#190 Pissed Jeans - Hope for Men

I saw one of their recent videos and was intrigued somehow. Something about their aggressive disinterest and halfhearted hookiness got my attention - this is one of their older albums though.

It's kind of interesting as art: it's sludgy, banally unpleasant, shouty hardcore punk, with a matching scumbag persona at the frontman position. Matt Korvette comes across 1/3 furious at the world, and 1/3 disgusted with himself, and 1/3 relishing a revel in the resulting filth. Its like a Chuck Palahniuk book, with all of the early-middle-age drudgery and self-loathing and none of the humor or wit. This mood, if nothing else, is well realized.

Unfortunately, its at the cost of making anything particularly listenable. Its all repeated thumpy drums, thrumming baselines, squalls of guitar noise, and shouty shouty shouting. That's cool they made this. It's good at being what it is. But I don't think I need to hear it again 2.5/5

#189 The Thermals - Personal Life

I've always liked The Thermals, though its been a slow but steady decline into less spazzy, less fun territory every since More Parts per Million.

Which this album continues, unfortunately. There's some hooks here, some swaying sentiment, but nothing nearly as propulsive as Pillar of Salt or No Culture Icons, which is undeniably a disappointment. It ends up sounding a bit late era midtempo green day, anthemic without being truly propulsive. Agreeable, pleasant, will probably find its way into my headphones once or twice more, but nothing more noteworthy than 3/5

#188 No Age - Everything in Between

Reviewed at Pitchfork, Dusted, Allmusic, everywhere. I've liked these guys' previous stuff pretty good (Nouns was my 7th favorite album of 2008!).

Deerhunter and No Age occupy a similar space in my mind, (similar noisy, textured sound, similar levels of hype, peaking around the same time a few years ago) so its a cute trick that their latest albums both came out around the same time.

This one doesn't really turn me on as much as Halcyon Digest though. I've always liked No Age's faster, hookier stuff, and here it sort of has the edges melted off. The album as a whole seems like a more conscious effort to be arty, lo-fi, texture oriented, sonic youth via pavement, etc, etc, etc, and its just not much fun. Its sludgy, seemingly consciously produced to be slightly off for its own sake. The main exception is Common Heat, which is great, propulsive mixtape fodder, but as of now this seems like a miss for me, and I'd be hard pressed to put it on before nouns next time I'm in the market for this kind of thing 2.5/5

#187 Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Reviewed at Pitchfork, Dusted, Allmusic, everywhere. I've liked these guys' previous stuff pretty good (Nothing Ever Happened was my favorite song of 2008!) but usually more on a track level than an album level.

This is a hazy, complex, pretty, nostalgic album, befitting its title, evoking Olivia Tremor Control, Swervedriver and Brian Eno (check that Needles in the Camel's Eye guitar line in Desire Lines!) at turns. Its much more cohesive as an album, track bleeding into eachother, reverb-drenched notes bleeding into eachother, moment into memory. Its an enjoyable listen, if not mindblowing, but I find myself gravitating back to its fuzzy intricacies. Maybe it will be the first of theirs to really grab me on the whole 3.5/5

#186 Das Racist - Sit Down, Man

Pitckfork liked it, and I have to say that Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell made me suspect these guys aren't as dumb as that song might make you think.

I was not wrong. These guys are obnoxious, but they are not dumb. These guys are good god damn rappers and they might be the smartest guys in the room right now.

Normally I don't like the long rap album, and at 80 minutes or so, this borders on ridiculous. But if your main claim to fame consisted of 9 words worth of sassiness, maybe you'd feel pressure to spit complex, chorusless, stream-of-consciousness rhymes, constantly, for nearly an hour and a half, just to prove your point. These guys are painlessly self-aware, and painfully aware of everything around them, dumping verse after verse about everything modern, and everything we're currently nostalgic about. Which is everything.

The production is varied, but generally electronic, rough, and nasty, with line after line piled on top of it. It's exhausting at times, and the length is excessive, but somehow I feel like it might be some kind of hyperdense masterpiece 4.5/5

#185 Mice Parade - What it Means to be Left Handed

Another one from Dusted, sounded compelling enough.

