Animal Collective's second album in a year and a half, Isn't It Now?, proves the group is in top neopsychedelic form

Animal Collective - Isn't It Now? Review

Animal Collective, a band formed from a small group of childhood friends, are a class all their own. Whether you love them or hate them, there can be no in between. This is how deeply committed they are to their songs. From their rather small and humble beginnings making music from their debut Spirit They've Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, the playful melodies were always there, either prominent or buried under their experimental avant-garde well of sounds.

My Top 100 All-Time Albums

My Top 100 Music Albums

After stumbling across an excellent website, neverendingchartrendering.org, I realized that I could take a crack at putting together a top 100 album list. The resulting list is my top 100 albums of all time from my own personal music journey. 

AirdriftSignals EXCLUSIVE: Barcelona-based alternative heavy metal group Obsidian Kingdom discuss their new LP, MEAT MACHINE

Obsidian Kingdom Interview

Our AirdriftSignals Artist Spotlight Interview series covers this time, Barcelona-based alternative heavy metal act, Obsidian Kingdom, who are promoting their brand new album, MEAT MACHINE!

AirdriftSignals: This third LP, MEAT MACHINE, is the first to feature primary female vocals in your songs, performed by one of your guitarists Irene, and the split vocal duties you bring is a welcome transition between the equally pleasing aggressive and tender moments of the album. Can you speak a little about how you came about deciding your latest lineup change and the addition of this contrast to your new songs?

Masterpiece Crate #4: Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral Analysis and Review

Alternative and grunge rock were left for dead in the wake of Alice In Chains' punishing grunge-metal-hybrid album, Dirt, which we covered in our Masterpiece Crate #2. It was an album that ignited mainstream culture in a way that no other heavy metal act could do at the time, and there was almost no way another album could top the sheer aggressive tones and tonal density caught on tape and pressed into their sophomore record. However, another challenger approached, just two years later, and this time, it brought another genre with it into the worldwide spotlight. To call this album mainstream (despite its worldwide commercial success) would be a disservice to its ultimate goal, which was to peel back the skin of superficiality, but its overall effect on mainstream culture still reverberates to this day. This album shook the world with its naked honesty in its final track, while still showing the world how sexy, dirty, and seductive it feels getting closer to God. That album became known as The Downward Spiral, released in 1994 by studio mastermind, visionary, and musician, Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails.

Sufjan Stevens releases his 8th mainline studio album, the lush, electronic, and heartfelt The Ascension - Album Review

Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension Review

As an accomplished and fan-favorite indie musician marching to the beat of his own drum, Sufjan (pronounced SOOF-yahn) Stevens has mastered nearly every corner of electronic and indie rock productions, often recording either bare-bones recordings that put his breathy vocals and a single instrument in the forefront, or creating a lush atmosphere of electronic orchestrations. The Ascension takes all of this growth over the past 20 years of his career and places it affirmatively into a seminal album full of love and hope. 

The Flaming Lips latest LP expertly crafts sonic psychedelia, detailing pastime youth, family, drugs, and death, but in the present year, does anybody care? American Head Album Review

The Flaming Lips - American Head Review

For a band as determined to explore all of the inner space that can possibly be explored, The Flaming Lips have done it yet again, but for all the sadness they seem to drudge up from either the past or their own lingering thoughts, there doesn't seem to be much new ground to be made. 

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts V: Together & Ghosts VI: Locusts Album Reviews

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts Reviews

Just over 12 years since the debut of the instrumental, ambient, and cinematic soundscape series Ghosts I-IV, seasoned film and television composer duo, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, aka Nine Inch Nails, release their surprise twin albums Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts, to help aid an ailing world in the midst of a global pandemic crisis.

Interview: DJ Nihilist

DJ Nihilist Interview

Our artist spotlight interview series this time takes a deep dive with talented, Connecticut dubstep artist, DJ Nihilist!

AirdriftSignals: Hi DJ Nihilist? How are you doing today?

DJ Nihilist: I’m alright, just chilling... it’s been a long weekend haha.

AirSig: It’s a new year but more notably a new decade. How do you envision this turn of time for yourself creatively, or do you have any resolutions or goals in mind?

