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User
Album Ratings 0
Last Active 09-03-17 10:42 pm
Joined 11-19-11
Review Comments 3
| 2k15
A constantly updated list of albums on my radar for 2015. | | 1 |  | Action Figures
Action Figures
"Action Figures took live samples from [VHS's], used contrasting film-genres while pairing sounds, and mixed them with a 4-track recorder — as one would solve a puzzle."
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/action-figures-action-figures | | 2 |  | Magic Fades
Wet Tech
"Drenched in conceptual acumen, WET TECH blends the idea of remix culture with standard “single” [radio-play] elements that both challenge and delight the audible senses, that leave listeners begging for more."
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-magic-fades-wet-tech | | 3 |  | Ahnnu
Perception
"When Leland Jackson dropped Couch, his first cassette as Ahnnu, back in 2011, it redefined any stereotypical approach to the beat tape. He incorporated those key moments that tend to occur in field recordings and built new environments for them by way of his own abstract taste." [more of this shit].
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/ahnnu-perception | | 4 |  | Amnesia Scanner
Angels Rig Hook
"What little meaning can be deciphered in Jaakko Pallasvuo’s text strays too far from any specific narrative to tell a story, swapping Blade Runner noir musings with ASMR barbers or non-sequiturs whenever it seems poised to make a little sense. The music is alien and new, sounding like water swishing in mouths, glass shattering, metal against metal. These textures also sound like KRRRXXTCHHH or SSPRRRSSH. It’s a useful description, because like Lotic, M.E.S.H., Arca, et al., Amnesia Scanner work with sounds for which there is no name yet."
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/amnesia-scanner-angels-rig-hook | | 5 |  | Angel-Ho
Ascension
"Non-traditional music? Non-genre? Not quite, but it’s NON music. It refuses to engage with modern notions of club music (except insofar as it’s already dictating them re: Arca) and pointless, codified, and troublesome terms like “African music.” As in, this kinda sounds like something, sure. But as much as this kinda sounds like something, it’s more not anything, specifically. It is cerebral to a fault, even when it is harshing all the vibes up over-playing the “glass shatter” sound." [mix from NON Records of South Africa]
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/angel-ho-death-drop-heaven
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-non-records-chino-amobi-angel-ho-nkisi-death-drop-heaven-mix-mimesis-threat | | 6 |  | Aphex Twin
Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt. 2
"It’s all there in the title: whatever the process for actually assembling these tracks, the individual sounds do indeed seem to be physical objects vibrating in space, as if James had marshaled a battalion of robots to realize his latest compositions." [an EP of more abstracted material, inspired by the intersection between robotics and acoustic instruments]
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20156-computer-controlled-acoustic-instruments-pt2-ep/ | | 7 |  | AFX
Orphaned Deejay Selek 2006-2008
"The separation of the sounds in the mix, and the way they stake out a position in space, is nothing short of spellbinding. He's also not kidding about the "deejay" part of the title: These really are some of the most straightforward pieces of music that James has put his name to in years."
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20872-orphaned-deejay-selek-2006-2008-ep/ | | 8 |  | ASAP Rocky
At.Long.Last.A$AP
[T]here’s a palpable magnetism surrounding At.Long.Last.A$AP that’s a product of Rocky’s undeniable attractiveness; his personality demands attention, and it contains a nonchalant ambition that can speak candidly about great struggles despite often shrugging them off." [TMT]
"As it’s grown easier to translate our identities through these careful assemblages of stuff we fuck with, good taste has taken on a new leveraging power. A$AP Rocky, the baby-faced fashion killa and primary figurehead of zeitgeist-wheelie-poppin’ Harlem goon squad A$AP Mob, has always understood this better than anyone else in the rap game." [P4K]
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/aap-rocky-atlonglastaap
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20661-atlonglastaap/ | | 9 |  | Beach House
Depression Cherry
"Part of the joy of yielding to [Beach House's] luxuriant music, then, comes from sensing the comfort of these solid borders framing it. Their music explores the sadness of pleasure, and the pleasure of sadness, and with each record they deepen this inquiry a little more." [Beach House progress forward perfectly]
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20691-depression-cherry/ | | 10 |  | Bell Witch
Four Phantoms
"A case-by-case survey of horrible ways to go, Four Phantoms is appropriately and hyperbolically morose for the subgenre known as 'funeral doom.' But Bell Witch answers the extreme, existential despondency of these motifs with absolutely triumphant songs, built with heroic riffs and headstrong rhythms. Four Phantoms, then, is like second-line funeral doom—very heavy metal that celebrates life by staring straight at death."