My first impression of this one was not all that strong. It sounds aaawfully twee, full of folksy turns, frail singing of frail sentiments, little awkward flourishes. But something about it, even in one listen, clued me in that there might be something more here, some heartfull of details that I might love if I let myself. Little snippets of the lyrics, as they trickled in though my half-paying-attention-to-the-lyrics, told me that they are trying to break my heart. This will require more listens. There is something here that will win me over or annoy me some day. It will be a big hit or miss someday. Today, lets say 4/5

#184 Buke and Gase - Riposte

Reviewed on Dusted. Getting back to my roots.

Man and woman invent baritone ukulele (buke) and guitar/bass hybrid (gase). Also some improvised hybrid drums. Put on (I'm told) impressive live shows. Sound great on album too. What more do you need to know? Either that kind of conceptual thing turns you on or it doesn't.

Ok, ok, fine. The actual music. Its pretty great. Complex, propulsive, uncomfortable. Sounding not unlike a more acoustic, mellowed Deerhoof at times, sort of like Menomena in their subtly not-of-this-world sound, at others. The improvised instrument thing matters, damn it. The overall tone of this album is just different, and their background trying to perform these complex songs live as a duo has caused them to take some curious songwriting turns - restrictions breed creativity, after all. And the end result is compelling - if you like slightly off-kilter, experiential, but still totally listenable rock, give it a go 4.5/5

#183 Flying Lotus - Pattern + Gird World

Got a good review on pitchfork - haven't listened to anything from them in ages! Cycle broken! Also, I didn't love Los Angeles, but it was intriguing enough to keep my ear to the ground.

The review on said site described this as being a more accessible Flying Lotus album, and that is downright accurate. For one, the pack of seven bite-sized songs is an easily digestible portion, whereas dense electronic music starts to wear me out in longer stretches. But the approach is more accessible too, and in my ears more enjoyable; I might even go so far to call this fun. Where his previous stuff was based more in texture and murk, here there are some honest to god melodies forming the skeleton, with the texture serving to rough up the edges, bend the angles, shuffle the rhythms and otherwise provide interest.

It undeniably evokes 8-bit video game music at times, with its buzzy, ringing tones and propulsive melodic pacing, but its a lot more interesting than that category usually implies - lots of subtle flourishes and twists underneath. Given that its not a genre I'm normally into, its more impressive than it sounds that I end up at the score I do - if you're into this kind of thing, add half a point 4/5

#182 The Mint Chicks - Anti-Tiger

Going back for the one thing by The Mint Chicks I've never heard: their second EP.

Man, these guys are just a creative, talented bunch. There's 2 more tracks of Octagon, Octagon, Octagon's Blood Brothers-esque thrashing here, but the band has mellowed a bit, sounding more like Gang of Four in places, having the patience to build tension and texture, and they have some downright experimental pieces to begin and end the record. It makes me wonder why these guys never got bigger, they're exactly the kind of thing the indie press is into these days. Before their time? Or maybe just too damn Southern Hemisphere.

Cool stuff, still really dig these guys 4/5

#181 Kate Bush - Hounds of Love

I had heard good things about this one, and while I was a bit skeptical, I eventually found myself with dishes to do, and nothing else new on my mp3 player. So!

The obvious reference points here are Bjork and Laurie Anderson, as Kate revels in bizarre dreamworlds, highly affected crooning, and icy, repetitive electronic structures. And actually, it kind of works. It is strangely haunting, the opener and Cloudbursting in particular building to spacious, spooky climaxes. The synths make it sound dated from time to time, but for the most part, it creates a world unto itself.

It gets a bit too experimental near the end, making gestures that don't really work, and that don't (at least by my ear today) break any particularly new ground. Under Ice isn't is scary as it wants to be, and the spooky whispering and Irish flavor of Jig of Life is exactly the kind of thing I was fearing from this album. It rang hokey to me.

