HAHAHA, oh my fucking god this is terrible.
When we're talking about trashy '80s music from good musicians, y'all are always pointing to Never Let Me Down and Knocked Out Loaded. Let me tell you, Landing On Water makes those albums look like MASTERPIECES.

Here, Young proves that he is completely dry on ideas. He goes full synthpop/rock yet again, but this time round he doesn't have any ideas where to take the sound to make it meaningful. The result is an album that feels less like Neil Young ... read more

Anyone who knows classic rock (and classic '60s and '70s music in general) that the '80s was not a good time for most of these artists. By this point, most of them were struggling to maintain relevance, with them being older and getting less ideas and there being a whole new sound that they needed to adapt to. It's no secret that artists such as David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop - you know, popular singer-songwriters - struggled a lot throughout this decade, with them adopting these new synths ... read more

Miles brings Cannonball Adderley along and turns his First Great Quintet into a sextet, and makes what is perhaps the most recognizable and beloved lineup in all of jazz.

Milestones is certainly, well, a milestone for Miles. While he had released many indisputable classics leading up to this album in the form of 'Round About Midnight and Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, and his First Great Quintet was just as influential and great as the title would suggest, it was this sextet that would go ... read more

An album whose sole intent was to piss off the label after they declined an album which Neil actually put more effort into because it was too country and they wanted "a rock 'n roll album". So Neil went out of his way to make exactly what they wanted, going with a very generic '50s rockabilly sound, performing redundant covers of classic '50s and early '60s rock 'n roll songs, and the few songs which he did write himself were so lazily done that you'd think they were covers of more ... read more

I'm sorry, Neil, but there's really no defending this thing.

There isn't a single album in Neil Young's long-ass discography (and quite possibly in the whole "classic rock artist goes full pop" thing of the '80s) that is as divisive as Trans. This album is unlike anything from Young or any of his contemporaries. Even if you were to compare this to the biggest sell-out albums from other famous singer-songwriters of the '60s and '70s who decided to go full synthpop or new wave in the ... read more

GodDAMN, this is some noisy noise!

The Gerogerigegege are one of the most notable acts in the '80s Japanese hardcore punk and Japanoise scene (though here they're probably best known for making that one sex noise album with the old dude on the cover). Throughout the '80s and '90s, Juntaro Yamanouchi proved himself and the band to be one of the most versatile artists in this entire scene, jumping anywhere from harsh noise to ambient to straightforward punk, making them one of the most unique ... read more

Picking a favourite from Davis' final four albums made for Prestige is no easy task. All of them are so close together in quality and great in their own ways that putting one over the other can be damn near impossible for some. Relaxin', however, is a very popular pick for best of the four, though it does pain me to say that I personally don't see this as being the best, and that I currently see Cookin' as the better of the two, even if only slightly.

But with that said, you can't dismiss ... read more

Oh, come on now! All I've heard about this album is that it's the worst Young released up to this point and that it still stands as one of his weakest releases, but I listen to this and all I see is an album that some people take WAY too seriously.

Okay, I'm not going to sit here and claim that this is a 'masterpiece' or something, because it really isn't. And to be fair, out of the albums of his that I've heard, this is amongst the weakest I've heard from Neil, and a definite far cry from ... read more

After being extremely impressed with her Vroom Vroom EP, I was hoping that it would only be up from there. I mean, Charli's discography is one of the most praised when it comes to modern pop, so if she managed to win me over with only twelve minutes of material, then surely a full mixtape will manage to leave me just as stunned? Well, unfortunately not. While Number 1 Angel does have good production, it doesn't hit anywhere near as hard as her previous outing did, and the songs, while catchy ... read more

After the ambient dud that was Einsamkeit and after a six year wait, Paysage d'Hiver releases his last demo before his first proper studio album. It would be easy to dismiss this album as yet another inessential outing as Wintherr had released much better projects previously and would go on to make his magnum opus seven years later, but there is a reason why Das Tor is a fan favourite release from him. This album is one of his most unrelentingly brutal releases to date, and one that succeeds in ... read more

Who would have thought that Neil Young's first supposed "failure" is actually just a fairly underwhelming, inconsistent album which gets more hate than it actually deserves?

