This week, I’ve got another four albums for your listening ears. There will be three new albums from the past week (on a monday to monday basis) and one classic album we’re celebrating the anniversary of.
If there’s an album YOU want to see covered that we missed (or a review that you disagree with) write a review of your own and submit it right here!
SIGHTINGS – Jarboe
5.8/10
This record is pretty good. It’s more or less a neo-classical darkwave piece that focuses more on the music that isn’t played so I don’t have too much to talk about it.
There’s a really heavy influence of field recordings which normally I love (“F#A#∞” anyone?) but here it can get a bit repetitive. The entirety of the seven-and-a-half minute “VIREO SERENADE (feat. Vireo)” features a single birdsong throughout. It adds to the piece sometimes, but the same loop over and over for seven minutes drives me mad. The music is too minimalist for its own good here and it really sounds like you’re listening to the birdsong first with the music second. Gorgeous for the first half, hair-pulling by the second.
This album doesn’t feel like it knows what mood it wants to capture. Some tracks like “CHOIR AND NIGHT FOX” or “THE HOLY WATERS” are dark, mysterious and surrounded by these long, drawling strings, pounding drums and moaning choirs. Others like “BREATHE (feat. Freddie Murphy & Chiara Lee)” feel bright and a little out of place with their bell chimes, lighter strings and horn sounds.
The dark parts are really incredible but they feel uncomfortably broken up by some of these lighter pieces. There’s potential for a cool story here with darkness moving into light but the tracks don’t really feel coherently placed to make this.
All in all, it’s worth at least one listen but I don’t think I’d find myself going back to this over something like “White Light From the Mouth of Infinity” by Swans or other neoclassical darkwave pieces like “Sinner Get Ready” by Lingua Ignota.
Pompei // Utility – MIKE, Earl Sweatshirt & Surf Gang
6.3/10
Described as “Speakerboxxx / The Love Below” for alternative hip hop nerds, “Pompei // Utility” is more or less two records by MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt stapled together and both produced by Surf Gang. These kinds of albums are usually hit or miss for me; more often than not there’s one side that I clearly prefer and it makes the other artist’s contributions feel a little unimportant. While the former is true here, the latter is not and the result is a very coherent and enjoyable piece by two of hip-hop’s greatest.
Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE compliment each other so well that it feels very natural for their projects to go wall to wall with each other. While both take on a more relaxed flow, Earl’s is a little more direct and almost psychedelic, whereas MIKE’s voice thumps like it’s a plucked bass. On the single track the two feature together, “Kirkland”, this dynamic is shown more directly and makes me wish there were a few more where they collaborated
Musically, it’s a beautiful bridging between the abstract hip hop that MIKE and Earl tackle with Surf Gang’s more contemporary cloud rap and plugg influences. The beats feel incredibly natural. Perhaps it’s due to the MCs relaxed flow, but they just feel so natural over each beat. Every line delivered by the two (and the occasional feature) feels like it was destined to be.
The beats themselves are psychedelic, spacey and feature traditional trap drum loops—which admittedly can get tiring after awhile but it’s a staple of the genre and their flows are so tactile in conjunction with said beats that it doesn’t get too tiring until the end of each of the respective albums.
Personal bias speaking, but I’ve always preferred Mr. Sweatshirt to his partner in their solo careers. Nothing against MIKE, but Earl simply does things better in my opinion. While I initially was a little disappointed by his performance here, I came around on it and it’s definitely not a bad showing. The same can be said for MIKE, but I’ve listened to less of his work to begin with, so perhaps I’m not one to be speaking on this.
The main flaw I have with this album—again—is the plugg influence from Surf Gang. While these beats certainly are incredible plugg tracks, that only goes so far and they can get very stale after a while. This is not usually an issue, but at over an hour by the time you’re even halfway through Earl’s “Utility”, you’re more than likely to feel a little bored. Artists like Summrs’ best works barely scrape 40 minutes and even then it can feel a little stale by the end.
At times, the rapping can feel stale too. Again, it works with the vibe they’re going for but it can start to slog when Earl and MIKE aren’t doing a ton to stand out from each other or the beat.