I don't know that I have a whole lot of use for this, but it has aged surprisingly well - its no wonder that The Hold Steady make a prominent reference to the first song, and The Futureheads covered the second 3.5/5

#180 Lady Gaga - The Fame

Man, a weeklong trip to Seattle and a few days of furious dissertation writing have killed my pace. And this is what I come back with! I'd never knowingly heard a Lady Gaga song, and she just reached a certain level of mainstream acclaim that I felt like I should probably hear an album or two just for reference. Plus, who knows, maybe I'll actually like it (see: Justin Timberlake).

First the good. I really like some of the skwonky synths on this, and some of the songs actually have some heart to them. Poker Face makes emotion mysteriously crystallize when the backing noises hit each other, and even Boys Boys Boys is strangely affecting in its desperation, in a Boys in Girls in America kind of way. I'm sure I'm giving it too much credit, but I kind of like it. Brown Eyes is just a straight up good song, everything coming together nicely, gelling into a Self-esque pop gem.

But at the end of the day I can't get past the persona, which just seems too designed, and never really commits to an actual personality, point of view or feeling. There's an effort to be Peaches-nasty, but its really watered down. There's an effort to be Madonna-trashy, but even thats watered down. Its all forced, and half-heartedly, it's edgy enough to be titillating to teenage girls, but not so edgy it upsets their parents. Which is exactly the wrong amount of edgy.

Musicwise its thumpy and dancy, but actually a lot more interesting and a lot less predictable than you might expect (though it is, no surprise, hyper produced). The real problem is I just can't get past the sleekly-designed personality on display. I've heard that Lady Gaga simultaneously revels in the trappings of fame, while criticizing their superficiality. That must be on a later album, this one just meekly gestures in those directions for effect 2.5/5

#179 The Books - The Way Out

The last Books album I heard was good enough to also check out their even-newer one too.

Man, its albums like this that make this project tough. So, in case you're wondering, yeah, it still sounds roughly like a Books album. But it also has a really different feel than their other ones - I wonder if I am unfairly hard on them for sounding samey just because they sound so different than anyone else.

On this, their forth album, they focus on samples from a variety of self-help recordings: plenty of calm people providing you with metaphors for wholeness and oneness, promising you a better you. At times its really affecting, when all the synths and beats and cuts and chops really come together. Other times its all a bit gimmicky (lead single Cold Freezin' Night doesn't do anything for me). Sometimes its both: I Am Who I Am actually really rocks, and The Story of Hip Hop somehow transcends its "sampling a children's story about a rabbit that just happens to be named hip hop" gimmick to be one of the best songs on the album.

I'm torn. The way The Books use these samples, they're not quite mocking them, but they're not quite respecting them. At first its just background noise, the random chatter of any Books record, but then the themes return and return and work their way into you, and the effect isn't quite funny, and it isn't quite therapeutic. Its a collage of people's ways of dealing with their weakness, and none of them are right or wrong, though none of them sound like the answer, I'm left feeling hollow but connected.

Its kind of an unpleasant listen - it reminds me of a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, where its heavy or harrowing or otherwise difficult, and you're glad that you've experienced it, and glad it's over. I don't know how many more turns it will get, but with themes as complex as these, and some of the better, more experimental compositions the books have attempted, it seems appropriate to land at about a 4/5

#178 Frank Sinatra - Songs for Swingin' Lovers

Frankroll, goin go go, this is the next of his Capitol records concept albums, after #177.

You probably know the sound:

"hey here's a line..." [horns go bwabaap]
"and a second line..." [horns go bwababapap]
"and here's the punchline!" [horns go BWABAP! BA! BAP!]

I think you have to be in the right mood for this. Its easy for it to sound tinny and hokey, but if you manage to lower your irony and buy into it, it suddenly becomes pretty damn cool. The singing is obviously excellent, and subtly inflected, its all groove, all swagger. I happened to be in the right mood for this, and it made a nice counterpoint to the morose (but probably better, in the long run) In the Wee Small Hours 3.5/5

#177 Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours

As I mentioned, I'm on an inexplicable kick to check out some earlier guys I've always liked, but whose albums I've never listened to. Lets start with a real early one.

