I really enjoy the covers of the more contemporary rock and pop songs here. Barracuda, Long Distance Runaround, and Feeling Yourself Disintegrate are all stellar energetic covers which elegantly and creatively adapt the source material to a jazz-quartet setting, but the weird spacy morphine-jazz of Comfortably Numb, Radio Cure, How Deep Is Your Love?, and Lock, Stock, and Teardrops is where The Bad Plus really shines through, straining the characteristics of jazz to their very limit. The modern ... read more

The rare case of an album where every song is good and it would benefit from cutting tracks out. There's really no reason for this to be 22 tracks when it could be 14 and under an hour. Personally, I'd have taken some of the more redundant tracks out (SPF 420, U n ME, Everything Explodes, etc.) and put them on a companion EP to keep the album from being overlong. That said, it's still a hell of a ride and a longtime favourite of mine.

The fact that this album has a cover of a Taio Cruz song right next to an 11 and a half minute folk metal epic and still somehow has a good flow baffles me, and that's just one of the many reasons why you shouldn't write Alestorm off as a pure novelty.

Side note, these guys kick ass live, definitely a band to see if you ever get the chance.

This was a pretty big disappointment compared to 羽川 翼 [ hanekawa ]. Where that album was atmospheric and poetic, this one is more straightforward both instrumentally and vocally and is a lot more tuned to trap. Luna and A Mother's Lullaby standout as tracks that bring back the feel of Airospace's more emo-informed releases, while Sweater sticks out as a particularly pointless excursion into brag rap.

The production is still pretty great, thanks to the great beatwork from JAMES, but the ... read more

Kick ass guitar work and fantastic vocals. This is a really underrated release in the ANB canon - it's different and a bit underpolished, sure, but it more than holds its own in the realm of sludge metal.

A bunch of really fantastic ideas held back by a lack of technical skill and composition experience. As Embers Dress the Sky really knocks it out of the park, but there are just too many moments here where somebody doesn't play very well or the transition to a new section is super rough for it to work nearly as well as it should.

ABSRDST, the man who once made a banger trap remix of the world's most saccharine happy hardcore song, puts out an album that sounds like if you vaguely described The Chainsmokers to Kai Whiston and then asked him to make their next album without letting him listen to them. This is the anti-dynamic duo's melodic EDM-pop, but way more experimental, spacey, and overall quirky - in short, the bizarro version of a Chainsmokers album, and about 5 times as good as one too. At just over 31 minutes, ... read more

I came into this with a bit of knowledge about HKE limited to his work under Subaeris and almost no knowledge t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者. I've always found vaporwave to be best when it approaches ambient, and this was almost always held as one of the best vaporwave albums (if not the best) in conversation, so I had decently high hopes for it. While 新しい日の誕生 is certainly quite good as an ambient album, I found it a little lacking in execution. Though it attempts to ... read more

Funnily enough I found that this actually reminded me of Cornelius and Sweet Trip a lot more than most folktronica and neo-psychedelia I've heard, at least in atmosphere and overall vibe. This is one of those albums you listen to when you want something just absurdly pretty - though, in that respect, it can be both the happiest album in existence and a pit of inescapable sadness, depending on the context it's presented in. There are definitely parts of this album that I think would be improved ... read more

This album is absolutely untouchable when it just grooves. If you're a fan of oldschool dance-punk like Liquid Liquid, the kind where rhythmic jamming comes before anything, this is the album for you. The hooks are a bit hit or miss, and in general the more melodic songs tend to be the weak link, but when this album decides to just groove on something it's unbeatable.. The highlights here are All My Heroes Are Weirdos and Bend Over Beethoven, absolutely incredible tunes that echo the ... read more