and before I start blathering on about it I was wondering if anyone could hit me with some contemporary R&B recs that might help me better contextualize it? I'm familiar with Frank Ocean, Janelle Monáe, Laura Mvula, Charles Bradley, THEESatisfaction, Rhye, FKA Twigs, James Ferraro's R&B-ish stuff, Weeknd, Autre Ne Veut, Bey, and I guess Jamie Woon and James Blake if they count. I also listened to that one MØ album when it first came out but I can't really remember what it sounds like. Oh and also Drake I guess
Alright well I'll hope for some more recs re: BJ the Chicago Kid but in the mean time I'm half-way through this beauty which I copped from skinny
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Galactic Parables: Volume 1 by Rob Mazu... Orchestra
He remarked that it's the best jazz album of the year, and if it keeps up like this throughout the second disc then it may very well be a contender. Already feel like it's gonna have more staying power with me than The Epic (which I loved at first and still quite enjoy but which has significantly fallen in my estimation.)
Will be sure to edit in fully fleshed out thoughts after I finish the whole thing. Feels a little all over the place so far (which I don't mind tbh. Feels more sprawling than disorganized) so I'm interested to see how the cohesion holds up for a whole nother disc
Past 2 years have been really remarkable for new jazz releases
***
Skinny on point as usual. Maybe not quite the greatest jazz album I've heard all year but it is definitely among them. It's a pretty interesting blend of free-but-not-that-free jazz and some tasty overblown skronky-ness, occasionally atop a subtle(ish) tape music backdrop and often featuring some impassioned preaching of some sort. The musicianship here is tight, with each instrumentalist moving fairly seamlessly to moments of chill modality to mild (and occasionally not-so-mild) dissonance, and moving across a very broad spectrum of moods and tones ranging from trepidatious staccato to hard bop intensity to laid-back gliding to just "in-the-moment" jamming. The songs themselves are structured such that each player is still ultimately working off of some kind of established structural framework, but free enough that it took me until the album was almost over to realize that 75% of the tracks on the second disc are just alternate performances of their disc 1 counterparts; the songs lend themselves very well to live re-imagining (while still very much maintaining their sonic identity) and the (rotating cast?) of musicians are excellent at playing off of each-others changes and functioning as one collective unit all dedicated to the same cause of making some dope music, and they seem to be having a really good time of it. Bangin'
both are really great, but I adore the former. I sort of get why Floral Shoppe wouldn't be up your alley but can't see how you wouldn't dig either of these gorgeosities
(plus they're both short *and* I may actually get to that album you recced me in my diary #bribery) _________________
I listened to the Yung Bae album a couple of times and had a lot of fun with it. Didn't quite make my 2015 chart but it was certainly a good time of an album. Been meaning to listen to Macross, so thanks for reminding me
OH YEAH hey did I mention that one of my (if not my) most anticipated tapes of the year has been getting some familiarization listens for about 10 days now? And I've concluded that it's (predictably) fan tucking fastic
I'll do my best to make this sound like a little more than the maddened ravings of a fanboy, but I can't promise that this won't end up coming out as the stuff that inspires restraining orders (and tbh I wouldn't mind the autograph inherent in that...)
ANYWAY, so, for anyone not up-to-date: Hellfyre Club is not-quite-a-label/not-exactly-a-"collective" group of underground hip-hop artists from LA brought together -initially as something of an off-shoot of Project Blowed- by emcee Nocando (who's Jimmy the Burnout y'all should listen to), often mentioned in the same breath as (likewise LA based) wonky/glitch-hop producers in the realm of Prefuse 73, Nosaj Thing, FlyLo, Daedalus, edIT, and others. Hellfyre doesn't have that many active members, but they're active enough, varied enough, and have enough pointless aliases, that you could reasonably assume that there's a veritable fuck-ton of 'em, and the fact that they always show up everywhere on each-others work just adds to the feeling that we're looking at some kind of esoteric guild of endlessly enigmatic art-rappers, and you'd only be half wrong in thinking this. Enigmatic art-rappers sure, but where experimental/abstract hip-hop can sometimes fall victim to surrounding itself in an air of elitism and "weirdness for weirdness sake", Hellfyre just kind of exist happily and humbly in their own little world; they aren't actively trying to expand the sonic boundaries of hip-hop I don't think, so much as doing so is just a natural consequence of them just doing what comes naturally. This is just how these guys think; they function as something akin to the spiritual descendants of Freestyle Fellowship and Del Tha Funky Homosapien.
So where does Busdriver fit into all this exactly?
Busdriver is the veteran (and the most significant force of influence) among these young 'uns. You can think of Busdriver as something of the eccentric grandfather at the head of the dining room table of Hellfyre, except that where normal children are expected to be generally embarrassed by their eccentric grandparents, Busdriver’s Hellfyre progeny think he’s the coolest thing since flavored condoms, and it shows in their work, work which is VERY much individual to the artist making it (these Hellfyre guys are exceptionally good at finding their own unique voices and styles in a world where it seems like everything is already taken no matter how bizarre) but that almost invariably has at least a hint of Busdriver in it somewhere. Like him or not, Driver has been pretty damn vital to the development of the LA underground as we know it now, and it's pretty damn hard to mistake him for anyone else no matter how far "out-there" he goes. And this new tape, Thumbs, might be his most "out there" to date, but it's still unmistakably his own, and it's really really fucking good.
