Animal Collective - Honeycomb/Gotham 

Considering Animal Collective’s output in the past three years has been much more impressive than Radiohead’s, they’re pretty much my favorite band ever and I’ve been vibing on the 2011 bootlegs so hard so when they announced a BRAND NEW 7” I almost puked and when it turns out the songs were actually amazing, I almost passed out. Call it being overly-dramatic but Jesus I am officially blown away by these two songs.
The A-side, Honeycomb (known as Frights on the tour bootlegs) is one of the most aggressive songs AC has released since Hey Light. Of course, no one’s going to be beating the shit out of each other at an Animal Collective mosh pit anytime soon, but the live drums (PANDA BACK ON DRUMS IS STILL REALLY EXCITING TO ME) and the huge flurry of sounds is just leveling. Don’t worry about Ben Allen being back on production duties, these songs didn’t get the Merriweather treatment. They sound just as raw as they did live. The keyboards and additional backing vocals (“HOWWWW”) only bring Honeycomb into the genre-elusive realm that many Animal Collective songs are generally brought into. And clocking in at just over three minutes, it’s an absolute power house. Trying to take in all of these sounds at one time is almost impossible and by the time the song is over, you’ll be absolutely slack-jawed.
Gotham is a totally different experience than Honeycomb. Originally titled Your Choice, Gotham is a ballad like only these four guys could do. We’ve seen Avey Tare take on more traditional song structures on tracks like No More Runnin’ but Gotham retains the intense live feel that Honeycomb. Usually, I think bongos are pretty tacky but they just resonate so well on this song. Deakin’s lead guitar work sounds as exotic as ever, rivaling some of his more interesting guitar lines on Feels. It’s an absolutely immersing song that sounds like absolutely nothing they’ve ever done. It’s the perfect marriage of Down There’s swamp and Tomboy’s overcast beach. It almost feels like a cheat when the song ends so abruptly with some bongo and guitar slams.  
I didn’t really care for either of these songs too much on the bootlegs but these songs have had new life breathed into them that just blew me away. Maybe it’s the crazy Animal Collective fan inside of me but I am just so pleased with these two songs. If Honeycomb and Gotham have gotten such great treatment, imagine what the other thirteen songs are going to sound like? I’m almost positive the next Animal Collective album could be my favorite album this year.

Just pre-ordered the Honeycomb 7” gonna review the songs tomorrow.

Sonic Boom’s Tomboy Vs. Panda Bear’s Tomboy

Noah Lennox is hands-down my favorite musician and Sonic Boom is an utter music legend so when it was announced that Peter Kember would be producing Noah Lennox’s next solo album, Tomboy, there were plenty of people who were stoked. Many noticed that Boom had dramatically changed the mixes to many of the Tomboy singles and some were seriously disappointed by this. Luckily enough, Noah announced that he would be releasing a deluxe Tomboy boxset, featuring the orginal SB produced album, acapellas, instrumentals, the one-off track from the AC KEEP tape, The Preakness and, most importantly, the single mixes. Noah’s Tomboy. The mixes can be pretty different from the “official” Tomboy and I know Tomboy’s pretty much super old new to most people by now but here’s a track by track analysis of each song, using the Panda tracklisting because, let’s be honest, it’s better. 

Note: I’m only doing this because I’m absolutely insane and this probably matters to no one except me.

Drone

The most simplistic song on the album. Only one note with different octaves. There’s not a whole lot of production to this song but Noah’s mix brings out the tone of the Kore a bit more and his vocals are pushed back more. There’s really not a lot to this song but God is it good. Anyone who saw him on the 2010-2011 tour knows how powerful it sounds live.

Tomboy

Panda’s guitar just cuts through on his mix. While Sonic Boom focused more on the textures and effects and that wonderful synth the glides through the track, Noah’s guitar sound more blanketed on his mix. Still, I give the edge to Boom.

Last Night At The Jetty

Noah’s vocals sound so warm on his mix but the crazy evil ambiance that been fit into the mix has just made the song almost sinister. The Panda version of Last Night At The Jetty has a much more aggressive snare than Boom’s and the song disintegrates quickly at the end.

