Lav's Music Corner

Jesu is the solo project of British musician and genre blender Justin Broadrick. It followed his pioneering experimental metal band Godflesh and took things in a different direction combining droning guitars with more conventional songwriting and lead vocals.  Review By Lavender: While I'm too young to have been able to appreciate Godflesh in their heyday I have spent a lot of time indulging with Jesu over the past decade plus. Whether it was with great albums like Conqueror  and Jesu , the pair of wonderful collaborative albums Justin made with Sun Kil Moon or the Before  EP he released this year that is still one of my favorite short form projects of 2020, I really enjoy the music of Jesu. While this is technically the 6th Jesu album the catalog runs extensively beyond this and would take far too long for me to unpack every part of it but what I will say is that as far as recent memory goes, Justin is on a hot streak ad Terminus  mostly keeps that up.  The re...

William Basinski is an experimental and ambient music composer who has been working out of New York for over three decades. He is most well known for his  Disintegration Loops  series of short loops played on repeat while being stretched and distorted. Since 2013 Basinski has entered a particularly prolific period of releases with many distinct styles and collaborators, alongside remasters and re-releases of older work.  Review By Lavender: While I think it should be absolutely essential that all serious music fans familiarize themselves with The Disintegration Loops  there is plenty that William's greater discography offers. 2017's A Shadow In Time  brought a greater spotlight back onto Basinski and his music and he has released a number of projects since then but Lamentations  with it's trio of singles felt like the most major rollout since. Turns out it was for good reason because Lamentations  is definitely my favorite thing William has d...

  Forgotten Days  - Pallbearer The doom metal band is back in action 3 years after a record that divided fans and critics. While I liked it quite a bit the band heard the criticism apparently and returned to a bit of a stricter interpretation of their doom metal mixed with elements of stoner metal sound. With a handful of compositions that run between 4 and 12 minutes I think the band makes an impact the right way but never really brings it home. Nowhere on this record are compositions with as compelling builds as so many of my favorite doom metal records of old. While the band doesn't do much wrong on the record I also don't see it as anything necessary for metal fans to hear this year. 5.5/10 Wake Of A Nation  EP - Zeal & Ardor The bands first release of new material since wowing everyone with 2018's Stranger Fruit  came on the back of three singles and features 6 tracks with a wide range of influence. While many of the socially conscious themes persist across ...

As we round the corner towards the end of the year it's time to start catching up on records that I didn't get a chance to review earlier before it's time to write my end of year lists. In this first set of more concise reviews we will cover a collection of hip hop records from 2020 by artists who made noise in their respective niches. Shrines - Armand Hammer On the newest collaboration from rapper Billy Woods and producer Elucid you really know what you're in for. The beats here work with a jazz rap fundamental but consistently push it into other worlds crafting some harsher and more abstract beats across the album than you may typically hear on a conscious rap project of the like. Billy Woods intoxicating and confrontational voice adds grit to some of the more narrative driven or politically charged moments on the album and guests like R.A.P Ferreira and Earl Sweatshirt make notable appearances. The only major problem I have with the record is Billy's constant sl...

Salem is a Michigan based band who's early mixtapes in the 2000's and 2010 debut album King Night  are considered pioneering for the witch house subgenre. After a 10 year absence in which they shrunk from a trio to a duo the band began to make noise with new music earlier this year before releasing their long-awaited sophomore album just last weekend.  Review By Lavender: I am just about the right age to remember when Salem and their subgenre with house were a pretty big deal. Salem's debut record King Night  was an old favorite of mine during my formative years and while it may not have all that same luster today that it once did I still thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the project in preparation for this release. With so much time between releases I really had no idea what to expect from Salem going into this record but as it turns out they tend to stick to their guns on this project with only one major exception, an onslaught of trap drums.  The record didn't get off...