Its the perfect title for an album full of slow, peaceful songs that echo off night skies. The opener sets sets the pace perfectly, and using a 2nd-person voice to really impart the heartbreak, and the sense of loss doesn't taper off much from there. These songs are present and interesting counterpoint to Johnny Cash's more lovelorn stuff: Johnny was flawed, so his girl left him. Frank never had the girl, he was born alone, with all the hurt built in, platonically heartbroken under infinite starlight. Never listen to this as a breakup album, it will sort of destroy you.

The production's good, and the singing's peerless for what it is. Heck, it even won me over, and I'm not a lyrics guy.

So, I mentioned things fitting perfectly. Perfect title, perfect opener. What I'm really saying is that that all the parts fit, the album's feel is consistent and whole, and it does not stray from it's path, which is its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. By the end, it gets to be a bit much, and Frank starts to lose his cool, sounding a little insufferable in his longing. After 16 tracks, it might be nice to see some progression, or at least some diversions. Still, it does what it does well, and with conviction, which is certainly good enough for 4/5

#176 Hot Chip - One Life Stand

Man, its amazing what some time off dissertation writing does for my music intake. I'm about to get back to it though, so the entries will likely drop right back off.

Anyway, Hot Chip has a remixes album out, I realized I'd never heard this one, despite really liking a few of their previous songs. They've never really put together an album, front to back, that I really got into though, will this be the one?

Hot Chip's music tempts one to coin compound genre descriptions to describe it, lying as it does somewhere in the overlap of electronic music and the indiest indie around. Indie House? Wimptronica? Technemo? But no! Resist! It is, though, for reference, beat heavy, spare music, drowning in small sentiments and big hearts. Well, maybe the "spare" part doesn't apply any more, cause on this album Hot Chip get busy. The mix is stuffed to the gills with synths, guitars, strings, and unidentifiable Radioheadisms and Enosities, sounding a lot dancier in the process.

It's totally agreeable work music, its busy-ness is all in lockstep grooves and perfectly engineered, but it only transcends that when the sentiment finds, exposes, and strikes nerves. Their previous albums had a couple of these nerve-strikers each (Boy from School, The Warning are standouts), and here we see two more in the form of Brothers and Alley Cats, though they don't quite crush as hard as their ancestors.

Across the board, this is likely to be my favorite Hot Chip album - I tend to prefer business to emptiness, and this album is more interesting front to back. That said, no, this is not finally the Hot Chip album that lives up to the promise of its standouts. I think I just happen to really like a very specific kind of Hot Chip song, and that's not the kind of song they tend to make very many of 3/5

#175 MC5 - Back in the USA

I needed some riffy rock, and I realized that while I'd liked Kick out the Jams, I'd never heard this one.

This is downright catchy at times, a lighter take on the breakneck relentlessness of their earlier stuff. It actually kind of works for me. It's built on a foundation of early rock and roll aesthetics, with plenty about teenagers, high school and lite rebellion. Heck, it starts and ends with two covers of 50's songs, by Little Richard and Chuck Berry, respectively, and The American Ruse is all but a parody of Summertime Blues. But it has enough of a sheen of metallic grime to keep it interesting. It strikes a careful balance: the songs aren't nasty enough to sound like they're trying to take a shit on the 50's aesthetic, but they're nasty enough to keep from being a tribute. Its a nonviolent kidnapping of the history of rock and roll, more The Buzzcocks than The Stooges, a grin and a gun to the head until the Stockholm sets in.

Right, the actual songs. Um, garage band jamminess, shouty, trebly, raw but tight. Its fun stuff, I liked it a lot more than I expected to 4.5/5

#174 Johnny Cash - The Fabulous Johnny Cash

More Cash! Moving forward a couple of years to his Columbia Records debut.

