ジェロナグラセッション or Jero Nagra Sessions (this could be mistranslation as I couldn't find anything on it) is the debut project for the group The Session, made up of 2 AOTY users, Flamingooooo and Stygian (TomBejoy)

Usually I would break an album down track by track, or at least point out my favourites, but I don't think that will work here as the entire record flows from one song to another almost perfectly. Part of this is likely due to the fact the project was made in the ... read more

The lead single for MALNEEZY'S upcoming self-titled record is dark, melodramatic and great

Nearly 6 minutes long, Born Sinner is a steady progression from simple, beautiful piano chords to chaotic, noisy and dark Ambient music. The mixing and production are both beautifully done, allowing the piano to be front & centre at the beginning of the track, but to slowly move back as additional layers are introduced, but is never overwhelmed by the new parts.

Waves of noise are brought in next. ... read more

And so we enter the ghost world

Follow Me (Forget Me) is the follow-up and second half to, in my opinion, Concrete Castles best project to date, Cerulean Echoes. A beautiful album that perfectly matched up the acoustic and electronic worlds in music all-the-while providing a narrative discussing boredom, depression and ghosts, with its cliff-hanger ending seeing the protagonist leaving our plane of existence for that of the ghosts.

Which brings us to this album. Now that we're in the realm of ... read more

Clairo's sophomore record explores the world of your early 20's

One of the most obvious shifts from Immunity, Clairo's debut, is the sense of maturity that pervades this album, both lyrically and musically. Immunity wasn't childish, however there's a tangible difference in how Clairo addresses topics of manipulative relationships, societal expectations and the general act of truly becoming an adult.

All of which is dressed in a beautiful array Folk influenced instrumentation. Gorgeous ... read more

Apparently the best part of boygenius was how much better the solo albums then became

I'm not going to go into too much detail about past works, because: 1. I don't want to turn this into a comparative piece between the 3 members of the aforementioned boygenius and 2. Sadly, Lucy Dacus' earlier solo material didn't really click with me. However, after this, I will give those albums another try.

It would be all too easy to begin talking about Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, whose popularity ... read more

Rapper, producer and (self-proclaimed) cryptid Backxwash returns with a project that is as fully realised as her last, but is truly hers

Still a relatively new name, Backxwash debuted in 2018 with the EP F.R.E.A.K.S, but has been very prolific having since released 2 more EPs, Black Sailor Moon in 2018 and Stigmata in 2020, as well as 2 LPs, Deviancy in 2019 and God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him Out of It in 2020.

It's that lattermost project that really skyrocketed her popularity. ... read more

Mykki Blanco has, from the beginning, been synonymous with fun, but Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep takes this to another level

It's been a little while since we've had a proper project from Blanco, the last album was 5 years ago and the last EP and Mixtapes were 7. In this time she has managed to make a greater name for herself through features with Teyana Taylor; Charli XCX; Brooke Candy, Pussy Riot and MNDR as well as on Kanye West's leaked Yandhi.

Another notable change, is that it's ... read more

With JORDI, Maroon 5 have created an incredibly unique artistic statement: A nothing project

The name Maroon 5 hasn't really been associated with progression, innovation or experimentation in quite some time. In fact, many would say that ever since their third album Hands All Over and the track Moves Like Jagger, the band have been on a downward trajectory quality wise, falling down the mainstream rabbit hole of simplicity and trend-following.

JORDI, the group's seventh record, continues this ... read more

A new champion for modern malaise

Dean Blunt is currently most well known for his work as part of the duo Hype Williams and, more recently, the side project Blue Iverson. But in 2014 Blunt released one of the most interesting and genre-subversive pieces of his career with Black Metal. A 50+ minute ramble through Jangle Pop, Post-Punk, Indie Folk, Drone, Dub, Experimental Hip Hop and many others all smushed together into the loose collage terms of Art Pop and Hypnagogic Pop.

In the 7 years ... read more

Honestly, it's just great to have some fun Pop again

I technically listened to Japanese Breakfast's (Michelle Zauner) last album, Soft Sounds From Another Planet, after it received plenty of attention and acclaim in 2017, but it sadly didn't click with me and I've genuinely forgotten what it sounded like... So, we'll consider this my introduction to Japanese Breakfast.

