ALBUM REVIEW: Flying Lotus- You’re Dead!
Flying Lotus has long been one of the most interesting musicians. That sentence is vague because FlyLo has consistently avoided being pegged into any single sound. Sure, you could simplify everything he’s done by calling it “Instrumental Hip-Hop”. But what about his Jazz influences? His heavy worship of Funk and R&B? His Electronic side? His penchant for ambiance? Flying Lotus always switches it up, and he can be rather unpredictable. Every album Steven Ellison releases is different from the last, but every album is also distinctly Flying Lotus.
You’re Dead! is a drastic change from 2011’s gorgeously subdued Until the Quiet Comes, yet it also represents Flying Lotus’ best work yet. Bringing back some of the unhinged energy that made Comsogramma so distinctive, You’re Dead! combines Flying Lotus’ intense energy with a sound grounded in 70s fusion jazz. Late Miles Davis, particularly In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, are clear influences over the sound on this record. Flying Lotus even brings Fusion legend Herbie Hancock into the fold. The record, while still heavily ingrained with Hip-Hop, is full of saxophones and jazzy synths. It’s also appropriate that Thundercat, bassist extraordinaire and Flying Lotus’ de facto side kick, is on a health majority of the tracks here.
ALBUM REVIEW: Rustie- Green Language
Electronic music, specifically Trap flavored music, has changed quite a bit since Rustie dropped the sugary rush of his debut album, Glass Swords, in 2011. That album was a sweet and delectable slice of energetic and bombastic, Trappy and Wonky sound. Russell White’s clear vision perfectly encapsulated the direction and tone of that album (as opposed to other artists who have tried similarly sugary EDM*). In the three years since Glass Swords, other artists have came in and changed wonky and trap flavored EDM. TNGHT changed the game with their single EP, mainstream EDM has come in to blur the genre lines beyond recognition, and some of Wonky’s greatest artists have moved away from the genre altogether (Flying Lotus, who stood at the forefront of this genre, seems to be moving into a more jazz influenced sound). Green Language is a perfect touchstone for electronic Trap music and Street Bass in 2014, but that’s not really a good thing.
There are moments where White’s brilliantly bubbly sound is more confident than ever. Raptor, the album’s first standout track, is an absolute explosion of shiny and bright walls of synthesizers. The shimmering synths create massive castles of sound, while the rumbling bass threatens to destroy these structures altogether. A slick vocal sample glides along the waves of sound, while a massive Trap drumbeat constantly shifts the song into multiple gears. The centerpiece of the album is the explosive Attak. Danny Brown gives one of the year’s best Rap performances with his percussive and brutal flow. The beat behind Brown is Trap at its finest, with glitching drum machines battling against a rhythmic drumbeat. It’s an absolutely thrilling track that, sadly, breaks the monotony of an ultimately disappointing album.
Though Rustie’s decision to move into a new direction is admirable, the execution is poorly handled. Whereas Glass Swords was an unrelenting and energetic endeavor, Green Language dozes off into sound landscapes that fail to be interesting. Rustie decides to put the ultimate buzz kill of Tempest immediately following the highly caffeinated chaos of Attak. Half of the album tries to enter these smoother and slower experiments in cloudy noise, creating a choppy sensation that slows down the entire record. It doesn’t help that Rustie uses some of these slogs to introduce rather uninteresting vocalists. Gorgeous Children, the rapper featured on the dreary He Hate Me, somehow makes an already bland beat even drowsier. D Double E’s uninspired performance on Up Down is one of the single most irritating guest verses of the year. The off brand Daft Punk vocals on Redinho represent the only vocal performance that isn’t utterly embarrassing compared to Danny Brown’s insane performance.
