Lav's Music Corner

JPEGMAFIA is a New York/Baltimore rapper who has taken the world of experimental hip hop by storm in recent years. With his breakout record Veteran  in 2018 he used unconventional song structures and a wide array of experimental influences to craft a truly unique and eclectic rap sound. He has prolifically released music since then with a number of one off singles, the 2019 album All My Heroes Are Cornballs  and a pair of EP's over the last two years. Both of those EP's helped lead up to the visual stylings and sonic composition of LP! .  Review By Lav: Peggy made it pretty difficult to write a review of this record that reaches any kind of conclusion but I'm gonna try. I really enjoyed his last two records and his sound was a refreshingly weird take on hip hop that impressed me even if not every single experiment hits it out of the park. I wasn't quite as enamored with either of the EP's he released even though they both certainly had their highlights, I thought th...

Parquet Courts are a New York based garage and punk rock outfit who garnered a cult like underground following for their hard-hitting performances and socially conscious delivery. They teamed up with super producer Danger Mouse for their 2018 album Wide Awake!  which became their most popular release to date and one of the most universally acclaimed rock records of the last few years.  Review By Lav: After being a bit hit or miss on Parquet Courts in their early days once they signed to Rough Trade records and released Human Performance  I was much more on board. They followed this up with a criminally underrated collaboration album alongside Daniele Luppi and Yeah Yeah Yeah's frontwoman Karen O called Milano  that you should definitely check out if you like Parquet Courts. For a lot of people the story of the band centers entirely around their previous release, 2018's Wide Awake!  and while it isn't fair to reduce the band down to just one album, when you rele...

Lana Del Rey is a pop star who really needs no introduction. Occasionally controversial but beloved by tons of dedicated fans Lana is entering a prolific streak in her career with this being her 3rd studio album in the last 3 years, which also featured the release of a spoken word poetry album last year. Blue Banisters  follows Chemtrails Over The Country Club  and 4 singles earlier this year and features tracks that date all the way back to her early career.  Review By Lav: I am incapable of hiding my love for Lana Del Rey's music, the numbers just speak for themselves. I've been a vocal fan of her first two records Born To Die  and Ultraviolence  then once I started reviewing albums I had nothing but more praise first for Lust For Life  and then dropping a 10/10 review for her 2019 masterpiece Norman Fucking Rockwell . I even ended up enjoying the spoken word poetry album she followed it up with, if you're a Lana fan and you've never heard Sportcruiser ...

Young Thug has been one of trap music's biggest stars for the past few years. Hailing from the genre's inception city of Atlanta and participating in collaborations with all of it's biggest stars as well as high profile crossovers with more pop oriented acts like Drake and Camila Cabello have all risen Thugger's profile dramatically. Now after releasing the most commercial album of his career back in 2019 he's following it up with a lightly indulgent venture into acoustic and singer-songwriting music, though it's all still heavily steeped in trap influence.  Review By Lav: *sigh*, I really like Young Thug. While his occasionally transphobia is, lets call it alarming, he's hip hop's ultimate charmer. His brash willingness to experiment with his personal and musical style compared with his capacity to write charming and silly lyrics that go over perfectly on song after song has made him one of contemporary rap's most protected voices. After a high prof...

As a wise woman once said on her EP's of the year list last year, "EPs are fun little guys full of fun little songs" and while they are so often overlooked sometimes when it rains it pours and a number of short form projects that I want to talk about all drop around the same time. so lets get caught up in the world of extended plays.  This Thing Of Ours 2 EP - The Alchemist Earlier this year legendary underground hip hop producer The Alchemist released an enjoyable if slightly inconsistent EP featuring a number of high profile rap collaborations and this is the highly anticipated sequel. This time MAVI, MIKE, Vince Staples, Zlooperz and Danny Brown's Bruiser Brigade serve as the five vocals heard across these five tracks which add up to just under 12 minutes.  Instrumentally speaking the EP is full of exactly what you'd expect, low key and lo-fi jazz rap beats rich with samples of classic brass instrumentation, drums and obscure vocal samples. The issue I have wit...

The best tracks released this weekend below: 5.  Crutch  - Band Of Horses Nobody ever accused Band Of Horses of being TOO original, and the chorus of "I've got a crutch on you" is a real eye roller. But with all that being said the band clearly still knows how to make a bouncy indie pop song with pinpoint precision. The sweet melodies and wandering guitar leads are impossibly pleasant and make up for the familiarity of the song.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCzPIrvlGXs 4.  Self Made  - Erick The Architect After releasing an underrated EP earlier this year, Flatbush Zombies' Erick The Architect is back and with a beat that fits in really well with the reserved jazz rap stylings that have taken over his native New York. Over a beat that sounds like something the Armand Hammer boys would rap over Erick flexes his credentials as a rapper and the authentic following he built with his come-up.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNzHA3_hmEg 3.  Against The ...

