Album of the Week Thread!!!
 

What's your favorite album to hit stores this week? And next week. And the week after, for that matter? Hell, why don't we just make this a "and ever after" thing?

Throw in last week too.

If you didn't buy any new albums this week, feel free to mention any album that you first heard within the past week. That should make it easy for just about anyone to take part.

We are hurtling towards album of the year conversations hella soon, so this should help us all keep track.

Right I'm gonna say it. The Flaming Lips' version of A Day In The Life is actually really good. Miley Cyrus' bit is especially great.

Ok, so ... I'll go.

I think my Album of the Week is probably the new DJ Koze release, Reincarnations Part 2: The Remix Chapter (2009-2014).

I don't know if any of you are fans of this starry-eyed, imaginative and beautifully mad little German dude, but he's one of the best m*****f****rs behind the boards right now. Amygdala was my #6 album of 2013, and this remix volume (which is so much more than just a remix album) almost makes waiting for his next studio LP worth it. Yeah, his remixes are as good as his own shit, and that's something that you can't say about most m*****f****rs.



Anyway, check out his remix of "Jo Gurt" by Super Flu. I mean- he just plucks out the two most worthy syllables ("OK") and turns the thing into a completely different song (which is far better than the original, btw)

Anyway, in the pitchfork review (which was actually fairly well written) Koze was quoted Kosi regarding the evolution of his sound, from more traditional dance and techno jams to this extended period of colorful and melancholic psychedelia that he's currently chillin' in....

He said: "It's so easy to rock the house, but so hard to look out the window"

Which is awesome, obviously.

Yeah, I had my doubts at the start, but the whole album is pretty fucking stellar. I just wish they'd done a "full" cover of the song, giant most-famous-crescendo-in-rock-history included. I think that those noisey moments at the end of "A Day in the Life" are very closely tied to very brand of orchestral acid-pop cacophony that the Lips have made their calling card since ... Well, since the punk rockers started adding pop rocks to their acid recipes. :p

It just would have been nice to hear. But as a whole, ...Help From My Friends is everything I love about the Lips, minus their own songwriting of course. It's the reason why they're my favorite *currently functioning* rock-type band in the world. They have been consistently not giving a fuck for exactly their entire fucking career, and despite the prog/jangle pop/classic rock cover album side projects, that's a pretty fucking punk rock ethos right there.

I hear I'm pretty good at makin' posts, but I must kinda eat shit at making topics. :/

I like this, need reminders to buy shit.


so off the top of my head there's new stuff from vladislav delay, dean blunt, nazoranai, skull defekts, mr mitch, arca, murlo out this week in addition to comps from hyperdub and livity sound.


feel the need to ask though: do release dates for records still even exist nowadays? can't think of the last time I said "I need to be at x place to get y record on z day", because ordinarily it'll leak, I'll give it a few listens and either put it back and just come to it whenever or will actively go out and find it. strange thymes when I consider that even when I was like 11 or 12 I used to go to chain stores on release days to get cds...

First of all, tell me about the new Vladislav Delay!! I haven't been able to lay physical hands on and of the Ripatti series. Is it a new volume in that series or something else? I've been getting by on electronic versions of the releases, because I'm not in a place to do much special ordering.

And to answer your question: yeah, they do exist. At least for some of us. I do some freelance marketing and advising for a local record store. I actually spend a lot of time researching up and coming releases, and helping the store owner invest in the right number of the right titles. He has almost no budget to speak of, of course, so I try to help him use it well.

Which means he almost never orders any under-the-radar electronic music... Then again, some of the year's best albums have been electronic releases that aren't even available in the U.S. It's been a while since I last checked, but last I knew the 2014 LP's by Untold, KidKanevil and Seekae were import only. God damned shame.

he's self-released it on ripatti, yeah, but where all the records on that label have thus far been very much indebted to footwork etc., this is being marketed as his first ambient album in a decade by way of its eschewing discernible rhythms. and while on the surface level it does draw direct to my favourite record under the delay moniker, entain, in using dubbed-out soundscapes and generally extended pieces which aren't encumbered by structure, it's definitely a different beast entirely. where his earlier ambient records featured songs which anchored themselves on a motif and ran with it over a set period of time, an approach which christian fennesz adopted for his poppier records, this seems almost indebted to acousmatic music. there are points in the tracks where they have shifts which recall schaeffer or rather concrète in general, where they're running along these chord progressions or melodic tangents and they'll be swarmed by this wholly other set of sounds, and given that it was apparently made in two weeks I'd presume that it almost has to be a result of generative techniques. so in terms of its composition it's pretty radically different, at least from his earlier ambient material, and is informed by the level of complexity he's been employing in his other material of late, but in terms of its overall sound and aesthetic it's very identifiably a vladislav delay project, and isn't one that treads water a bit like vantaa did.


yeah I think that's the thing, being all the way out in aus there isn't much in the way of infrastructure to uphold the release of imported records. they sort of just trickle in over time, and getting a record you're looking for is as much a matter of luck as it is anything else. and the absurd shipping costs serve to price everyone out (ie to get a record from the US in particular costs less than it does to actually have it delivered to you) and make pre-ordering a record totally unfeasible.

