Oh boy. Been waiting for a thread like this for awhile. I've been working on reviews for illmatic and good kid, m.A.A.D city and hopefully I'll have them done soon.
I've listened to a bunch of their songs, but not really their albums, so my opinion is notwithstanding any awesome conceptual stuff in their albums, but they're pretty good. They're pretty esoteric though; their genre is really divisive...
@Owen: can't wait to hear about what you think of Good Kid.
I would rate this as the most underrated rap album of the past few years. The lyrics are catchy and creative, and the inclusion of the church organ on some songs really give it a great and awe-inspiring feel. Give Cunninlynguists a listen.
It's a little known fact that The Bible actually begins, not with the creation of the earth but with the creation of something far more important, rock n roll.
The review went along the lines of "In the beginning....(stuff).......and he saw that it was good"
Owen and I discussed the album at length at #fiftychat. To summarize, this is Owen's track rankings:
12: Real
11: Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst
10: Backseat Freestyle
9: Compton
8: Money Trees
7: Poetic Justice
6: B!tch Don't Kill My Vibe
5: Swimming Pools
4: The Art of Peer Pressure
3: Good Kid
2: Sherane A.K.A. Master Splinter's Daughter
1: M.A.A.D City
I enjoy Peer Pressure, B!itch Don't Kill My Vibe, and Money Trees.
I personally think good kid, M.A.A.D. City was overrated as an album, especially as its role as Kendrick Lamar's "coming out" party. (That said, it still gets a 7.5/10 from me).
Now, onto Yeezus. The production on this album is amazing. You can tell that Rick Rubin, Daft Punk, and Kanye himself played a lot with each track. Lyrics are kind of angsty in all honesty. There is no radio pop hit that I can imagine (but I said that for Dark Fantasy too). Particular highlights for me are Blood on the Leaves, Send it Up, On Sight, and New Slaves.
The way I'd describe it in blasphemous terms (comparing Yeezy to the Beatles) is that if Dark Fantasy was Kanye's Sgt. Pepper, then this is his similar to Rubber Soul. Kanye's grown past his Late Registration days and while it's very creative and talented, it's not as fun.
A solid 9 out of 10 for me. Born Sinner from J.Cole is my next review.
Red Hot Chili Peppers-Californication
11/10. Do I even need to explain why this one is great?
Daft Punk-Random Access Memories
9/10. Normally, I don't listen to electronic music of any kind. My curiosity won in terms of this album, however, and it's honestly amazing. I love the funky beat of the upbeat songs, and the smoothness of the slower songs. Definitely a good album to start branching out from in terms of electronic music.
Big Boi-Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors
7/10. After Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty (which itself is a 9/10 to me), I was expecting an album that was even better. I was disappointed a bit by how the raps in this song weren't as good, but it is still a decent album.
I get this! I know that taste......but.........there are some cool tunes there but the swamp is so deep and putrid that I don't know whether I want to swim through it to taste them.
The obvious thing for me to do is to try to be cool and mention stuff they did before they were HUGE, so I will. The Uplift Mofo Party Plan and Mothers Milk do rock pretty hard.
The Arcade Fire- Funeral: 8.5/10
I have listened to this album twice already and a few of the individual songs multiple times, and am liking it more with each listen. While I enjoy the rich, layered symphony of guitars, organs, strings, and pianos, I'm not a huge fan of Win Butler or Regine Chassagne's voice. Also, the recording quality is sub-par, which is a shame because this is very detailed music.
ShahJahanII - While I personally don't find Funeral as good as its hype, I do understand the appeal of its recording style, as it's not particularly overproduced, and people appreciate that.
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FIRST (?) REVIEW
Alcest - Autre Temps
I am going to make a first impression listening of Alcest's Autre Temps which consists of three BBC sessions from 2012. I'm going in completely green, having gained accidental hold of the album through a post-rock circle I'm part of. I have no idea who the band is and have no view of them so far. I am going to give a blunt view of the album's strengths and weaknesses per my personal criteria.
The album is supposedly from the "blackgaze" genre according to its metadata, so I assume it is a crossover between black metal and shoegaze. According to wiki, I am apparently right, Alcest having earlier played black metal, but having developed into a shoegaze/post-metal hybrid. Of course here I'm already facing a challenge of prior understanding: I know a lot about the aesthetic criteria of shoegaze, less about those in post-metal (as it lends heavily from post-rock which is my taste incarnated), but know very little about the black metal style, honestly not remembering which of the metals it was - especially in regards to its position on dynamics, tempo, complexity, and melodic structure. So I might miss some things there. Wiki'ing it helps me understand that black metal is one of the more noisy, fast, gritty metal styles, and I will take that in mind if something like that shows up.