And what an introduction! Jubilee is a beautiful and entrancing listen, yet is filled with enough energy and immediacy that ... read more

MALNEEZY'S third Throwaway EP continues to showcase their ability to write simply catchy music

Pt. 3 is a 6 song, 28 minute long collection of House-adjacent Electronic Rock and Synth-Pop (or 35 minutes if you include the bonus track). There's a loose theme of video games, mostly presented through vocal snippets or samples taken directly from said games, either telling an individual story for that particular cut or as part of the beats themselves.

Clusterpad opens with very strong ties to the ... read more

The standard bearers for the UK Indie scene return with an even more mature and refined record

Whether you heard their early singles, came across their debut in a record store (like myself), heard about their Mercury Prize nomination for that album or the win for the second, any of the singles leading up to this one or any number of other ways; from the moment they entered most people's ears, the band captured attention immediately.

The group's style hasn't shifted too much from My Love Is ... read more

From the opening moments Sweet Trip let us know that, despite disappearing, they never truly left

A Tiny House, in Secret Speeches, Polar Equals is the first project in more than a decade from the pair, deciding that they finally had something worth saying. A collection and combination of their previous sounds, it borrows the lush atmospheres of Halica, the glitchy Shoegaze of Velocity:Design:Comfort and the Pop melodies of You Will Never Know Why.

There's a lot that can be said for an ... read more

Cavalcade gives us our first taste of what British Rock ought to become over the next few years

The conversation surrounding the "Death" of Rock, or more accurately its waning popularity, has been the talk around the internet watercooler for more than a decade at this point. Gladly though, its time away from the spotlight has given birth to more invigorating and inspired records. Untethered from mainstream expectations, Rock has been given the opportunity to grow and find the spirit ... read more

Gel.'s self-titled debut completely eschews the sound of their earlier singles for chaos

I'm not sure if my usual song-by-song breakdown will work for this particular record. The 27 minutes, broken into 8 tracks, don't follow the traditional song structure of verse-chorus-bridge, nor do they even use the tension-release formula for a lot of other music.

Instead each piece meanders through endless streams of information, throwing them at the listener will little regard for how the listener ... read more

The story of DEMA becomes too much for the music

A trap that many intelligent songwriters fall for is believing that their intelligence is what makes their music great and, in trying to make better music, they create a project that revolves heavily around a concept of some sort. By focusing so much on the ideas/themes/stories that are being presented, this can often lead to the actual music quality being compromised and, sadly, Scaled And Icy is another example of such compromise.

There are 2 ... read more

In almost all regards Bodhisattya Pal's second EP is a significant improvement over their first

The most obvious areas for me are the vocal performance and the mixing. One of my larger complaints for Astronomer's Dilemma was that the singing in English was not nearly strong enough, especially when compared to those in Hindi or Bengali. The mixing, most notably for the percussion wasn't great either, with the electronic drums on the first 2 tracks coming across way too loud and taking away from ... read more

One of Rock's best collaborators continues his solo work

Myles Kennedy has earned himself the reputation of being someone you want to work with. His back catalogue began in Jazz with the instrumental group Cosmic Dust, then the Alt-Rock influenced Jazz Fusion in Citizen Swing and then furthered his journey into Rock with The Mayfield Four.

From there he was snatched up by the 3 instrumental members of Creed to become the singer and frontman for Alter Bridge. Whilst his influence on the first ... read more

Beyond the standard form of songwriting and atmosphere, Gel. reaches for the abstract

There's little in the way of melody or harmony or coherent rhythm, yet Needles is a genuinely enjoyable track.

An array of glitchy and fuzzy synths paired with whatever can be used as percussion, coming together in a 2 minute short story about nonsense. Some semblance of tamed chaos that is warping around itself like a cat on a leash, the song scrambles to find form or freedom, but in never doing so only ... read more

I have no idea where Grey Whale City is, but I know whoever is trying to escape it is a badass

Shifting their sound to Synthwave, MALNEEZY has managed to find another avenue in which to showcase their ear for melody as well as tone and structure.

For better and for worse, Escape From Grey Whale City is a pretty standard Synthwave track. Warm yet crisp synths pervade the song, from the fuzzy drone of the bass to the lighter and clear touches the ride on top, each one comes together ... read more