The sound here is more polished, a bit richer, with a good deal of oooo-waaaa-infused backing vocals. I'm surprised all over again how music of this era focuses on the vocals, how the drums and guitar are so spare, and so low in the mix. It's not really in line with my preferences, to be honest, and here the vocals are a bit more polished than I'd like. Subject-matter-wise, its much more overtly religious, and the songs of longing are more "I miss you" than "I don't deserve you". These themes (and a lack of tales of debauchery) rob us of that image of Cash as a damaged man, an image that was so appealing on his first album. If nothing else, this one makes me appreciate Hot and Blue Guitar more. Of course, the vocals are still incredible, and the guitar lines are classic and clean, good enough for 3/5

#173 The Books - Lost and Safe

Again, I don't know how I missed this one. I think that Lemon of Pink left me thinking these guys were out of tricks, and didn't encourage me to pursue their later stuff. But hey, I really liked Thought for Food, lets give it a try.

The basic approach is party-line Books, lots of spare samples, rim-shot beats and drawn-out cello notes, with vocal samples yanked from context and dropped onto hard surfaces. The production's more dense, and the vocal samples seem less abruptly cut; its all a little less IDM. The real difference is Nick Zammuto's singing. Scarce in the past, here he lends a consistent, persistent voice to the album, sometimes crooning, sometimes evoking Laurie Anderson's autotuned monotone.

The real real difference in the album is its feel though. Its a more emotional album, a sad, nervous, vaguely hopeful album. Lost and Safe is the perfect title for it. Their previous albums were distant curiosities; bristly, nervous Roombas; this one sheds its harsh edges and moves close, becomes soft, wraps itself around you. I don't know that its better or worse, just different. It undeniably still sounds like The Books, and you can't say that it really breaks any new ground, but my reaction to it is remarkably different considering its made up of the same basic parts. I owe it another listen or two 4/5

#172 Autolux - Transit Transit

Caught Audience #2 on KCRW, heard it was Autolux, and remembered Dave liked them, so I figured I'd look into their new album.

I like bits of this, there's some experimental stuff, some nice space, some interesting textures. But I couldn't really get into it somehow, it all seemed by-the-numbers experimental, if that's even possible. It sounds like radiohead here, sonic youth there, silversun pickups here, my bloody valentine lots of places. Everything's a bit too downtempo for me, just not enough energy, the fine production not attached to enough actual song. The one exception is actually the aforementioned Audience #2, which wields broken beats and bottomless purple drones to create a great, lurching 90'sstyle rocker. I feel like I'd like this better on a second listen, but I don't know if it's going to get one. Maybe I'm being too harsh on this for not living up to its influences - it certainly was more interesting than a lot of music I've heard, but it just didn't move me 2.5/5

#171 Prefuse 73 - Vocal Studies & Uprock Narratives

Its insane I've never heard this, given how much I like One Word Extinguisher. This came out first, and for some reason I never went back for it.

The chopped vocals on OWE are some of my favorite bits, and there's a lot more of that here. He lays down a beat or two, adds some samples, chops them up a bit, and the throws rhymically diced vocal fragments all over the top of it all. The result is spastic and erratic, but its all done within the beat, and it all flows well on the album and track scales. Its curiously exciting, as it ebbs and flows, swooping in with IDM-level beatfiuckery, before retreating into some downright smooth grooves, never letting you get too bored, nor too comfortable. Totally dig it.

I think it probably lacks some of the polish and timeless cohesion that set One Word Extinguisher apart, but it will surely get more plays, and I'll bet it'll grow on me as I get to know it 4/5

#170 Johnny Cash - With His Hot And Blue Guitar

I'm not sure what inspired it, but I suddenly got the urge to really check out some old timier folks who I've always liked, but never listened to thoroughly: Johnny Cash and Frank Sinatra. Lets start early.

There's probably not a lot I can add here. Its an album of simple, twangy county with that booming, crooning voice over it all, singing songs about love, loss, and not being the man you ought to be. Cash, in all these vignettes, ain't right, missing something in himself and others. But the sense isn't sad, so much as its aching, pushing on relentlessly through long days and longer nights. The guitar parts are clean and pleasant, mostly simple - though the furious Wreck of the old 97 takes things to another level. I wish there was more here like it.

