thoughts on albums

[thoughtsonalbums]

i miss the sun

“There’s always gonna be times in life where things seem the worst that it’s ever been…but there’s also gonna be some more positive times, more happy times for you."

This spring, I felt worse than I had in years. I still don’t know exactly why. Life just hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt (for reasons that were entirely my own fault) disconnected from my friends and family, and spent an unhealthy amount of time on the internet in an unconscious attempt to reenact those relationships. As life went on, my light grew dimmer. One of the worst parts about those times is the feeling of absolutely nothing. I spent hours going back to the music that usually hits me the hardest. None of it worked.

But one Sunday afternoon, I was listening to cloud rap, which eventually transitioned into SNCKPCK (a much smaller gap than you probably think). I decided to check, for the first time in a while, to see if he had any new music. I saw there was one new track: “afternoon.” I pressed play.

Here’s some advice for you, if you want to know. I was nothing but skeptical, but it couldn’t hurt. You gotta have a good heart, you gotta let people in. Nobody had been in for what seemed like forever right then. You gotta support your friends. I had talked to my roommates some, but that was about it. You gotta make sure you’re alive, cause if you’re not, you’re not alive. I needed that second reminder more than most people. Read comic books, all the time. Eat an apple, after five. Do whatever you wanna do with your time. Despite everything I was telling myself, I hadn’t been doing anything I wanted to do. In the afternoon, noon, noon, noon. …Why hadn’t I been? I know your house address. Always be prepared… All I’d done was make it harder for me in the future. …for anything resembling everything that you are scared of. I was scared of every situation, everything, everyone. I was scared of the mirror. Take a pen outside and watch the clouds go by (and draw them) I had spent most of the past weeks in my room. Call your friends and let them know how much they mean to you. This was probably the point where my fantasy of being completely alone and my reality of never having reached that point collided, violently and tearfully. In the afternoon, noon, noon, noon. I hated the concept of the afternoon - time where you can’t skip it through sleeping, where people aren’t doing much of anything you can latch on to, where you have to create your own life or lack thereof. Create something that wasn’t there before, make your life something more. There had been absolutely nothing. Eat your dinner at an appropriate time, make sure your body gets lots of rest. “These may include changes in sleep, appetite…” People next to you everywhere are people too, and one of them could be your best friend. I hadn’t seen my best friend in almost a year. You never know who could show up, when you say hello. A few months earlier, I’d made it a habit to wave hello to everyone that could see me through my window. I figured at worst, they’d be confused, and at best, they’d have a better day. Cause people are the best thing, and everyone knows that anyone can be anything they wanna be, they wanna be. I was nothing, I wanted to be. On the way home to my parent’s house, I wandered off down to a trail where I wasn’t supposed to go. I found a home, where I wasn’t supposed to go. I found a home in the afternoon, noon, noon, noon.

Four minutes and thirty-two seconds later, my hard-working denial had finally given up.

The rest of the album is good, some of Daniel’s most polished and original work yet. If you liked SNCKPCK in the past, you’ll probably like it. If you didn’t, give it another try, he’s evolved. But all it really comes down to for me is “afternoon,” because I can legitimately say that it helped change my life. In an e-mail interview, he said his goal with his music is to spread the message that, among other things: “Life is crappy and hard for some people. But before we can fix that we need to believe that we can.” This is exactly what I heard through this song. I remembered that I can.

"When those happiest moments of your life come, you’ll look back at all those sad and bad things that have happened to you, and you’ll, you’ll be happy that you went through them.”

Today, it’s probably been about six months since I first heard “afternoon.” Life hit me like a ton of bricks again recently. I don’t know exactly why. I’m tempted to disconnect, waste time, dim my light again, and sink back into nothing. But having already been through it, I can tell what I’m doing. Instead of running into the woods, I can find a home in friends, family, hobbies, duties, what I want, the afternoon.

[thoughtsonalbums]

Sleepline

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[thoughtsonalbums]

Lows

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[thoughtsonalbums]

Ultimate Care II

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[thoughtsonalbums]

Hospice

Don’t forget to feel.

I've talked to a lot of people about music's effect on emotion. I know that a lot of people can listen to music and have it change their mood. I kind of doubt that this can happen quite to that degree (why wouldn't they just listen to happy music all the time?) but I do understand that some are more sensitive to the emotions that music gives off. I'd like to say that I'm a sensitive person too. But I can't change my mood with music. Maybe I'm too used to the cliches, maybe I've tried too hard and broken it. Regardless, it doesn't work for me. Most of my music discovery as a 15-year-old consisted of me scouring the web for music (or anything, for that matter) that would make me feel happy. None of it worked. My attempts just led to further unhappiness as I eventually realized I was just in denial. As such, when people like me are in the thralls of emotion and the deepest, darkest pits of our valley-and-mountain life, we know well enough that we can't "fake it 'till we make it." So we search for something that feels real, something that won't drag us down any farther or tell us that life is good but will simply accept the tragic reality of the hell that existence feels like in the moment. Thank heaven for Hospice. As you probably guessed by the album title, Hopsice is sad. It's conceptual, loosely based on a man grieving over a dying woman in a hospital. If this is scaring you already, turn back now, because it just gets worse. "Bear," for example, confronts an abortion, a daring choice. Lest you worry about politics being thrown in your face, this song simply describes the heartbreak and social dismissal that a couple feels upon making their decision. It's incredibly touching, smart, and heartfelt. This social dismissal is explored further in "Two," one of the most frisson-filled songs I have ever heard and expect I ever will hear. The Antlers understand that you can't just run away from people - they're there, they're essential, and you have to deal with them, or else face depressing issues like those discussed in the song. I've avoided discussing the main theme of the album so far - death. I think that's because I'm not very experienced with it and as such feel pretty inadequate to write about it. I can't fairly say that I know much of anything about death because I've never had anyone particularly close to me die. Typing this review makes me think that I'll probably look back in ten or so years, by which time I'll inevitably have had the tragedy strike my life, and wonder how I could be so presumptuous. I hope I can express even a fraction of the emotion that others have felt, but I probably won't be able to. Death has an intense impact on people, and every effect is different. Some people become thinly veiled caricatures of their previous selves, holding it together against all odds and hurting themselves with denial. Some people completely break apart and never really heal, struggling to make it through a single day. Some people join together with others and appreciate every single person that they still have around them. Most people have some sort of combination of these, if not infinite more reactions. Hospice catches all of these intense, life-changing feelings, and slowly releases them to the listener in spurts and pieces. I can't really describe them all to you, but here's one. Halfway into "Wake," something hits me, whenever I'm listening, and I always forget exactly how powerful it is. It's really just a slow chord-dropping build-up for another climax, but it's the most touching part of the album. Then, after finally showing you your broken heart that it's been teasing the whole album, it gushes out: "don't ever, let anyone, tell you you deserve that" Suddenly everything comes flooding back - remember being hurt and promising to never let anyone else feel that way? Remember being sad and promising you'd never be happy again? Remember being happy and promising you'd never be sad? Remember childhood? Remember innocence? Remember when they still had life in their eyes? All these promises, feelings, and memories come flooding back and any fragments of emotional stability are now shredded to pieces. That's what this album really is best at, after all - breaking emotional numbness. Sometimes, we'd rather be stable in our relative peace with life, and if you feel like that I wouldn't recommendHospice. But if you feel like you can't feel anything, it is, by far, the best piece of music I have discovered for bringing back your sense of emotion and connection with reality. While I wouldn't wish the feelings it exudes on anyone, I suspect that those feelings are a common trial of humanity. From my experience, there's no way to avoid them. So when you are hopelessly broken, listen and remember.