Black Thought is a Philly rapper and long time member of seminal rap collective The Roots. Black Thought began his career as a solo artist in 2018 with a pair of EP's that served as volumes 1 and 2 of the Streams Of Thought  series.  Review By Lavender: I love The Roots and I enjoyed Vol. 1  in this series in particular so I was moderately excited going into Cane & Able . Even with some strange features and production credits that sort of lacked the star power of the EP's I had a feeling Black Thought was going to deliver his typically strong blend of intense performances with conscious introspective lyricism. That happens for the most part although there are tracks on the project that take incredibly strange detours.  Good Morning  was the lead off single for this record and while it came out long before the album itself it feels just as fresh and compelling. If you were going to make an explosive, politically charged posse cut I think Pusha T and Killer Mi...

The Mountain Goats are a long running California indie rock project of John Darnielle known mostly for their highly conceptual projects like All Hail West Texas  and The Sunset Tree  in the 2000's as well as Beat The Champ  and Goths  in the 2010's. Getting Into Knives  is the 2nd album from the band this year following Songs For Pierre Chuvin  which was released earlier this year when the bands tour was cancelled. Review By Lavender: While I've never been a massive John Darnielle stan I do enjoy a lot of The Mountain Goats music. While All Hail West Texas  has always been a favorite of mine just a few years ago I rekindled with the band on their great record Goths . Since then I haven't been particularly impressed given that their last record let me down a bit and I didn't have much of anything to say about their record from earlier this year. I enjoyed a couple of the singles leading up to Getting Into Knives  that had me excited but ultimately...

Ariana Grande is an artist who turned from a pop star into a mega star over the past few years. With her last two album cycles she's collected numerous #1 hits and translated that success into a massively successful multi-media presence. Unlike many contemporaries who travel the same path Ariana has done so with critical success at her back alongside her commercial success, with her 2019 record thank u, next  in particularly receiving massive critical acclaim across the board, positions  is a relatively quick follow-up for an artist of Ariana's stature and only had one single dropped just a week before the album was ultimately released.  Review By Lavender: I was always a casual appreciator of Ariana's music in her early days but it wasn't until the one-two punch of Sweetener  and thank u, next  that she established herself as one of the best and most capable performers in all of pop music. The prospect of her releasing one of my favorite pop albums of the year ...

PUP is a Toronto based punk band who first received recognition on the back of their 2013 self-titled debut album. Since then the band has released two more records each of which received more attention than the last culminating in last years Morbid Stuff .  Review By Lavender: While straight up punk rock isn't necessarily my go to genre for great music these days I have enjoyed each PUP album more than the last. Leading up to Morbid Stuff  I still wasn't fully convinced of the bands merits but after hearing that record I have to say they are capable of rocking as hard as anybody around right now. After a single from this EP really impressed me I was pretty excited for the project, and while I think every song here is at least decent it is also clear that these are effectively Morbid Stuff  B-Sides. Rot  was a great single and by far my favorite song of the bunch. It's a fiery pop punk rager from start to finish with a melodramatic chorus and short hooky guitar riffs...

Clipping is the experimental rap group consisting of producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes alongside rapper Daveed Diggs. The group quickly established themselves as some of the genres most interesting and unique projects with a willingness to indulge in wild experiments and narrative concepts. Their 4th record last year There Existed An Addiction To Blood  was an experiment in horror-rap that came from the bands immense appreciation for horror movies. The appreciation turned out to be deep enough that they produced a whole 2nd albums worth of material under a similar concept, which makes up most of the tracks here on Visions Of Bodies Being Burned .  Review By Lavender: Clipping has been one of the best acts around in any genre for the past decade. Since I started writing about music in 2016 they may be the best act period given how they've monopolized spots on my year end lists as one of only 2 (or kind of 3) artists to ever appear on both the Singles and Songs list...

Autechre are a British electronic music duo who have blended their sound across many different sub-genres of electronica through their 3 decade long career of innovating. In the past few years the band has taken to releasing a pair of incredibly long albums with elseq 1-5  and the nearly twice as long NTS Sessions 1-4 . Sign  is the first conventional and moderately lengthy album from Autechre since 2013's Exai . Review By Lavender: I love many of the most influential IDM artists of the 90's including Autechre. I was excited to finally get to review one of their albums without having to commit 4 or even 8 hours each time I wanted to get through the records material, even I have to say come on at some point. Sign  is actually really the tale of two albums spliced together and mixed around. Half of this record is densely layered, rapid fire IDM and the other half is deeply arranged and distantly mixed pseudo-ambient tracks. Making sense of the order in which these tracks ar...