Got my hands on it today. Well... I procured the music that appears on Vladislav's “Visa” ... Let's just leave it at that. Times are tough, but I won't go without music.

It's incredible, but not as footworky as I was expecting.
More later

Ok, official album of the week:

Vladislav Delay - Vista


I was reminded of how much I adore the multi-pseudonymed work of Delay/Ripatti/Luomo immediately, and I've been digging into his back catalogue for some kind of additional fix. But every time I put on an older recording, I find myself wanting to hear Vista again. So it's pretty much owned my life since first listen.

I appreciate the ambient vibe of the record, but like the more adventurous installments of the RIPATTI label series this is experimental footwork plain and simple, though it's neither plain nor simple.

This is what Footwork the genre is all about. Fan comments in response to Ripatti01 were pretty united in their "this is just polyrhythmic Dnb/technoid/IDM etc." but it's fucking footwork. I'm not sure why yet, I've spent most of the year digging into footwork comps and listening to everything from the genre's leaders like Rashad, to the most ubderground Chicago dj's, and while I'm still unsure where everything else stops and footwork begins, I think the genre is supposed to exist in the periphery of other more traditonal sub-styles. This is certainly Vladislav Delay, and it picks up where the singles and collabs from 2013-14 left off.

But either way, whatever you want to call it, it's an ingenious record. Album of the week, no fucking question.

Oops. Nevermind. I spaced on this:

Röyksopp - The Inevitable End


Did this get some so-so reviews? I don't know. That's what I've heard. But if you like this group, you'll like this album. I don't see what's so goddamn uncool about it. It kicks the shit out of Random Access Memories (though it has nothing quite like "Contact" or "Doin' it Right," but that's because it's Röyksopp, and Röyksopp isn't the subject of LCD Spundsystem songs. They probably can't afford Pharrell cameos, and thank god for that.

I love Daft Punk. But Röyksopp is more interested in pumping out melodic dance grooves and less interested in being looked at by everyone. Consequently, they've been more music focused, and have made fewer missteps. The Understanding is one of my favorite aughts dance pop records. Wasn't Daft Punk still reeling from the perrennial disappointment that was Human After All around that time?

No matter. Daft Punk is great. But I was worried that Röyksopp wouldn't release an album of their own after the success of the Robyn Collab EP. So this was a treat for me. Robyn is in fine form on this record as well, btw.

I might have had to go with Mouse on Mars's 21 Again Collaborations box set as my pick for the week, but I only have a promo, and I'm not sure it's even out. Anyway, that record is brilliant as well. But The Inevitable End is one of the most enjoyable simple dance records of the year. It doesn't have shit on Plaid's Reachy Prints, or Aphex Twin's SYRO, or patten's Estoile Naiant. And maybe I should have given the honor to Clark for busting shit up on his self titled Warp release... But for whatever reason, this is the album I'm listening to a lot at the moment. So I'm callin' it.

Wu-Tang Clan - A Better Tomorrow.

"Next week?" Ghostface Killah - 36 Seasons

Man, fuck this. What a terrible idea.

Nobody cares about albums anymore; they care even less about whether or not I care about albums.

Shut it down!!

Skull Defects? Are you referring to Street Metal or Dances In Dreams...? I picked up the latter earlier in the year and thought it was fucking amazing, but I just learned about the former. Street Metal... Hmm... Can't tell if it was meant to be an EP or another full length, but "Holy Drums" is an incredible fucking song.

I think serious music fans--including a lot of the members on this board--still care about albums. The problem is, we're all too cool/hip/indie/alternative/punk/whatever to immediately pounce on new albums every week--that's too much of a "wow, kids, what's new in popular music this week??!!??" mentality for musical elitists such as us.:cool:

Maybe instead of nuking your fine thread, the title could be changed to "Album Of The Month" or "Album Of The Quarter", and ditch the !!! at the end. That would be more fitting for incredibly in-the-know folks such as us.

Haha..

sev it's a great thread, but end of year has meant I'm trying to catch up on shit I missed. Keep it up. Lead by example. I like this.

THIS WEEK has been Ghostface for me btw. I mentioned in the hip hop cafe tho.

save next week for D'Angelo.

Stop whining. Some of us are busy as it is to be listening to new albums everyday. Every month is a hell of a lot more realistic.