Memory keeper. Mostly music and movies, plus some series and video games. Obscure darkness meets pop culture glow.
It’s been a long long time since I last listened to a pure dub record. Not dubstep, not dub techno, but simply dub. And I came across this one and it delivers just that. Moody, wandering, lost in thoughts and walks in the rain.
Broken beat, drum and bass, hiphop, IDM, the common denominator is smoothness and a light heart. Like if it’s drum and bass then it’s liquid, if it’s hiphop then it’s soulful. These 26 minutes contain a whole summer’s many flavors in six tracks. It’s not a consistent record at all, more like a promo sampler for a festival, but there’s fun in all those tracks.
So cinematic, so nostalgic. It’s like listening to the moody, calming score of something on a VHS tape. Ambient with some IDM noises and occasional voices. I make some loose spiritual connection between this one and Sound of the City vol. 3 – Berlin.
That dubstep thing, like ten years never happened.
My favorite type of focus music. Minimal techno, sometimes house, mid-tempo, some dub aesthetics, some tight beats, sunset moods. Respectfully sits in the background and enhances my attention when I need that extra kick for work. Also good for cruising around in a night city and some dinner conversations.
First half of the record is amazing downtempo glitchy electronics with beautiful melodies and ethereal vocals. It shows both band members at their best, Dave Harrington and Nicolas Jarr sound like mixing up Apparat and Bonobo, especially on the more hook-heavy primary single track, The Limit. Then the second half of the record gradually goes into more indie influences, ambient jammings, and audibly auto-tuned vocals that I don’t appreciate. It’s a bummer but overall the album delivers some strong singles still.
Such cyberpunk. I love that it doesn’t sound retro in any way, it’s modern synthwave with some glitch flavor.
It doesn’t get any more effortlessly cool than this. Fun, quirky alt rock that’s catchy like covid.
Sometimes you can think “but all the tunes have all been written already, so what new are we expecting” and then comes something like this, which just opens a complete new portal with three notes on the bass. I love when this happens, makes me keep going and listen to ten new records a day again.
A blend of ambient and IDM with down-to-mid-tempo beats. First I registered this as some strange combination of psy chill atmosphere and glitchy sounds, then I figured there’s quite a bit of cyberpunk mood to it. I could imagine this to be a soundtrack of a neo-noir RPG game. Then I looked at the album title again… Riiiiight.
When I wrote “good punk rock” for the latest Offspring record I was already thinking how I’ll make that right when I get to this album. Because I think Rise Against is an obviously more mature and serious punk rock band, but then again punk is definitely not the definition of anything serious. Anyhow, Rise Against is not the joker type, they are serious, political, and they play melodic hardcore—this is all right there on this one.