[thoughtsonalbums]

Personal Computer Music

A.G. Cook's crowning achievement perseveres through the controversy, creating the best bubblegum I've ever heard.

I don't know what it is about bubblegum that gets so under some (most) critics' skins. There's little to no actual acceptance of it in the "serious" music scene. Even the increasingly popular so-called "poptimists" tend to be more interested in trends and favorable political positions of the artists than the actual quality of the music. Consider the critical opinion shift Carly Rae Jepsen received transferring from her bubblegum debut in 2012, Kiss, which drew off of the more popular and less critically acclaimed dance-pop of the early 2010s, to 2015's emotion, a heavily 80s-inspired piece. Now that she started making music with an in-vogue aesthetic, critics and aspiring poptimists alike paid far more attention to her, despite her huge drop in popularity after the enormous "Call Me Maybe" fell out of culture. (You might argue that this has to do with the quality of the music, not the aesthetic. However, she has received both more positive attention and more negative attention with emotion, when Kiss was an easy "objectivity" boost, as one website refers to conformism.)

This probably comes across as awfully off-topic, but it's enormously relevant to A.G. Cook. A.G. Cook normally makes bubblegum (with a new jack swing flavor). It's enormously catchy, perfectly polished, and charmingly (or disturbingly, depending who you ask) extreme. Basically, it's bubblegum for people who get bored of generic pop and want something a little more intense. That's all there is to it. However, the musical scene can't really handle this. In various attempts to be the forward-thinking, music publications dissected the innards of it, writing overwrought thinkpieces, ignoring the real purpose of the music in favor of assumptions that there had to be something that kept this from being the same as the bubblegum and new jack swing that they had previously largely ignored. How else could they justify the praise?

Most listeners discovered it with this context of it being some highly advanced inaccessible (Jia Tolentino of Pitchfork considered PC Music Volume 1 to be pop hidden under a "pixelated thicket") post-modern art project. While artists like SOPHIE probably have at least some of that going on, A.G. Cook, PC Music as a whole, and SOPHIE, while linked, are not the same, and the perception of the three as identical skewed the reception enormously. "Rockists" rightfully called BS on the art project theory, proclaiming it (wrongly) to be bad because it was "just" bubblegum. Poptimists effectively either argued "it's OK, it's not bubblegum, it's an art project" or "it's an art project, you're too old-fashioned to get it." This controversy inflated the spotlight on the music, creating an even larger argument, and continuing the upward spike of popularity, especially among those of us who didn't really care about the argument. All this controversy has become largely impossible to ignore, since any praise or persecution of PC Music has to stand against those arguments, respectively. And that's why I insist that both "sides" are wrong - it's just music. No matter the intent, no style of music is more intellectual than another, no style of music is inherently more valid than another, and it doesn't matter anyway since this really is just bubblegum with a twist.

But it is some seriously excellent bubblegum - think the stuff from Willy Wonka that tastes like a full meal or/and inflates you. Just in case it wasn't clear to you, even though it is bubblegum of the finest degree, it isn't like most bubblegum you've heard before. It's probably better. It's mostly frantically paced, grabbing you from the get-go, faking relaxation. You might think you can leave early, but you can't until you hear the dramatic finale. It's incredibly catchy. I dare you to listen to this without getting something stuck in your head. Go ahead. Let me know if you manage it, I'd be legitimately interested in how you managed it. Possibly most importantly, it's beautiful. Nothing in here sounds dull or grating, just sparkly. Cook is clearly a superb producer, experienced enough to understand the subtleties other electronic producers are famous for but melodically inclined enough to create and curate music that isn't really subtle at all. This mix wouldn't be nearly as good as it is without the interludes that add context and interest. I can't think of any other DJs who would choose to put dialogue in-between the first song, an untitled Dux Content (A.G. Cook + Danny L. Harle, another brilliant pop producer) bubbled 1-minute intro, and "Aquarius," both of which share a similar enough aesthetic that he could have just mixed between the two. He continues this pattern of unusual choices between songs, helping to blur the line between an album and a mix. It's nothing but orthodox.

Particularly interesting is how sleek Cook's mixing is. There are people whose entire careers are devoted to mastering music, and this sounds like it went under that kind of treatment. If he simply did this on his own, as would be expected from his background, that's incredible. Comparing it with any of the many nightcore edits that his music is frequently compared with, Personal Computer Music has a huge edge in production quality. Beyond just the sharpness, it's varied enough to create far more interest than something you'd find on an anime-emblazoned youtube account. Consider the fact that both the dark, faded "Moose" (sample lyrics: "I make 'em so mad the way I'm flowing, I never look back the way I'm going, swag, swag…other rappers are transparent, I see through 'em"), "Where Does That Leave Me," a nu-jack-swing single that time forgot, and even an edit of "Better Off Alone," which acts as a great example of a transformation from cliché to majestic, all appear on this 31-minute mix.

Personal Computer Music is just the right combination of twisted and catchy. If it ends up being influential enough, it could have a huge impact on the future of pop. While I admit that possibility is relatively unlikely, I'd still love to see a Velvet Underground & Nico-esque effect on the radio. In any case, it's had a huge effect on the music scene, forcing critics to re-consider their position on what makes music innovative and current by combining some of the most critically panned styles (eurotrance, nu jack swing) with some of the most current (cloud rap, vaguely menacing synthwork) under a perfect bubble. Speaking on his pathway to success with Danny L. Harle, Cook said: "…music became much more of a craft – we weren't attached to any specific genre but we became very aware of music production as a potentially virtuosic activity." That potential has been reached.