I've now done the preliminary check-ups in order to have the right mindset about this small release and will attemp to consider the album from the standpoints I understand.
The album opens with Autre Temps and a clear chord structure over delayed guitars as well as a minor riff. The drums enter coincidentally with the singing that is remniscent of fantastic pseudo-Celtic rock and it progresses through the chorus. I recognize a lot of post-metal and shoegaze progressions, especially the drummings and dense distorted guitar layering. The song is really catchy and straightforward to me. The listener might take issue in the clarity of the voice from a shoegaze standpoint, but the detailed texture should suffice for the ear. A post-rock guitar lining really cuts through around 3:10 before the vocals go up an octave, and the instruments let loose. If one looks for innovativeness in a song, the song structure is pretty standard but it's interesting how the melody lends from fantastic music.
Song two is named Écailles de Lune and opens with two guitar chords, much similar to the first, before making a few harmonies and entering the groove with a guitar melody and some present drums. It's very stylistically, like the first, somewhere between shoegaze and post-metal. The drums are much more prominent this time and the groove very upfrontly dense. The singing seems less densely structured, letting the groove breathe more extentively than the first, and it basically breaks into a post-rock groove structure around 2:20. The progression settles somewhat at 3:00, breaking down into a simpler form and dynamic; personally I would have liked if they really emphasized the difference in dynamics by making it even softer or simply lower in volume. It then starts again about 3:30 to further the progression and continues the long buildup. It attempts to further the dynamics about 5:00, but I'm not feeling it really; it's like they exchange density for further complexity of the groove, and for a first sit-through, the dynamic shifts are difficult to really feel. The buildup ends, having the progression renew and reset about 6:00 with a guitar riff and a pacing hihat. I feel that this song can grow on one easily when one's ear has recognized the dynamic shifts and can expect and feel the changes more. After a ritendando molto, a post-metal density of distortion, a very broad and loud groove begins at 7:30, attempting and upwelling movement. I don't know: It's attempted to really be the climax of the song, but I don't feel they let the dynamics breathe enough in order for the climax to really come through.
The third song is Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde and starts with a more crisp beat which evolves into a distorted chord progression. It uplifts really well into a bright echoic guitar arpeggio for some measures before evolving into a very dense noise wall and the vocalist beginning to sing. It's very well paced and really melds together well with several layers making the wall of sound they've established, and when the noise wall disrupts about two minutes in again, the progression is kept vivid and strong for a while before the beckoning verse sets in about half a minute later. The verse then incorporates melding harmonics with guitar and vocal falsetto accompagnement while rephrasing the melodic structure of the main vocals a bit. Then a third noiseless grooves lets the song breathe before I think an instrumental verse lets itself breathe again with a number of dynamic effects such as an arpeggio'd guitar to which the vocals harmonize. And then the dynamics have the song uplift itself. It's by far the best recording on the album and really moves the progression before erupting into post-rock guitaring.
First impressions leave me mixed. The first track was catchy, but honestly, I think it'd get old really fast, although it stylistically feels more detached from the other two due to the somewhat clear vocals. The second track was all over the place while not really doing much with it; I feel more dynamic emphasizing could have made it much better, as well as some more breathing space for the individual segments, but it might win me over through a second or fourth listening. The third track is really good, but doesn't win the album by itself, especially due to its overarching structure which might eventually become boring (I think it's ABABBABBBB[...], but I might be wrong. Just first impressions here!). But in the latter recording, the dynamics do let the song breathe and gives it space and intensity, which I feel they didn't quite manage to do in the second track. Stylistically, I find that the band manages to settle in a nice area between post-stuff and shoegaze and they establish an identity quite nicely. I don't think "Oh that's Band X isn't it?" about the songs, it's pretty obviously something from Alcest itself, and that's always nice. I have no idea what black metal has to do with that album, however, as I felt pretty much no presence of metal other than the distortion, which is already a core incorporation of shoegaze to begin with. Fans of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, fantastic folk songs and post-rock like Lights Out Asia or Kid Ikarus should check this out. There is some stuff here that is remniscent of the above, but I can't personally name a band personally that sounds exactly like Alcest.
This song is what I really think is a nice track. Check it out:
I downloaded Chicago rapper Chance the Rapper's second mixtape/album, Acid Rap, a few days ago.
The first half of the album is great, while I kinda fell asleep during the second half, but that's probably me. "Good Ass Intro" and "Pusha Man/Paranoia" were the two best songs on the tape. Despite Chance's nasaly, Corganesque delivery, his flow and the production on the tape satisfy my peculiar taste in rap. While it isn't the best rap album I've ever heard, I see good things coming out of Chance in the future when he creates an actual album.
7/10
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I've also relistened to Modern Vampires of the City and I'm bumping it to a 9/10. Listening to it after a break made me appreciate it much more.
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