Aside from some terrible guests, Green Language’s greatest sin is a lack of energy. Rustie’s high-octane production is far more palatable in fast, Drum & Bass style songs. The ambiance introduced on the intro Workship does not compliment Rustie’s talents as a producer. “Interlude” tracks overwhelm the true standouts here, hurting the flow of the album. His slower and more experimental songs aren’t awful, but they also aren’t remotely interesting. Plenty of EDM artists are trying to find their place in 2014’s hectic and congested scene, but hopefully this isn’t where Rustie chooses to stay. After the excitement found in Glass Swords, Green Language doesn’t encourage anything other than head scratching.
Summary: While Green Language is certainly inoffensive, terrible guests (Save an on-point Danny Brown) and some misfired slow songs kill the vibe of an album produced by one of today’s most energetic producers.
Choice Cuts: Attak, Raptor
Leftovers: Up Down
C
You can stream Attak below. Green Language is out now on Warp.
*Electronic Music probably have beef with generalizations of genre. But come on. Electronic Music is slowly becoming more and more homogenized to the point that it’s pointless to list every single sub genre it’s a part of. There’s a lot of energetic, rhythmic based songs on here, and thus I’m putting it in with the rest of whatever the hell EDM is today. I will not discuss this any further.
ALBUM REVIEW: FKA Twigs- LP1
For years I’ve been saying that James Blake’s style of electronic R&B was going to be one of the most influential sounds in music. There have been plenty of artists who have tried to mimic this sound without totally feeling unique. There has yet to be an artist that truly sets their own path, expanding upon a poppy electronic R&B in a way that doesn’t just create catchy tunes. FKA Twigs, however, has finally blazed an entirely different path with sounds that, despite being familiar, sound otherworldly.
It’s clear that LP1 has a lot of influences besides Blake’s early electronic freak pop. The pop sensibilities and some production flourishes clearly harken back to Timbaland’s work with Aaliyah (which again has connections to early Blake EPs, particularly CMYK). The ambition and unabashed weirdness also brings Bjork’s bizarre and imaginative sound into the influences. These influences (among many others) are thrown into a blender and come out as LP1. While the album is initially unsettling, it eventually melts into something that is warmly comforting, disturbing, and inventive all at once.
ALBUM REVIEW: Shabazz Palaces- Lese Majesty
The rise of experimental Hip-Hop these past few years was mostly in the hands of loud and abrasive groups that were just as influenced by Rock and Punk as they were by Hip-Hop. Death Grips, Ratking, and Clipping. have all made major strides in the past few years by crossing over into audiences that normally wouldn’t dabble in Hip-Hop. When Death Grips first saw a rise against punks and metal heads, Indie labels like XL Recordings and Sub-Pop began signing these acts. However, one of the major groups in this rise isn’t even remotely abrasive. This group is the delightfully weird Shabazz Palaces.
Hailing from Seattle, Shabazz Palces is made up of rapper Ishmael Butler (notably of Digable Planets) and producer Tendai Maraire. When they broke on the scene, their debut album Black Up was their opening statement. Though that album’s brand of wonky consciousness didn’t really do anything for me personally, it certainly gained them a lot of fans. In a year full of notable debuts, Shabazz Palaces certainly had one of the most memorable and influential. Three years later, the group has followed up that project with an album that is even more audacious and bold, and this renewed strength helps the group quite a bit.
Lese Majesty is a massive and sprawling Hip-Hopera; built up of 7 short suites, it’s one of the most ambitious Hip-Hop projects in recent memory. In a genre weighed down by derivatives and safety, it’s refreshing to find progressive experimentation that doesn’t simply throw in punk influences (as awesome as those experimenters are). However, as the album carries on, the individual songs begin to melt into each other. 18 tracks are easy to guffaw at initially, but the album is so hazily cohesive that it’s hard to actually notice. The free flowing songs revel in abstraction and cloudiness. While it certainly isn’t “Cloud Rap”, the atmospheric textures that permeate throughout every song certainly create an album that is beautifully hazy.
