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Music Quickspins

XXXTentacion – ?

XXXTentacion – ? (Capitol)

The infamous Florida rapper is back with his second full-length album, a follow-up to August’s 17. Unlike 17, which was only 27 minutes long, ? nearly doubles that with a plethora of tracks ranging in various music styles. XXXTentacion’s talent is his ability to operate within many different genres. Songs like “Moonlight” and “SAD!” are a mix between hip hop and sad emo rock, while the hilariously titled “I don’t even speak Spanish lol” is a reggaeton track that is not only rhythmic but catchy as hell. Other highlights on the album are “$$$” featuring pre-teen rap sensation Matt Ox and “SMASH!” with PnB Rock. Warning though, like all XXX albums, there are a lot of cringy emo rap tracks that will leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. ? is a huge improvement on 17, but the recent domestic violence case against XXX is definitely a turnoff. If you really want to listen to this, I suggest pirating it rather than buying it.

Trial Track: “SAD!”

Score: 7/10

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Music Quickspins

Beauty >> Forward – AtomTM

Beauty >> Forward – AtomTM (Audio Archiv)

Having released music under 72 different aliases (no joke), it really is tricky to keep up with Uwe Schmidt’s output. The Berlin-born producer, label manager and designer and Berghain resident is busier than most, yet manages to release music at an alarming rate. Regardless, the newest album from his AtomTM project, Beauty >> Forward, should not slip under the radar. The nine tracks range from glitchy and abrasive “Phonopollution” to the smooth and dreamy “Petrified Rimshot,” each with nods to the many styles Schmidt has experimented with before— with a particular emphasis on electro and dub techno. While Beauty >> Forward doesn’t necessarily bring anything new to the table, it definitely features a few club-ready stormers that are hard not to move to. Having said that, listen for highlight track “Recycled Term” on a dancefloor near you.

Rating: 7/10

Trial track: “Recycled Term”

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Music Quickspins

Jean-Luc Guionnet & Daichi Yoshikawa – Intervivos

Jean-Luc Guionnet & Daichi Yoshikawa – Intervivos (Empty Editions) *Editor’s Pick

Intervivos begins without warning. An alto saxophone blasts with urgency, wailing away with a curious elusiveness that begs to be explored. The sound is dissonant, pausing every few seconds or so, only to release again with a heightened sense of tension. It’s a fitting introduction to an album replete with sonics that both challenge and intrigue; it’s an utterly fascinating take on technicality. The record is a set of four improvisations between alto saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet and electronic feedback aficionado Daichi Yoshikawa. Every piece finds the two subverting established norms of structure, creating sounds that congeal at the seams. Intervivos doesn’t dictate its path, but rather constructs a highway of vacancy, speculation and expression. But this method of recontextualization is a cognitive tactic, lingering in its own cryptic aura, never quite finding a linear pace.

Rating: 8.4/10

Trial Track: Intervivos I

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Music Quickspins

Loma – Loma

Loma – Loma (Sub Pop) *Editor’s Pick

Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg pairs with Cross Record on a record that moves with the glacial pace of a deteriorating relationship, interwoven by a template of cavernous chamber pop and 90s slowcore. Cross Record’s multi-instrumentalist Dan Duszynski and lead singer Emily Cross were married when they began this collaboration, but split at some point during the recording process. It’s not clear whether their breakup influenced the direction of the album, but the record unfolds with layers of overwhelming melancholy that make a strong case for it. Isolation can be quite purifying. The compositions feel heavy with the burden of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, an album bred from destructive inner-band tension. Despite the toxicity lying underneath, Loma displays a kind of artistic chemistry that coheres almost inherently. Tracks “Dark Oscillations” and “Who is Speaking?” ripple with a veneer of ornate string arrangements and acoustic balladry. Loma is a rare record that actually makes use of organic tones to amplify emotional expression, rather than using it to relish in gratuitous sentimentality. The musicality feels natural, like the instinct of breathing.

