Just until now I didn’t know this thing even exists. Two tracks, 12 minutes each. It is an epic.
Massive Attack vs Burial – Four Walls / Paradise Circus
Massive Attack – The Spoils
The video for The Spoils reminds me of the recent video of Oneohtrix Point Never in terms of such minimal use of a movie star for an underground music video. This is still cool.
As for the music. The Spoils is a beautiful and soulful piece. The B side with Ghostpoet mostly sells because it’s Ghostpoet and I love the sound of his voice, but other than that it is really B-side material. Not bad, nevertheless.
DJ Shadow – The Mountain Will Fall
This is totally surprising from Shadow. I haven’t expected much from him anymore, which does not mean he cannot set up a great DJ set or even a cool (and mostly nostalgic) live session. But any new material that I would find truly fascinating – not something on my bucket list.
And yet, here it is. An album that I have already listened to quite a few times and like to hear any next time. Nobody Speak is a huge smash that I instantly saved to my hiphop playlist. Depth Charge is some deep and dark triphop tune that crawls under your skin. (Also its main hook resembles much the track Conquercrete from the Hungarian live triphop band Realistic Crew.) Than there is Bergschrund written with Nils Frahm and which is an amazing collaborator find, if this was a movie I would call it casting quite nailed. But actually all the tracks are truly great even to the very end where Suicide Pact holds some memory sparks for me coming from the brutal and brutally graphical video game Hotline Miami – same atmosphere.
Anyway. Shadow did it again. And I like it a lot that he did.
Wovenwar – Honor Is Dead
When at 1:30am you cannot not play this loud and shout along. Melodic hardcore and industrial metal riffs at best.
And the track Silhouette? This is… what is this? ‘90s pop tune with this melodic metal atmosphere. This is a powerful pop metal thing, that’s what it is.
Moby & the Void Pacific Choir – These Systems Are Failing
What. The. Fuck. Is. This. From Moby? It’s like a remixed EBM album with some synth melodies and aggressive drum machines beating the shit out of a Japanese kawaii fangirl. This is totally not expected, and what is bad about that is I totally cannot tell whether it’s sincere or just faking being young and all.
Btw, Moby’s appearing and playing that role in Blunt Talk does not help at all.
VA – Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia Presents PZYK Vol.1
Everything and anything you could possibly hear at a psychedelic rock festival. From experimental electronics through hippy dance to of course serious psychedelic rock shit. This is dope.
Nicolas Jaar – Sirens
Two tracks (The Governor and Three Sides of Nazareth) on this album are completely off here that you don’t see coming, and still, crown jewel. Ambience, electronic music, rythm of dub (in No), and then these two post-punkish upbeat things I cannot really classify into a genre.
Dead Pirates – Highmare
Getting to posting this one at last, too, but I needed to listen to it many times to properly digest what I hear. I consider the Malevolent Melody EP as the first Dead Pirates record, so counting from there this is the fourth output and the first proper long player album. And this has been quite a journey in terms of music. The tunes changed and evolved and matured in a serious way. I love where this whole project ended up, it is so… grown. Like a man not with a beard but the understanding that is not at all about the beard.
Lith – Gaïa
It feels like sarcasm to call such an industrial power noise album Gaia. Anyway, very heavy noise beats, one of my favorites.
Oranssi Pazuzu – Värähtelijä
Finnish black metal but with many strange edges. Psychedelic rock, pumping kicks, many post-rock themes. It is quite an opus.