ALBUM REVIEW: Death Grips- N**gas on the Moon
Note: For purposes of sanity and artistic integrity, I will not be censoring the word “Nigga” in this review. I won’t use it outside of referring to the name of the project, and if this offends you, you should probably just read another article or something. Also, I’m entirely aware of the “incomplete” nature of this project, and I am reviewing these 8 tracks as their own independent entity. They may change in perspective when the other half of the project is revealed, but for now, these 8 tracks make up this project, and I’m reviewing these tracks on their own.
Death Grips are a band that revel in unpredictability and experimentation. They’ve been so randomly prolific over the past couple of years that people can forget how strange and bizarre their music is. When Niggas on the Moon dropped Sunday night (P.S.: There is nothing more exciting than when an artist randomly drops a project like this.), some people on Twitter groaned at the now “predictable” nature of Death Grips. However, as someone who still finds this band vital and entertaining, this project’s release-not even the project itself- was one of the best moments in music this year.
Death Grips, even though they have a general aesthetic, never do the same thing on their projects. Chastisement over their perceived “repetitiveness” may be on account of hype and the group’s innate divisive sound. While No Love Deep Web was a grimy and dirty dark project and Government Plates was an instrumental heavy project, Niggas on the Moon is their most poppy release since their 2012 grower The Money Store (A record that I once hated that I now mostly love). Part of this catchiness is a renewed emphasis on hooks, part of this rests in the renewed and newly reinvigorated MC Ride, and part of this is found in the Björk “samples”.
Björk’s involvement in the project has been the subject of much discussion, with the Icelandic singer claiming that the band used her vocals as a “Found object”. However, the use of her voice in fractured samples is one of the most effective sonic ideas that the band has ever pursued. There are plenty of songs that would have been great without the samples (Like the vicious Up My Sleeves and the glitchy Have a Sad Cum (Best Death Grips song title ever, by the way)). The modulation of electronics and MC Ride on these tracks works brilliantly, and it would make the project decent on its own. But Björk’s vocals add a strange ethereal quality to all of the songs they are prevalent on. One of the weakest tracks here, Say Hey Kid, is noticebly lacking in clear Björk samples (She may be there, but the sampling veils her voice too well). The way her beautiful soaring voice is broken into these shattering beats is fascinating and endlessly entertaining. It’s a collaboration that, on paper, doesn’t make sense. In execution, it works incredibly well.
On a song like Fuck Me Out, the warped and skittering sound of Björk’s crashing vocals creates a chaotic sound that echoes MC Ride’s panicking vocals. The same happens on the screeching Voila, with MC Ride calmly repeating “Voila!” over Björk’s breakneck vocals. The clashing synths on these tracks come in and out, taking a back seat to Björk most of the time. Zach Hill also brings a lot of great drumming to tracks like these. The breakdown towards the end of Voila has Hill violently losing it on the drum set in front of some horrifying screeching. It’s a song that, while not heavy on replay value, is absolutely fascinating to sit through.
Niggas on the Moon is a short project (because it’s part of a greater whole), and this does make it one of the most enjoyable Death Grips projects yet. The concentration of ideas works better here, with the unrelenting punch of the sound not wearing out. While it does lag a bit in the middle with songs that aren’t as great as the bookend tracks (Say Hey Kid is a bit bland and retreads former territory, Fuck Me Out doesn’t hold up with repeat listens). But the songs that surround the middle section are some of the best songs Death Grips have ever made. Up My Sleeves rivals Government Plates’ opener in terms of pure violent energy, while Big Dipper’s chaotic closing rivals Whatever I Want (Fuck Who’s Watching) and Hacker as the band’s best closer yet. The use of Björk samples throughout the album is also a welcome experiment, as it mostly works incredibly well. The electronic freakout towards the end of Big Dipper is absolutely fascinating, and the use of an unbroken Björk samples over the glitchy synths creates a moment that actually transcends into true beauty. Death Grips themselves still show that they’ve got more energy than most punk bands that still make music these days, and they’ve proven once again that they’re a forward thinking group that you shouldn’t mess with.