Surfer’s Hymn

The beach samples at the beginning seem very long for some reason and the pitch shifted vocals on this mix used to annoy me so much but this mix has more forward momentum than Boom’s. Seriously, the chorus sounds so big on Noah’s mix. He did a great job with this one. It just sounds so ethereal.

Scheherazade

THE TUBBY SAMPLE aight if you were into the bootlegs that went around when Panda Bear started playing those new songs, chances are you were blown away by this track. Chances also are that you were disappointed when the disjointed King Tubby sample at the end of the song was taken off. Well, it’s back and it adds this amazing quality to the song that just makes it unlike anything else. It’s gorgeous. 

Benfica

The best song to come out of Tomboy and those sessions. There’s a new layer of ambiance added to the track and it just sounds so warm and big. It’s shorter and doesn’t have that extended outro but I think it’s a necessary sacrifice. It kind of feels like you’re ten years old and you just won a soccer game at your school and Noah Lennox is singing this song. So happy. 

Slow Motion

While it’s missing the violent pang that opened the Slow Motion on Boom’s mix. the beat on Noah’s mix makes it sound out-right dangerous. If this wasn’t in 3/4, I would expect some heavy freestyles over this. It’s way more powerful on this mix and just overall better.

Friendship Braclet

I’m still not crazy about this song but I dig the way it opens itself on the Noah mix with the beat and the stripped down vocals without the crazy warbley effect. That used to annoy me so much. Boom’s mix seemed to go on forever and god it was placed so awkwardly on Tomboy. 

Alsatian Darn 

Oh man Noah’s mix for this is so nice. There’s some new vocals and some more little touches of ambiance and the kick drum stop is just unstoppable. This has always been another highlight from the Tomboy sessions and even from the live performances and this gives it more of the live feel.

Bullseye or Afterburner 

While it’s more true to this live performance of the song, Afterburner just has that live jam at the end that rules so hard and made it one of my favorite songs from the album. It just feels way too short with Panda’s mix.

You Can Count On Me

This song is a snoozer on both mixes.

In short, I think Noah’s Tomboy sounds like more of a homage to his live shows that got everyone excited for Tomboy. The tracklist is more honest to the setlists he’s played and have the live feel running through their veins. I’m willing to bet that he had a more specific vision for the album that was perhaps not realized with Peter? Either way, some of these songs sound super good on the “singles” Tomboy.

This was completely pointless. This is how I spent a Saturday night.

Yo I know this is supposed to be music reviews but come on when was the last time you saw a good superhero movie? Exactly.

I don’t have the album on my computer so I can’t post songs or anything but whatever here we go

Black Dice - Mr Impossible

It’s safe to say Black Dice is, at this point, noise royalty. From working with everyone from Erase Errata to Wolf Eyes and to exploring all forms of noise from hardcore to ambient to sound collage, Black Dice in 2012 is well-respected by most and they definitely know what they’re doing when it comes to their music. So when Black Dice announce a new album and we get one track from the album (the stellar Pigs), we should pretty much know what we’re getting. And Mr. Impossible isn’t much of a surprise. 
Mr. Impossible holds all of the things that have made me fall in love with previous Black Dice releases. Eric Copeland and Aaron Warren’s deranged vocals that sound like they could have been taken from an insane 80’s car commercial? Check. Broken percussion mixed with squeaky guitar? Yep. Songs named after classic rock staples that will probably insult a 13 year old obsessed with The Who? Yeah. Again, there’s not a lot of entirely new things going on on Mr. Impossible. Most of these songs start as a sloppy mess of electronic and noise and develop into surprisingly conscious and focused and percussive jams. The before mentioned Pigs is a highlight and a bona fide jam. The 4/4 fury of the bass and the chopped up wheezing and hacking that is passed of as the vocals along with that classic BD guitar make this such and infectious song that you’ll forget that this is commonly labeled as “noise”
Spy Vs. Spy is another highlight and works it’s way around and huge disorienting loop of noise and ends up sounding like work they’ve gone through on Beaches And Canyons. Brunswick Sludge (Meets Front Range Tripper) is one of the most shocking songs on the album, for the pure fact that it’s very catchy. Camitas is practically an Aphex Twin song circa Richard D. James album period (think Fingerbib) and insures that idea that Black Dice is hardly sinister and, if anything, a whole lot of fun.
Black Dice gets the label of “acquired taste” and “not for everyone” a lot and I won’t argue with that. I’m sure after hearing Noah Lennox and his worship for the trio that many people have been left confused by Black Dice’s insane noise assault and with good reason, Black Dice doesn’t offer a whole lot of coherent music but Mr. Impossible might offer a new approach that’s more accessible without treading away from the sound they have been focusing on since the mid-00’s.

