Slift-Ilion

The best thing I can say about Ilion is that it is the first album in a while, in my memory, that really sells the idea of it being a journey, or telling a story- the moments that eclipse the album’s experience as a whole come few and far between, but every moment serves to communicate this great journey. And what a journey it is, told through an enormous, ever-shifting wall of sound, and through the three members’ stellar musicianship including great riffs, looming bass, passionate vocals, and propulsive, furious drumming. These elements are able to successfully carry the momentum across the entire length- not only does Ilion cover 8 songs in 80 minutes, but these songs really ROCK too. Even the repetitive closer feels like music that might play while looking at the destruction created after a final boss is defeated, or ceremony music that symbolizes a great and terrifying change in the life of a protagonist. Even if better albums come along later in the year, this is a story that must be told, and an album you must hear.

–Squiggly

Peter Gabriel-i/o

The usual hesitations behind releasing a record in December seemed to matter fuck all to legend Peter Gabriel, who kicked off the month with his first studio album of original material since 2002, which he had been tracking since as far back as 1995.  i/o’s nearly 30 years in development did not go to waste either, as this may be his richest and most densely produced record since the ’80s.  The man even released three separate mixes of the record, each highlighting enough new subtleties in the production to make any of them a reasonable candidate for “the definitive version”.  Peter approaches the sonic palate here blending electronics and traditional instrumentation perhaps the furthest he’s ever gone, spanning a range from beautiful, lush, and sprawling orchestration (“Playing for Time”) to tightly constructed borderline sculptural beats that almost sound assembled in a musical junkyard out of any scrap he could find (“The Court”).  This is a notably more patient and subdued record than some of his bombastic and thunderous early work (understandably so at 73 years old), but even a few throwback bangers rear their head and show the man can still sell jubilant pop tunes overflowing with vibrancy, most notably the exhilarating “Olive Tree”.  It’s the title track however, a warm and moving piece on universal connectedness that only feels more earnest and resonant in Peter’s old age, that serves as the heart of the whole project.  Although i/o admittedly falls short of the unfairly high…

Sufjan Stevens-Javelin

Sufjan Stevens has long since passed the point in his career where anything he makes is inevitably going to be discussed in terms of how it relates to his previous works, and given Stevens’ status as one of the rare truly prolific artists to emerge in the last few decades, as well as one of the most lauded, that’s a hell of a lot of material for a new release to stack up to. Yet Javelin does so effortlessly, and already seems destined to reach a similar status as Stevens’ consensus classics. On first brush, both in terms of its sound and in the context of the multiple tragedies that Stevens experienced in the months leading up to its release, the album seems clearly to be a follow-up to his 2015 indie folk masterwork Carrie and Lowell. And this is true, in a way, but further analysis reveals Javelin to have its own identity, even if pretty much every idea it presents has been explored by Stevens at some point in his career. While this is, at heart, a folk album, with most songs featuring prominent acoustic lines as their primary grounding, alongside Stevens’ personal (and often heartbreaking) lyrics and vocals, the reality is more complicated. Most of these songs build gradually over the course of their runtimes, adorned by lush arrangements complemented by electronics which end up dominating significant portions of the tracks, as well as gorgeous, reflective ambient passages. Never as bombastic as much…

yeule-softscars

I was introduced to yeule through last year’s enigmatic Glitch Princess, an ethereally digitized outpouring of self-doubt and alienation consistently channeled through the prettiest of vocal melodies. I absolutely positively did not think it could be improved upon with… of all things… the addition of electric guitars to yeule’s warped palette. What makes softscars feel like such a jump is how yeule is able to push their sophisticated songwriting into a more approachable direction while maintaining their elusive aura. They can turn what is essentially an indie guitar ballad like “software update” into one of the most over-stimulating pieces of music you’ll hear this year with no sweat. The striking amount of detail hiding within these seemingly skeletal nostalgia-laden alt instrumentals almost acts as a mirage for the sharp stabs of nihilism and the longing for real connection in the digital age within yeule’s lyrics. Contrasted with Glitch Princess, where pitch-corrected existential dread threatened to swallow them whole, softscars sees yeule finding a little solace in the struggle of being human, expressed through rawer yet familiarly chameleonic vocal stylings and all the reverb an android can process. softscars is endlessly catchy and infinitely layered and potentially the best album of 2023.