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20352-four-phantoms/ | | 11 |  | Ben Zimmerman
The Baltika Years
"Each time Zimmerman turned it on, he had to boot the operating system from three floppy disks. In this environment it was enough effort just to play a game, let alone record music. But that’s exactly what he did, for 10 years, across three consecutive Tandy computers all running the same archaic operating system, DeskMate. This music remained unheard for decades, until he sent a demo to the Olde English Spelling Bee label who put him in contact with Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, who is releasing it on his Software label."
http://www.factmag.com/2015/05/29/ben-zimmerman-the-baltika-years-interview/
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/ben-zimmerman-baltika-years | | 12 |  | Bjork
Vulnicura
"Co-produced by Arca ... and the Haxan Cloak and drawing on Björk’s split with artist Matthew Barney, the album places itself among the most human, emotionally candid, even functional of art forms: the breakup album. [It's] simultaneously her most mature feat of arranging and almost psychosomatically affecting."
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20181-vulnicura/
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/bjork-vulnicura | | 13 |  | Black Cilice
Mysteries
"Because they were so poorly recorded, early black metal records sometimes sounded like drone music: The instruments overwhelmed the devices meant to capture them. But Black Cilice take that aesthetic a step further, deploying the technique selectively so that strident guitars, bruised drums and yowled vocals move under and above that matrix, as if they’re alternating between floating and drowning."
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20267-mysteries/ | | 14 |  | C. Spencer Yeh
Solo Voice I-X
"Without the elision of Yeh’s respiration, the organic source of the sound would constantly assert itself, closing the ear to the sonic texture and introducing readable moments of unintentional silence into the pieces, obscuring the role silence already plays in the latter half of the work." [Yeh makes a bunch of mouth noises into music]
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/c-spencer-yeh-solo-voice-i-x | | 15 |  | Chelsea Wolfe
Abyss
"At odds with the ugliness surrounding her stands Wolfe herself. Her voice reverberates like that of a nightingale swallowed whole, crying for rescue from within the song’s monstrous belly."
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/chelsea-wolfe-abyss | | 16 |  | Chief Keef
Sorry 4 The Weight
"In November 2013, a TMZ cameraman greeted Chief Keef as he wandered, blinking, into LAX baggage claim. Keef was being sentenced to rehab, and the TMZ drone flung questions at him in his employer’s house style (lightly mocking, difficult to ignore), about his drug use, his fast driving, his habit of carrying too much cash around. Was he planning to change? Flashing a smile that seems charitable to spare for a paparazzo, Keef responded simply (and unforgettably): 'I growed up. I glowed up.'"
"[T]he tape feels like an emergence, in a way, from Keef’s wilderness period ... On Sorry 4 the Weight, [Chief Keef] emerges as something new: A calm, poised, self-sufficient auteur, a production machine of Keef Music."
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20281-sorry-4-the-weight/ | | 17 |  | Chief Keef
Bang 3
"To some rap fans, Chief Keef is still a reliable wellspring of dense, intriguing street rap; to others, he's a misguided and spoiled ne'er-do-well who has been making sloppy Death-of-Rap mixtapes in his mansion since "Love Sosa" fell off the bottom of the charts. Even a cursory listen to Keef's new album, though, pokes a hole, or several, in the latter diagnosis. Bang 3 is clearly not the work of a contrarian, unfocused artist (or, for that matter, an "outsider" one) actively trying to antagonize and self-sabotage; nor is it an awkward or even phoned-in bid for renewed pop appeal. It's the work of a mature rapper and songwriter, putting the skills he developed over several years spent branching out stylistically to good use."
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20925-bang-3/ | | 18 |  | Container
LP 3
"[Container's] songs live on the verge of chaos, and though they never actually fall apart, the threat remains. At the same time, his adherence to regular rhythms and logical changes makes each track focused and orderly, at least compared to abstract noise. So you can dance to Container’s music without falling over, but you can also chill to it without falling asleep."
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20826-lp/
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/container-lp-1 | | 19 |  | Courtney Barnett
sometimes i sit and think, and sometimes i just sit
"An ease surrounds her music, a looseness: Even at their most clever, her songs glide from line to line and thought to thought, a stray observation about cracks in the walls leading to something about the wrinkles in Barnett's own palm, propelled by rock'n'roll that seems to find itself plenty serviceable but nothing to stop and fuss over." [P4K]
"Barnett’s is a music one can turn to whenever: it’s comfortable, familiar, fits many sizes and moods. Falling asleep to her songs will always bring calm dreams (though her lyrics often deal with anxieties); driving or walking are given dry, sly purpose; “just sitting” becomes “sitting and thinking.” Small profundities slip into each song, sometimes only making themselves apparent after the song is long over. She’s tricky, coy, funny, like an existentialist Broad City character." [TMT]
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20268-sometimes-i-sit-and-think-and-sometimes-i-just-sit/
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/courtney-barnett | | 20 |  | D'Angelo
Black Messiah
"Brown Sugar and Voodoo were snaky, golden, sweating, living, cavernous R&B. Black Messiah is like Brown Sugar, like Voodoo, but it is also charged with moment and with revolution in ways only hinted at earlier in D’Angelo’s career. Most of all, it is charged with time, but charged in such a way as to simultaneously eliminate time: Black Messiah makes its own clocks; Black Messiah was crafted painstakingly, that’s evident, but it never sounds labored over. It sounds loose, on fire, and huge, like a truly Christian sermon."