Death Grips - The Money Store

Get Got

The Fever (Aye Aye)

Hacker

It’s 2012. We now live in an era of post-My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy hip-hop. Jay-Z is now 42 and married. A$AP Rocky has kickstarted an incredibly well-funded career by constantly referring to himself as “that pretty motherfucker”. Lil B is Lil B and if you don’t know about all the amazing things Lil B has done in the past 3 years, where have you been? In short, hip-hop is very different than it was when Enter The Wu-Tang was released on the world. 
Hip-hop is at a crucial point. We have a new generation of rappers, the first time that has ever happened in the genre (old rappers didn’t exist in ‘98). I suspect there is now a mad rush to change hip-hop, shape it in any new way for a new breed of performers and consumers. Death Grips falls into the spectrum at an odd time. Death Grips doesn’t seek to change the game (and they haven’t either), but if any album has just shaken hip-hop’s very foundation, it’s certainly this one.
Most people have already heard Exmilitary. It’s bombastic mix of punk aesthetic, IDM production and just the general horror (not horrorcore) of the whole thing just made it one of the most intense listens I’ve had with a mixtape in recent memory. Plenty of people commented on the album’s abrasive nature and claimed it wasn’t even hip-hop. Others made the comparison to Dälek’s jarring production. Either way, it was absolutely polarizing and still ended up on many best of lists at the end of 2011 (including mine)
And the pre-release excitement for The Money Store has developed my entire year. I was really excited for this album to drop. I wasn’t even pleased with my first listen; I was ecstatic, almost slack-jawed. The Money Store could easily already be the album of the year.
Death Grips have carved a clear cut path for the sound. You’ll hear no more Black Flag samples. The Money Store mostly relies on lo-fi synths and grainy production, making some of these songs sound like ominous walls-of-sound. MC Ride’s flow has advanced from the sloppy shouts and growls of Full Moon and Known For It. His quiet delivery on Get Got is completely surprising, even though it might be slightly similar to Culture Shock (A song I couldn’t stand). Ride has also learned how to write amazing hooks (GET GET GET GET GOT GOT GOT GOT, AYE AYE, IT’S SUCH A LONG WAY DOWN, HUSTLE BONES COMING OUT MY MOUTH, BITCH PLEASE YOU MUST BE SMOKING ROCK, I’M IN YOUR AREAAAAA) and his insane, jumbled lyrics only make The Money Store a more nervous and surreal experience. One of the most intense lyrics comes from I’ve Seen Footage “Armored cop open fire Glock/On some kid who stepped so/Fast was hard ta grasp/What even happened til you seen dat head blow/Off his shoulders in slow mo/Rewind that, is so cold/Rewind that, is so cold/I seen footage.. I stay noided” Chills. 
Touching on the production, it’s absolutely one of the most disorienting things I’ve ever heard in my life. Zach Hill recently gave some insight on how Death Grips gets their sound during a Pitchfork interview “We all carry around camcorders; we’ll record sounds with digital cameras and use those sounds on our records, with a real disregard for sound quality. We’ll build something around something that’s just fucked— like, you just shouldn’t use it. But there’s a majestic quality to that rawness.” Listening to The Money Store, none of these samples are obvious. Maybe the being roar of some lo-fi car racing off (kind of reminds me of the dune buggy from Half-Life 2? That’d be cool) at the beginning of Hustle Bones and a few other select sounds scattered throughout the record are identifiable, but the mix on this is so huge it’s hard to figure what most of these sounds are and what the hell’s going on. A lot of comparisons have been made to The Bomb Squad, famous Public Enemy beat alchemists. While the influence is there, don’t think there are any cop-offs anywhere on this record. Zach Hill has expressed that he wanted the music to be as aggressive as the lyrics. Luckily, they’re a perfect fit for each other.
Death Grips slung almost half of this album at us in the months predating The Money Store and on their own, some of them didn’t make much sense, but as an album experience, nothing feels weak. Nothing feels boring. I dare you to listen to this and say that it’s OK. Every track is absolutely stellar, almost to the point where you’ll have to drag your jaw up from the floor. The Fever (Aye Aye) is so intense that I’m pretty sure I didn’t even breath for it’s whole three minutes and seven seconds. The Cage finds MC Ride barely coherent as he screams to be let out of his cage. Hacker is the perfect way to bring together a 13 song assault on the mind. It finds MC Ride rambling about Lady Gaga and Apple and WikiLeaks in a calm(er) but just as frantic tone. You don’t know what the fuck he’s saying but you certainly believe every single word. Top that off with what sounds like production that sounds like it’s LCD Soundsystem’s Losing My Edge if it came from hell and you have one of the best tracks released this year. 
The Money Store has ended up being one of the most discussed albums of the year, and how could it not be? It’s probably one of the most intense listens you’ll get from an album this year. I can’t think of any other music besides Death Grips that makes me just want to run from the police and smoke meth. It’s paranoid, claustrophobic and just straight up frightening. The Money Store could easily be my choice for the best album this year and it’s perfect. Zach Hill recently commented that “the middle of the road, and how it’s the worst place to be artistically.” Death Grips will easily split it’s listeners. Many will hear this and hear nothing but noise and yelling. Everyone else will be very enthusiastic about Death Grips forward thinking in the world of creative hip-hop. No one’s doing it better than these guys right now. It’s such a long way down.

