The Heart of the Sound.

On October 22, 2021, JPEGMAFIA released two very similar projects, yet intrinsically different at their core.

This version of LP! is the one that immediately landed on streaming platforms and became available for everyone; The Offline Version was released the same day, but without being available online due to sample clearances. There’s a big divide in opinions about copyright and plagiarism; personally, I don’t really know where to place myself, and ... read more

Maybe it’s due to the lack of innovation compared to the soundtrack for The Fellowship of the Ring, but I’d say The Two Towers has less interesting instrumentation, though it still delivers a very strong fantasy and epic atmosphere throughout the whole hour of score.

Speaking of the movie, I really enjoyed seeing how the hobbits’ adventure continued, but if I can make a criticism of this beloved film: I didn’t like how they staged Gandalf’s return. I’m ... read more

Social Bias

I don’t know if it’s just the influence that the average score of the album gives me, or if it’s really the various cuts, transitions, and overall aesthetic that make me prefer the offline version, but I seem to have a clear preference.

OFFLINE! is a sort of parallel experience compared to LP!. I listened to both one after the other, and I’ve always preferred the latter one, but why? The atmosphere gives me stronger and more vivid vibes. The hardcore tracks ... read more

A Movie a Day.

My summer vacation has finally begun, and in order to waste time in the least useless way possible, I’m going to watch a movie every night I’m not hanging out (this won’t last very long, but let’s see).

I never watched any of The Lord of the Rings without falling asleep when I was younger, and even if this time I still couldn’t stay awake, I watched it from start to finish. I loved the first movie: the world‑building is very good, and it ... read more

"But the president is on a bull market run!"

I Can Surely Say That Cry Baby is my favourite Vince album so far. Jamal here has a more interesting and hardcore production than usual, and the kind of production chosen is very thematically coherent: the rap‑rock beats, shaped around rock‑based drums and loopy guitar riffs that remind me a lot of early‑’80s country music, are very catchy, and I can already see them in the highest spots of my Spotify Wrapped.

I really felt ... read more

Beside the first three tracks, the rest is just too minimal and simple to be interesting for me.

I can't understand why this album has only one rating (mine). The new songs are as good as the original ones. yes, Stability might be slow after the beginning, but the other two songs deserve more attention!

I Let It In and It Took Everything sounds like a borderline album where each part of it seems to fall deeply into either metalcore or a lullaby of atmospheric synths, while at times merging the two atmospheres into a safer alternative‑metal scenario.

The album progresses like a continuous river of sonic trials that almost seem not to fit well with the band that chose them, even if the final result is concretely superior to many projects that try to combine two or more radically different ... read more

i didn't listened to the original album but those redux seem pretty strong honestly!

I’m currently watching a video tour of a forty‑million‑euro yacht, and now I know what I want to achieve before I’m thirty (it’s not going to happen, but my failure will still be better than most people’s idea of success). “Finally”, after one and a half months of investing, I’m currently down 0.23%, but the market always goes up, right?

The album isn’t very interesting compared to the rest of the discography, so I just wanted to write some ... read more

Eve is really amazing, one of the best songs in their catalog. I’m always surprised when people tell me they don’t dive into EPs as much as they do into other projects.

Is a twenty‑minute album worth a three‑year wait? I think music artists have the duty to at least explain their intentions to their fans. The primary example in all of music is surely Frank Ocean, with his annoying habit of staying away from the public without ever really saying, “I don’t feel like making music anymore.”

Still, this album isn’t bad at all, but after Summertime ’06 and Big Fish Theory I was expecting a solid continuation of the run, and that ... read more

“I Wonder What He’s Listening To.”

Scaring the Hoes wants to represent that kind of unpopular music, the kind that, if you listen to it and talk to people about it, they’ll look at you badly, as if you were some kind of psychopath. I really like the idea of the extremization of distortion in hip‑hop, one of the most widely appreciated genres of the last decades.

The production takes a lot from the late stages of Devon Hendryx, and the implementation of ... read more

Sigma Edits.

Love Is Not Enough gives me an album aesthetic that reminds me of the ’22–’23 era, when Instagram and TikTok were full of sigma‑male edits. I was pretty young, and even if I wasn’t taking that wave of videos seriously, I wasn’t thinking about all the people who actually were taking the “alpha‑male status” seriously and genuinely wanted to achieve it.

Love Is Not Enough almost felt like their motto, and the album cover has something of ... read more

Turn On/Off the Radio.

I don’t like anything that can be considered hip‑hop that gets played on the radio. Living in Italy as an AoTY user means having a headache every time you go to a public event where speakers are involved, and I stupidly ask myself every time: “But why? Why don’t they just listen to better music?” Surely a dumb question.

I really like the album cover, and it represents the diversification of the album pretty well. Staples’ idea of ... read more

Last Day of School.

Tomorrow will be my last day of school, at least for this year. A lot has changed since I moved to another school: everything here is easier, and that comes with both good and bad consequences. Surely, I won’t be as prepared as I would’ve been at the end of the five years if I had chosen the easier path, but fortunately my head is still attached to the rest of my body, something that wasn’t guaranteed at the other institute.

I don't have much to say ... read more

I’ve read many times in charts of the best albums of the last years about this “atmospheric sludge metal” genre, without really knowing what it sounded like. Now, some of you like @CrackedSkull16 will tell me something like “rEaDiNg tHe wIkIpEdIa aRtIcLe aBoUt dUbStEp cAn’T bE tHaT hArD mAn”, but I’m very lazy, so I assumed I had to guess by myself with my ears.

I wasn’t expecting to hear something so radically different from the ear‑violating ... read more

Looks Like Trump.

A few days ago, I started a discussion with @Homesession3 about what could and couldn’t be considered post‑trap. I told him that even if there’s a ton of experimentation going on in a genre he hates so much, I still can’t pick something out of this big pot and call it “post‑trap”. But does the same thing work for hip‑hop? My answer is yes. The very first thing that comes to mind when I think about post‑rap is for sure the cLOUDDEAD ... read more

Three years after Plans, Death Cab return with a safer and more accessible project, Narrow Stairs. The album follows the well‑known band formula that has been repeating (and working very well) for the last five albums.

I often wonder if artists get bored of making similar music just because it’s their safe zone, and they aren’t actually capable of doing decent genre exploration, or they’re just lazy.

Converge’s album run from 2001 to 2017 is really one of the best I’ve ever heard from a band, even from any artist or group across any genre. The Dusk in Us is once again proof of how hard this band goes.

The album feels very similar to their 2012 project, and just like All We Love We Leave Behind, the title track is the strongest song on the tracklist. Lately I’m getting a ton of quality music through my ears, and I’m starting to struggle to process all this goated ... read more