-AlexKzillion

Hail the Sun-Divine Inner Tension

Swancore has become a rather hot topic over the years, either met with thunderous applause or with largely exasperated groans. The one group that has stayed strong and avoided fan burnout is Hail the Sun. Their 2021 effort was met with critical acclaim, and their latest endeavor might somehow be even better. Divine Inner Tension is a showcase of divine (haha, like the album title!) power and energy that only they seem to be able to achieve anymore. With every technically driven lead and riff, there comes a beautiful transition to a much-needed respite of calm textures and melodies straight from the mouth of their virtuoso Donovan Melero. This group has had a long time to craft and perfect their sound, which they may have just accomplished. Hail the Sun have not only become veterans of a scene they once adored, they’ve grabbed their rightful seat on the throne.

-SteakByrnes

Chepang-Swatta

Chepang are a mostly Nepali grindcore band. On Swatta, Chepang get a little crazy. The way they do it, a slow-motion, frenzied collapse of their furious machine through the gradual opening of the insanity throttle over 50 minutes resonates pretty deeply, given the various cultural crossroads we find ourselves at. The gleefully frenzied envelope-push of Sides B, and especially C, are grandma’s cozy cableknit sweater knitted from miles of talent and that wonderfully punked-out grind desire to get completely batshit. The hay we could make of Side D’s absolute fuckstorm of an AI driven genre disintegration could feed the entire farm. But Chepang’s thrills ain’t cheap, and even when they’re immediate, they’re well earned. There’s a carefully thought-out progression to their program, to their gradual rattling loose of all but the barest ideas of structure and composition and the tropes that make up the genre. It’s a program that tries, patiently and gradually, to shake off all order, to leave just the boiling cerebral fluid of the genre formerly known as grind. By the end of this thing, the feeling arises that punk is dead, grind is dead, humanity is dead, the idea of grind as a category characterized as the sum total of its musical elements has been fed through a wood chipper and glued back together like a grotesque humanoid meat sculpture. Things get a little crazy sometimes. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy and all that. Sometimes our obsession with order, with…

DreamWeaver – Blue Garden

Blue Garden is a cozy and serene little trip of a record, offering more than enough in the way of lush, textural composition and simple beauty to find its way into the heart of somebody who has no idea what “progressive breaks” is. The tender vocal songs punctuating the tracklist offer an inviting hand to me and it’s not hard to find myself enjoying the rest. It is my favorite record of June, and not just because ****** made me write this.

-mechamagica

Jeromes Dream-The Gray In Between

There’s a ferociousness again to Jeromes Dream, a hunger that, while scattered into tiny doses throughout 2019’s LP, is now unhinged and unleashed on The Gray In Between. The Gray In Between goes for the throat. Between Jeff Smith screaming again, Sean Leary’s pummeling riffs, and Erik Ratensperger’s phenomenal and frantic drumming. Jeromes Dream has written an album that very much serves as the spiritual successor to 2000’s landmark Seeing Means More Than Safety. Simply put, Jeromes Dream has roared back, and let’s hope there’s no slowing down anytime soon.

–calmrose

Yune Pinku-Babylon IX

Wow. Another month has come and gone. Which means, of course, it’s time for a blog post. Dare I say 2023 is shaping up to be a very memorable year for music? Spring is in the air, the pandemic is finally over, and everyone is leaving their virtual discos in favor of good ol’ fashioned ragers. Who doesn’t love hearing loud trance music in dark tightly packed spaces? Maybe this year ACL can have a good lineup, who knows. Anyway, May 2023 is off to a weirdly boring start for music. I can think of several reasons why but the most obvious one is that April was just too damn exciting. Now that the Sheeran trial has run its course and musicians are safe again, we can all relax and play the new Zelda game or if you don’t have a Switch, Hyper Light Drifter is recommended on any platform. By the way, have you heard the new Yunè Pinku EP? The new Yunè Pinku EP is Sputnikmusic.com’s album of the month.

Yunè Pinku’s BABYLON IX doesn’t quite have the staying power of new Metallica, nor does it make me cry like the new National, but it kinda rules. Marvelously produced opener “Trinity” continues to amaze and uplift, even when it is boring and rainy outside or in the world of other music: quite a trick. It is not easy to make electronic music sound lush and inviting on first listen without sacrificing some element of…