๐ฝ 3/14/2025 - Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions by Earth
Wow! I gotta say, this is an amazing follow-up album from Earth 2! The mood shifts in an interesting way throughout the album, almost as if it's telling a story. It gives me a similar vibe as Yanqui U.X.O. by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but more... enjoyable, I guess, haha. The album starts off generally happy with Harvey, and then slowly shifts to a more tense and less carefree mood with Specific Carniverous Occurance, which explodes into Phase 3: Agni Detonating Over The Thar Desert. There is no way to describe that track properly without just listening to it and considering the title, because that's simply what it sounds like. Dylan Carlson really has a particular talent for naming his songs that really adds an extra layer to them. When I hear this track, I see the bomb dropping and a huge, nuclear cloud enveloping the land.... which dissipates throughout the next track, Thrones and Dominions, which creates this interstitial mood just perfectly. It almost sounds like an orchestra all holding the same note, something you'd hear out of a blockbuster movie. Then you get that bassy hum near the middle of the track, until it switches almost entirely into a more active song after that. The album ends on Song 6 (Chime), which, to me, calls back to that optimistic happiness you get from the first track, Harvey. This one has a bit more of a somber tone to me, probably aided by the acoustic guitar, that gives a distinct feeling of hope after disaster to me. It's such a beautiful note to end the album on... I LOVE THIS ALBUM!
๐ฝ 2/3/2025 - I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU (DIRECTOR'S CUT) by JPEGMAFIA
Yeah man, I'm not feeling this one at all. Words cannot describe how excited I was for more ILDMLFY era music (y'all saw me gushing over the mixing of genre sounds). I was so excited I pre-ordered merch before I had even listened to this release. Now I kinda go back on that, partially out of finding Peggy's recent behavior a bit corny, but also because I really don't care about owning this release physically. COKE OR DOPE? was the main factor in this decision; this is genuinely one of the most offensive songs to me on the album. The individual unique parts of this are fine, but the way the latter half of JIHAD JOE is spliced into this is so sloppy. The way JIHAD JOE slowly winds down in the middle before exploding into guitars was masterfully done, whereas this track just jarringly goes from quiet to loud to quiet to loud again with no clear transition. I like jarring switches as much as the next guy, but this just doesn't work well at all. Anyways, I like the other new songs, but this Director's Cut really disrupts the great flow and overall flawlessness of the original release. I liked that heavy buzzy bass in Boy You Should Know! and PROTECT THE CROSS is unbearably hype, but they work on their own and don't really add anything to the album. There is little to thank Kanye West for these days, but I gotta give him propsh for being an influence in the tracklist of the original release. In my opinion, these new tracks would haave worked better as a DLC pack like he and Danny Brown did with SCARING THE HOES (Minus COKE OR DOPE?, I think we can all live without it).
๐ฝ 1/8/2025 - Mars Audiac Quintet by Stereolab
Need to find more female vocalists who sound like this. I love the sing-songy but really chill vocals... It's a really simple sound that I prefer to alot of more... to put it poorly... soul/gospel influenced vocals that you tend to hear, especially these days. Lots of "ornamentation" I guess. It's either that or the cursive singing that I can't stand!! Anywho, I'm getting off track. I really dig how this band sounds. It sounds how those caricatures of hippies and their aesthetics looked in cartoons. But it's also still got that distinctive 90s warmth.... I love it!!!
๐ฝ 11/3/2024 - Six Desperate Ballads by The Garden
The only songs I know by The Garden are Call This # Now and Thy Mission. I think I listened to one of their albums before and was expecting an upbeat silly alt rock thing, so this sorta weird art-punk experimentation came as a bit of a surprise. I don't really mess with it though... Most of the songs have potential but are just too messy for me to enjoy. I also can't believe how much I disliked Hell Hole; it's not often I decide I never want to hear a song again?? That being said, I did like the last two tracks a fair amount. These guys certainly have range, I just think they might need to find their footing... but who knows, since everyone else seems to like the album??
