Monday, June 17, 2013

Album Reviews: June 2013 Week 2

Tyler The Creator - "Wolf" 2013
Tyler is a weird anomaly to the music world right now. Not that the music that he makes is very weird, per se. It's mostly just recycled rebellious teenager rants that he'll probably cringe at when he's an old man, but you gotta get famous and make money somehow, right. Shock G said it best when he said "just to catch a break I had to blow up my nose". Everyone needs a gimmick, and Tyler has for sure honed in on the pouty teenager, mad at his parents, running back to his room screaming "I fucking hate you!", attitude. This is annoying to repeatedly hear for someone like me in my mid 30's, but i'm sure it goes over pretty well for the target audience. In the end, I would rather see people like him blow up than a lot of the average 2Chainz, Chief Keef type people, because I feel like for someone like Tyler this is just the beginning of a long and fruitful career that will change a lot over time and probably be a little sideways compared to the mainstream of the future, whereas those other guys are more like one trick ponies who are in the peak of their career, fully participating in the new millenium minstrel show, and can only go down from here. He's already showing signs of wanting to break out of this mold a little bit by having guests on this album like Erykah Badu and Laetitia Sadier. This album isn't as amazing or terrible as certain people are making it out to be, it's just a decent rap album that works good as background music for me. Check out the weird looking video for "IFHY"the video for "Domo23""Lone", and "Jamba" featuring Hodgy Beats.

MGMT - "Alien Days" 2013
I have no idea about the origins of this song or when their new album is coming, but i've been geekin for a new MGMT release ever since 2009's "Congratulations", which was dismissed by all the hipsters that made them famous in the first place, because instead of trying to be some one trick pony, one hit wonder, bullshit electronic pop hipster act, they decided to be a full on progressive psychedelic rock band in the same vein as The Flaming Lips, and suddenly it seemed apparent to me that these guys were going to be interesting for years to come. As far as I know this was a vinyl only release for Record Store Day this year. Alien Days does not disappoint, but does not blow me away either. The B-Side isn't really a song, but a spoken word piece, that isn't very interesting to me. This was a good teaser to let me know they still exist and whet my appetite for more. Check it out.

L-Vis 1990 - "Circuits" 2013
I'm not super familiar with all of his other work, but I remember at least slightly enjoying a couple of his previous EP's. None of these songs really do much for me, but then again, I feel like a lot of the average techno and house songs out there don't really ever either. I'm a poor judge of this style of music because it's not really my thing, and when I do like stuff, it's very specific. Check out "That Thunder Track""Wires", and the title song.

Cook Classics - "Cook Classics vs. Now Again" 2013
Now Again Records has an ongoing series where they let producers pillage their catalogue and make new beats out of them. I really enjoy the way this one turned out. I only have one other album by Cook Classics, and that one is more of a standard hip hop/producer album, with different guest emcees on each track. It's nice to hear him flaunt his style without rappers rapping over it, and the beats really ended up sounding versatile and not like they were all made by the same man. Unfortunately, I think this album is not quite yet available for retail, and I got it early through my Now Again subscription, so there is only one song available to listen to online right now, but you can download that song for free from the official site here.

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