THEESatisfaction - awE naturalE

God

I had to stop myself from typing about Shabazz Palaces because it’s unfair to THEESatisfaction that they will constantly be compared to their Sub Pop contemporaries. It’s not that bad, to be honest. They certainly retain a similar sound to the Seattle duo and they ever appeared on last years fantastic debut from Shabazz Palaces, Black Up. But that does not mean they exist in Palaceer Lazaro or Tendai ‘Baba’ Maraire shadow. Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White are totally independent of Shabazz Palaces and have formulated an album that can stand right next to Black Up. 
awE naturalE is a synthesis of experimentation in africa american music. Here’s an excerpt from their website:

They write, produce and perform their own material, funk-psychedelic feminista sci-fi epics with the warmth and depth of Black Jazz and Sunday morning soul, frosted with icy raps that evoke equal parts Elaine Brown, Ursula Rucker and Q-Tip.

Pretty bold claim that could easily fall on it’s face. Luckily, the Seattle duo does not falter. The sparse neo-soul of Bitch is held together by a discordant high hat snap. QueenS slowly develops into a homage to 90’s hip-hop with the proud line repeated through the song of “Whatever you do/Don’t funk with my groove”. Sweat is exactly the “Black Jazz” the ladies previously mentioned, the loops sound like it could of been taken right from Mile Davis’ Live-Evil. It’s a melting pot of their influences and it’s vicious. awE naturalE is only 30 minutes but it holds it’s weight. It feels like a full album but feels like THEEsatisfaction’s guerrilla warfare on you, it doesn’t let up on you.
awE naturalE shouldn’t be viewed as a lackluster answer to Black Up. The samples and loops here feel much more loose and more like jazz than Shabazz Palaces’ experimental hip-hop. The similarities are there but this feels like a more natural experience. Not surprisingly, Palaceer Lazaro adds two verses to God and Enchantruss, respectively. He, of course, kills it but not before The Queens Supreme do multiple times over.