[thoughtsonalbums]

heat.wav

"i 'm a future funk producer i have nothing to smile about" - Amherst

Over the past few years, probably because of the quick communication methods of the internet, genuinely innovative genres that are only really possible with modern technology have risen into massive popularity in critical music scenes within months and fallen just as quickly. A common thread behind all these flash-in-the-pan styles is the way that most of the best music comes after the entire style has already been largely dismissed by the audio-obsessed public. Future funk, a disco-based offshoot of vaporwave, is no exception to the rule. It burst into popularity thanks almost entirely to Saint Pepsi's Hit Vibes, which hit it big around the same time vaporwave was subtly starting to slide into the aforementioned complete lack of credibility (not a coincidence). But then, the exact same thing happened to future funk, which is now almost completely neglected, outside of a relatively dedicated (but miniature) fanbase. It wasn't surprising, but it was a little sad. Like every hyper-specific electronic subgenre, it is formulaic, but that doesn't mean it's never worth a listen. The absolute best example I can give you from 2015 is heat.wav - a polished, moody, cohesive album that ties the best of funk, vaporwave and straight pop together into a delicious debut.

One of the reasons future funk is mostly ignored by the public is the familiar tropes. Inactive producer AEON-MEMBER describes the basic process unfortunately accurately: "Find Japanese funk sample, add vengeance drum samples, side chain compression, 909 hi hat on the off beat, anime photo. Upload." There's a sad percentage of it that does work like that. heat.wav, however, does not. Besides the lack of anime, the songwriting and sampling are legitimately creative. Instead of just finding some bit from a funk classic he really likes and looping it using the aforementioned process, Amherst approaches sampling more like a hip-hop producer or a member of The Avalanches (sidenote: one of his older songs made rounds as a new single for the sequel to Since I Left You, fooling quite a few people, if that gives you any insights to the quality of these tracks), combining record digging with pop sensibilities. And on the topic of record digging, these are some seriously cool samples. Amherst made a youtube playlist with all the songs he ended up sampling for the album, and there's a nice variety, with some cheesy disco, some blue-eyed soul, and a thick layer of funk. He utilizes them creatively in his album, exaggerating the groove and, of course, looping. These songs - with verses, choruses, bridges, etc. - are extremely catchy but take a while to get stale. There aren't that many albums from this year I've kept listening to, but this has kept making rounds.

Partially to blame for this longevity are the emotions it brings on. It would have been easy for Amherst to make an album that was entirely cheerful, optimistic, and partying. Thankfully, he realized that happiness can't be expressed without a comedown, and ends up cooling off from the highs of "Nobody but You" and the preceding tracks on "For Two," picking it back up again on "Something About You," and then slowing it down again on the back end. These mood shifts are gradual, welcome, and not forced at all. Based on the lyrics, heat.wav is about love, heartbreak, and recovery, and this refusal to sit in one state of mind for too long is very consistent with that theme. In Hit Vibes, the album starts off with an unexpected invitation to a party, and a lot of future funk artists have embraced the sparkling, magnificent euphoria that hits immediately after that. But Amherst remembers that the invitation was unexpected, and that this isn't about someone with a thriving, crazy, social life, but instead someone who is incredibly thrilled to be introduced to "someone," capturing both the thrill, the comedown and the growth that it gives him as a person.

On /r/futurefunk, probably the biggest future funk community still around, a listener said that they sometimes felt guilty listening to it, because it's often so derivative. Amherst responded by saying that "If you're taking huge chunks of samples realize that your main role is that of a curator, and that you should probably be releasing albums and eps rather than single after single after single. Taking a bunch of different artists and making them sound like they belong together is a lot more interesting than just taking one good song and repackaging it as a single."   heat.wav did this successfully. He managed to "curate" a whole new idea out of a bunch of smaller pieces, successfully chopping samples, songwriting and ordering tracks to create something that can stand on its own. So yeah, it's hard to smile as a future funk producer. Nobody really takes you seriously, if they take you at all. But heat.wav is a superb example of something worth smiling for.

SOURCES:

Initial quote: https://twitter.com/fivexhotel/status/678443295047979008

Quote on predictability of future funk: https://www.reddit.com/r/futurefunk/comments/3x8nwn/some_help_on_considering_what_i_would_do/

Amherst's sampling style: https://twitter.com/amhrst/status/677562289365626880

Amherst's view on sampling's originality as it relates to future funk: https://www.reddit.com/r/futurefunk/comments/3wvenw/conflicted_feelings_about_future_funk/cy15f10

[thoughtsonalbums]

EVENIFUDONTBELIEVE

Rustie finally makes the album his fanbase wants - but do we really know what we want? Because I don't.

There's something weird that happens with music listening I've been thinking about a lot lately. I find that it's extremely difficult to quantitatively evaluate it with an objectively subjective perspective - that is, attempting to completely base your rating on your opinions is almost impossible. EVENIFUDONTBELIEVE has been one of the hardest albums for me to do this for. It's ranged from a seven to a ten for me, depending on the day and what I feel like. As far as I can tell, this is because it's so emotionally linear, and as such is easily listened to too much. I've had completely life-affirming experiences listening to "Death Bliss," (particularly 1:08 - one of the best moments in music of the year). However, I've had times I've tried to duplicate this feeling of overwhelming beauty and frisson with little success. I guess part of this is just that these moments hit so many endorphins that I naturally try to rerun the euphoria that they bring too many times over again. Unfortunately, pleasure is very different from joy. While joy is long-lasting or at least memorable, pleasure lasts for the moment and quickly loses steam. That's the main problem with EVENIFUDONTBELIEVE - it's sort of a false positive. You can see this short-run perspective in Rustie's recent obsession with intense positivity. "Imagine how the world would change if news told inspiring stories instead of trawling us thru the gutter of humanity" he recently tweeted. And yeah, when I'm in a good mood, I completely agree. But it's nearly impossible to listen to anything like this when I'm feeling down at all, because, just like his tweets it doesn't really accept reality, instead choosing to focus entirely on the positive. That's why it's so difficult for me to rate this - I'm rarely this positive, so my opinion on the album changes extremely frequently.

While I'm indecisive on the overall quality of the album, I can still describe how it sounds. It steals the propulsive beats, sheer variety, and of course semi-random sound effects (listen closely to the album version of "Big Catzz"'s drop and you'll probably notice something a little different from the single) of Glass Swords, but thankfully mixes it in with some of the best, most heart-stoppingly gorgeous ambient sections of Green Language. Basically, it sounds like what you might imagine an album's worth of Triadzz/Slasherr sounding like, if a bit rougher around the edges. The younger Zedd/Madeon/Discovery-era Daft Punk/Skrillex fan in me would probably have considered it one of the best albums ever made. Current me is a little less enthused, but still pretty positive. Features include: gorgeous high-pitch vocal cuts, a sugary aesthetic, a drop/build-up based structure that allows for easy appeal and nothing really "sad"- sounding. You can hear various influences. Examples include PC Music (if I could pick one non-album song to summarize the entire release, it'd be Rustie's edit of A.G. Cook's "Beautiful" - formulaic but, for lack of a better word, beautiful), happy hardcore (Jess Harvel said in his 2011 review of Glass Swords that "you might mistake Rustie for a happy hardcore artist" and now it's finally come to pass with "First Mythz") and recent Hudson Mohawke ("Scud Books" could probably find a way to fit in here somehow). Songs are pretty, extremely sweet, fun and even sometimes inspirational, but unfortunately sometimes a bit repetitive, and generally poorly mastered.