Nihilist: Musically the only real goal I have this year is to write my second EP, but I’m sure there will be other singles and what not that pop up. Personally my goal this year is to be more focused on my health, both physical and mental. I find that if I’m in a good space it’s easier to write more music too so it’s a win-win situation.

DJ Nihilist - Outer World Bounce and Dubstep Singles Galore

DJ Nihilist Singles Reviews

From our interview with DJ Nihilist, it's no question that he is going to have great things lying in wait for him. The first and most notable of those is his most recent release, Outer World Bounce! 

Outer World Bounce

B. Dvine - Times Have Changed EP Review

B. Dvine - Times Have Changed Review

As our interview with B. Dvine makes light of a lot of things going on in this Long Island producer/emcee's life, so too does his latest release, the self-produced, ever-changing, and forever-growing Times Have Changed EP.

High Zombie & graves - GHOSTS Single

High Zombie and Graves - GHOST Review

Industry engineer, DJ, and electronic producer graves teams up with rising hybrid trap and bass producer High Zombie for the epic and high octane EDM track, GHOSTS!

Originally from Hawaii, graves, aka Christian Mochizuki, got his start assisting and engineering top industry hip-hop and pop albums including Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Kid Cudi's Man on The Moon Volume 2, among other big projects. His experience in composition and production continued to form as he played at popular music festivals, including the Las Vegas Electric Daisy Carnival, and released his debut EP, Hilo, in 2017. 

DJ Shadow - Our Pathetic Age Review

Just over a month from the end of a decade, there's been more change in the Internet age than ever before. As the rise in social media, influencers, and connectivity continues to grow, so too do the anxieties, concerns, and questions that our artificial and intelligent world continues to pose. There's a lot to be concerned over, but there's still room for hope. If there was ever an album to sum up what's happened to us globally in the past ten years, then it is DJ Shadow's latest full-length album, Our Pathetic Age, an affecting and universal double LP that features genre-bending electronica, hip-hop, and heart.

Update: Satellite Beats: Earliest Transmissions OUT NOW!

Update: Satellite Beats - Earliest Transmissions Release

How do I begin? Satellite Beats... Where do I go from here? DJ Dark Flow... As an aspiring songwriter and musician, a 15-16-year-old me was lucky enough to collect and get my hands on various electronic equipment, a keyboard, an acoustic and electric guitar, and a digital recorder. With these circuits and machinery, I was able to begin to fulfill my dream and passion for songwriting by creating acoustic, electronic, and industrial atmospheres full of mystery and dread, and from this era of my musical experimentation, I produced a lot of wide-ranging material under my first musical alias, Satellite Beats. After years of having the songs on my computer, I decided to curate and release this compilation album of my earliest recordings.

Bill Laswell - Smoke + Glass & Realm of Spells Review

Bill Laswell - Smoke + Glass and Realm Of Spells Review

Having significant involvement in the creation and release in over 100 albums since the early 80s, the breadth of musical discography that bassist, producer, and record label owner, Bill Laswell has accumulated is enough to overwhelm the senses and make your head spin. Still, Laswell, an undeniable influence in the genres of world, jazz, and dub, does it again with dual collaborative releases in 2019, Smoke + Glass (with Alex Haas), and Realm of Spells (with Jah Wobble).

Jenny Hval - The Practice Of Love Review

Ever since Jenny Hval's critical and commercial breakthrough, Apocalypse, Girl in 2015, I was hooked to her music. Through the years I had grown to love the style of music from European countries such as Iceland's post-rock band Sigur Rós or Sweden's electronic duo, The Knife and later Fever Ray, but when I found Jenny Hval's music, I felt like I had found my favorite version of this kind of European singer-songwriter, since she contains the fabulous avant-garde sensibilities of Icelandic artist  Björk (who I was never much a fan of), while maintaining the elegant synth-pop style of an artist such as Fever Ray. As she blended the two seamlessly, she grew into her own, and I was already late to the party as Apocalypse, Girl was already her 4th album as Jenny and 6th overall! She continued in 2016 with her atmospheric, concept album, Blood Bitch (a masterwork in my opinion which will be covered in my Masterpiece series at a later date), a meditative EP in 2018 called The Long Sleep, and now her latest album in 2019, The Practice of Love.

