Very obscure 667 adjacent project featuring some of the earliest babelfishh recordings which are, surprisingly, really good. I say surprisingly because while I am a huge babelfishh fan, I've always been lukewarm on his earlier albums (think Exit Lever) and how DIY to a fault the mixing/mastering was. His first verse on Unlisted sounds like it might very well have been recorded this decade. Straight out of No Man's Gospel type stuff. That's how good it is. Needless to say that ... read more

Ostensibly working with a varied influence range, this release sonically sits somewhere between a degraded Slauson Malone and some poorly executed Zeroh-isms. Obviously wants to send a message, but trips over its own pointless attempts at cramming itself into the insipid, vague totalism that's so annoyingly prevalent in a lot of modern "avant" music in the process. There's quite a lot of, well pretty much everything, going on in these ten minutes. However, at some point you ... read more

Very lo-fi, and sometimes sounds like absolute shit. However, being a part of the NOTIR universe it makes sense, and thus, gets a pass out of principle...barely.

Quite imbalanced in favour of Earl I have to say. The only breath of fresh air here compared to what these two would normally put out is the production and I can't help but feel that MIKE just got the short end of the stick in that regard. The beats on Earl's side are a lot more accomodating to the whole airy, derealised melancholy he's got going on on the mic. MIKE's side falls flat, but most everything MIKE does falls flat to some degree to me.

To my surprise, this isn't offensively bad like I expected it to be. It is just really, really boring and devoid of personality. The whole selling point of his earlier music was the charisma, and even though I found it to be incredibly bland and often annoying to the point of being unlistenable, I can acknowledge that *something* was there and can understand why people are drawn to it. As bad as the majority of his other albums are, at least you could walk away from them with an idea about ... read more

The noise imbued Boom Bap sound design really makes this album fit right in with the rest of what was coming out during the early Ipecac Hip Hop era back when Illbient was cool as fuck. Back to basics, except the basics were never basic to begin with. Fascinating how one group can have a very trademark sound that they adhere to for several decades and never have it deteriorate into boredom once.

Very interesting sounds most of the time. Unfortunately, too gimmicky and not funny. Also has an evildrank feature which is easily the worst thing about this album.

The type of music people would call soulless garbage had it been released some years ago. Literally just Brat all over again, but with more cheap NCS sounding EDM. Hints of good, even great melodies and singing buried under heaps of awful bleep bloop quirks. Real wasted banger potential.

Vocally indistinguishable from BLACKHANDPATH 90% of the time, but the production sometimes randomly strays off course into these ambient somethings. Does enough to be different; is different enough to hopefully continue pushing this sadly kind of forgotten sound into new territories.

Ever wondered what you would get if you crossed Jeremiah Jae's brand of Art Rap with the early-to-mid internet dyi, lo-fi, jazzy and somewhat trappy Hip Hop? Neither have I, but I am absolutely not complaining about being presented with an answer. Capturing the zeitgeist of both worlds with utmost precision even all these years later is certainly impressive especially when you consider that it's quite often that you see people returning to these older sounds just completely unable to ... read more

Sole's best release since his works with The Skyrider Band. Come to think of it this kind of sounds like their self titled in a way doesn't it? Endless stream of bars over carefully crafted atmosphere. Less anxious, sure, but at its core it's a very similar raw transmission of his views of a decaying world. This is a middle aged version of that, less confrontational and personal, more begrudgingly acceptant with tired objective observations. Almost makes it sadder in a way. ... read more

It took a while, but nettspend finally manages to consistently sound good, well, minus the intro, that one is really bad. Now the unfortunate part is that while it is consistent, it is not a sound that can really afford to drone on for 48 minutes as it's quick to become redundant and tiring. 10 tracks in it already felt like I've been listening to it for way longer than I have.

I never thought the day would come where I'd give the absolute fucking legend R.A.E.D an unironic 0.5 star rating but here we are. Despite the presence of some of R.A.E.D's greatest bangers (look no further than I Did It on There Phz), the very concept of making an anti-colonial song and using AI to do it is enough to cast a shadow of contempt over this thing as a whole. I'm hoping that him using AI to tastelessly shove himself into conventional sounds is just a short lived ... read more

Carefully crafted fantastic nocturnal melancholic atmosphere sometimes reminiscent of City Light Mosaic's finest works only for them to rap like that over it for some reason. Whatever.

It's 222 minutes long, I'm not done with it yet, and will properly review it once I am finished. However, on track two he sounds like R.A.E.D on the youtube full album upload version of Why Can't You Just Pick Me Up and I felt like letting everyone know.

Modern day Abstract Hip Hop is just getting absolutely ridiculous. If you want to listen to something that has a semblance of personality, abandon all hope, ye who enter here. The first time I listened to mary sue I almost cried because I couldn't believe he's a real person and not just an AI MIKE/Navy Blue clone. Beats are generic, but quality. What does it matter though when the rapper has the charisma of a stale rice cake.

I was going to say that a lot of these songs sound so much like Noodle Arm Whimsy era Serengeti, until I realised that some of these songs were, indeed, over 20 years old. You can tell the difference between which tracks are old and which are new pretty clearly, but it never gets in the way of continuous enjoyment nor does it throw you out of it. Great stuff as always from Geti King.

Another person that was cloned in the generic e-person factory last week tries making music and it sounds like I'm back in 2017 listening to Lil Tay yell into the camera about her shoes or apartment or what have you. Well imagine that, only this time it's over zoomer Hip Hop production. If I took the agglomeration of every alt-zoomer trend of the past X years, crammed it into AI, and made you listen to this and the result it gave me side to side, I guarantee you couldn't in a ... read more

Awesome original, awful remixes. People gotta stop doing this to Rammellzee man.

A lot of the bombasticity and almost hilariously overblown levels of epic, yet silly grandiosity of post On Land and in the Sea Cardiacs that I and so many others fell in love with has mostly dissipated on this record. This is more akin to something like A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window, which I also wasn't too huge of a fan of for essentially the same reasons I am not a huge fan of this one. It does have the Cardiacs-esque energy, albeit considerably weaker than, say, ... read more