Athena

/NR/ (sort of)

I'll review this fully eventually. There's a lot to unpack, just know for now that I think this is /insanely/ good, and shows a real refining of the instrumentals and chaos of Schlagenheim into a prog masterpiece that solidifies Black Midi as a band at the forefront of modern musical innovation.

I'm really not sure I'm well equipped to give this album a sufficient review. I haven't ever heard anything like this; It's a hearbreaking, phenomonal artistic statement that defies all of the accepted ideas about what rap and experimental rap can be. The sound pallette has changed from the JPEG-Style light-hearted glitches and synths of their previous LP into that of a shattered, fractured mix where every segment of each song has been thrown out of wack, and yet it retains this haunting melody ... read more

Pom Poko's sophmore rarely rises to excellence, but it definitely stands out as a /real/ nice noise pop album - Fangel's ever-unique vocal delivery provides for some really interesting sounds that just aren't present anywhere else. Where the album falls is often in a quest to make the sounds more experimental than they need to be, which can occaisionally come off more grasting than innovative. When listening to the album, I'm often reminded of LCD Soundsystem - despite their totally different ... read more

Holy shit.

I'd never delved into Simz's solo music heavily before - like many, I'd heard that she was an underrated, incredible rapper after her previous album, but for some reason or other, I never checked her out beyond a few features. Part of me is glad about that, because it means I went into this album completely blind, which ended up providing me the best first-listen experience I've had this entire year.

Without a doubt, this is an instant classic. Every single part of SIMBI is crafted ... read more