Usual F&M vibe and groove.
Fujiya & Miyagi – EP2
Nery – 33
Soulful, hiphop tempo, some bass, some singing. Sounds like hailing from those best days when glitchy hiphop and dubstep started rediscovering its triphop roots. I really like this record, have been listening to it for some time now.
Mark Pritchard – Under the Sun
This. Is. Beautiful. Intimate, soothing, calm, enchanting. And all that without the slightest trace of being cheesy, wearing any fluff or trying to be over the top mainstream chillout. Cannot help to replay right away. This is a gem.
Metallica – Hardwired…to Self-Destruct
I cannot just say a quick verdict on a new Metallica album. But actually… it’s great!
Kuedo – Slow Knife
Say this first: worst album cover of the year. Now, as for the music it is definitely different from the first album but still something great. It may not even be possible to see this as a follow-up to the first Kuedo record, but rather a piece in the larger context of the life of Jamie Teasdale. Many flavors mixed in but this is misterious in many ways. Electronic, synths, and probably the most beautiful tracks are the ones resembling Vangelis in the era of the Blade Runner soundtrack. And then there are those few tracks which are the most shit-your-pants soundtracks of a horror movie and you may not want to listen to those at home alone.
Acid Arab – Musique de France
Super weird, like bass music and triphop and such with arabic flavors mixed in. If something it is sure to be a unique take.
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.