I can't say its an album I have too much use for front to back. Its goddamned cool at times, but a bit too wide-eyed and mournful in others. Good road music, if nothing else, as I learned in Barstow long ago 3.5/5

#169 DJ Vadim - U.S.S.R. Repertoire (The Theory Of Verticality)

This album found its way onto two lists of instrumental hip hop albums I looked at, and I have to admit I was intrigued by the Russian DJ angle.

There's certainly something raw about this. In the sense that it seems unskilled, underproduced even, which is weird for a style of music that is basically nothing but production. Its slow-paced, uneven, overly simple in places, generally cold. But it also all kind of works in its favor, its lo-fi, in terms of aesthetic, if not in terms of actual audio fidelity (though the occaisional tape hiss actually does buy it something too). It gives itself room to breathe, especially towards the end, peaking around Who The Hell Am I's minimalist soundscape, which evokes The Olivia Tremor Control, or maybe The Beta Band's Monolith. Plus, there's the song titles, with their misordered parts, their cryptic sentiments, their hints of desperation - it gives the album a personal touch, feeling like a journey though the creator's mind in a way I rarely find in this genre.

On some level, its not really very good. But I'm kind of intrigued, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a The Glow pt. 2 kind of grower. I'm sure it will either go up or down, in my mind, from a 3.5/5

#168 Bjork - Post

Bjork is one of those artists that I'm supposed to like, but just could never get into. People who like the kind of music I like tend to like her, and she's undeniably done some original stuff, but so far, I just have not been able to get into her, never really found her listenable. But, Hyperballad being pitckfork's #11 song of the 90's, plus my recent exposure to the Sugarcubes, lead me to give one her one more try.

I was fortune enough to put this on my mp3 player while I washed the dishes, which allowed me to really listen to this without trying to do anything requiring any actual attention. This is not work music. Its noisy and erratic, yes, but it's also that its appeal also lies in the subtle crannies of the lyrics, which are easy to miss if you aren't puzzling them all together as you listen.

The first half really won me over. Army of Me doesn't sound quite as striking as it probably did when this came out, but Hyperballad really is incredible. It is unbelievably evocative, crushingly bittersweet. A true original. Similarly, It's So Quiet is without peer, that vocal performance is something else, totally beyond what I thought Bjork could do with that voice of hers. Enjoy and You've Been Flirting Again are also great, and serve as heartbreakingly unusual breakup songs.

After that though, it really falls off for me. Isobel and Possibly Maybe are trip-hop meanderers that I don't have any patience for, and I Miss You just sounds cheesy, an undercooked version of the sound on display earlier. Album closer Headphones brings back an unsettling unusualness, but its too little too late, the second half sounds like the sort of Bjork that made me not be able to get into Bjork.

Where does that leave me? An album with two really striking songs that I think will gain depth every time I listen to them, some good stuff, and a whole half I just don't see myself making it through again. The fact I resorted to going track for track really shows how mixed my feelings were here. Across the board, its a stark, frightening breakup album that I think is actually kind of amazing in the abstract, even if I don't like large parts of it. I think that, as often happens with albums where I have some baggage coming in, the score I settle on seems both too harsh and too generous. In this case 3.5/5

#167 Pete Rock - Petestrumentals

Another one that got mentioned consistently on the instrumental hip hop lists.

Here we have a dark, jazzy take on the genre, with plenty of swooning distortions in the background to give it that latenight emotional core. This is really on the opposite end of the spectrum from the Madlib album (#165) though, this is all about taking a groove and riding it for a long, long time. Each song establishes a beat and a melodic sample and generally doesn't mess with them. Extra samples drift in and out, the swooning distortions oscillate ever-so-slowly, and the texture merges glacially, but it doesn't really work for me. Its not overly interesting, and it doesn't have any kind of between-the-notes minimalist magic to me, at least not that I've been able to find.

