* Teknofonic is the name of the New York record label which has administered this “best-of” compilation. The label just hatched in 2015, and indeed its Essentials Vol. 1 title does feel absurdly ambitious, sort of like Sub Pop’s plans for “world domination,” but in truth many of these tracks do shine as legitimate house […]
Score: 6.5/10 . Coming from Estonia as it does, a country so far north, this project finds an ironically “tropical” vibe permeating its strut, and stride. The words, when there are lyrics, are sung in English, but its overall disqualifications from being in any way “traditional” go way past this — its total assimilation to […]
Score: 7.5/10 . Per my specific taste in things, Alanis Morissette ends up being sort of a crossover star within my artistic feelers, but not at all in the typically banal, Hollywood way. That is to say, it’s undoubtedly substance itself that put her into stardom — her music career propelled by power and melody […]
Score: 8/10 . Wow, it’s amazing how hard it is for electronica musicians these days to actually sound ORIGINAL. That, but it’s also just, that this is the case. It makes sense that this genre would have generally, by and large, run its course, all the Flying Lotus albums sounding roughly the same (I personally […]
Score: 10/10 . There’s really nothing I could say to describe how great this hourlong video is, this is more of just a promotion of it than a description. One thing that jumps out however is the effect that “All Those Yesterdays” has on the vid, or rather, the effect that the production has on […]
Score: 7/10 . I’ve heard “funk rock” done badly: lack of one-beat chutzpah, excessive moaning and wailing on the part of the vocalist. Dawn to Dusk definitely isn’t that. Jim Wellman is a veteran of the craft who’s nuanced out a centered, balanced journey of rhythm and jazz which unfortunately, through occasional excessive ambition, becomes […]
Score: 7/10 . I just started subscribing to NME, and as much as I love it for the unabated music-centered zeal and the relative lowness of advertising, sometimes I just get this feeling of being surrounded by things overwhelmingly BRITISH. A Head Full of Dreams is just that — like Colorado’s high and dry Big […]
Score: 5/10 . We have upon us now a new musical act, Add Agency, and an 11-song album, Gemstone Radar — fixings with a vaguely hip-hop feel to them. When you attempt to google the “record label,” “Stratking Records,” nothing comes up, and there’s no wikipedia blurb on them. The first two songs on the […]
Score: 8/10 . Violins sound strikingly like Neko Case’s voice. Or is it the other way around? Along these lines, the sonic layering mastery on iTunes Live from Montreal is no surprise to any A.C. Newman fan, and I really hope you are one! I remember getting a “You’re just aces” (cheeky) from the old-as-sin […]