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. 

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. 

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.

Masterpiece Crate #3: Tool - Fear Inoculum

Tool - Fear Inoculum Analysis and Review

It is rare that I pass down perfect scores on albums, but when I do, it is entirely earned by the artists through pure ingenuity, vision, cohesion between members, and production value. Tool is one of those bands, and 2019’s Fear Inoculum is one of those albums. This review also serves as my masterpiece series entry number 50, as it fits chronologically after my 49th listed album that I still have to write about, and at the same time shifts my sequential writing order significantly since I have only written a couple of articles in this series thus far (my next article will be about the Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral). My masterpiece crate series will occasionally grow beyond the big 5 0 and my original 49 album collage in my introductory article, but for all intents and purposes, this needs to be done to keep up with the release dates of current albums which rise to this rare occasion.

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. 

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.

Crystallize DEBUT LP by DJ Dark Flow OUT NOW!!!!

Update: DJ Dark Flow - Crystallize LP Release

This June 1, 2019, Crystallize, my debut electronic LP, will be released into the world on all music platforms! I have had a long and exciting journey with music ever since my DJ alias was founded in 2008 for my late night radio program. Now, 11 years later, and 4 years after the release of my debut self-titled EP, comes my first full-length release!

Avey Tare - Down There Review

There is not a moment to spare from the beginning of Down There. Instantly Animal Collective member, Avey Tare, pulls listeners into a swampscape of blurry voices and wet beats for his debut solo effort. Animal Collective are known to craft songs that experiment with the production and style of modern music, to such a huge extent, that their music has gained a considerable cult following. This steady rise in popularity has only since exploded by the time the group released their mainstream breakout album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, in 2009.

Shabazz Palaces – Black Up Review

When Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler of Brooklyn, New York, worked as part of the jazz hip-hop trio, Digable Planets, their easy-going alternative rap rocked the 90’s, when hip-hop was still in its early stages and growing in popularity. Now more than a decade later, Butterfly is back with a new name, and a new group, pushing a sound that burns a new chapter into the history of hip-hop. Based out of Seattle, Butterfly, newly dubbed as Palaceer Lazaro, heads Shabazz Palaces. Many excited fans were already buzzing from the release of Shabazz’s first two self-released EPs, Of Light and a self-titled EP. If these two releases meant anything in the world of hip-hop, it was a sure sign of something else entirely.

Teebs - Ardour Review

Teebs, a popular artist on the Brainfeeder record label started by Flying Lotus, releases his debut album and blows all other producers out of the water! His multi-textured compositions come to life in Ardour, arguably one of the best beat albums of 2010. His soft beats and melodic chimes have a fulfilling presence, and I cannot stress it enough that his work bears a therapeutic, healing power for any avid headphones junkie.

Flying Lotus – Pattern+Grid World Review

Brace yourself for a new breed of FlyLo, with a new EP just months after his third full-length space opera, videogame drama, Cosmogramma. There’s more to be heard here, as Steven Ellison, the man behind the mask, takes you somewhere completely different once again.

Omar Rodriguez Lopez – Tychozorente Review

For one of the most experimental and explosive songwriters to appear over the past couple decades, multi-instrumentalist Omar Rodriguez Lopez has clearly made a name for himself in this generation of music. From his early start in the hardcore/alternative rock group At The Drive-In, to his departure with musical partner Cedric Bixler-Zavala to explore the musical realms of psychedelic and progressive rock with The Mars Volta and beyond, Rodriguez Lopez has made an impressive track record, which will now include, his seventeenth solo album, Tychozorente.

Mount Kimbie - Crooks and Lovers Review

To make my blog more exciting, I decided that I am now going to start doing album reviews of music that I have enjoyed enough to feature in my radio show Adrift In The Airwaves.

For my first album review, I decided to take a look at Mount Kimbie's debut full-length, Crooks & Lovers.