Dorian Electra is one of the most unique voice's in hyper pop blending genres and tackling gender norms with a uniquely wild and androgynous personality. Dorian's music is just as unique as the numerous singles released leading up to this record often took drastically different sonic approaches and the feature list has names as unpredictable as pop legends The Village People and Russian provocateurs Pussy Riot.  Review By Lavender: If that introduction to Dorian left you head spinning get used to it. I was head over heels for some of the singles from Dorian's first record particularly Career Boy  but the final album felt like a compromise to me. Nothing about My Agenda  feels like a compromise as Dorian clearly threw everything they could possibly find at the wall here regardless of what stuck or didn't. The record blends genres together constantly with the help of some wild guests and paints a surprisingly indulgent narrative all spun around the fedora wearing incel ch...

Open Mike Eagle is a Chicago based rapper and comedian on both television and podcasts. He broke out in the growing experimental rap scene with his 2014 album Dark Comedy  and has since been one of the most critically acclaimed voices in rap with his conscious and comedic style. Review By Lavender: The first time I ever got to review Mike's music was in 2017 when he released what is still to this day my favorite of his projects Brick Body Kids Still Daydream . He followed that up in 2018 with one of my favorite EP's of the year What Happens When I Try To Relax  and has been largely quiet since then aside from a single in 2019 and a feature here and there. Even with some singles that didn't quite blow me away I was excited for this record given Mike's bassline of talent. While it's clear that this record comes from a very different place as his other projects, the incredibly lowkey beats and repetitive hooks can become a serious drag at parts of the album and it'...

James Blake is a British singer-songwriter and electronic music producer who first made waves in the early 2010's with his dubstep parallel experimental electronica. In recent years James has massively widened his audience through high profile collaborations on the Black Panther  album as well as alongside Slowthai, Flatbush Zombies, Kehlani and Beyonce.  Review By Lavender: There was no single artist in the 2010's with a slightly possible exception of Kendrick Lamar, whose output I enjoyed as consistently as James Blake. From his experimental debut to the rich R&B songwriting of Overgrown , the icy DIY of The Colour In Anything  and finally the commercial bliss of Assume Form . James Blake has excited, challenged and amazed me at every single turn of his career up to this point. Giving that just 9 months ago I called his self-titled debut album my second favorite of the entire decade as well as naming his song Retrograde my favorite song of the entire decade I was cl...

Touche Amore are a California post-hardcore band who spent the last ten years releasing one critically acclaimed album after another and peaking with 2016's Stage Four . Lament is the bands third release on Epitaph records and featured a pair of singles that developed significant hype for the project.  Review By Lavender: While I wasn't the earliest adopter of Touche Amore, by the time Stage Four  came around I was certainly on board. I enjoyed the project quite a bit and I've been anticipating a true follow-up ever since. After I enjoyed most of the singles leading up to the record I had pretty significant expectations for the project, and it mostly lives up to them.  Reminders  was the most recent single we heard from the record and while it has a much more conventional chorus than most of these tracks but I have to give the lyricism a ton of credit for putting such raw emotion on display. I also think the instrumental pulls off some pretty diverse transitions well...

Future Islands is a Baltimore based synth pop and indie pop act fronted by Sam Herring who emerged in the early 2010's as one of indie music premiere summer songwriters. The band found mainstream success after a viral performance of their most well known track Seasons  in 2014 and while they have failed to replicate that commercial success since then they still have a dedicated following among indie fans.  Review By Lavender: Future Islands have a discography of singles that can stand up to any of their indie contemporaries. Tracks like Vireo's Eye , Balance , Seasons , Ran  and the newest entry For Sure  are all incredible examples of their sound done to absolute perfection. The issue is that since their 2010 record In Evening Air  the band has failed to put an entire album of great songs together, and the limitations of their sound are just as apparent on As Long As You Are .  For the most part the singles here are once again great tracks with only one ex...