๐ต 10/18/2024 - M3 N MIN3 by Femtanyl and Danny Brown
Is 2024 just the year of great music or something?! 2024 and 2023! I was already loving life when I saw Danny Brown gassing up Femtanyl, and now the worlds collide where they made a collab?! I'm in love! I'm surprised how poorly this song was received, but maybe it's just from people who don't dig Femtanyl in the first place. This is one of the few times I wish the mixing made the vocals more coherent, because rap is kinda one of those things where you wanna understand what the person is saying... Still, could this signify an upcoming collab album....?!
๐ต 10/11/2024 - Puff Daddy by JPEGMAFIA & Kenny Beats
This isn't safe for me to listen to bro. I'm still high off the
Denzel/Kenny collab, not to mention the NEW PEGGY? And now we're
getting PEGGY AND KENNY? Oh good lord I'm not ready for it, I'm
not ready, it's everything I could've ever dreamed of. BITCH WE
STRAPPED LIKE DUKE NUKEM!
๐ต 9/24/2024 - Enemy of My Enemy by All Them Witches
This goes WAYYYY harder than I would have expected from All Them
Witches??? I'm used to their lighter sound, mainly because I
almost exclusively listen to Sleeping Through the War, but this
blew me away so hard while I was reading that I had to stop and
type some code for the first time in a month. "Behold my power"
with that intense wave of reverb-heavy sound just kinda shook me
up.
๐ฝ 8/15/2024 - I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU by JPEGMAFIA
You guys have no idea how badly I needed this. To me, Peggy was
one of those artists that I always felt had crazy good
potential, but I just had to wait it out for him to find his
footing. I admired his experimental, chaotic sound but it didn't
appeal to me too much outside of a few songs. I thought the
Danny Brown collab really transformed his style, and we have the
evolution I've been waiting for on this album, and it's harder
than I ever could've imagined!! You're telling me this dude is
taking some already off-kilter hip-hop beats, throwing some
distorted guitar riffs over it, and then has the audacity to add
in STRINGS for emotional weight?! This dude does practically
everything I love in a song to such an insane extent that it
feels like every song is secretly 3 different micro-songs. When
people say hip-hop is the new punk, JPEGMAFIA is who they're
talking about.
๐ฝ 5/25/2024 - DARK TIMES by Vince Staples
I'll admit I really like Vince Staples' earlier music the most
out of his overall catalog. I tend to like that loud bombastic
sound... Summertime '06 was hard. With this release though, I
found this had a nice moodiness to it that wasn't overly
depressing like I feel his recent albums have been. Nothing
wrong with depressing... it's just not my cup o' tea lately.
Maybe I should go back and relisten to his last two records.
Maybe I was being too harsh on them?
๐ต 5/15/2024 - Holla At Ya Mans by Bruiser Wolf
This dude has the most idiosyncratic flow I've ever heard. I'm
trying to compare him to any other artist just to make sense of
what I'm listening to but he does not sound like ANYONE ELSE in
the game right now. Also he's SO FUNNY I can't stop thinking
about "we got the block ovulating"!!
๐ฝ 5/11/2024 - Blue Lips by ScHoolboy Q
I'm so mad at myself for not listening to this on release.... is
there ANY reason people were so quiet about this album when it's
got NO SKIPS??? Every song is so HARDDDD. I'm gonna be so
annoying about Back n Love.
๐ต 3/3/2024 - ใขใใซๅชๅใใใชใใงใขใใใ by Group Tamashii
Went down a rabbit hole trying to find a non-Soulseek way of
downloading music because TMC is not available on there.... to
no avail. Am I really gonna have to order a CD?!
๐ฝ 2/24/2024 - Rust in Peace by Megadeth
I've never actually listened to this album all the way through
and goddamn I love Megadeth. Wasted my youth listening to more
Metallica than these guys. They're a lil goofy, but it works.
๐ต 2/24/2024 - Sunday Service by Latto
Y'all heard of Latto because why did it take me this long to
discover her? The bars are crazy.