Adult
Why Bother
Label: Thrill Jockey
Release Date: 03/20/07
What happens when its getting late in the night at your cities hipest
dance night? All the pretty skinny ladies dressed in their leggins are
hangin with “white girl”? You haved on too many Sparks and are feeling
restless. The PBR’s are almost sold out at the bar. I know what you [...]
Lusine
Podgelism
Label: Ghostly International
Release Date:03/20/2007
“Podgelism” strikes at first as strange, but inviting. This is experimental electronic music. Is it ambience? Is it dance? Is that relevant? What is notable is that either blips and bloops have lost their curiosity, or the tracks on this album avoid the alienating effect of work laboring too hard to be [...]
El-P
I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead
Label: Definitive Jux
Release Date: 03/20/07
El-P’s first solo long player, “Fantastic Damage,” was a masterpiece of dystopian, sci-fi, modern hip-hop angst in which a hyperwired, junk cluttered future shock mixed imperceptively with a paranoid, enraged vision of the present as an assaulted landscape in which the individual is terrorized and bombarded without [...]
LCD Soundsystem
Sound of Silver
Label: Capitol
Release Date:03/20/2007
It appears the jig is up, and the man who persuaded thick glasses to dance has gone and gotten mature. The thing is, he’s even better now. As half of the DFA, the production duo and label heads most responsable for forcing the beauty of electronic dance music [...]
Antibalas
Security
Label: ANTI-
Release Date:03/06/2007
The new Antibalas album, “Security,” opens with “Beaten Metal,” a title that describes the crystalline clanks and clacks that distinguish the percussion. In just under six minutes the track builds into something undeniably propulsive and funky, but there is a tension, as sinister keyboard lines slither in and out, casting a pall. The [...]
RJD2
The Third Hand
Label: XL
Release Date:08/22/2006
How do we continue to be surprised when the worlds of rock and hip-hop clash? It is increasingly more apparent that it happens all the time. The artists that surprise us the most should surprise us the least. With DJ Shadow’s penchant for atmospherics and wistful vocal lines, it shouldn’t have [...]
The Arcade Fire
Neon Bible
Label: Merge Records
Release Date:03/06/2007
Today has been an incredibly conflicted day for me. Major confessions have been made and then retracted; I’ve fallen in love with my city and hours later discovered its bitter edge; I froze in the winds of early morning and then basked in the warmth of the afternoon. The [...]
Amon Tobin
Foley Room
Label: Ninja Tune
Release Date:03/06/2007
The sometimes idolized, and sometimes taken for granted Amon Tobin’s new album, “The Foley Room,” creates the odd impression of reminding me to have missed him. Tobin, who hasn’t released a proper album in 4 years or so, is the kind of electronic artist who, despite the obsessive terminology developed, [...]
Eluvium
Copia
Label: Temporary Residence
Release Date:02/20/07
The best soundtrack possible for the most beautiful movie that will never be made.
Dr. Dog
We All Belong
Label: Park The Van Records
Release Date:02/27/07
We All Belong opens with the track Old News, a song that sounds as if it fell from the liner notes of The Beatles Help! album. It is only around 2 minutes long, but sets the mood for this magnificent album perfectly vowing that “It’s So Easy [...]
