Album Reviews

This shit ain’t haunting, it’s soaring. Spacious music often gets the “haunting” label. Haunting to me is scary, dark, brooding, evil even. As a child of New Orleans, hauntings are not inspirational, but terrifying. I think haunting and my mind goes out on some Paranormal Activity shit. Conduits aren’t haunting, they aren’t brooding, or depressing, or evil at all. It’s soaring, spacious, like the wide open sky to a bird. It’s the kind of music that makes you want to spread your arms wide and let the diminutive heat of the end of winter sun warm you. There are moments that remind me of dancing around my room and knocking shit off the shelves and dresser on some teen angst faux-rebellious acting out, but for the most part Conduits self-titled album elevates. I had this album playing in the...

This winter, at least in New York, has been mild as shit. I'm not complaining, just stating the facts, on some Joe Friday shit. This has fucked with my listening habits in the worst way, especially as we head into the traditionally "cold as a witches tit" days of February. I usually like to douse myself in depressing music during the winter, not the kind of depressing music that constitute the half of Mary J Blige albums that aren't dedicated to 'no more drama'; no I am talking about the kind of depressing music that is in its way uniquely 'Merican. It has the feeling of wind whispering through the overgrown wheat fields of a long abandoned family farm in a once thriving community that is now nothing but shells of homes and humans. In a weird way this music makes the shit days of winter...

I have no idea how this ended up in my ears, but I've been painting my hands with a black bic pen ever since. What in the fucking world would I, Joel Frieders of the realm, be fucking smoking listening to a gothic trance album? Well, I'm fucking loving the fucking Fuck out of it actually. Synthetic and menacing, Trust take otherwise dainty sounds and splatter them with rust, static and then spurted through the liver in a drug-influenced catharsis. Imagine Matt Dillon in Over The Edge listening to trance instead of shit rock and he'd probably have Trust in his walkman. It's as addictingly progressive as the first few times I went through the debut album from Crystal Castles, but it's inside this darkened niche that I've found a new favorite. While TRST doesn't stray too far from...

Although this winter is mild, for the most part, winters in Chicago fucking blow. Last week a 'heat wave' came through while snow was on the ground making it foggy as Fuck. It was a miserable and gloomy day….a perfect day for some slow and depressing music. Disclaimer: I'm hesitant about using the word 'depressing' to describe music because it has such a bad connotation. With music, depressing doesn't necessarily mean bad. It can share traits with such adjectives as beautiful, haunting, and dramatic. All of these words happen to be a perfect description for the album Fold in the Wind by House of Wolves. I came across this Fold in the Wind while scouring Bandcamp for something new because I have been in a music funk as of late. The shitty weather may have had a little to...

Bleubird, Orlando-based nomadic emcee, blogger, and all around gypsy provocateur has just released his first solo LP in a couple of years, CANNONBALL. This in no way implies that ole Freeebird ain't been busy. Dude is all over the place, from his constant street journaling to collabs and videos with Sole and K-the-I. This release comes to us from those ever eclectic tastemakers over at Fake Four, Inc. It was produced by a dream team of Astronautalis and Radical Face. Radical Face has been credited with taking Astro's music to the next level, and his contributions here resulted in Bleubird having a record he can call a labor of love. That love has paid off with an intimate, heartfelt record. CANNONBALL should be considered an achievement for an otherwise accomplished...

If you're busy and you have other shit to read, I will sum this album up in one quick sentence (and potentially offensive send off) before continuing on with more descriptive handjobs to help coerce you into loving this album like I do. Poliça is the electronically treated and layered female vocal version of Bon Iver, with unbelievable fucking dual-drumming, patchy stubble and it's fucking magically delicious. Peep my erection. If you have to bail on the review, feel free to go ahead and do so now, the rest is just me man-sturbating about how fucking awesome this shit is. Go. You guys still with me here then? Thanks dreamboats! Poliça has the immediate bounce of Little Dragon, the drums of a fucking waterfall of ball bearings crashing onto a tin fucking roof, and the bottom end of a dub...

When is the last time you just wilded the fuck out for the fuck of it? It has been a while for me, I was easing into a relative state of inactivity and middle-agedness and then out of nowhere FIDLAR’s EP DIYDUI drops in my lap and everything fucking changed. For one I stopped eating salad, much to the chagrin of my lady friend. I also have not worn a shirt in a week and a half. I do everything shirtless and only wear flip flops; half the time I am standing next to someone working on something or another with one hand on my hip and the other holding a flip top can of Moosehead, barking out instructions. My boss and friends don’t approve and have been thinking about staging an intervention, but fuck them. I dare them to throw on DIYDUI and not kick a hole in their kid's...

Everything about this fucking album is Goddamn disgusting. Beats are dirty. Samples are filthy. Even the pretty shit is covered in grime. Instrumental hip hop essentially gets out of the shower and jumps directly into a pile of dust and writhes around in it like my friend Tim in his Cool Water cologne kiddie pool. Dirty Art Club, whoever the fuck they are, have crafted an instrumental album I can get behind like a push broom sweeping an abandoned gym floor. What feels like a crate full of forgotten 45s is actually a perfect marriage of then and now. If you like your now covered in then and ran through the mud for good measure. It takes twists and turns towards and away from the relaxed, and then shoves a thumb up the anus of relaxed and hitchhikes towards the border between funky and...

You hear that rumbling? Ominous right? The sound's fucking bearing down on you like a rabid rhino with a taste for blood and hatred for bearded, waify white men. Lucky for you it is only Vex Ruffin’s Crash Course EP. Relieved right? Vex Ruffin fucks with bass the way I fucks with food and British Ciders. It is a feast, it is decadent. it is erotic, It is deep, guttural and aggressivly grabs you by the meat sack. It occupies that weird space between your soul and your mind, often crossing over between the two causing some sort of event horizon in your groin. The Crash Course EP reminds me of what would happen to rap music if it ever grew up and became interesting. Imagine if hip hop heads decided to travel the world and experience new things, broadening their horizons,...

The bloggy bloggers needed a well deserved break from their Occupy Wall Street protests last week. Fortunately; the CMJ Music Marathon and Film Fest was in town. Like superman they were able to instantly morph from hippy to hipster with the help of some tight jeans, Ray Bans, and a Preferred Stock whore’s bath. I wasn’t able to make it because I have a job, but apparently 389 bands (at last count) were labeled “the next big thing.” Don’t get me wrong, I love hype and I love blogs, but music fests like CMJ, SXSW, etc. cause music aficionados to ejaculate all over themselves. This results in too much hype in too little time, and because I get overwhelmed, I ignore 99% of the coverage. Opinions are like assholes and some people’s really stink. I prefer not to sort through a bunch of shit in...