Thankfully the album flows extremely well, almost cinematically. He's clearly learned from his last two albums - interludes actually have a point this time around and he's learned where to put them. Songs like "Emerald Tabletz" and "Peace Upzzz" are obviously placed where they are to help provide a breather from the other tracks, which is an enormous benefit for music with a largely homogeneous vibe of inspired euphoria - something that would be impossible to sustain this long normally. And while it does better than a lot of other albums I've heard, it still isn't quite possible to keep it going forever. The beauty of the hopeful sound Rustie really tries to hold on to is that it happens in despite the sadness. That's why he can't.

Besides this, the mastering issues, and the occasional stale feelings, it's a nice album, with some very enjoyable tracks, an underutilized aesthetic, powerful moments, an inspiring message, and, for the first time in Rustie's career, excellent structure. I'm listening to it now for the first time in a while, and I was surprised with how much I enjoyed it. This happens to me every time I listen - I'm still not sure what the right rating for something like this is. But I guess that makes sense - happiness isn't quite as objective, quantifiable or concrete as we'd like to think.

[thoughtsonalbums]

No Way Down

Hope is real.

Let's talk about music's potential as an anti-depressant for a minute. I don't think that music can solve problems, but I think it can act as a comforter. A comforter can't make your problems better, but it can make you feel better about them, which has the same effect on you. There's a classic question when it comes to music, or any art for that matter: why do some people consume things that feel sad? As most heavy listeners can attest, there are moments in life when the only thing that feels real is something that makes you want to cry. It can be relieving and cathartic to express your emotions. If successful, there's often a moment after this, when you look around and see all the potential in the world and in yourself. You realize that anything you want to do, you can do. I want to say that No Way Down traps both of these feelings - comfort and recognition of possibilities, but that wouldn't be accurate. Instead, I think it releases these feelings to the listener, even after the listen. It's an auditory sunrise, a gasp of breath from an ocean of sorrows, a spark of light. I have trouble even explaining how this sounds without using experiences, feelings and ideas that have little to do with music. There's ambient, gorgeous strings. There's a happy, stretching bassline in "No Excuses," the album's centerpiece. There's brilliantly selected crate-digging samples, transforming a high-pitched rave-esque vocal cut into a completely genuine cry of young delight, and cutting an obscure bit from an 80s Beauty and the Beast remake onto "Collapsing Outside Your Doorstep." (As far as sampling goes, this is probably the closest the world will ever get to another Since I Left You 2 - there's even a horse neighing in "Windmill Wedding," just like "Frontier Psychiatrist.") But there's no simple formula I can use to explain what these songs are about on a musical level, no left-brain explanation because everything about it screams imagination and memories, nostalgia and possibility. "'Sort of like a dream, isn't it?' 'No, better.'" explains the aforementioned "Collapsing Outside Your Doorstep." I don't know exactly what Air France were thinking when they decided to use that, but to me, it's the mission statement of the EP. Passivity is default but the human race doesn't have to be default, our hopes can be our future. Life is more than a dream.

[thoughtsonalbums]

Kindred

“All I want are hooks to hang your flowers on.”

Passion Pit, the semi-one-man-project of Michael Angelakos, started off with the Chunk Of Change EP. This was the era of a thousand Myspace success stories, and synthpop was just coming into vogue. As such, the EP, particularly “Sleepyhead,” surged into popularity, and the polished (if slightly stale) Manners was released the next year. In the following three years, the blog era descended in popularity significantly. When the band (which had gained members at this point) announced a new album in 2012, Gossamer wasn’t what people expected. Standout singles “I’ll Be Alright” and “Take A Walk” sounded more pop than anything put out so far, and many fans were disappointed. Another three years later (don’t expect a new album until 2018), Kindred is announced, as well as the band’s return to a one-man project. This time, it’s even more radio-friendly than ever before. You can easily pump your fist to “Until We Can’t (Let’s Go),” and Michael uses auto-tune (the filthiest of all “real music” betrayals) on the finale. The easiest reaction to hearing this, and the ridiculously happy pop that the album embodies, is to assume that Passion Pit have sold out and created a completely cheesy letdown, but that’s not at all true. It’s not a crazed detour into something worse - it’s a hard-earned victory lap, more pointed and direct than ever before. On Kindred, Angelakos finally completely embraces the pop he’s been circling since Passion Pit started, and it’s exactly what we needed. Everything he’s released has been reliant on pop ideas and styles. (A track off Chunk Of Change sampled “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” one of the cheesiest, catchiest pop songs ever written.) It’s just that now he's finally honest about its identity. No more pseudo-alternative disguises. Just like Gossamer saw Michael shed his lyrical subtlety in exchange for complete, intensely affecting emotional impact, Kindred sheds all layers of ex-blog-era credibility in favor of a complete, intensely accessible, classic simplicity. The key word there is “classic.” Listening to SPIRITS I, one of two playlists Angelakos curated on Spotify prior to Kindred’s release, we hear influences like The Isley Brothers and Barbra Streisand, songwriting geniuses, and nothing if not pop artists. Making an album like the classic pop greats is clearly a priority: note the (relatively) short 10-track, 36-minute run time, the LP-like Columbia logo on the album art, and the dramatic, almost lo-fi nature of “Ten Feet Tall.” Despite the current obsession with retro, actual classic pop songwriting and album structure is rare, so it sounds genuinely fresh. Although it’s nice, like many older pop albums, it gets grating at times. Some songs stretch their hooks too far and don’t give full credit to their often interesting verses, and the transition from the speed of “My Brother Taught Me How To Swim” to “Ten Feet Tall” is very jarring. Thankfully, there are more influences than just classic pop, which SPIRITS II shows off. These cuts are diverse and often unexpected, whether it be the Gossamer-esque emotion of “No, No” and “Song Cry” (clear on the emotional musical peak of the album, “Dancing On The Grave”), the bubbly melody of “Double Bed” and “Rice Rain” (most obvious on “Where The Sky Hangs” and “Looks Like Rain”), and even the frenetic, intense energy of “Lights” and “Unrequited Love” (manifested in the fist-pumping anthems “Lifted Up (1985)” and “Until We Can’t”).The point I’m trying to make is that Kindred isn’t just another generic synthpop artist putting out an EDM album, regardless of how it might appear on first glance. This is, for the most part, layered, complex music. Arguably, emotion is more important than depth. Gossamer, despite its controversially mainstream sound, gained Passion Pit numerous fans (including yours truly) because it’s such a raw, emotional confession. Kindred continues that theme, to an extent. Most of these Gossamerfans probably wish there was a bit more heartbreak and a little less optimism. Sometimes we need happy music, but the biggest problems directly faced here are unwanted publicity and domestic frustration, a far cry from the substance abuse and mental health of yesteralbum. But there is a beauty to this simple hope. Michael thanks his wife, recognizing how much his problems have hurt her (“I took your hands and pulled you down”). He’s happier now (“Until We Can’t” couldn’t have fit on any of his other releases), but he still understands just how much he’s overcome, and his need for continual help (“We’re dancing on the grave of the nights we couldn’t sleep...someone hold me as I turn the night away”). He even discusses religion’s impact on his life, in the blatantly Christian “My Brother Taught Me How To Swim.” The common theme, is humility, recognition, gratitude and hope. Michael sees things from a broader perspective for the first time - he and his music are all the better for it. We all know why albums like this get plenty of hate. Kindred isn’t as sad (read: “real”) as Gossamer, and it’s far more accessible (read: “sellout”) than Manners. But does it really deserve it? I say no. If Manners was an experimental flatland wander, and Gossamer a grueling uphill trek glimmered with hope, then Kindred is the thrilling downhill ride - exciting, short, and beautifully concise. If the hard times deserve a soundtrack, the good times do too. One of Michael’s first (and best) songs, “Better Things,” sang fervently of hope for a better future. Those times have finally arrived for him, and if that doesn’t deserve passion, I don’t know what does.

