. “I never would have turned to music if I didn’t feel like I need to change or cope with something,” he told Beats 1. “I was perfectly fine before music, and then something happened where I just felt a buildup of some sort. I didn’t know how to decompress that and to have an outlet for it—I was forced to learn how to play the piano.”
“Dear listeners. This is the first track from my new album, Dead Magic! Me, my band and Randall Dunn spent 9 days in Copenhagen recording this record. The great pipe organ you’re hearing is a 20th century instrument located in Marmor Kirken, "The Marble Church", Copenhagen. Here is a poem for you by the Swedish writer Walter Ljungquist (1900-1974): ”Take the fate of a human being, a thin pathetic line that contours and encircles an infinite and unknown silence. It is in this very silence, in an only imagined and unknown centre, that legends are born. Alas! That is why there are no legends in our time. Our time is a time deprived of silence and secrets; in their absence no legends can grow." Please enjoy the music. Yours sincerely, Anna von Hausswolff"
After two concept albums and a string of roles in Hollywood blockbusters, one of music’s fiercest visionaries sheds her alter egos and steps out as herself. Buckle up: Human Monáe wields twice the power of any sci-fi character. In this confessional, far-reaching triumph, she dreams of a world in which love wins (“Pynk\") and women of color have agency (“Django Jane”). Featuring guest appearances from Brian Wilson, Grimes, and Pharrell—and bearing the clear influence of Prince, Monae’s late mentor—*Dirty Computer* is as uncompromising and mighty as it is graceful and fun. “I’m the venom and the antidote,” she wails in “I Like That,” a song about embracing these very contradictions. “Take a different type of girl to keep the whole world afloat.”
Back when he was still one-half of Clipse, Pusha-T dazzled listeners of the Virginia duo\'s mixtape series *We Got It 4 Cheap* by annihilating popular beats of the day. The project\'s sole criticism was that the production was already so good, it could carry anyone. *DAYTONA*, copiloted by hip-hop production genius Kanye West, upends that conceit, with contemporary boom-bap built from luscious soul samples that would swallow a lesser MC. With Pusha at the absolute top of his game, *DAYTONA* is somehow more than the sum of its parts, a fact the rapper acknowledges proudly on “The Games We Play”: “To all of my young n\*\*\*\*s/I am your Ghost and your Rae/This is my Purple Tape.”
Aviary is an epic journey through what Julia Holter describes as “the cacophony of the mind in a melting world.” Out on October 26th via Domino, it’s the Los Angeles composer’s most breathtakingly expansive album yet, full of startling turns and dazzling instrumental arrangements. The follow-up to her critically acclaimed 2015 record, Have You in My Wilderness, it takes as its starting point a line from a 2009 short story by writer Etel Adnan: "I found myself in an aviary full of shrieking birds." It’s a scenario that sounds straight out of a horror movie, but it’s also a pretty good metaphor for life in 2018, with its endless onslaught of political scandals, freakish natural disasters, and voices shouting their desires and resentments into the void Aviary, executive produced by Cole MGN and produced by Holter and Kenny Gilmore, combines Holter's slyly theatrical vocals and Blade Runner-inspired synth work with an enveloping palette of strings and percussion that reveals itself, and the boundless scope of her vision, over the course of fifteen songs. Holter was joined by Corey Fogel (percussion), Devin Hoff (bass), Dina Maccabee (violin, viola, vocals), Sarah Belle Reid (trumpet), Andrew Tholl (violin), and Tashi Wada (synth, bagpipes).
by Will Toledo download to get a lyrics sheet with illustrations by Cate Wurtz (lamezone.net)
In the age of overnight virality, JID’s about craftsmanship and good old-fashioned hard work; on *DiCaprio 2*, it pays off—and then some. On his second album, the East Atlanta native raps circles around just about everybody (including his label boss, J. Cole, who impressively stepped his game up on his “Off Deez” verse) in a dense, breathless drawl that’s bound to draw comparisons to a down-South Kendrick Lamar. The guy’s got bars for days—check “Slick Talk,” a clinic in double-time wordplay that careens from fourth-grade memories to absurdist *Maury* impressions. But he knows how to set a mood, too, recruiting some of 2018’s best producers (Kenny Beats, ChaseTheMoney) and occasionally veering into slick, upbeat R&B. Partial credit is due to the late Mac Miller, who helped post-produce and arrange nearly every song before his tragic death; but it’s JID’s masterful rapping that makes *DiCaprio 2* great.