Ital - Hive Mind/Blondes - Blondes 

Doesn’t Matter (If You Love Him)

Hater

Ok this is a double review pretty much just because both of these albums are pretty similar, as they both successfully on full-on funky space house jams (Basically, they sound like The Orb) and they have both released this year which, if you allow me to be skeptical, could mean 2012 will be the year of ambient house revival, hopefully without airy reverb female vocals (see chillwave).
Ital is on Planet Mu and most likely that should mean something to you. For about 15 years, Mike Paradinas has been challenging Warp as the best electronic music label. Ital is Daniel Martin from Mi Ami, which is some post-punk band. His roots shine through on the shortest track on the album, Privacy Settings, an obvious industrial jam. The nice thing about Hive Minds is that it’s not begging to impress you. I mean, the first track samples one of Lady Gaga’s better known hits and Whitney Huston, as well. Eventually,  the Gaga sample turns into a layered mess and caves in on itself, becoming a mess of glitch. That’s how Daniel Martin approaches his own unique brand of house. Constantly he challenges the 4/4 monotony of house music with simple little changes, a key change, a midi string arrangement. Subtle but completely necessary. Closer Flordian Void continues the obvious influence from The Orb with light hand claps and percussion and various synth pads that works its way to a high hat heavy crescendo that keeps the funk high, not an easy tasks considering the last three tracks are all over ten minutes.
Blondes is much more constructive. They start with something basic, a synth or a bassline and add tracks over and over each other. Here how the best simple electronic dance music is achieved. The sounds on this are not rocket science, they could of easily been patches assembled in Logic, but the pure simplicity of it all is what makes it so enduring, like Gas.
Many blogs (even Pitchfork) have referred to these artists as hipster house or something like that because both of these artists are musicians from other genres making electronic music. It makes me wonder how people don’t understand what a unique snapshot of house music this is, outsiders looking in to a world they’re not totally familiar with. Does everything have to be so authentic? Are there really house music elitists? Did they not get hugged enough as a child?
Revolutionary? Not really. As previously mentioned, this is grounds The Orb and AFX have explored before in the 90’s. But are they fun? Yep. They’re funky enough for Richard D. James to spin them at one of his illusive DJ sets. I think that’s probably the highest compliment I can give to these two artists.

I added song links to my reviews so you can check out individual songs first. Hope it’s convenient! 

Fennesz - Black Sea

Black Sea

I believe that noise and ambiance are very closely related, perhaps like brother and sister. Both are pretty simple to make and are used loosely in a broad spectrum of genres, acting more as gentle blankets over a music pieces most core instrumentation or become very engulfed in the own ideas of noise and ambiance (Merzbow and Brian Eno, respectvely). If you listen to a fridge buzz, is it noise or ambient drone? Same thing goes for hacks saws, dolphin cries, compressed vocals and pretty much anything that requires any sorts of unusual, dragged out instrumentation.
But I don’t want to spend time talking about the differences (if there are any to begin with). Instead, I want to talk about a really pretty album. Christian Fennesz is a guitarist who’s very invested in the electronic scene. He’s remixed everyone from Ulver to Isis to Oneohtrix Point Never and he’s even covered The Beach Boys. He’s worked along side various musicians, including Mike Patton and Jim O’Rourke. It’s obvious Fennesz has a wide pallet of influences going in and out of him and to be working with giants like these, he’s no joke.
Listening to Black Sea for the first time was almost like listening to Fripp & Eno’s Evening Star for the first time. Ambient texture along side some dreamy long guitar notes. Thankfully, Fennesz takes a hint from Fripp here in his subtlety. I imagine a guitarist going into a project like this and playing a prog solo with huge flanger on it but Christian is sparse. His acoustic guitar pings and his electric guitar soars over waves of dense drones. The other aspect to Black Sea is the Eno element; the ambiance. Glitch ambient is my favorite sort of ambient music for the irregular noise it brings into the genre. The title track (and the first one as well) becomes such a fuzzy, grainy mess, it almost becomes difficult to find any melody in it, but the noise clears and gives ways to guitar and various other instrumentation that’s hard to make out. Either way, it’s an amazing experience with plenty of tension and clever production. 
Christian Fennesz’s Black Sea is a unique experience in ambient music, a genre that has plenty of duds and few greats. In around 52 minutes in length, it’s the average ambient album size and provides plenty of dynamics and plenty of ideas to explore, something many albums like this may miss. Fennesz is a wonderfully talented musician and Black Sea is a testament for his song craft and musicianship.