As I got closer to Neil's dreaded '80s run where he would release widely despised albums for much of the decade, I got more and more nervous about what these albums would actually be like. And while Hawks & Doves isn't seen as the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel of his discography like certain other albums ... read more

It's just a normal, average live album, I don't know what you want me to tell you.

The only notable thing about Live Rust is that the performance of Sugar Mountain here is honestly better than the original studio version, and I honestly see it as the definitive version. But outside of that one track, there's nothing essential here. None of these tracks barring Sugar Mountain are definitive versions. I mean, I personally prefer the performance of Comes A Time here than to the studio version, ... read more

Sometimes instruments can do and say much more than words.

I found this album through Youtube recommending me a random song from it. That song was Sleeping Inside, the opening track. I had absolutely no clue what to expect when clicking on that song, but listening to it was definitely something special. It ended up being a really beautiful, gloomy, gothic alt-country track wallowing in so much despair that I really didn't expect at all. It was so unlike anything I had heard, being one of only ... read more

Oh hey look, it's yet another one of these Miles Davis reissue albums that definitely served a purpose in the long run but aren't at all enjoyable to listen to after listening to the original release! Sigh.
Hang on, it's actually really good, what the fuck?

So yeah, this is by far the album which cheats the most out of everything else I've heard from Davis. Instead of just releasing Ascenseur pour l'échafaud like any other normal person, he decided to release that album solely in Europe ... read more

Soundtrack albums generally don't impress me too much. Hell, I think the general consensus of them is that they're fine when in the movie but on their own they don't actually leave a lasting impression. I personally don't mind listening to soundtrack albums on their own if I like the film enough, and I do generally find myself at the very least enjoying what I hear, but when it comes to films that I've never seen I know I'm going to be left in the dark. I had never even heard of Ascenseur pour ... read more

A pretty damn solid EP. It's honestly refreshing to hear a user project which clearly had thought put into it to make it as richly creative as this.

I wouldn't call Pretty Things the most consistent project out there, but it definitely has enough quality content to warrant a listen or two. Tracks 2-5 in particular were all incredibly enjoyable, with some of them - namely Bean and Bruised Egg - showing so much creativity that it's impossible not to at least like them. I wouldn't say they're ... read more

Neil Young is perhaps best known for being the "Godfather of grunge", but if you've heard every single one of his albums preceding Rust Never Sleeps, you'd likely be thinking that he was just like any other folk/country rock singer-songwriter, only that he wasn't afraid to do a good, lengthy guitar solo every now and then. That is, of course, until Into The Black hits, and you realize that he's even dirtier than Alice In Chains.

Honestly, I don't consider Rust Never Sleeps to be a ... read more

Sorry to do it to ya, Neil, but this album just doesn't scratch that itch I was hoping it would.

Up until now, I've enjoyed most of what I've heard from Young - loved it, even! Unfortunately, the final studio album released during his classic run just doesn't leave me as impressed as I'm sure it did many other Neil Young fans. If anything, it left me very wary about the future of his career. If this is supposedly his last great release for the better part of a decade, then what the hell lies ... read more

Remember in my review for Im Wald when I said that this album was a 'fluke'? Well, returning to it so that I could write a review on it definitely didn't make me think any higher of this project.

I'm just going to say this now: this is easily the worst demo released by Paysage d'Hiver. I know that Paysage d'Hiver hasn't really made anything truly terrible, and I don't even think this album is all that bad, but whenever I listen to Einsamkeit, I get nothing out of it. This is the most nothing ... read more

Nacht - or "Night" - is one of the most unique albums in Paysage d'Hiver's discography. While it still stands by all those atmospheric black metal and Paysage d'Hiver tropes that you expect from him, this time round, instead of the usual wintry atmosphere that makes Wintherr such a compelling artist, he goes for a more nocturnal approach, giving as a dark night time atmosphere. The result is one of the more conventional albums from Tobias, but also arguably a hidden gem that doesn't ... read more