Music Journal #003

Raime are a duo who keep popping up on lists, apparently pushing darker sounds that move things forward. So I delved into their EPs - Raime EP, If Anywhere Was Here He Would Know Where We Are and Hennail. their productions are bleak and nightmarish instances of house and industrial, incorporating elements of techno, experimental and drone. Beautiful but barebones rhythms, spacey reverb and stabbing percussion help make these EPs great and I think it's time I listen to their full-length LP.

I'd heard most of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew already although never the whole thing. The sheer audacity and ease of which the music slips in and out of tradition towards this brave new world of jazz is, at first, startling. The record teaches you to embrace what the unknown will bring, messing with your expectations and ideologies of how the music should be. The album artwork is also some of the most enchanting, striking work I've ever seen.



Kings And Them is the mixtape adapted for a 12" release on Tri Angle from Evian Christ. Drip makes for an engrossing intro track which induces apprehension and anxiety to the listener, but in a positive way, setting the tone for the album. Now the mood is established, Evian Christ shows what he can do with the simplistically brilliant. brilliantly simplistic MYD. My favourite track on the mixtape is Fuck It None Of Ya'll Don't Rap, with it's hard-hitting kicks and crisp snaps, bassy undercurrent and staggered pace. It even makes for an excellent rap-a-long with the now iconic hook. The fact that this could be made from the most dire of Tyga songs just goes to show how far sample-based music has come.


Another Tri Angle producer, howse, released his debut EP for the label in 2012, with the title Lay Hollow. The track Other Ways especially has an air of discover about it, with the entire EP  carrying themes of exploration, bittersweet melancholy. The dark, downtempo house had its elements of ambience and juke seeping through to the surface making it a very enjoyable listen while giving the songs extreme versatility.

The Aus Music label always seems underrated and under-appreciated despite consistently impressing. One stand out release is surely George Fitzgerald - Child EP. The title track holds infectious yet basic grooves and melodies, channeling Chicago house through it's low-end frequencies. The vocal sample on Lights Out works very well while the latter two tracks on the EP were made to be more deeper, serious parts of the dance.

I've been waiting a long time for LONG.LIVE.A$AP, the debut studio album from A$AP Rocky, one of the biggest hip-hop newcomers of this decade. It had a lot to live up to, with his prequel mixtape essentially being the best mixtape of 2011. Clams Casino returns with his exceptional production on LVL and Hell but not before Hit-Boy can tear it apart with certified banger Goldie. Rocky knows it can be important to have some fun on the album, and Fuckin' Problems as well as the collaboration with Skrillex definitely meet this target - the latter of which I was actually surprised to enjoy. It's impossible to ignore 1Train - Hit-Boy makes one of the best traditional-oriented hip-hop beats I've heard in a long time. Following Rocky's verse, Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, Yelawolf, Danny Brown, Action Bronson and Big K.R.I.T. all make their marks in one of the most explosive collaborative rap efforts of the past few years. The only flaw has to be Joey Bada$$' strange off-beat delivery but he does well overall. The latter half of the album places more focus on Rocky himself and he proves he can carry the weight. A verse of absolute fire from Gunplay is the icing on the cake, and Rocky doesn't disappoint with the album.

Silent Shout has been touted by many as one of the greatest electronic crossover albums of all time, more so now that The Knife have their next album on the way. Crossover between electronic and what, though? Everything, it seems. The Swedish duo manage to dance on the borders between electronica, pop, ambience and techno. The album is extremely dark and unsettling while also provocative, dance-able and fun.

Thefft's Destronet EP had some tunes in it for sure, Jungle Out There being a frantic, frenetic mesh of bass and juke. My highlight from the EP has to be Ten Ten, the last track - a house beat jam with soulful vocal samples cut up with the funkiest of piano loops and synths layered over the top of the whole thing.

I guess I'd been putting off Muse's The 2nd Law. Partly because I didn't want my appreciation of them to worsen anymore post-Resistance, and partly because everyone could not stop going on about the 'dubstep' track. I hated that track; Muse took liberties with the 'dubstep' sound without appreciating where it had come from and what could be done with it, thus sounding bland, crude and forgettable. I know that they've played with a host of influences on previous albums (see: the wonderful strings and sax on City of Delusion) and though I'd loved it back then, this time it seemed much less playful and fun, and much more grating. The album as a whole certainly wasn't as bad as I expected, in fact I enjoyed a couple of songs near the start. Still, when listened to as a whole, it felt like one long Matt Bellamy groan over sub-standard riffs and mundane music.

It was nice to wake up to a stream of tweets from Four Tet about how he was about to release an LP out of nowhere. This turned out to be one long track, 0181, put together from his unreleased material between 1997 and 2001, which he'd compiled last year. It proved to be a wondrous listen, with his old school sound conjuring up that desert experience once again as well as touching on jazz, electronica and post-rock.

When a friend pointed me towards Hexsagon Presents Dave Brubeck Beat Tape, how could I not listen to it? Brubeck's music pushed the edges of genres with interesting takes so a beat tape from his works seem natural. Hexsagon does the late pioneer of unorthodox time signatures justice with interesting interpretations.

I gave the album Monarchy a listen, from Mosh. I was disappointed to find it neither paved new grounds nor refined the areas it worked with, which was a shame. It was still an enjoyable listen as haunting spins on electro and house go, though I'm not inclined to return to it.

Zomby's Where Were U In '92? leaps and hops between styles and moods, from hyper rave music to drum and bass cuts to Prodigy-sounding beats to deep basslines. the uniting theme is the wild, euphoric and hyper nature of the material and the artist effectively captures the movement he sets out to reproduce. The pitched-down vocal sample from Daft Punk's Technologic is solid and the album truly hits momentum as Tears in the Rain comes in with that 2am bass.

As I listened to Zomby, I found that Panda Bear of Animal Collective appears on his song from Deciation, Things Fall Apart. The same vocals appear on Pantha Du Prince's Stick to my Side and I'd heard good things of Panda Bear's Person Pitch. It turned out to be a consistent and commendable release, blending experimental electronic music with ideas such as shoegaze. My only real criticism is that Panda Bear's vocals tend to be quite similar in all his appearances, though the album was very good.

When on thinks of Cuban music, one surely thinks of Buena Vista Social Club's self-titled record. Chan Chan is a beautiful piece to open an album with, its sincere, soulful nature lingering in the spirit. I particularly loved the free jazz of Pueblo Nuevo, showcasing how broad the range of Latin music can be and where it can be taken to. The guitar licks on Candela are also a wonderful moment of a must-listen album for those even remotely interested in Latin, Cuban and world music.