This is probably the most technically skilled Driver has ever appeared as a rapper, which isn't a huge deal tbh; Busdriver's problem has never been in needing to prove his rapping chops; Driver's biggest weakness is that he's all too aware of his strengths. In the past he's fallen victim to having entire album segments seemingly existing for the sole purpose of demonstrating the full extent of his virtuosic flow, and other times his intense ambition goes well beyond any actual potential for further content, resulting in some exceedingly interesting but ultimately overblown works. And sometimes, Busdriver's wackjob one-man-Wu-Tang-circus personality is just a little overwhelming. Here on Thumbs he manages to mostly keep everything in check while still letting his creativity run wild, and it's definitely a crazy ride but one that never really feels overlong.
Lots of stuff works here that shouldn't. Some deft rapping over breakcore sections, Driver taking a backseat to let Del dominate a particularly odd track, a couple of unexpected appearances from Jeremiah Jae (whom you may know and love if your name is Benpaco), even clipping.'s Daveed Diggs fucking MURDERS his verse. Oh and the lead singer of Future Islands is a perfectly decent rapper. There's also a "skit" about a third of the way through (simply titled "Skit") that made me actually laugh out loud (and not for any of the reasons you're probably thinking). Sure there's a ton of weirdness here and a ton of creative production, and sure Busdriver's wordsmanship is fucking labyrinthine, but much like last year's Perfect Hair, there's a lot of humanity and actual raw emotion at the core of it all. Also much like last year's Perfect Hair, sometimes the weirdest moments are the most strangely beautiful, such as on "Worlds To Run", where Milo opens with a verse of his signature "vulnerable intellectual nerdy guy" thing atop a shockingly not-annoying melodic acoustic guitar sample, with a peaceful hook courtesy of Anderson .Paak (whom you may have noticed earlier this year on the new Dre). It's a weirdly sentimental piece, and it kinda adds to the feeling that in a way Busdriver & friends are perfectly grounded, just not on Earth. There's an odd internal logical consistency amidst all the stylistic versatility. Everything here feels otherworldly, but it's all definitely from the same other world, and the tape does an excellent job of fully immersing you in this uniquely fucked-up neurotic fantasy land until it feels like home, and the regular world feels fucking boring by comparison. Long liveHellfyre Club
Alright currently downloading me some Macross. In the mean time I gave a cursory listen to
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Abyss X - Echoes
Very atmospheric (almost vaporwavey) left-field R&B/art pop stuff with some grimey sounding 808s scattered throughout and some moments of almost trap-esque production. Didn't leave too much of an impression on me but I can definitely see this being something that Precedent, SuedeSwede, and maaaybe satie might find to their liking. Made a nice soundtrack to souleekqing Macross anyway
Tons of fun. I'm such a sucker for those basslines. Almost made me envision a much funkier version of Super Mario Sunshine, complete with all the moderately wacky seaside chilling. This one struck me as a lot more natural sounding than Disco Edits, which again was fun but felt oddly mechanical to me for some reason (despite seriously digging those basslines). This whole future funk thing is a really cool extension of vaporwave imo, and I think Macross does a pretty decent job of mixing the fun with the floaty and ethereal, (and of making some nice sounding horns that would sound fucking boring in any other context). Also it's nice at avoiding a lot of the style-over-substance complaints I often have towards certain vaporwave artists (*cough*macintosh plus*cough*), and I know I keep using the word "fun" but IT'S SO APT because if nothing else this record is a damn good time
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Really liked your Busdriver writeup, and it might actually make me check him out. For whatever reason, besides Freestyle Fellowship, which has a bit of teeth to it, I've found the bulk of abstract qualities, conscious hip hop to be pretty uninspiring in the past couple of years, falling out of love with old favorites and being generally unmoved by CunninLynguists and such. Kendrick's new one was an exception until it wasn't. You make it all sound a bit fun, though. I assume I should start with Temporary Forever since I recognize the cover of that one from what seems like several places... Maybe it's been mentioned a lot on /mu/ or something?
Really liked your Busdriver writeup, and it might actually make me check him out. For whatever reason, besides Freestyle Fellowship, which has a bit of teeth to it, I've found the bulk of abstract qualities, conscious hip hop to be pretty uninspiring in the past couple of years, falling out of love with old favorites and being generally unmoved by CunninLynguists and such. Kendrick's new one was an exception until it wasn't. You make it all sound a bit fun, though. I assume I should start with Temporary Forever since I recognize the cover of that one from what seems like several places... Maybe it's been mentioned a lot on /mu/ or something?
Temporary Forever is likely my personal favorite atm (though Perfect Hair comes close, and Gowi would likely argue for RoadKillOvercoat or Fear of a Black Tangent).
I think for me what separates Busdriver (and the majority of his LA contemporaries) from the rest of the art-rap world (other than the very glitch-influenced production that I tend to dig quite a bit) is that I don't feel like he's really outwardly trying to do anything profound or revelatory. He's just trying to make the tunes he wants to make, and at his worst that comes across as some ego-driven nonsense, but more often than not it's just a ton of fun with some unexpected emotional punch here and there. Like I said earlier, the music all kinda exists in it's own bizarre world, and it's perfectly happy to do so
I guess listen to this and this, and if you like the former better then start with Temp Forever and if you prefer the latter then go with Perfect Hair. If you think both are ass then hey I tried (though I guess you could still try out this little piece tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation)
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