Monday, March 17, 2014

Album Reviews: March 2014 Week 2

The Octopus Project - "Fever Forms" 2013
These guys are a hard group to describe. Definitely extremely psychedelic. Their sound is mostly built from keyboards, but the majority of the songs still seem to have a more rock n roll feel to them, if that makes sense. They do a really good job with sound placement, where every noise in the song sounds like it's coming from different places, but each noise has it's own space within the speakers or headphones. Most of the songs are instrumental, but there are a few songs with vocals scattered here and there. Highly recommended. Buy it or listen to it here. Check out the videos for "Whitby" and "Sharpteeth". (These videos are excellent). Also check out "Mmkit""Deep Spice", and "Perhap".

A$AP Ferg - "Trap Lord" 2013
This is one of the more entertaining rap albums i've heard in a long while. His flows are very interesting and varied. He goes from a Danny Brown-esque flow at times, to flows that fit in with his A$AP Mob crew, to rapid fire, sing-songy, lightly laced with patois sounding flows, that sound like a cross between members of Bone Thugs N Harmony (who actually make a guest appearance on a song) and members of Strange Music at times. There is almost always an element of comedy to his lyrics, and it gives the album an overall fun feel, even when the subject matter gets gritty or crass. His background vocals are hilarious. You can usually hear some sort of echoed and filtered track of him chanting and wailing like some alternate universe Ol Dirty Bastard that's trapped in a different dimension. The production is incredibly solid. Most of the beats are engaging on both a basic level and a deeper psychedelic level as well. Almost every one is a banger. Check out the videos for "Work (Remix)" featuring A$AP Rocky, French Montana, Trinidad James, and Schoolboy Q"Shabba" featuring A$AP Rocky (this song gets stuck in my head like crazy), "Hood Pope", and "Let It Go". Also check out "Fergivicious""Fuck Out My Face" featuring B-Real, Onyx, and Aston Matthews, and "Murda Something" featuring Waka Flocka Flame.

Rob Sonic - "Alice In Thunderdome" 2013
As far as I heard, this is like a demo version of his next album that he most likely scrapped most of, because I think he just leaked this material to the internet himself randomly one day. I don't know that for a fact though, but it seems plausible with the way this album sounds. There's a few gems on here for sure, but there's also a few complete duds that I would hope never make it to an official release. There's a song that's clearly produced by Tobacco, and that's a cool surprise. Most of these beats sound like he self-produced them, and there's a couple that sound really intricate, and I can say the same thing about them as I said in the Octopus Project review above about sound placement. Some of these beats have great sound placement and there is nobody else that has this same style that I know of in the hip hop world. It's very unique without being too weird to listen to, which is a hard balance to achieve. I can't find any links to any of these songs to share, but this album isn't hard to find online.

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