As background music, its fine, though it falls into that kind of Digable Planets territory, where it seems a bit douchey somehow. Maybe I'm just letting the jazz-rap samples and album name bias me though. One standout is Pete's Jazz, which find the right guitar line to lead it, but even that song overstays its welcome. Also, on the last 3 tracks, suddenly there's rapping, where there had been none before. Weird. And its not very good. This album's fine, but I've come across far too many better ones in this vein lately to warrant more than 2.5/5

#166 The Budos Band - III

I'd randomly read about these guys a couple years ago in some travel magazine or something - they sounded interesting enough, so I checked out their last one, and dug it. This one got good buzz.

This is another case where I would have like this better if it was the first album of theirs I'd heard. The basic structure it there: a Meters-ey funk bass groove, a brassy horn groove over top of it, some funky drums, and not a whole lot of variation in a given song. It's music what whips its core riff around like a ribbon and lets you catch it from different angles, but it doesn't take many surprising turns when it comes to dynamics, song structure or mood. The result is energetic and fun, but consistent to a fault.

Compared to their last album, the band has a more well-defined sound, thanks primarily to some buzzy keyboard bits, and I think this is probably their best album to start with if you haven't heard them. For me, its enjoyable, but I'm consistently hard to please when it comes to more-of-the-same albums 3/5

#165 Mablib / The Beat Konducta - Vol. 1-2

On something of an instrumental hip hop kick, it makes good programming music. This one got some good buzz, and I've liked Mablib's stuff in the past.

This is more entertaining than usual as instrumental hip hop goes. It changes samples and gears often, firing off dozens of songs in 1:30 - 2:00 bursts. The tone is dark, but energetic, with a lot of funk mixed in, along with some more modern sounding fat squonkiness that I like.

Maybe I'm getting more familiar with this stuff, or maybe this treads more well-worn territory than usual, but I recognized an awful lot of samples off here, a bit from Endtroducing, a bit from the Rjd2 album, the ubiquitous Planet Rock hook, some snippets from MF Doom songs, etc, etc. That actually worked in its favor here, since it gave it that kind of memory resonance, that kind of timeless slab of tone quality that the best instrument hip hop seems to find. That said, this falls into a funny middle ground for me, not focused enough on flow, atmospherics and tonal narrative to make exceptional background music, and too often not interesting enough for chin-scratching listening. Still good enough for 3.5/5

#164 DJ Shadow - The Private Press

A trip through a series of "kinda like Endtroducing, but not as good" albums lead me to check out his followup.

This more or less falls into that category, except its not really all /that/ like Endtroducing. That album has a consistency to it, it has a wholeness and a timelessness. Despite all the sample sources, tempos, styles, and instruments, it all seems unidentifiably from a single, cohesive mind. I've heard it referred to as zoomed way in, its a uniform thing with devils in the details, the textures; its all about flows.

If Endtroducing is a circle, this is round but crowned with points - its the spikey eliptical starburst that says NEW! in it. The styles vary more, and each song feels like a gesture in a different direction outward from the core circle. Again, there is that theme, that feeling of a common origin, which is even more impressive given the variety. There's the usual dense breakbeats and slow, soaring, dense notes, with a more aggressive a rap flourish here and there, and some more adventurous sampling choices. Its really enjoyable, and I'm itching to listen to it again (I just haven't had the time lately with a visiting researcher in town all week), though I think that the sheen will wear off. Not every album can be a classic, but its at least an exciting listen 4/5

#163 El-P - Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3

Heard about this a couple of places, I've liked some of his rap albums in the past.

I was never all that into instrumental hip hop, but I've been finding some good stuff lately. This is noisy, aggressive, gritty and generally nasty, combining the overblown bass of Spank Rock with casiotone lo-fi buzz; more or less what you'd expect if you've heard any El-P. Its surprisingly listenable, menacing and weird, but not overly heavy. Time Won't Tell in particular actually has a nice emotional core, and of all things, I really like the song titles.

Its a bit too intense, and not quite exciting enough, for regular listening, but its driven, interesting background music, at worst a 4/5