New York's nebulous avant-garde metal outfit Imperial Triumphant redefine sonic darkness on their ambitious new album, "Vile Luxury". A turbulent, frenetic take on experimental noise and progressive black metal, Imperial Triumphant embody the most austere side of the New York underground. Chaos, menagerie, and the perils of the city clash with its reputation for majesty and extravagance. The band aim to portray the juxtaposition between high society and urban decay. 'Vile Luxury' combines the various musical elements that follow well within the tradition of music in New York, a monolith of the Western world, of constant experimentation and appropriation of all things that enter it, never leaving the same as it came.
Formed in New Brunswick, NJ in 2005, Screaming Females are Marissa Paternoster (guitar, vox), Mike Abbate (bass), and Jarrett Dougherty (drums). Over six albums and more than a decade of music making, the band has remained deeply individual and steadfastly DIY. They have also grown into one of the most dynamic and devastating touring bands going today. Out February 23rd, All At Once, is the trio’s most expansive and imaginative work to date -- a double LP that swings between surreal miniatures and and solo-heavy sprawl. Concision takes a backseat to experimentation, with arrangements meant to evoke the energy and spontaneity of their live shows. It's music built across a timeline that's longer than our internet-enhanced moment typically tolerates and a testament to the band's dedication and perseverance.
Written over the course of 2016 and 2017 and recorded in the summer of the latter year by Frances Quinlan (songwriter/vocalist/rhythm guitar), Tyler Long (bass), Joe Reinhart (guitar), and Mark Quinlan (drums), the album addresses disappointment, particularly in man's misuse of power, and relates accounts from the periphery -- one's attempts to retreat from the lengthening shadows of tyrants, both historical and everyday. It considers what it’s like to cast off longheld and misguided perceptions, yet without the assurance of knowing what new ones will replace them. Much like on Hop Along’s first and second records, Get Disowned and Painted Shut, Quinlan seeks in real time to work through these issues. Throughout the album, one gets the sense that Quinlan is wandering in the thicket of a forest—a state of being that will feel familiar to longtime listeners—and on this outing, they haven’t left a trail of breadcrumbs behind them. The album’s artwork, which Quinlan painted themself, invites the listener into that forest, as well. “There is a terror in getting lost,” they say, “the woods are at the same time beautiful and horrifying.” This curious wandering gives the album, both lyrically and musically, a heightened dimensionality. Bark Your Head Off, Dog is, without question, Hop Along’s most dynamic and textured record yet. Self-produced and recorded at The Headroom in Philadelphia by Reinhart and Kyle Pulley, Bark Your Head Off, Dog features the familiar sounds that have always made the band allergic to genre: grunge, folk, punk, and power pop all appear, with inspiration from ELO to Elvis Costello to ‘70s girl group vocal arrangements. This time around, they’ve added strings, more intricate rhythms, lush harmonies (featuring Thin Lips’ Chrissy Tashjian), along with a momentary visit with a vocoder. In more than one place, Mark Quinlan drums like he’s at a disco with Built to Spill. Most significantly, Bark Your Head Off, Dog shows the band at its strongest and most cohesive. Hop Along (which originally began as Quinlan’s solo project under the moniker Hop Along, Queen Ansleis) has never sounded so deliberate, so balanced. “So strange to be shaped by such strange men” is a line that repeats on more than one song on the album. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot. That I just deferred to men throughout my life,” Quinlan says. “But by thinking you’re powerless, you’re really robbing yourself. I’m at a point in my life where I’m saying instead, ‘Well, what can I do?’”
