2021 May Listenings

Posted on June 1, 2021
Tags: music and stuff

Cities Aviv - The Crashing Sound of How It Goes

Although it’s probably most fitting to be called an experimental hip-hop album, the songs are actually very easy to approach. Kind of feels like Madvillainy meets vaporwave, and then the whole thing is fed into a lofi chorus pedal.

Release date: 2021-04-16

[8.5/10]

Various Artists - Arc Mountain

A compilation from artists from Deathbomb Arc and Hausu Mountain, two of my favorite labels right now. Fire-toolz is an underrated producer…

Release date: 2021-05-21

[8.4/10]

Maxwell Sterling - Turn Of Phrase

Crystalline electronic ambient.

Release date: 2021-04-23

[8.4/10]

Matt Sweeney, Bonnie Prince Billy - Superwolves

Country. BPB is still on top of the game, love this one.

Release date: 2021-04-30

[8.3/10]

Lost Girls - Menneskekollektivet

Jenny Hval does dance music. It’s actually pretty cool.

Release date: 2021-03-26

[8.3/10]

Minotaur Shock - Qi

Crystalline techno music. Kind of reminds me of Chekov’s EP from last year. Very enjoyable.

Release date: 2015-02-04

[8.3/10]

Brockhampton - Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine

This is actually the first Brockhampton album for me… The first 2 tracks are pretty dope. Overall this one feels a lot like something that we hear all the time at around 2000.

Release date: 2021-04-09

[8.3/10]

Yukika - Timeabout,

Another stellar future pop EP from an artist on top of the K-pop game (not that I’m too indulgent on the genre though). Although one can argue there really isn’t a whole lot of new ideas on this album, the songs on this album is undeniably catchy and enjoyable.

Release date: 2021-04-07

[8.1/10]

Mark Fell, Will Guthrie - Infoldings / Diffractions

If there ever is a club that plays “Infoldings” on repeat and no drink spilt on the floor and people go there to read books instead of talking about nothing until getting completely wasted, I’d go there regularly.

Release date: 2021-01-29

[8.1/10]

Leon Vynehall - Rare, Forever

Highly enjoyable, slithering club music. I like the first several tracks like “Ecce! Ego” and “Mothra” a lot, but the latter tracks don’t really stand out that much.

Release date: 2021-04-30

[7.8/10]

Vatican Shadows - SR71 Blackbird Survivors

Bleak, elusive industrial ritual music.

Release date: 2021-03-05

[7.8/10]

Masayoshi Fujita - Bird Ambience

On this record he plays marimba instead of vibraphone, and has more accompanying instruments and textures. That being said, I prefer the pure, sorrowful Apologue to this one though.

Release date: 2021-05-28

[7.7/10]

Lucinda Chua - Antidotes 2

Too short… 4 really soothing songs.

Release date: 2021-05-07

[7.7/10]

Sons Of Kemet - Black To The Future

Compared to their 2018 masterpiece, this one isn’t as well composed and overall not as stunning. Still this is a pretty good afro-jazz album.

Release date: 2021-05-14

[7.6/10]

KMRU - Logue

Newest release from key Kenyan ambient musician features more organic field recording samples and more glittering electronic sounds.

Release date: 2021-05-14

[7.5/10]

Caterina Barbieri - Fantas Variations

Friends of the artist all do a rework of the first track of her incredible 2019 album, “Ecstatic Computation”. I like the tracks from the artists I already love, people like Lyra Pramuk, Bendik Giske, Kali Malone and Kara-Lis Coverdale, but not so much the other techno / breakcore artists. The electric guitar track is pretty dope though.

Release date: 2021-04-02

[7.4/10]

U-zhaan, 環Roy, Chinza Dopeness - Tanoshimi

Japanese left-field hip-hop with new age-esque instrumentals. U-zhaan is a tabla player, so I guess that makes sense. IMO the instrumental is much more interesting than the vocal performance.

Release date:

[7.2/10]

Scuare - Phenomenal

Chill-hop. Not bad but not really my jam.

Release date: 2020-05-02

[7.0/10]

Burial, Blackdown - Shock Power Of Love EP

Compared to Burial’s other stuff this one is tame.

Release date: 2021-04-30

[6.8/10]

Fly Pan Am - Frontera

Somehow this feels more post-punk than post-rock. There are still slow, ambient passages on this album, but they don’t click that much IMO. The post-punk-y songs all have drony guitar and bass line, which is something I like, but the beats are just too predictable and repetitive.

Release date: 2021-06-07

[6.7/10]

Flying Lotus - Yasuke

Never imagined FL would create something so bland and so unmemorable… and the anime is a complete flop, can’t even finish one episode.

Release date: 2021-04-30

[6.3/10]

Telex - This Is Telex

More often than not I find Synth-pop music in general not really interesting. This compilation gives me the same feeling…

Release date: 2021-04-30

[6.1/10]

th1r3en, Pharoahe Monch - A Magnificent Day For An Exorcism

Imagine rap-rock, but the “rock” here refers to the kind of music from Led Zeppelin…

Release date: 2021-01-22

[6.0/10]

Gruff Rhys - Seeking New Gods

Ew…

Release date: 2021-05-21

[3.0/10]

Methods Body - Methods Body

Jungle / ambient. I like this a lot, it’s wonky and majestic and sometimes jazzy.

Release date:

[8.8/10]

Jay Electronica - A Written Testimony

Jazz-hop. It is very good.

Release date: 2020-03-13

[8.4/10]

Oliver Coates - skins n slime

Droning contemporary chamber music / ambient. Music for coding.

Release date: 2020-10-16

[8.2/10]

Teller Bank$ - The Grotesque & Beautiful

Chill-hop. The beat is fluid and the flows are dope.

Release date:

[8.1/10]

Even Less Friends - Starlow

Bedroom indie pop. Cry emoji all the way…

Release date: 2020-05-01

[8.0/10]

KMRU, Ian Urbina - burmaa

I’ve always had the impression that while KMRU is one of my favorite ambient music acts right now, they’re consciously staying away from using more straightforward melodies in their music. This is not the case on this EP though.

Release date: 2012-06-15

[7.8/10]

Blessedassistant, Iceberg Theory - The Hierophant

Jazz-hop. I like the instrumentals (esp. the saxophone) but the singing voice sounds shaky and kinda off putting to me.

Release date: 2019-05-31

[7.5/10]

Rav - I’m On To Me

Chill-hop.

Release date: 2020-11-27

[7.4/10]

Perc - Bitter Music

Industrial techno. Makes you want to party really hard even if you’re trapped in the apartment.

Release date: 2017-05-19

[8.6/10]

Rafael Anton Irisarri - The Shameless Years

FFO Gas, Tim Hecker and GY!BE. Droning ambient music. Also check out his last year’s album “Peripeteia”, real quality music.

Release date: 2017-08-25

[8.1/10]

Bataille Solaire - Documentaires

Dunno where this band is from, but this sounds a lot like those Japanese new-age ambient music from the previous century. Good stuff.

Release date: 2013-08-06

[8.2/10]

Jessika Kenney, Eyvind Kang - The Face of the Earth

I remember listening to Eyvind Kang’s stuff a long time ago in highschool, but I don’t remember anything about it. This one sounds mystical and has a lot of Eastern influence. Almost ritualistic.

Release date: 2012-12-03

[7.3/10]