[thoughtsonalbums]

Wedding Bells

Harps, toy pianos, and rain sticks go R&B for something unmistakably unique.

Wedding Bells is the definition of a crossover release. Magnus August Hoiberg released his first EP, Mirror Maru, a subtler piece that sounded much more like a sadbois Flying Lotus, and 3 years later, in 2015, he's producing/teaming/touring with R&B mainstays like Ariana Grande, Tinashe and Usher. In between the two, this came out. It captures the seemingly unnatural midpoint between those two styles so well that it's honestly pretty amazing it isn't a well-explored genre already. This isn't a mind-blowing release, but it's a confusing one - you're not going to have a reaffirmation on your life, and you're not going to become an instant fan for the instrumentation, but you're going to wonder "why didn't somebody do this already?" He takes Hemsworth's cloudy attempts at tying together the experimental electronic scene and the contemporary R&B scene, subtracts most of the reliance on the overtly obvious "sad-but-not-really" aesthetic/PR campaign, and adds a heaping tablespoon of alien to make something that fringes on the avant-garde with a much more positive, poppier attitude. The mood is something else. Cashmere stirs together the propulsion of a sweaty, slightly awkward dance floor with the spontanaeity and general composure of a relaxed night with friends. You can dance to it, but you'd look pretty stupid. You can just sit and listen, but you'd be hardpressed not to tap your feet. This music is made for mid-volume listening, jamming to alone in an empty room, and relatively insignifcant movements of the head, hands, and feet. It's something that won't propel you, but instead gently catches you in it's groove. "Gently" is the keyword here - the song structure is more reminiscent of popular current/more than slightly stale EDM than anything else (which, combined with a heavy dose of internet savvy, is probably the main reason such an odd artist has such a relatively large fanbase) - but the styling is, instead of the typical maximalist/minimalist anger and, dare I say it, "masculinity", fluffy, twinkling and sweet. The most obvious "drop" on the album is a loud bell solo in "Pearls." Listening to it come to fruition for the first time (and the few next listens) is like bracing yourself for a needle and getting a kiss instead. Striking moments like these abound through Wedding Bells, and they're all the better for it. Harps, whistles, flutes, triangles - you know, all instruments that largely get ignored in popular music - strike with a half-hearted smile, not a vengeance. Where most producers, one way or another, use some sort of drop, Cashmere uses his signature droplet. Clicks, locks and ticks replace the 808 as signature percussion. Radio static and almost Eno-esque gleam detail the gorgeous hand-made melody of pitched vocals, which occasionally skirt the PC Music-esque uncanny valley cliff side. Familiarly human hip-hop staples, like yells and thumps, are present, but muffled significantly, for a dramatically different, but of course similar, effect to more "normal" music. It's not different for the sake of difference, it's just a more beautiful, twisted version of the norm. Tropes about EDM, pop and hip-hop are put in their place as Cashmere uses tildes instead of exclamation points, pseudo-natural window sunlight with a pretty filter instead of the justifiedly stereotypical abrasive neon lightbulbs. The EP's main flaw is it's lack of development. Each track is gorgeous, clearly painstakingly produced, but none of them really flow inside of each other outside of aesthetic - that is, nothing really new happens, besides the overall novelty and excitement of the sound, to keep the excitement going. After the sheer amazement runs off to hide in your next new listen, it doesn't have much staying power. I'd be interested to see what Magnus could produce if he took a slightly more minimalistic approach (especially considering "Wolves," his new, subtler collaboration with Kanye West) or at least tracks that took a little more time to reveal their flourishes, rather than bringing them all out within the first half of the song. The entire length is only about 15 minutes long, he definitely could have extended that time quite a bit without dragging on. But that's a relatively minor complaint. Despite the flaws, Wedding Bells is a slightly brilliant, entirely cohesive, innovative, peppy, gorgeous EP. This is the kind of release that defines an artist, looks forward, and won't be forgotten.

[thoughtsonalbums]

Lava Pal

SNCKPCK highlights the passion of music, refining his art along the way.