Analog synthesizers give tangible life to the works of Guerilla Toss. Whether it be the sound of a rocket ship, a kitten-with-a-wah, distorted dolphins, or a clavichord made out of honey-baked ham, the band consistently finds new ways to bring together the many ideas that combine to shape each new batch of art-rock puzzle pieces. Twisted Crystal, Guerilla Toss’ new LP, feels more personal than ever for the band. Angular yet irresistibly catchy, this collection of pop songs pulls influence from powerful groups like The Slits, ESG, Gina X, and early Madonna, with sing-speak vocals from Kassie Carlson nodding to legendary artists like Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones, and Lizzy Mercier Descloux – combining this all into a twisted, crystalline concoction. Oracles and enigmatic egos are common lyrical themes, but charismatic instrumentality springs the listener back to extraterrestrial comfort. Old favorite sounds ring true from the trusty Sequential Circuits Six Track Synthesizer and Clavia Drum Machine. New, more refined sounds are molded and polished by drummer/producer Peter Negroponte, whose passion for perfection and creation goes far beyond an all-consuming Tetris effect. Peter has truly excelled on this new recording, creating a complex networks of beats and sound that become easily intertwined with the rhythmic fabric of life. Raised in a devoutly religious family, vocalist Kassie Carlson started performing at the age of five. She often participated in large pastoral choral performances, as well as her family’s four-part harmony gospel quartet, making her no stranger to the stage. Growing up under the fear of God leaves a distinct footprint on your perception. An omnipresent male dictates not only your present waking life but also the rest of your eternity. Discovering a rock band was more than self-expression for Kassie, it was a manifestation of a self-healing temple, a personal pipeline for power. What better way to part the waters of toxic sludge than a matriarchal shout? Arian Shafiee, Guerilla Toss’ resident textural-guitar guru, is inspired by aspects of non-Western tuning and extended techniques. He designs moments of dense, glistening, pitch-shifted harmony and measured strumming that link classical impressionism to no-wave and early minimal music. His recent solo work truly comes through on this new record, as he tethers fantastical surreality to noise rock to deconstructed Middle Eastern pop music. Keyboardist Sam Lisabeth paws the keys with distinct virtuosity and expressive sass. A new member, Stephen Cooper (of the band Cloud Becomes Your Hand), binds the group with an urgent, disciplined, and melodic style. The hypnotic, ostinato-like basslines and up front rhythm tracks guide and grip each song like gravity, keeping the listener from swirling off into the cosmos. In albums past, Kassie’s performances resembled more of a manic, possessed high priestess; humming at the gates of hell, hacking telepathy and tugging the strings of every audience member. Twisted Crystal goes beyond this familiar darkness, leading us into a rhythmically calming charm with deep wisdom, serenity, and understanding. What is a twisted crystal? And who told you it would heal? At times the listener wanders through mazes of dizzying, alternately pulsing time signatures, but the roads always bounce, meet and magically snap back together. That meditative groove, both live and in the studio, has become signature for Guerilla Toss, drawing deep influence from 70s krautrock and experimental rock music like Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Neu!, Cluster, Todd Rundgren, and La Dusseldorf. A constantly evolving, living breathing entity, the band now presents the album Twisted Crystal. Enjoy the same surrealistic, kinetic healing energy of live Guerilla Toss, today in your own home. “Magic is Easy. Hypnotize yourself well.”
Speaking to *The Guardian*, British singer-songwriter-producer Dev Hynes described his fourth LP under the Blood Orange name as “an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color.” Recorded on-the-go in studios around the world (Tokyo, Florence, Copenhagen) with whatever was lying around at the time (“If I go to a studio and they only have an acoustic guitar, then I’ll go with that.”), *Negro Swan* splices Hynes’ impressionistic R&B with recorded conversation and spoken word, the most haunting snippets taken from writer and transgender-rights activist Janet Mock (“Family”) and a surprisingly vulnerable Puff Daddy (“Hope”). The result is dreamy but incisive, melancholic but alive, lonesome but communal. “When you wake up/It’s not the first thing you wanna know,” he sings on “Charcoal Baby,” a highlight. “Can you still count/All the reasons that you’re not alone?”
Producer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter and vocalist Devonte Hynes returns with his fourth album as Blood Orange, Negro Swan. Raised in England, Hynes started out as a teenage punk in the UK band Test Icicles before releasing two orchestral acoustic pop records as Lightspeed Champion. In 2011, he released Coastal Grooves, the first of three solo albums under the moniker Blood Orange. His last album, Freetown Sound, was released to critical acclaim in 2016, and saw Hynes defined as one of the foremost musical voices of his time, receiving comparisons to the likes of KendrickLamar and D’Angelo for his own searing and soothing personal document of life as a black man in America. He has collaborated with Solange Knowles, FKA Twigs, and many other artists, and was recently one of four artists invited to the Kennedy Center to perform alongside Philip Glass. In addition to his production work, he scored the film Palo Alto, directed by Gia Coppola and starring James Franco. Hynes’ newest album, Negro Swan, was written and produced by Hynes. Says Hynes: "My newest album is an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color. A reach back into childhood and modern traumas, and the things we do to get through it all. The underlying thread through each piece on the album is the idea of HOPE, and the lights we can try to turn on within ourselves with a hopefully positive outcome of helping others out of their darkness."
