Is the comet coming? The introduction of this Nu Jazz album announces loudly in a preachy voiceover at the start that THE comet is coming - does this mean the end of the world? just a beautiful sight? A new beginning? It is left ambiguous of course, all we know that it is coming. So this should at surface level be an album that is either a buildup or a builddown or something in between that evokes a strange aura of fatalism. The question what the comet represents is as they announce themselves ... read more

There is something great about Brotha Lynch Hung but he exposes himself far too much - or at least, he doesn't nuance himself into having a second dimension. Mannibalector succeeds in two things fabulously (1) As an exercise in dark lyrics that are absolutely vile and twisted from beginning to end, it provides an absolute blast of shock value with an aim at controversy and making the audience wince at the bars (2) As an introduction to the well established persona of Brotha Lynch Hung who ... read more

One way to open an album with vocal confidence is a solo voiceover in a manner that suggest a cheery singing practice. Even when 30 seconds in a hollow harmonica and a campfire guitar joins in, his vocals still dominate the sound. Sometimes a small scaled opening can make a great first impression - and above else, he doesn't sound cocky. It's a bold and explosive move that immediately settled a connection between me and the Bruce (an artist I never really noticed in this way before). the whole ... read more

Ticklish with anxious energy, as if the mob is on your back - a crazy fool named Howlin' wolf makes his way through this album. He pretends to have a cool in the lyrics but the tremble in his greasy voice and the riffs constantly remind us that this album is in a nervous hurry. It's that fast paced blues that feels as old and fresh of that made in the 1930s. It has the gritty spark of the purest of roasted blues, like the rockiness of Elmore James but the gritty uncleanness that is only found ... read more

I laid in bed thinking I should listen to something that is tenderly romantic - not something cheesy and artificial or deconstrucing and cynical but something pure, so my mind drifted to Van Morrison's Moondance. An album that is romantic about more than love, it is sweethearted towards daily obstacles such as rain falling during an autumn walk. What usually bothers me about regular love songs with simple lyrics is that it doesn't dare to be even remotely erratic or improvisational - in ... read more

Edit: a review for all six phases of Everywhere at the end of time. Aofy doesn't have it comiled as an album.

Yesterday evening I knew I was going to listen this album for the first time through, after having listened to 1hour and 50 minutes before and quitting. I found myself threatened by the intensity and concertation is demanded. So yesterday all day, I felt like I was preparing for something monolithical that would have a profound effect. I was right - it did. It loosened up such a ... read more

There are two slick faces on this great album cover, one with a stoned smile and another one with stone cold intensity. They're both featured in the album, there embodied as bipolar voices. But for the most part it all sounds very happy, it is one of the jauntiest pieces of foreign schtick I've ever laid my pleased ears on. I can't understand a word from it, but I do understand how corny it is.

It is an album where the gentle voice of the singer will never shut up, but nevermind - because it ... read more

As all albums should start, ArchAndroid starts with a grandiose orchestral overture that could've only elsewhere be found in a fantastical Hollywood history movie with some Disney in it. What follows is an hour long amazingly versitale concept album that bends at will and has actual evolution. Can you believe that? An album that is actually interested in arching and exploring it's borders. ArchAndroid knows no comfort zone, but only a centerstage around which everything steadily spins. ... read more

A Thousand suns tries to be about a thousand diffent things and ends up being about close to nothing. Scratches and scattered all over the place in terms of both music and themes they try to press to us with zero conviction - there is very little to compliment about this for me. Half of the album is made up out of stretched out instrumental bridges and openings that don't make any sense and don't at anything at all to the whole piece.

I suppose they tried to invent a new genre or at least a ... read more

A good sport of an album that is only one step above generic but is clean nevertheless. Channeling 70s funkiness through tame summer beats in a fashion that is subdued enough to be relaxing but energetic enough to be called fresh. It is brushed over with a simple electronic makeover that gives the album it's breezy, one dimensional texture that has the obvious setting of a toned down Miami. The album is called A Groovy Thing, is it a thing? yes. Is it Groovy? A bit, yea.

