#621 Car Bomb - w^w^^w^w

Noisy. Pure thrash with scant few punches pulled, pull bore screams from hell, chuggachuggachugga fills, wailedupoon guitars, the whole 9 yards, wrung around angular and precise as I've heard done before, landing somewhere between a heavier Dream Theater and a more listenable Lightning Bolt. But then a twist, up sprout these those weird, sweet melodic moments, where vocals and instruments alike relent and show shimmering underbellies, not quite like anything I've heard on an album like this before. They're great moments.

But then, are these moments really that great or are they just rendered beautiful by their contrast with the wasteland from which they've sprung? A moment like Finish It's little closing "woo!" are remarkable in their ability to change the whole tone of the album in one second, a nightmare beast with a little gold star on its forehead. It's these moments of proof that Car Bomb could be pretty and fun if they wanted to be, but withhold in the name of mindcrushing, that give them a strange credibility.

And at least the aforementioned wasteland is a compelling one, full of undulating purple hills and aquamaroon skies and jagged creatures burned black by the end of endless lives. Not anywhere you'd want to live, not even anywhere you'd want to visit again, but a place whose very existence nests in the back of your mind, skittering around now and again 3.5/5

#620 Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music Instrumentals

The album itself featured a solid helping of heavy, sharp-edged rapping, and this instrumental version helps draw the ear to the buzzy, bigass boom bap that gave that rapping its body. With songs so thoroughly dominated by their hard-hitting vocals, this is more welcome than usual as a way to see what makes them tick.

Standing on its own, this plays a bit limp, not quite hooky enough for background music, not quite interesting enough to demand listening. The best tracks are the more melodic; Anywhere But Here plays like songs off a lost great Air album and Willie Blake Sherwood could just be a delightfully offkilter M83 outtake.

A curiosity, and more worthwhile than your average instrumentals album, but that's not saying much 3/5

#619 Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come

Hey fellow jazz laymen, what do you think of when you think of free jazz? That's what this sounds like, as horns whip up and around and don't quite congeal into much. Which isn't to say that this is without structure: melodic themes emerge, there are riffs and interplays and moments of convergence, but it never becomes a thing you can hold in place, it never quite becomes what you'd call a song in any traditional sense. It is an event, wound woolly over time.

All things considered though, this isn't that radical; its innovations are in the discarding of the piano and chords as backbones, things that we folk aren't liable to much pick up on in any conscious sense. We just know it sounds even more chaotic and unknowable than usual, a bit more catnip in these cats, a bit wilder and more transgressive. For better or for worse, depends on your mood. For the most part, I found it more interesting than enjoyable, and not all that interesting 3/5

#618a Feed Me - Feed Me's Escape From Electric Mountain

I went into this EP with an irrational love for Feed Me's Big Adventure, which was nominally dubstep, but without all the drops and noise and jocky bullshit. It's a shame that this is a Feed Me album built on that kind of stuff.

The biggest problems are Trapdoor and One Click Headshot, which are just embarrassing, with their sub-Evanescence bitchy rage samples shitting on the entire track. The rest is actually reasonably solid: Trichitillomania is an ok banger kind of made guilty by association, Embers doesn't lean too hard on its ladysamples and has some transportive swerves, and Relocation is a nice housey meanderer. But on a six track EP two garbage tracks is a lot to overlook. As a full album listen, no better than 2.5/5

#618 Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus

Punchy, propulsive sax-driven jazz that jukes and feints, start-stop, full of sudden runs, hard notes and the silences in between. It's jazz driven by showmanship, by demonstrating the horn player's mastery over his horn, with the combo serving mostly to build the stage for that mastery, only occasionally rising to the fore for a piano solo, drum flourish or the like.

The actual playing is exciting and playful and worthy of close listening, but as someone who knows just this side of fuckall about jazz, its all a bit lost on me. I hope to someday know enough about this stuff to kick myself for not rating it more highly. Hating on your past self is growth 3.5/5

#617 Sam Cooke - Sam Cooke (Weton-Wesgram, 2009)

Strange 3-disc Dutch compilation of Sam Cooke's stuff that I stumbled into somehow.

The first disc is the real Sam Cooke I came looking for, full of deep soul and mourning and love and hope. Cooke's voice is legitimately graceful, more full-bodied and powerful than many of his better-known contemporaries. This is downright listenable, if occasionally goofy, largely unadventurous stuff.

Then its two discs of Jesus Jesus Jesus. Cooke did love him some Jesus. It all sounds samey as hell, and I know its not the singer's fault that it was compiled this way, but its downright unbearable by the end.

I came for a taste of Sam Cooke and I got it. And then I got way too much more. It's like he invited me over to watch the game and then spent 4 more hours talking about the Lord. Gotta judge the whole album, and that's a full third of it. Sorry Sam, I'll try to find something else of yours and give you a fair shake 2/5

#616 Miles Davis - Birth of the Cool

Melodic runs runs runs, sometimes a horn, sometimes two in unison, sometimes two different pairs, following, splitting off, coming back, like ribbons behind dancers, like children looping paths across wheatfields.

The sound is carefully orchestrated, as befits a band of nine trying to double each others' voices in a series of pairoffs and squares. There are solos, but nothing extravagant. This is a tight series of songs moving freely, looping and swooping like a flock of birds, and then one wheels off for a solo, but is back before long, and the flock finds a tree and alights 3.5/5