All in all it’s a good record, and it serves as a great introduction to either artist if you only listen to one of the two. If you happen to hate one of the artists and not the other (somehow…?) then great! You still get a 30 minute project from one of your favorites. Those of us with common sense though, we get two.
Distracted – Thundercat
7.1/10
Totally unrelated, but god I miss when he and Kendrick collaborated. I won’t talk about anything other than his own works on this review (aside from this preamble) but the vocal harmonies and psych-soul sound he captures makes me wish for another “To Pimp A Butterfly”.
I like Thundercat about as much as the next bassist does. He clearly loves the instrument and implements it so, so well into his music. While I prefer the thick, richer tones of the lower scales, when you play a $10,000 six-stringer, you’re gonna use every fret you paid for and Thundercat absolutely does on this record.
Despite him being known for his genius bassing, he is the frontman after all and his vocals are really nice as well. He harmonizes with himself through different overlaid recordings and it’s gorgeously done and very pleasant to listen to. His voice goes along as just another instrument in the ensemble and is usually fun. It’s cutesy in a way and Thundercat clearly has a lot of fun; for example: on “Great Americans” he meows at us. Great.
The psychedelic soul sound captured here is really beautiful. I love the bright, smooth, floaty feeling that overwhelms you as you fly through the groovy basslines, jazzy chords and elegant vocalizing. The project definitely holds up in comparison to his previous best work “Drunk” from 2017 and it’s nice to see that he can keep consistency after all these years. If you’ve enjoyed his work before (or if any of these genre descriptors sound interesting to you) I would definitely give the album a listen.
Sextant – Herbie Hancock
8.9/10
Before Herbie Hancock reinvented jazz fusion with “Headhunters”, but after he had helped Miles Davis invent it in the first place on “In A Silent Way”, the great pianist adopted a swahili name—Mwandishi—and crossed into the world of the avant-garde and afrofuturism. Through three albums under this title (with a group dubbed the “Mwandishi Sextet”), he pushed the bounds of the avant garde genre. While ‘71’s “Mwandishi” and ‘72’s “Crossings” are great in their own right, none are more inventive, interesting and fun than “Sextant”.
I’ll skip over the opener for now to talk about “Hidden Shadows” and “Hornets”. These two are both great tracks. Clearly you can see the early funk influence that he would later fully incorporate and accept through the latter part of the ‘70s while still maintaining a primarily jazz ideology. There’s a super cool fusion element that backs the track and while it is mostly focused on the acoustic instruments, the spacey yet spiritual touches from Hancock really up the excitement.
“Hornets” features a flute and turns the dial up on the futurism a bit more, featuring the synthy, laser sounds that are very synaptic and buzzy. The saxophone here is played very out there, and it sounds like a kazoo. Just kidding! There actually IS a kazoo on parts of this record—and it rocks. Seriously.
The actual sax—which sounds nothing like a kazoo—is fluttery, explosive and really pleasant. Benny Maupin is really underrated and super excellent on both the saxophone and kazoo and it brings a spacey element to it. Since the kazoo is basically never used in any serious music ever, combining it with darting synths, swirling electric piano and electric drumming makes it sound like an alien instrument being played by some otherworldly creature.
How about that opener that we skipped over though? In my opinion, it’s maybe the greatest single jazz song of the seventies.
For an album that came out in the early seventies, it is incredibly impressive how futuristic it sounds. The moment you hit play on “Rain Dance” you’re hit with spacey pluckings that float up and down the track in seemingly endless, random patterns. Synth risers move up and more swells build until the first whispers of a trumpet move in. The beat—a simple, snapping pattern—moves in almost invisibly and gives way for the trumpeter (Eddie Henderson) to start soloing. Suddenly, everything stops. Then, it all explodes back into form and a full drumbeat and bassline kick in.
Before it even comes in, Hancock’s keyboard playing is there. You can feel it in the empty spaces where you know it should be, where an appreciative jazz listener can even imagine him playing in the silence. And when it actually does come in? Oh, oh man. It’s class. Pure mastery distilled to its clearest and most absolute form.
I could go on and on about the bizarre time signatures, start-stop patterns and ridiculously cool sounding synths, but there’s nothing stopping you from opening any music app and listening to it right now. I’m serious. Stop reading. Go listen to “Sextant”.
