Photo Credit: Marilyn Hue Released as a surprise drop 24 hours after Skrillex debuted his sophomore album Quest For Fire, Don’t Get Too Close manages to hold its own in the shadow of its sister album. The much shorter of the two, hailing in at an underwhelming 33 minutes, showcases a trendier features list with songs coming… Read more
Photo Credit: Nasty Little Man Gorillaz began more than two decades ago, originally a form of collaboration that was unique, to say the least, between a musician (in this case, Blur vocalist Damon Albarn) and an illustrator (Jaime Hewlett, creator of the British comic book series Tank Girl) with the purpose of creating a soundtrack… Read more
Photo Credit: Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns Following up on an album like Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is an unenviable task by anyone’s standard. Little Simz Mercury Prize-winning fourth album was an orchestral, genre-mashing masterpiece filled with expert story-telling – upon release, it was widely compared to the likes of Lauryn Hill’s Miseducation and Kendrick Lamar’s To… Read more
Photo Credit: Johannes Lovund EDM, perhaps more than any other genre, defined the commercial music of the 2010s. When you think about the biggest, most inescapable hits of the decade, you realize a majority of them belong to this genre – the late Avicii’s “Wake Me Up,” Major Lazer, DJ Snake, and MØ’s “Lean On”… Read more
Photo Credit: Savanna Ruedy There’s one track tucked in the middle of Gryffin’s 2019 debut Gravity that suggested the then 31-year-old could be EDM’s next great hope. “If I Left The World” begins, seemingly, as a traditional song about lost love, but in its second verse evolves into one about crushing isolation and even suicide… Read more
Photo Credit: Zackery Michael A single start-to-finish listen will reveal to just about any listener that the fourth full-length album (joining about a half-dozen EPs) from Vancouver, Canada duo Bob Moses, The Silence in Between, is a strong and tight offering of atmosphere club-type EDM and bouncy, fun pop. Appropriately-titled opening cut “Seen it Coming” is the perfect… Read more
Photo Credit: Maria José Govea Something important happened in the last 2-3 years – well, besides the pandemic, climate change, and never-ending political turmoil -: the standard for mainstream music increased exponentially. Chalk it up to “Bad Guy” or “Old Town Road” – songs that paved a weirder and wilder path for Top 40 music… Read more
Photo Credit: Travis Shinn Whoever thought it was a good idea to open Tom Morello’s second solo album in the Atlas Underground Fire series with autotuned vocals – and I’m afraid that this was Morello himself – were obviously wrong. I’m not sure if “Harlem Hellfighter” is his take on 100 gecs’ hyper-pop, but a brief check… Read more
Photo Credit: Brian Ziff Nicholas Miller creates under the name Illenium. If you look the word up in the dictionary, you will find no entries as the word, technically speaking, does not exist. It is a creation of Mr. Miller himself. But the sound of the word, Illenium, is quite evocative and suggests to those… Read more
Photo Credit: Getty Images/Ringer illustration It doesn’t even take a million streams on Spotify or three sold out nights at Madison Square Garden to be labeled a “sellout”. Virtually any commercial success in music will inevitably invite claims that an artist has “sold out” and ironically enough, this label is most likely not to come… Read more