Rating: 8.5/10

Trial Track: “Dark Oscillations”

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Music Quickspins

U.S. Girls – In a Poem Unlimited

U.S. Girls – In a Poem Unlimited (4AD) *Editor’s pick

Meg Remy’s approach to music, an idiosyncratic mix of post-punk fury and sultry pop-rock, finally takes shape on her fantastic new album. In a Poem Unlimited is the sound of frustration taking form in a vacuum of pensive meditations. “You’ve been sleeping with one eye open because he always could come back, ya know?” she sings on “Velvet 4 Sale.” This is channelled through a near-transcendental level of lyrical observation. The music shines with the spirit of disco-leaning pop idols like ABBA and Cyndi Lauper, while churning out lyrics informed by skepticism and the delegation of male authority. But these nods act as an aesthetic backdrop to Remy’s more complex compositional ideas. “Time,” the album’s thrilling seven-minute epic, hurls forward an impetus of screeching sax and post-punk dance beats; Remy’s vocals are absolutely commanding among them. The album rages with a cathartic force, pleading for change in a world that refuses to.

Rating: 8.8/10

Trial Track: “Rosebud”

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Music Quickspins

Car Seat Headrest – Twin Fantasy (2018)

Car Seat Headrest – Twin Fantasy (2018) (Matador) *Editor’s pick

Will Toledo’s re-recording of his 2011 album, Twin Fantasy, has been making love with my ears for weeks. The original version was a home-spun package of neurotic lo-fi pop, rich with quirk and wit that managed to load enough melodic sensibilities and muscular riffage to jumpstart a promising career. With this revamped rendition, Toledo has churned out his first mini-masterpiece under the Car Seat Headrest moniker, an album born of eroticism, biting irony, sexual confusion and self-medication. Now evolved from a charming imitation of his most obvious influences, Toledo zeroes in on the teenage experience with remarkable insight, all the while proving himself to be a miraculous talent capable of crafting some of the most forward-thinking guitar pop out there. Seriously, if you consider yourself a fan of transformative indie rock, you need to listen to this album.

Rating: 9.1/10

Trial Track: “Beach Life-in-Death”

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Music Quickspins

Barrio Sur – बड़ा शोक (heart break)

Barrio Sur – बड़ा शोक (heart break) (Self-released)

बड़ा शोक (heart break) lives in a cushioned stratosphere of ethereality, with sonic roots deeply grounded in a reshaped vision of past musical eras. Softly strummed timbres of rhythm and blues, drums and bass cohere into a listening experience that’s fractured at a glance, but strangely gratifying in its challenging construction. Its skeleton is digitized in nature, with a surging glow of lo-fi warbles and abstract rushes of distortion and tape fuzz. Sounds are displaced in a manner that feels both intentional and accidental; the warm quality that exudes is impeccable. There isn’t a note on this record that sounds well-arranged, but the results cohere remarkably. बड़ा शोक (heart break) marries source material in beautiful fashion, but plays out against a lingering, ever-present layer of noise. There’s time for all these moving pieces to connect, but they rarely do; folding in-and-out of frame from future-sounds into the sounds of yesteryear.

Trial Track: “redemption (7inch)”

Rating: 8.4

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Music Quickspins

Migos – Culture 2

Migos – Culture 2 (Quality Control Music)

Culture 2, the Atlanta rap trio’s followup to the Grammy-nominated album Culture, is a bloated attempt at recreating its predecessor’s success. With 24 tracks totalling one hour and 45 minutes, there just simply aren’t enough quality jams to justify the length. With tracks like “Narcos,” the intro “Higher We Go,” “Bad Bitches Only (BBO),” “Walk It Talk It” and “Too Playa,” the album is filled with songs that either sound too much like Migos’s previous album or are just completely unfinished. For instance, the song “Open It Up” is an exact melodic rip-off of the song “Deadz” from the first Culture. Another glaring problem is that the songs are mixed poorly. For a group as big as Migos, poorly mixed tracks are a big no-no. Sure, there are some great songs to jam to, but realistically, this album would have been average at 10 tracks. At 24, this album is a chore.