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/dangelo-and-the-vanguard-black-messiah
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20078-black-messiah/ | | 21 |  | Angel-Ho
Death Drop From Heaven
"The sonic component of Ascension is largely layered instruments and collages of sound, which are meant to reorientate the consumer. The idea of orientation, not only in terms of sexuality - but more importantly our orientation to, and relationship with, environments and spaces which inhabit mass and cultural construction. It is about revealing binaries – political performance and our performance as communities. Power distribution within the postcolonial state is disrupted through the forms of the soundscapes, defying pattern and synchronicity that is so present in commercial consumption of music. It is this disorientation, which re-orientates the body in relation to these mediums, which supports the questioning of our environments." [statement from ANGEL-HO]
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/news/angel-ho-drops-debut-ep-rabits-new-halcyon-veil-label-mastered-arca | | 22 |  | D/P/I
Ad Hocc
"Ad Hocc detaches itself from anything culminative or singular by emphasizing modularity within the very construction of an album experience. The USB drive that contains the music features six versions of the “album” with the intentionally vague statement that “these versions are included to enjoy separately or played out of multiple speakers.”
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/dpi-ad-hocc | | 23 |  | Deafheaven
New Bermuda
"[Deafheaven] are a band that works best in colors, as the titles of the albums and the salmon color of Sunbather’s cover attest: On New Bermuda, they revisit an ecstatic sound world that resembles, as Clarke puts it on opening song “Brought to the Water”, “a multiverse of fuchsia and light.”
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21022-new-bermuda/ | | 24 |  | Dean Blunt
Babyfather
"Babyfather doesn't so much expand on the sound of Black Metal as continue it."
http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=17249 | | 25 |  | Death Engine
Mud
"This quartet has blazed a trail by riding a flammable musket shot through a razor-scraped landscape with contributions from propulsive, sandpapery bass tones, exorcism-style vocals and veritable walls of guitars that might see a bruised and battered My Bloody Valentine emerging from the shoegaze ruins like Jake and Elwood Blues brushing the dust off after a “mysterious” building collapse."
http://www.metalinjection.net/reviews/quick-review-death-engine-mud | | 26 |  | Death Grips
The Powers That B - Part II: Jenny Death
"The beauty of Jenny Death, and of the Death Grips story itself, is that it testifies to the fundamental tension between the private and public functions of art. They dramatize how the urge to express yourself is counteracted by the urge to avoid the homogenizing, diluting, and vulgarizing effects of the common languages and conventions necessary to self-expression." [TMT]
"It’s hard to speculate whether Jenny is a redemptive closing chapter, a new beginning, or some other inscrutable part of Death Grips’ master plan, if they even have such a thing. What is evident is that Jenny Death is some of their strongest material in a while, and may even return a few disillusioned converts to the flock." [P4K]
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/death-grips-jenny-death
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20451-jenny-death/ | | 27 |  | Dej Loaf
#AndSeeThatsTheThing
"The performative nature of muting people from one's life isn't seeking true isolation, but being selective about who is allowed into one's world. Whether it is a passerby on the street, dudes creeping into DMs, or the comment section of Instagram, there are always so many voices shouting. The response of Dej's music to pull inward feels appropriate, to only open up when most tender. #AndSeeThatsTheThing might sound so sad today, but Dej appears comfortably dour."
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20896-andseethatsthething-ep/ | | 28 |  | Destroyer
Poison Season
"The point and pleasure of Destroyer's world, after all, is that it motors away on its own juice, irrespective of others. The world is a big place, his records seem to say, and it can be wearying and demanding, but your thoughts are a republic entirely within your control." [P4K]
"Dan Bejar's intellect is so formidable it feels like an event, and Destroyer has, for 12 years or so, been indie rock's most rewarding intellectual project. You listen to Destroyer to hear the smartest person at a party mutter funny and erudite things in your ear." [P4K]
"[Dan Bejar is] too sentimental to be entirely sober and too wise to confuse the richness of sentiment with the hollowness of nostalgia, Bejar’s 10 albums as leader of the Vancouver-based Destroyer read like tangled love letters to a civilization in the throes of a well-deserved decline." [TMT]
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20706-poison-season/
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/destroyer-poison-season | | 29 |  | DJ Richard
Grind
" Like the Rhode Island native’s previous EPs for New York’s White Material label, DJ Richard’s debut album strikes a balance between house and techno: analog in feel, melancholy in mood, and rough around the edges, yet still unmistakably elegant."
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20878-grind/ | | 30 |  | Drug Church
Swell
"Now, the band is back with a new EP, Swell, recorded with the legendary J. Robbins in Baltimore."
http://noisey.vice.com/blog/drug-church-work-shy | |
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