It may just be ... read more

This reminded me constantly of an hour long musical ending of an absurd tragicomedy. It always restarts and never really ends, even after one hour and fourteen minutes it still goes on in the heads of an avid listener. It is quite a powerful powder that really tries to wrap itself around ones mind, sometimes it is very succesful, other times it is purely tiresome. It has the wide array of colorful musicality that an old Elton John song would have and the downbeat outcome that the saddest songs ... read more

Listening "Pet Sounds" is a nearly religious experience for many. It is pure bliss coated around a tiny core of immense and pure tragedy, which you really have to look for. But, I like to ignore this fraction, not because it is badly done - quite the opposite - but rather because there is just too much enjoyment in the beauty of the surface to let yourself sink in the rabbit hole of what this album is really about. The Beach Boys are rarely a band I admire, save for Brian Wilson, and ... read more

It is frustrating to listen to a good enough album where the real musicality seems to be hiding under the skin but shy to come out. Brewing and nearly boiling but never being able to absorb the whole package. I try not to judge music for what I want it to be but for what it is, but In Between Dreams makes it damn hard to not want to extract the music from under the surface and ask it to paint in broader strokes than it does. Granted, it's very easy to have a fine time with this music on the ... read more

Never more have I had the impression that an album was trying to sleep with me as much as I did here, what a weird sentence. 20 seconds in and there he was, with the baddest and the most iconic voice in town - belonging to the mythical Isaac Hayes. A sound that is indeed as smooth as hot butter in a steel pan. I've heard Hayes before, he wrote Shaft and all, but I always assumed he was trying to cement a reputation with his lyricisms rather than actually tell a good story - I was dead stop ... read more

When it all comes down to it and you all count it up, this album is no more or less than a redux of the same one catchy trick. Jack Stauber has talent yes, in his flair and fling but ultimately he kind of feels like a magician whose trick reveals himself after he's shown it eleven times. But at least it's quite enjoyable for as long as you don't catch it. His songwriting has good hooks and quirks that elevate it as a weirdly neutral chaotic pop album.

Does it have some pretense? Yeah, sure! ... read more

Reckon how hard it is to accentuate a genre such as (Afro)-Jazz in the boundaries of rebellion while still having a full fledged, great sounding album in front of you. Fela Kuti is all about creating his own brand, even if his means have to be rebellious or risqué. Said brand consists about hyping audiences up in an own groove that spirals around an oh so exciting vibration that includes many forms and shapes to really combine itself as an album - it flies though multiple shapes, ... read more

The longer I listened to Galaxy Garden's Lone, the simpler I found it to be. Simple, not as in easy to deconstruct or superficial but simple as in unidealistic or content to be more of the same. I got pretty tired of Lone about three quarters in but wasn't urged to halt my listen. For how long it lasts, it's an album with great production value and a pleasant middle ground between exciting and relaxing. It does well what it does, but that's all it does.

The genre is labeled as Acid House, but ... read more

Love Deluxe is about nothing more than the sensual thrill of desire (not only about sex for those of you who dare to be one minded) and the pain that comes with it. It is bright as day and smooth as silk in that regard - and every regard for that matter. Sade resists the easy trick of making herself the object of desire but here, she IS the one that longs and aches.

There is a very peculiar way of her singing in relation to the world surrounding her. She sings with a voice so naturally suave ... read more

The great, magical algorithm shed light and presented me this album unexpectedly while I was busily studying and listening to slower and more sober music. This hit me with a weird wave of involvement even it still kind of had that wandering structure that likes to take it's kind of pop value very slow. Their beats are very rudimentary and relaxingly repetitive, the beam out a self confident and fresh vibe with just that right amount of influence of underbeat past music that I really miss ... read more

The Mollusk is a loveable mutation, a failed experiment created in a very, very creative laboratorium and emerging like a jolly collage of misfitting cutouts. This is a rare album which has no floor, no bottom, no ceiling and no walls, it's just an uneven and very pleasing texture. I'm wanting to say there is no clear genre, or style, or themes or anything but it's clearly all part of the same fully visceral creature containing many layers of talent. What I'm trying to say is that all of these ... read more