The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die is a Connecticut based band/collective who have been commonly placed under the emo label even though they have interpolated numerous indie and experimental rock genres to their sound over the years. Their first three records blended genres and were met with critical acclaim and while it's been four years since their last studio album they released a compilation of assorted tracks back in 2019.  Review By Lav: I don't know if you guys have heard of websites like Twitter, Rateyourmusic or 4Chan's /mu/ board, but emo music is kind of a big deal in those places. While I can't keep up with literally every up-start emo project that gets hyped up by 6 people on rym I was pretty early on TWIABP. Heartbeat In The Brain  completely knocked my socks off the first time I heard it back in 2013 or so and I've heard pretty much everything the group has done ever since. While it can be a bit hard to narrow down their...

BADBADNOTGOOD are a Canadian jazz trio who first gained popularity in the early 2010's with their first two albums. They were released on Bandcamp and featured creative instrumental renditions of online favorites like video game soundtracks and hip hop beats. The band had a breakout moment with their 4th album in 2016, with the records biggest hit becoming a surprise Tik Tok hit earlier this year. The band is known for collaborating with artists from the hip hop and indie scenes but Talk Memory  features a much more jazz oriented set of collaborators and a sound much more indebted to classic jazz music as a result.  Review By Lav: In my early teenage years I loved hip hop both new and old, loved artists like Joy Division and James Blake, had grown up playing Zelda games and was developing a burgeoning interest in jazz. All of that is to say that for me, like many other people out there BADBADNOTGOOD were an incredible cool and exciting way to dip my toes into the genre through...

James Blake is a London based producer, singer and songwriter who developed an instantly recognizable sound over the last decade. In his early days he dabbled in dubstep and abstract electronica before working chilling R&B stylings into his sound. On his 4th album Assume Form  he greatly expanded the scope of his collaborators to include the worlds of pop, experimental R&B and even hip hop both new and old alongside Travis Scott and Andre 3000. Friends  comes just two years later and has seen James profile continue to grow through continued collaborations with contemporary pop, rap and R&B artists.  Review By Lav: So here's the part where I say exactly what anyone who has been following me for any significant amount of time is already thinking, I fucking LOVE James Blake's music. I called his self-titled debut my runner up album of the decade a few years ago and the best album of 2011 in a video earlier this year. The Color In Anything  cracked my top 10 ...

The best new tracks released this weekend below: 5.  Scripture  - Eartheater After experiencing a pretty significant breakout across her last two albums Alexandra is back with a new Eartheater sound that combines some of the beautiful vocal melodies she's so well known for with a highly digitized and jittery instrumental. It's certainly a strange and unique combination of sounds that benefits from shimmering sonic textures in the backing walls of synths.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMGyY6ufADE 4.  Born Yesterday  - Arca (Feat. Sia) In perhaps the most unlikely pairing of the week Arca's newest single sees the experimental producer teaming up with pop's gold standard in songwriting who was responsible for the controversial Music  film last year. The jittery electronic production we've come to expect from an Arca song is still but distant among the spiraling synth lines and Sia's trademark vocal harmonies. It's a combination that surprises throughout and...

We're at that time of year where I try to cover as much as I possibly can before 2021 is out and that starts with some of the albums that have spawned quite a bit of discourse. These are rap records that came out over the past month or so and inspired Instagram rap page admin discussion, profuse memeing and second hand listening experiences outside bumping car windows.  Expensive Pain - Meek Mill Is it just me or was there a lot more discussion about Meek like, two years ago. Obviously during the Drake beef and Dreams Worth More Than Money  era he was quite the headline grabber but even in recent years during his very public battle with the legal system I just saw a lot more people talking about him. This record seems like it's gonna chart pretty well and it certainly attracted the attention of a number of high profile mainstream hip hop artists, but I can't shake the feeling that it's his most culturally inessential album to date. As a pop culture observer that's a...

The Body & Big|Brave are quite the unexpected collaboration. The former is a two piece extreme metal project from the American north east who released one of the most brooding noise albums of 2021 back in February. The latter is a Canadian minimalist folk project who have toured with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion, and have slowly increased the use of heavier metal instrumentation into their music over the last few years.  Review By Lav: Alright I've done a lot of contemporary, fun and accessible music recently. Let's get fucking experimental. Earlier this year The Body absolutely melted my skull with one of my favorite experimental records of the year so far I've Seen All That I Need To See  and while I've always been sort of aware of Big|Brave, it's long overdue that I paid the act some more attention. When this collaboration was first announced I really wasn't sure what to expect given how little similarity or crossover their was bet...