Trial Track: “Narcos”

Score: 5/10

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Music Quickspins

No Age – Snares Like A Haircut

No Age – Snares Like A Haircut (Drag City)

Snares Like A Haircut is the latest offering from manic noise producers No Age. The duo has spent the better part of a decade plotting and refining a cognitive paragon of punk escapism, unraveling polarities that represent a finessed vision of rock music. Drawing from these tendencies, No Age construct a sound that challenges whether dichotomies can coexist. Short answer: they can and with absolutely masterful results. Combining drilling distortion with crisp, ambient textures, the record is a sharp turn from the complex pop that permeated the band’s previous efforts. Rather, the album lands feet first toward cohesive and romping guitar rock. No Age have perfected their propensity for extremes, coalescing their intuition through remarkably imaginative sounds. Across these 12 sprawling tracks, Snares Like A Haircut tugs and pulls with leverage.

Rating: 8.3/10

Trial Track: “Soft Collar Fad”

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Music Quickspins

Porches – The House

Porches – The House (Domino)

New York-based songwriter Aaron Maine is an auteur driven by his own seclusion. Channeling the delicate chords of new wave and funk, Porches weave songs rooted in impulses that evoke natural responses. Thrust by an impetus of its own, The House, though hollowed-out in sound, contains a gamut of realized musical ideas. The album locks into grooves that are somehow catchier and more instantaneous than Maine’s debut breakout, Pool. That album pondered the state of the human condition through anxiety-ridden imagery, and The House is an album very much informed by that tension. It constructs heart-wrenching melodies that pull at the very seams of human emotion. Though not entirely halting in its structure, The House lays down some of Maine’s most gripping melodic excursions. The album’s best track, “Now the Water,” is propelled by an icy beat that narrates the social and psychological costs of isolation. The album sparks with a wilting flame, familiar to digest but not enough to get the blood flowing.

Rating: 8.1/10

Trial Track: “Now The Water”

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Music Quickspins

Jonny Greenwood – Phantom Thread

Jonny Greenwood – Phantom Thread (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Nonesuch Records Inc., 2018)

Jonny Greenwood, known for his work with Radiohead, composed the soundtrack to the Paul Thomas Anderson movie Phantom Thread. Similar to the film, the soundtrack has an old-school vibe reminiscent of the 90s. Greenwood uses the dynamics of a large orchestra well. From percussive strings to the emotional violins and expressive cellos, the sound is impeccable. My favorite track off the soundtrack is the slow “Never Cursed.” The track manages to be atmospheric and express emotions just through the orchestra’s performance. Watching the movie is not required to fully enjoy this soundtrack; the work stands on its own. This album is perfect for a stroll out in the countryside on a brisk day.

Sample track: “Never Cursed”

Rating: 8.2/10

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Music Quickspins

Maxo Kream – Punken

Maxo Kream – Punken (TSO/Kream Clicc, 2018)

A skim through Punken, Maxo Kream’s first mixtape since 2016, listens like a comprehensive autobiography. Laced with expert storytelling and southern-fried production, the record holds a variety of aggressive instrumentals over which Kream delivers some of his most compelling bars. The narratives here aren’t shaded by cocky assertions or hyperbolized brags; rather the Houston rapper divulges a series of dark revelations with blunt sincerity. It’s an uncompromising peer into Kream’s life, chronicling his ascent from an amateur drug pusher to occupying a position of power before his incarceration in 2016. This is a project also informed by communal bonds, between friends and family. The rapper treats loyalty like an ancient proverb. His approach is unflinching, as is his faith to the hustle and his glock.

Trial Track: “Grannies”

Rating: 8.5/10

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