MICROTONAL MARCH: 1/8

Hello, welcome to Microtonal March! This month, I’ll be participating in an event hosted by @zzile where twice per week, I’ll be listening to and reviewing a selected album with microtonal descriptors.

“What is microtonal music?” you may ask, and oh boy I’m not sure that I’m the appropriate authority to provide that detailed, musical understanding. Essentially, microtones are the notes between notes. If you can imagine two reasonably ... read more

Bruno Mars infinite money glitch

It has been a long and quiet wait for more Baby Keem music, but I think the artistic growth and maturity of 'Ca$ino' is worth it.

Starting with the album roll out, I loved watching the three short documentaries in the week leading up, giving an unprecedented and authentic look into Keem's upbringing. To have so much archival footage of his lifestyle and mundane living is actually quite rare and acts as a dramatic backdrop to the albums personal themes. Baby Keem really lived ... read more

𝐀 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐉. 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐞'𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫?

J. Cole has always presented himself as the rapper’s rapper – someone so deeply in love with the craft and each little nuance of hip hop, making music with passion and meaning and hunger, and not just going through the motions or flooding the market looking for a blank check. Whether or not you care for him, you can recognize that J. Cole image has been ... read more

“I see,” said the blind man, peeing into the wind. “It’s all coming back to me now.”

As time has gone on, I’m still higher on Joji’s previous album ‘SMITHEREENS’ than most. It’s a short and unfinished work that has some excellent highlights, along with some entirely middling lowlights. But at only 24 minutes and 9 songs, I’d still take an album with a couple of great songs than… a 45-minute, 21 song sprawl that barely ... read more

QUICK THOUGHTS

Sounds just like "New Choppa" from Playboi Carti's self-titled album, or even a little bit like "Thought It Was a Drought" from Future's 'DS2'. It's a heavy, raucous beat that definitely brings shades of that mid-2010's trap, but doesn't innovate or do much different that we hadn't heard a decade ago. Solid rhymes too, but it's still the delivery that is keeping this novel.

I'd look forward to a new project ... read more

I always feel Don Tolliver sings like his sinuses are congested.

‘OCTANE’ is the 5th studio album from the second most famous Cactus Jack act Don Toliver. It comes off the heels of his 2024 album ‘Hardstone Psycho’, which to this point should be considered his most commercially successful work, being his first solo effort to chart #1 on rap charts and seeing his highest first week sales. While he’s certainly had bigger singles in the past, I’d argue that ... read more

𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠

Wouldn’t that be nice? For the world to take a quick pause every time something disruptive, or even inconvenient happens, so that we all can sort ourselves out and carefully build back to a stable baseline? The world is moving faster now than ever, especially with an ever-exponentially growing social media bombardment – ... read more

A cold reflection of distance and closeness.

Sassy 009 is the stage name for Norwegian singer and producer Sunniva Lindgård, known for her experimental and electronic approach to pop music starting in late 2010’s. ‘Dreamer+’ is her first full-length album after a run of EP’s and the 2021 mixtape ‘Heart Ego’.

What immediately stands out about ‘Dreamer+’ is the cold space in resides in. The production feels vast and distant for what ... read more

First off, the title - Disc 2?? A double album will justify any delays or time spent teasing the album.

J. Cole tells the entire story of his life in reverse chronological order, from his death, to releasing this album, to marrying and then meeting his wife, all the way up to and before his birth. It's not necessarily a mind-blowing concept, but is executed with such finesse and meticulous detail, all while carrying the same rhyme scheme from beginning to end.

Cole has such deep ... read more

QUICK THOUGHTS

22-year-old singer The Kid LAROI muses for 44 minutes about his recent breakup with fellow emergent pop star Tate McRae.

A clearly emotionally charged and poignant album like this, to me, only feels like it can age poorly - with the context of each song on here clearly being directed towards Tate, I would have a hard time I were The Kid LAROI performing touring this record or looking back fondly on it. The depth and writing come across as someone who is clearly lost without a ... read more

~2025 Year in Review~

It’s the end of the year, and I always like to take this time to formally reflect back on the past 365 days, consider how my music listening and reviewing has changed since then, and set a few goals and predictions for myself in 2026. This has been something I look forward to doing at the end of every year for a while now – looking back on where I was and *who* I was just a short year ago is always a wonderful reminder of how much you change your life for the ... read more

QUICK THOUGHTS

These guys will make a classic album one day

Dave still tells stories like no one else in hip hop. ‘Psychodrama’ was an incredibly important record for me in 2019 discovering my music taste, and ‘The Boy Who Played The Harp’ is another notch in a no-miss catalog. Dave draws on pain, fear, trauma, and guilt so clearly and poetically that it’s like watching it unfold in real time.

If you can listen to Fairchild without being sucked in and horrified, you aren’t doing this album justice.

Alright the album is fine but it would be wayyy better with 26 special edition reissues 🤩

🚨BREAKING: Geese get devastatingly vulnerable through the most zany and groovy shit you've ever heard

When Geese first emerged out of Brooklyn’s underground in 2021 coming out of the pandemic, they quickly put themselves on the map as one of indie rocks most promising young bands. Their debut album ‘Projector’ was a bold statement of wiry post-punk, but it was their follow-up ‘3D Country’ that really caught my ear. Front man Cameron Winter’s oddball ... read more

QUICK THOUGHTS

The Youtube description for this record states: “this album is designed to be played loudly. Listen as loud as you can or as loud as you’re allowed.”

If that doesn’t encapsulate what this album is about, I don’t know what will. ‘[angry noises]’ is loud, vicious, and breathtaking in the most literal sense, and it was all recorded live.

'Breach' puts itself above 'Clancy' for me, but I still can't say I'm overly impressed.

For those deeply invested in this ever-complicated story and it's conclusion, this will be an incredibly touching record. For those who are simply stopping in to hear the music... I mean it's fine? Certainly the sanitized and glitzy pop rock that we're used to hearing from Twenty One Pilots at this point, like Tally, RAWFEAR, or the single Drum Show. I find it ... read more

I’m genuinely blown away by this debut… my expectations were high, and ‘Pain to Power’ still exceeds them.

Maruja’s debut LP has been one of my most anticipated albums for years now, tracing all the way back to their breakthrough 2023 EP ‘Knocknarea’. Their aggressive post-rock and punk sound, improvisational technique, and socially conscious lyrics struck an immediate chord with me and many listeners and has continued to evolve over the course of two ... read more

An extreme experience of disorienting noise that feels strangely cathartic.

Ground Zero is an experimental Japanese noise rock band of the 90’s led by Otomo Yoshihide. The group’s final studio album, 1997’s ‘Consume Red’, feels like a 57-minute-long catastrophe playing out in real time, starting off slow and wary before collapsing in on itself more with each passing minute. At any given point where you think the chaos may have reached its explosive and grating ... read more