A surreal, energetic Noise Pop/Experimental Rock album. I enjoy the poppier tilt Disco Inferno take here, though the deadpan vocals do ruin the effect at times. Still, there are some lovely songs here from the titular opener and Sleight of Hand to It's a Kid's World and When the Story Breaks. Disco Inferno weren't always the most interesting to me, but they had a truly impressive approach to instrumentation that I haven't heard elsewhere.

Favorite Song: Sleight of Hand

A mellow, relaxing Alt Rock/Neo-Psych album. Soda Stereo's final album is plainly influenced by Cerati's forays into psychedelic electronica. The sound is lush and gentle for much of the album but dilutes into this distant spaciness by the end. It is a soothing listen, but perhaps less impactful than expected for their final work.

Favorite Song: Angel Eléctrico

A light, relaxing J-Pop/Bossa nova album. As is standard with Onuki, this album is nice to listen to, but there's little to take away from it. I do like the silliness of BERIMBAU DO BEM, but the other songs are pleasantly boring or just kinda weird like Onde esta voce: Oscar Castro-Neves just makes Onuki's vocals sound inexpert. I fear this is yet another forgettable entry in Onuki's discography.

Favorite Song: BERIMBAU DO BEM

A melancholic and softly passionate Alt Rock/Post-Britpop album. The album is honestly rather soothing, with its understated vocals and quietly noisy guitar riffs. Though the lyricism and atmosphere are primarily somber and bittersweet, it manages to be quite reassuring. I particularly enjoyed the runs from Planet Telex to High and Dry and from My Iron Lung to Black Star. It really is impressive that they started putting out this level of quality from their second album.

Favorite Song: My ... read more

A simply gorgeous Pop/Smooth Soul album from Kali Uchis. This is perhaps the most natural evolution of Red Moon in Venus, with equally dreamy and lush production and Kali Uchis' mellifluous vocals cultivating this beautiful, romantic atmosphere. While some songs do feel purely atmospheric, this album is excellent and may just be her best yet.

Favorite Song: Heaven is a Home...

A soft, dreamy Indie/Alt-Pop album that encapsulates the bittersweetness of a breakup, I imagine. d4vd is an excellent singer, and I don't know anyone who hasn't already heard Feel It, which is practically an anthem to young love. Crashing is the song that made me actually listen to this album as it's a beautiful collab with Kali Uchis, but the rest of the album isn't particularly interesting. The two main moods of joyous love and tragic breakup are fine, but sonically, d4vd ... read more

A disturbing, apocalyptic Experimental/Noise Rock album. It's definitely not what I expected from the debut of Godspeed You. The sound is rough, dissonant, and fractious, with mere glimmers of the potential they would later realize. The short song length and the large number of songs doesn't help this at all: after And The Hairy Guts Shine, I simply fell into this depressive trance and began contemplating the end of the world till the album concluded. There's some interesting ... read more

A languid, spacy P-Funk album. The album has a distinctly 70s sound as you'd expect of Bootsy, but the movie samples present throughout create this odd anachronicity, as if to remind you that this album actually came out in 1994. Though there isn't really anything special here, I do like Good Nite Eddie and the last song. It's an acceptable conclusion to the Rubber Band, I suppose.

Favorite Song: Good Nite Eddie

A somber, melancholic Art/Prog Rock album. Pink Floyd presents a soft, solitary soundscape, like a man forlornly staring at the sky with only miles of empty fields for company. I particularly enjoyed Wearing the Inside Out and High Hopes. Though the album does drag somewhat, it's definitely their best work since the 70s.

Favorite Song: High Hopes

A simply otherworldly Post-Rock/Experimental Rock album. The main draw of this album is the interweaving of natural environmental sounds with post-rock sensibilities like the murkiness of In Sharky Water or the crunchiness of Footprints in Snow. While some songs are less captivating than others, as a whole, the album presents a strikingly unique perspective on post-rock.

Favorite Song: Starbound: All Burnt Out & Nowhere to Go

A bright, uplifting Smooth Jazz/Jazz Pop album. The album starts and ends pleasantly, but the middle portion is rather forgettable and feels less cohesive than Brazasia. Solitaire and Dolphine are probably among Yokokura's best works, but Love Light continues to be his best album. A good, if somewhat lackluster, final effort.

Favorite Song: Dolphine

The cover of Amor Amarillo perfectly evokes the simple summery warmth of this album. Cerati takes the sound of Dynamo with an emphasis on the dream pop, creating this singularly lush, uplifting atmosphere. While it's interesting to see how strains of this would develop into the forthcoming Bocanada, I can't really rate this too highly because none of the songs beside Pulsar really stuck with me.

Favorite Song: Pulsar

A rather pastoral J-Pop album. I'm likely just influenced by the cover art, but the sound is really suited to a lazy day of blue skies and green fields. The top half is especially nice, with the title track, Crazy on You, and Sea of Cortez. Million Bucks is a little trashy, but it's still fun. The rest of the album from that point is very forgettable though. It's a surprisingly good release, at least for Onuki at this time.

Favorite Song: Crazy on You

Radiohead's first album is surprisingly representative of their sound, like I can definitely see how OK Computer would grow out of this sound. Unfortunately, after the first two songs, the rest of the album is an indistinct, grungy haze. Blow Out is a pleasant closer with this delicate, melancholy sound, but altogether, this album is not the best introduction to Radiohead.

Favorite Song: Creep

A morose, tired Singer-Songwriter album. The first four songs are fine, if somewhat overlong, but with Democracy, the sound just becomes depressively empty. Of course this is emblematic of Cohen's vision of the future, but it's really not pleasant to listen to.

Favorite Song: The Future

A lush and dense Alt Rock/Shoegaze album. The top half is simply beautiful, transcendent shoegaze, which feels like a very natural progression out of Gustavo Cerati's first solo album, Colores Santos. However, after Luna Roja, there's just something rather indistinct and distracted about the bottom half. It's still good psychedelic alt rock, but it's not nearly as compelling as the top half. While I still prefer Soda Stereo with their new wave sound, this is quite a ... read more

Gustavo Cerati's first solo work is a lush Alt Dance/Neo-Psych affair that's quite unlike the work he did with Soda Stereo. Vuelta por el Universo is a beautiful, dreamy opener to the album, but after that point, the sound meanders into a pleasant haze: nice to listen to, but not striking in any way. While this certainly foreshadows the sound he would display on Bocanada, we're still quite a ways off from that.

Favorite Song: Vuelta por el Universo

Taeko Onuki keeps it light and airy with this Art Pop/Jazz Pop album. With an interesting fusion of synths and jazzy instrumentation, Onuki provides a soothing atmosphere. I especially enjoy What To Do 'Cause Love You, though most of the other songs don't really stand out much. Altogether, I suppose this album is nice enough for easy listening.

Favorite Song: What To Do 'Cause Love You

A richly gothic Post-Punk/Post-Rock EP. The material here is much stronger than their debut album, with fewer vocals to clutter the sound and more focused instrumentation that evokes a cold, yet soothingly dreamy atmosphere. The first hints of a post-rock sound begin to peek through here, which is what I'm here for, so I'm glad to hear it.

Favorite Song: No Edge, No End

A dreamy yet dry Post-Punk/Neo-Psych album. The first few songs have this beautiful, darkly delicate sound, but it grows rather distracted and ineffectual over the entire album's run. The vocals are also never good here, providing a vague accentuation at best to the instrumentation, but more often than not, the indistinct mumbling gets in the way. Admittedly, it's been a while since I last listened to Disco Inferno, so I forget how this sound develops further for them, but I can ... read more