One of the most common recurring trends in music is that of the aesthetic-driven genre. Whether it's the emotional poems, dark hair and teenage angst associated with the emo scene, or the extensive kerning, armless statues and Windows 95 desktops of vaporwave, all of these trends tend to completely polarize the music community. They always have over-enthusiastic fans claiming anything vaguely related to the genre as hugely important modern artistic pieces, and they always have dedicated haters who (perhaps passioned by the fans' overenthusiasm) claim them to take no skill and have absolutely no worth. Later on, past the veil of current emotional stances, as it turns out, the answer is usually somewhere in the middle. SNCKPCK, the alias for Daniel Alexander, is a contagiously positive person who uses his semi-unique personality to help make heavily aesthetic music. It lives off of the variety that only a bandcamp bedroom producer could pull off, ridiculous positivity, sheer enthusiasm, unmistakable modernity (one track is titled "a sunset so perfect it doesn't need a filter") and a presumably conscious lack of typical musical merit. There are dedicated fans, and Alexander consistently reflects that dedication. It almost seems like he's more of a character, or even a caricature than a musician. But unlike some artists that just live off their caricatures and ignore their jobs, there's something magical about the music.LAVA PAL makes you want to stop caring about pretensions, cynicism, rights, backgrounds, and controversies. This isn't the kind of album that pretends to be immune to criticism, it just allows for a fresh look on criticism and music as a whole. Imagine relaxing at your best friends' house, listening to him strum silly songs to his girlfriend on the ukulele. (Suspend any cynical disbelief for a minute and imagine that this isn't awkward.) Sometimes LAVA PAL comes across this way. But in other parts, mostly the later half, it shifts into charming synth work, often largely instrumental. He even has some nightcore (or Chipmunks, depending on your perspective) and shoegaze influence on "imagine a girl" and "a perfect day with you," respectively. Transitions between these styles are surprisingly smooth, deciding to cohere by mood rather than genre. "you look like a cat when you sleep" is a highlight, combining both synths and ukulele work. Perhaps the biggest achievement of that song is that it manages to make a Microsoft Bob style reading of "I want to kiss you, in a spaceship, upside down" positively cheery, if futuristic, rather than the usual spine-curdling. Both traditional and modern styles are approached quite nicely. On previous releases, most songs had a "feat.", but this time he apparently figured out how to do it all on his own, which is impressive, given the variety. Sounds range from chipper bleeps and bloops vibrantly dancing in "windows 95: lava edition" to blatantly romantic vocals and default piano synths reigning in "a perfect day with you." LAVA PAL, although it doesn't entirely rely on it as much as some past SNCKPCK releases, is defined by its mood. This time around, it's silly, fun, loving, and, as always, relentlessly cheerful. The lyrical and instrumental themes are significantly more balanced than his other releases, along with many other bands. COOL VIBES often struggled to catch the proper placement between dance, cheer, swagger, and humor, although it was a very admirable effort. On the other hand,songs for someone you love was consistent but very one-track-minded. But this time, he finally gets a solid mix between the two ideas, and even gets the timing just right. The album is fourteen songs, but none of them are very long, which is pleasant. It understands the delicacy between interludes and full-length songs, fun and story, kindness and laughter. It reaches that perfect mix of cohesiveness and diversity. Lyrics range from funny to childish to romantic to factual to surreal to imaginative to all of the above. Some examples: "Hey, you there, I like you, so I'll go to bed, with you in my head." "The pizza man is at the front door, are we gonna get it? That's a stupid question, heck yeah we're gonna get it." "If we, were, skeletons, I'd be, your, skeleton, I love you, so much. ('I don't think you get it, I love you so freakin' much, okay?')" Admittedly, hearing the word "freakin'" probably brings back immediate memories of edgy middle-schoolers, but SNCKPCK clearly isn't going for that. Instead, he's just legitimately really excited about this girl and doesn't want to make anyone feel bad by cursing. Alexander isn't the type who would ever curse anything. So why would he say something that would make people feel hurt, uncomfortable or offended? He's not trying to clean up his act, nor restrain himself in any way, he's just being a nice, loving person. Speaking of his kindness, he could have done with a bit more lyrical encouragement and a bit less swooning. He tied together the instrumental styles of previous albums, so it'd be good to see him mix together the lyrical styles as well. A significant part of the charm of the album is the spontaneity of the lyrics, so they do often get tiring after repeat listens. And his voice, while endearing, is not pop star-quality. In particular, it's audibly shaky in the grating opener "welcome 2 the future," a track I often skip. Apart from that, he does decently for an amateur. And honestly, with this kind of music, the measurable quality of the instrument, even if the instrument is a voice, isn't really the point. But if you find it hard to listen to an average-quality voice for an extensive period of time, the album has many instrumentals and heavily modified vocals to helpfully break up any monotony. LAVA PAL is a nice break from the rest of the music world, which all takes itself a bit too seriously. It's the kind of album we "serious" music fans love to hate; it's optimistic, quick, fun, blunt, and very, very pop. But we don't really (or we shouldn't, anyway) hate music like that because of how matter-of-fact it is. Instead we tend to hate it because it tends to be stunningly impersonal, average, and overrated. Life isn't as cheerful as an artist like Owl City or early Taylor Swift would have us believe, and we can feel that fraudulence in the music. That's why LAVA PAL is so essential to music - it's incredibly real, and somehow cheerful. It's the actual optimism music is so often lacking. It’s the candid smile instead of the “smile for the camera.” It does have pitfalls: over-reliance on the same lyrical concepts, some songs that taste like Splenda instead of sugar, and above average, rather than great, bedroom production. However, it has everything else needed for a great piece of work. It's both modern and retro, trying out new sounds while exploring a mood of music that hasn't really been properly pieced together since Pet Sounds. It's cohesive, tying and mixing together genre after genre into one solid mood. It's varied, with only a few songs sounding too similar. It's lyrically and melodically emotional, cheerfully living life to the best of its ability. It's surprisingly cohesive. Above all, it's unique. Nobody but SNCKPCK makes music like this, optimism without the naivety, a jam session without the muffled comments. He grabs moments of pure, unadulterated, stunningly legitimate joy, pushes them together bravely, and nicely asks us to go ahead, give it a shot!

[thoughtsonalbums]

Discovery

Disco, house and pop combined into something unexpectedly forward-thinking that the world is just now almost catching up with.