Update: Backwords Thoughts Single OUT NOW

Update: Backwords Thoughts Single Release

The final supporting single from my debut album Crystallize, Backwords Thoughts, a revisit of my instrumental bonus track, is out now! Featuring verses by Long Island emcees B. Dvine and Thomas Coppola (both who I have reviewed in the past and Thomas who I have just recently interviewed), Backwords Thoughts is a fully-fleshed out idea with jewels of knowledge for your ears. Listen now on Bandcamp or any other streaming platform that you choose and listen to my album Crystallize on all music streaming platforms!

Thom Yorke - ANIMA Review

For an artist as inventive and mysterious as the lead singer and frontman of Radiohead, Thom Yorke has made a name for himself as a compelling creative force by carving out a diverse portfolio of a solo career, which has become a solid separation from the alternative rock group that made him world-renowned. His debut solo release, The Eraser in 2006, proved to the community of Radiohead fans that his work was intriguing and beautiful enough to stand on its own, and his following release, 2014’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes proved more of the same as an elegant, but mellow sophomore effort. Not only was Thom interested in his solo work, but he ended up forming his own side act out of his lineup who toured in support of The Eraser, which took the name after his track in that album, Atoms For Peace. They released their own album, AMOK, a year prior to Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. Last year, Thom Yorke surprised his fans yet again with his first stab at film composing, with the horror remake Suspiria’s original score (my review of which you can read here), following in the footsteps of his bandmate Johnny Greenwood’s multiple film score outings, and reaffirming to the musical community that Radiohead’s music, as well as the work of the singular bandmates, is essentially designed and paired astonishingly well to visual storytelling. Now, just a half a year since his film score debut, Thom drops another sonic work of brilliance in the form of his third solo album, ANIMA. Besides being an extremely busy creative force, releasing albums on his own, with Radiohead, and his first film score, ANIMA shows listeners that Thom is far from slowing down. On the contrary, his musical journey only seems to expand even more with age, and this latest work of the imagination and dreams displays his masterful musical experimentation with grace and fluidity. 

Claud5 - Claudscape Review

Only a couple months after releasing his debut concept album, Dogs Carry Knives, Claud5 is back again with a tropicana, hip-hop, and nujabes-infused summer album, Claudscape! Not to put his debut, atmospheric, electronic debut in the rearview mirror, but in a way, to show another side to his persona, Claudscape is best enjoyed while kicked back on a warm, summer day, with a drink in hand, and it's an exciting genesis for an artist who clearly has been saving his songs in the bank and allowing them to grow in quantity and quality.

Tyler, The Creator - IGOR Review

What? Tyler, The Creator is evolving!

I'll admit, I had lost my interest in the self-described creator ever since his follow-up release to his major label debut, WOLF. I had an early interest in Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All when they first arrived on the scene, boasting a large entourage of rappers and producers and putting out multiple albums and mixtapes and cross-promoting each other with features. I mostly just kept tabs on Tyler while I predicted that his protegé Earl Sweatshirt was going to eclipse him artistically. While over the years, Earl, who has stayed largely in the same minimalist, lo-fi musical landscape, Tyler, The Creator, has grown in style and ambition and has created an entirely new image for himself in his acclaimed hip-hop, R&B, and funk soaked album, IGOR.

Flying Lotus - Flamagra Review

Flying Lotus has become an amalgam of jazz, hip-hop, and electronica ever since he burst onto the scene with his minimalist beat-driven debut LP, 1983. A dusty, stripped-down collection of beats and electronic songs which defined him and defined an era of the late 2000s glitch hop scene. Since then, he has continued forward in big and exciting ways, releasing his touchstone classic, Los Angeles, and pushing forward into more styles and genres that all seem to melt into one signature sound in his follow-up works, Cosmogramma, Until The Quiet Comes, and You're Dead! This was a period of serious experimentation and collaboration into the genres of hip-hop, jazz, fusion, and cinematic, orchestrated greatness, and Flying Lotus, aka Steven Ellison, began a wild career full of all-star collaborations on these records. Artists such as Thundercat, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Erykah Badu, Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Snoop Dogg, and Kendrick Lamar, are just a few of the many team-ups gracing Ellison's catalog, and these artists and his forward-driving sound give them all a special place in history. Like Ellison's past work, Flamagra continues this tradition with more of that definitive experimentation in his most dynamic album to date.