Summary: Niggas on the Moon is an energetic, short, and exciting project that once again brings a new idea to their sound that works brilliantly; the use of Björk throughout the 8 songs is some of the best sampling that the band has ever done.
Choice Cuts: Up My Sleeves, Black Quarterback, Big Dipper
Leftovers: Say Hey Kid
B+
You can stream the entire project below.
ALBUM REVIEW: Skrillex- Recess
Remember that couple of months at the beginning of the decade where guys like Skrillex and tracks like all of those Cinema remixes were just huge? And Brostep was the big thing, with everyone from Kanye West & Jay-Z jumping on board to sample it? Well, that period is long gone. Brostep is this decade’s version of Nu Metal and Rap Rock. It was huge for a few months, and both genres rely more on IQ smashing breakdowns than much actual songwriting. Recess, Skrillex’s debut album, is 3 years too late, and is plagued by songs that veer into self-parodying territory.
The opening track, All is Fair in Love and Brostep, is laughably obnoxious. The breakdowns and bass drops are unwarranted, and the lead ups into them are underwhelming at best. Skrillex then tries for some “subtler” territory on Stranger, which turns from a quietly bland house track to a wave of farty synths that sound like a bathroom on Taco Tuesday. In the opening two tracks, Skrillex has managed to create two of the most unpleasant EDM tracks I’ve heard this year. Recess’ bass drop doesn’t even feel full thought out, with the rhthyms falling all over each other in a haphazard style that takes an already messy style and…somehow…makes it messier.
Clearly, Skrillex is trying to find himself throughout the record, but he never really does. There’s some clear moombathon influences here, with Skrillex attempting to bring his thrashing style together with Diplo’s style that has become increasingly popular following Skrillex’s 15 minutes at the top of the world. The vocals on the opener, the drums on other tracks, all of the various out-of-place reggae samples- none of it works.
Skrillex includes several collaborators all over this album, with middling success. The only two collaborations that actually stick out are Chance the Rapper and Diplo. Chance brings a sense of charisma to the messy and nonsensical beat (Chance’s classical, jazzy pianos don’t mesh well with the wormy synth lines), but the song ultimately feels like a forgettable remix rather than its own entity (The only thing really memorable is Chance shouting over and over again and doing his off-tune crooning at the end of the song. Which is something I can get sans Skrillex on Acid Rap.). Dirty Vibe, which is credited as a collaboration rather than a simple feature, is the cleanest and least cluttered track on the entire album. Diplo manages to keep a mute on Skrillex’s noxious qualities, and the song really only suffers from the annoying vocals.
The rest of the album is the same thing, over and over again. Lame verse, bass drop explosion. Lame verse, bass drop explosion. The bass drops, at this point in Skrillex’s career, just do the same thing every time. At least on his first EP, 2010’s My Name is Skrillex, the bass drops felt earned and were often interesting and fun. Here, each bass drop is another joyless plummet into the same tired territory we’ve been through before. Plus, last year’s Leaving EP proved that Skrillex can at least kind of do subtlety that was akin to artists like Burial and James Blake. But no, the one attempt at subtelty here is the forgettable and completely brain-dead Doompy Poomp (dumbest song title ever). Then there’s some attempts at bringing House into the beat on Fuck That, but, surprise surprise, it doesn’t work. At all. The only tolerable songs in the second half are Ease My Mind, which only works because of its generic and poppy verses, and the closer Fire Away, which succeeds (barely) because of its cheese-factor. If the best song on your debut LP works because of its cheese-factor, something’s horribly wrong. Recess is just more evidence of how quickly Brostep died, and how dated it has already become.
Summary: Recess is 3 years too late, and is nothing but a series of mindless bass drops and uninspired verses, with Skrillex lacking any coherent ideas or songs. It’s an entirely joyless and mind-numbing affair.
Choice Cut: Fire Away
Leftovers: Stranger
F
You can stream the whole project below. Recess is out now on OWSLA.
Vantage Point Music 