There’s often a bit of a disconnect between a longtime listener attempting to convince someone to hear an album for the first time. It’s often difficult to convey the feelings and insights a release gives a listener. Many albums are merely collections of songs, whether intentionally or not. On the other hand, many albums, particularly more challenging or experimental releases, are obviously meant as a solitary whole. Either of these are easy enough to express to a music fan - “Just listen to the first couple songs.” “You have to hear it all together.” Most of the best albums find a sweet spot in between. Unfortunately, this can create the aforementioned disconnect. If a listener absorbs an album expecting particularly good songs, and not consuming the album as a whole, they can’t properly appreciate the cohesion, the mood, the flow, or the story. Discovery is a classic example of this kind of album. It’s an amazing piece that often gets disregarded to “good” or “decent” status because most of its tracks work well enough as stand-alone songs, and the listener can’t realize they have to back up to see the mosaic the songs paint. When it first came out, critics saw a respected, if slightly abnormal, pair of house producers attempt to join the mainstream. (It worked, in case you were curious - the album has sold almost three million copies.) The current electronic music scene was stuck in a bit of a rut. Minus Since I Left You, (The Avalanches) You’ve Come A Long Way Baby, (Fatboy Slim) and Remedy (Basement Jaxx) there hadn’t been very many particularly good “fun” albums yet. The electronic scene was critically dominated by artists like Bjork, Aphex Twin, and Portishead, who, while intriguing and innovative in their own right, were certainly not fun. This is a big part of what makes Discovery such an astounding album. Daft Punk created one of the most fun, accessible, and inspirational electronic albums ever, combining the relatively stale genre of house (which they had already played out in their debut, Homework) with accessible pop and the bouncy genre most people hoped time would forget - disco. As such, when it came out, critics disagreed about it, many previous fans disliked it, and nobody really knew what to think. There hadn’t been an album like Discovery before - and fourteen years later, there still hasn’t been one. Even though it works much better as a whole, most of the songs on Discovery work on their own, as distinct, if repetitive, individuals. Starting off the album is the impeccable pop standard, “One More Time.” It’s hard to understate just how good “One More Time” really is. It blurs lines between verse, build and hook, and all of it is pure ecstasy. Any other artist who could come up with that great of a hook would have likely spoiled it by playing it through the entire song (see Tiger & Woods). But Daft Punk smartly decide to cool it down midway through, setting the stage for buildup/drop anthems before they were cool, let alone as stale as they are now. They aren’t settled with this pattern, however - a lesson that hundreds of sprouting producers could learn. Instead, they choose to use the next song, which could have easily been another radio hit, as an incredibly satisfying breakdown for “One More Time.” Immediately following that is the first Daft Punk song to actually include a lyrical story of some sort, “Digital Love,” a synth-laden anthem that cheerfully captures the feeling of lost dreams. Following this, “Harder Better Faster Stronger” breaks it down once again - but this time, it does so in a stand-alone song, composed of basslines, build-ups and possibly the best use of a vocoder ever. By the end of the first third of the album, they’ve seemingly made their mission clear - this is almost not even a house album anymore. Fortunately, that isn’t the case. Daft Punk seemed to realize that their talent for endless hooks and four-on-the-floor beats shouldn’t go wasted. “Crescendolls,” “High Life” and “Superheroes” all heavily rely on funk samples with house-style basslines and excellently timed breaks. Despite the songwriting skills required to tie the samples to the other layers of the song, many are eager to claim these samples as a clear sign of inferior musical ability. There is some truth to that theory - there are many artists who take an aged dance sample, apply a liberal supply of modern production and call it a new piece. But this isn’t how Daft Punk work. The sampling on this album is, for the most part, wholeheartedly original, rivaling other plunderphonics masters like The Avalanches or DJ Shadow. If you hadn’t heard the original song, you almost certainly wouldn’t realize that Discovery uses so many samples, and in some cases, not even then. “High Life,” for example, takes lone syllables from various segments of Taveres’ “Break Down For Love” into a naturally flowing call that sounds like a cheerier Hopelandic. The samples on Discovery are so extensively modified and often obscure that many are still being searched for to this day. Even after the burst of energy the middle third of the album provides, Discovery just keeps going. It mixes up the style quite a bit yet again, with some very necessary slower songs - “Something About Us,” “Voyager,” “Veridis Quo,” all of which are beautiful, underappreciated pieces that help the album’s cohesion significantly - and then moves on to the high energy “Short Circuit,” which soon suddenly breaks off into a haunting, tired rhythm. Finally, at the end of the album, “Face to Face” and “Too Long” tie back together, respectively, the pop and the house of the first two thirds of the album. At this ending point, the listener has heard an entire hour of music. Impressively, it hasn’t overstayed it’s welcome. Discovery showcases Daft Punk’s brilliant sense of timing and variety better than anything else they’ve released. The duo understands exactly how long they can tease the listener for maximum anticipation - and then they know exactly how to fulfill those nearly impossible expectations. This method is used both in individual songs and in the album as a whole. "Aerodynamic," for example, seamlessly transitions between pounding basslines, waving background chords, and a ringing bell. And Discovery flows back and forth from pop to house to disco, in the process creating an album with some of each and a bit of something all of it's own that has never been duplicated. Part of this singularity is due to the album's mood. Sure, there have been quite a few great EDM albums released after and before Discovery, but none of them are as boundlessly fun, creative and honest as the latter. Butter (Hudson Mohawke) captures all of the spontaneity, but little of the flow and humanity. Worlds (Porter Robinson) captures all of the influence and emotion, but loses the variety and honesty. Even Random Access Memories , by Daft Punk themselves, doesn't quite understand that what makes Discovery so great is the way it combines technology with humanity, dance with emotion, fun with rest, and inspiration with creativity - things that naturally meld together in reality, making it all the more beautiful. It mixes up the awkward spontaneity of a high school dance, the hilarious conversation with someone you’ll never see again, the sudden exhaustion of much too long of a day, the love on first sight, the stupid optimism of a few too many drinks, the conquering of the local world, the ten seconds of fame, the raw release of a voice at a karaoke night, and the wish that life could always be like this. It’s essentially every Friday night you’ve ever had. As such a great album, naturally it has influenced many new artists. It can be heard on hip-hop releases such as Kanye West's Graduation and Gorillaz' Demon Days, largely because it helped reincarnate sampling into something modern. More obvious is its influence on the electronic music scene - influencing artists from Rustie to Lemaitre to Anamanaguchi to Madeon, among countless others. Many artists were inspired to create music primarily from hearing this. If any one album is responsible for the overall sound and success of the new bedroom producer generation, it’sDiscovery. In it, Daft Punk made an album that predicted the slow rebirth of disco, presented both French and Japanese styles as cool, and made EDM fun, all years before any of those were accepted as fashionable. Now, in 2015, all of those trends are being or have been played out, and yet nobody has managed to duplicate the original. Discovery is something special in music. It's a truly entertaining stand-alone piece, even apart from Interstella 5555. It's something you can play at a party or by yourself and evoke the same blissful emotions. It has transformed electronic music and continues to influence many artists. It takes a wide range of ideas and styles and mixes them all into something all of its own. It steals your breath, gives it back so you can remember how it feels, and then takes it away again. It’s the soundtrack of a great day. No album can actually make someone happy, but Discovery does a pretty good job of tricking you into it.

[thoughtsonalbums]

Wonderland

Whimsical.

Sampling is a debated topic and will likely continue to be debated for years to come. Wonderland, among other plunderphonics masterpieces like Since I Left You, will hopefully be used as an example of the kind of art that can only be achieved with sampling. Wonderland is a perfect example of timing. In “Unbirthday”, gusty breaths sync perfectly with vocal samples and butter-smooth beats. Almost any other artist using gusts as a fundamental part of the skeleton of a song would find themselves creating a very scary or at least unnatural sounding song, but Pogo does it in a flowing and free fashion. The EP as a whole is also very well-timed; the flow from “Unbirthday” and “Lost” is a little unsettling, but otherwise it all feels natural, from the tired, recently awoken feeling of “Alice” to the final well-placed echo at the conclusion of “Bread And Butterflies.” The film “Alice In Wonderland” is a classic, but Pogo doesn’t come across as arrogant, attention-seeking, or even foolhardy for using such a revered source. (see Mouth Silence, Neil Cicierega) Rather, he captures the film’s dreamy, unreal, tired feeling perfectly. Vocal samples are arranged in such a fashion that very little quite makes sense, although it feels like you’re almost getting it, just like the rabbit hole. The arrangements feel dazed and lazy but were obviously highly meticulously arranged. Ideas are repeated just enough to feel a vague sense of déja vu but not enough to feel overly repetitive. This release feels like the soundtrack that should have been, even though it is much more of a main feature than the background sounds soundtracks normally are. Wonderland could be described as a dream, but this wouldn’t exactly be accurate. Rather, it is the rare moment when you have become aware that you are falling asleep. You notice strange things going through your head at frantic paces, but you don’t really seem to mind too much. You feel funny, but you’re perfectly content with that. Somehow, your mind keeps moving around and around with different thoughts - the opposite of boredom. Nothing actually is logical but that’s totally alright with you - you definitely want more. So go ahead. Fall asleep. Listen to Wonderland. Jump into the rabbit hole.

[thoughtsonalbums]

I Love You

An unfortunate lack of creativity is thankfully just overwhelmed by great hooks and more than enough personal flair.

Let's get something straight: this EP is not meant to be particularly innovative. It's meant to be a bit of a cheap thrill. Sure, it would have been quite a bit better and more interesting if it was, but it isn't. Obviously this is bad, but there's more to music than innovation, and I Love You EP proves it. It's essentially a crossover between the creative Cashmere Cat and the other producers in the otherwise relatively stale Jersey Club genre. Thankfully, it does this very well. It mixes together the insane grooves of Jersey Club and the intriguing wonky styles of Cashmere without breaking any sweats - other than the listener's. I Love You EP shows a bit of an over-reliance on producer cliches - from the insistence of placing his signature sound in every possible corner of every song, to the two parts of a song that build on each other so much that they might as well be one song. Some of the songs - particularly "I Love You Pt. 2" - sound stale and have no particularly good sense of progression. Most rely almost entirely on the overdone drop, quiet, gradually building bassline, drop routine. Fortunately, Lido is masterful at this, even if he does overuse it. The best example is "Money." Full of hyper-synthesized vocals and sudden explosive snares, it's easily the highlight of the EP. On the other hand, "Lost," despite having a much more traditional composition style than any of the other tracks, underwhelms, as it relies on its somewhat dull chorus just as much as the other hook-heavy songs rely on theirs. Ultimately, Lido has shown himself to be excellent at drawing listeners in, but he can't quite keep them there. But that's not really what this kind of music is about, and what it is about - a dripping, fun sense of style and fantastic hooks - is almost perfectly accomplished.

[thoughtsonalbums]

Worlds

Inspired, creative, but not quite up to the impossible task set before it.

"...the thing with 'Worlds' for me is that it’s ultimately about this idea of the worlds that exist online." That's Porter Robinson (in an interview with Mixmag) defining the concept behind Worlds to us. Did he succeed? Does it live up to the hype? Ultimately, yes. Not without flaws, but yes. Although it is a concept album at heart, it doesn't really sound much like one. What it does sound like is a heavily inspired, simultaneously glossy and glitchy, semi-symphonic electropop collection with a decent balance of "art" and "hit." Some albums try too hard for musical creativity and integrity, and some albumstry too hard for popularity or ease of listening. Porter has a little trouble figuring out what he wants but ultimately strikes a decent middle ground by the end. It's a great album for going outside and looking at the sky and dreaming to - catchy, inspiring, uplifting, transporting - but not as good as it could be. Worlds is obviously very inspired by various artists. Porter is not ashamed of admitting this - he has a Spotify playlist dedicated to music he likes, which includes Jon Hopkins, Daft Punk, Kanye West, Chrome Sparks, and CHVRCHES. All of these are clearly heard in his album, but there are various other influences as well that are even more easily identifiable, which is usually a bad thing. The overlly clear M83 inspiration behind "Sea Of Voices" kind of ruins an otherwise great song. But the overall combination of influences, when combined with a dash of creativity, can create something much more interesting. "Flicker" is a great example - Daft Punk-like repetition of samples plus funk, an early Giraffage-like segment, Flume-like subtlety, and a chiptune style combine to create something totally unheard of in EDM. Of course, if we're being honest, Worldsreally isn't the EDM killer that it was prophesied to be, or even an EDM album at all. Just likeRandom Access Memories (Daft Punk) before it, it was overly and falsely hyped as an EDM album that would blow the minds of all its listeners, when, in reality, it is simply another genre of music entirely. Maybe it will help diversify the market some. But M83, Passion Pit, and Daft Punk have each made similar albums with Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, Gossamer, and Discovery. That's not to say that this isn't it a good and creative album - it's just that it's not as innovative as many hoped. Some of the moments really spark like nothing else out there right now - for examples, the intense contrast in "Fellow Feeling," the perfectly timed development of elements in "Divinity," the crescendo at the end of "Fresh Static Snow" - but the album feels a bit stale some of the time. There's an unfortunately repetitive "dramatic synthesizer-laden chorus, dramatic piano-style synth note finale" electropop formula to some of the songs (particularly "Years Of War," "Polygon Dust," and "Hear The Bells.") It's clear that Porter tries to stop this from happening, with mixed results. "Natural Light" is a good try at a Flume-style interlude of sorts, but it feels out of place, which is unfortunate because the album definitely could have used the variety. The sequence between "Lionhearted," "Sea Of Voices," and "Fellow Feeling," on the other hand, works extremely well, despite or perhaps because of the drastic differences between the three. This shows an extraordinary level of promise which would have been fantastic had it been translated to the entire album. That's the real problem with Worlds - it's hit or miss. It combines songs ranging from good to fantastic, and doesn't quite combine them right. Overall, it's an incredible collection of songs. But it's not an incredible album. Porter obviously could get it right, but he so unfortunately doesn't. Ultimately, he successfully captures the "idea of the worlds that exist online," but not without capturing their fatal flaw as well - the listener/player begins to eventually get a sense that they're hearing/doing the same thing over and over again. If only there were a few well-placed interludes, if only some songs were a little less repetitive, if only some were placed differently - if only we could get out of the world and into Worlds like Porter so clearly wants us to.

[thoughtsonalbums]

Triadzz/Slasherr

A brief exploration into maximalism. 

To get the idea of what Triadzz/Slasher is like, take a look at the album art. It's dark, dirty, shiny and sharp. This describes the single perfectly. Triadzz is initially a bit of a let-down for the average Rustie fan - it starts off with a huge synth buildup, and then drops to a dark trap beat. This isn't expected but it works very well, and it makes the next drop, the expected synth one, that much sharper. When they're finally combined near the end they're both that much better around the next listen. Slasherr, on the other hand, is not a let-down in the slightest. In fact, it exceeds expectations significantly. It combines the melodic style of Surph (off Glass Swords) with the incredible synth drop style of Secrets + Lies (off Mirror Maru, Cashmere Cat) with that shiny Rustie touch that multiplies everything by about 10. By the time you're done with this single, you'll probably be itching for more. That's the only strong flaw with this release - it really could have been an EP - and if the main complaint about something is that there should be more of it, then it has to be good.