Of all the genius promotional things Daft Punk did prior to last week’s iTunes leak of Random Access Memories—the SNL & Coachella ads, the secretive websites, the weird collaborators interviews—putting “Get Lucky” out as the album’s first single was the wisest. It has already crushed all comers in the summer song category, it’s the album’s most playable song, and it is, in no way at all really, indicative of what the rest of Random Access Memories sounds like. No one could have predicted it a month ago, but Daft Punk just used Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers and “Get Lucky” as a Trojan horse to trick people into downloading an album that is inspired by, in turns, Steely Dan, AOR pop schmaltz, Boz Scaggs, and mid ‘70s peak-era disco. This is one of the better– and most unlikely–developments in music in this, the year of our robot overlords, 2013.

Because here’s the thing: Daft Punk realized it would be a zero sum game to try to top 2001’s Discovery, an album that inadvertently helped germinate the EDM boom (seriously, what have will.i.am and Aviici and Deadmau5 been doing but trying to recreate “One More Time”?). They already bricked the follow-up to Discovery once, by doubling down on the rockist moves and the elegant, but empty minimalism with Human After All. So they went as far as they could in the opposite direction. They may have created the market for paying $150 to watch flashing lights and guys playing with computers, but this album has less to do with beating EDM and the Skrillexes of today, and more to do with Daft Punk trying to match Aja, Silk Degrees, and Risque track for track. Daft Punk are not going down a weight class to match up against EDM enfant terribles; they’re competing against the forgotten pop songs of their childhoods.

Undoubtedly, this is not the album that the most casual enjoyer of “Get Lucky” signed up for. It’d be hard to imagine, even two weeks ago, that it would be possible to be knocked out by a Daft Punk song featuring ‘70s star songwriter Paul Williams, star of the recent documentary about how he is in fact, still alive (last year’s Still Alive). Or to believe Daft Punk would make the best Strokes song since 2003 by turning Julian Casablancas into a sad robot. Or that the song with Panda Bear wouldn’t be a disaster, and instead would be a song that bodies his entire solo oeuvre. The not-so-subtle way that the anodyne Random Access Memories subverts your expectations for a multimedia, multi-quadrant pop cultural event ends up being one of its strongest selling points.

Another is how, instead of building their grooves in the 0s and 1s, Daft Punk went out and hired guys who played for Michael Jackson and Madonna, and had them record hours of raw material to build their opuses with. The biggest get was Nile Rodgers—he who invented disco guitar playing, more or less—to lay down fretwork on “Give Life Back to Music”, “Get Lucky”, and the other Pharrell-assisted banger “Lose Yourself to Dance”, that could be ensconced in the Smithsonian. Its sound is so historic and perfect, and the idea is so simple that it’s almost radical. Daft Punk wanted to make songs that sound like Risque, so they went out and paid the guy who played on that.

That commitment to the authentic and excessive gives RAM an expensive sheen that makes it sound like it was created in the era when radio men could be plied with free cocaine, albums all cost a million bucks, and your collaborators happened to be whoever was around. Paul Williams, writer of some of the most tearjerkingist tracks of all time (“Rainbow Connection” chief amongst them), gives the album’s most affecting performance on “Touch”, RAM’s emotional core. A space epic featuring a children’s choir and lyrics about needing love, it cuts deep. Italo-disco god Giorgio Moroder shows up to talk about inventing disco—and I mean literally talk; he sounds like he was recorded at a Starbucks—and to serve as the preacher extoling the virtues of Daft Punk’s approach on RAM itself. House O.G. Todd Edwards, meanwhile, subs in for Donald Fagen on “Fragments of Time”, delivering the best Steely Dan song since “My Old School”. Daft Punk’s earlier albums showcased their ear for making future forward dance music; this album’s greatest strength is its perfect selection of collaborators. Even the unlikeliest team-ups (particularly Panda Bear’s “Doin’ It Right”) work like gangbusters.

Ultimately, it’s not hard to see– even if they’re dead wrong– the perspective of people who declared RAM a bust hours after it leaked last week. This is an album made for kids who spent their formative years in the backseats of their parents’ cars, listening to AOR like it was catnip. It’s the kind of album that would have been a pretty easy sell in 1975, but in 2013, it’s out of step with every musical genre to the point where it is its own solar system. That Daft Punk just used their considerable clout to make an album—the year’s best so far, it should be noted– that is equal parts total cheese and total greatness can’t be ignored. Daft Punk spent a decade and a half convincing people that they’re not like the rest of us—they’re robots, after all—but it turns out they’re inspired by the same guilty pleasures as the rest of us.

4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5 out of 5

Since debuting in 2010 with The Sound of Strangers EP, London native Ghostpoet has steadily established himself as one of the most innovative, endearing, and intriguing voices of our time. This was also evident on his debut album, Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam, that arrived a year later to heaps of acclaim. It deftly blended electronic, hip-hop, and other genres with Ghostpoet serving as our guide through a cold and distant world with a glimmer of hope. That is all largely why he’s such an engaging figure. He’s akin to hip-hop’s version of Thom Yorke, even up to the sometimes-impossible-to-decipher vocals. He also clearly studied many of the same artists that inspired Yorke, in particular Massive Attack. The Bristol outfit’s influence runs throughout Ghostpoet’s music and maintains its presence in his fantastic sophomore album, Some Say I So I Say Light.

At first blush, you could run through this LP, drift away, and think to yourself, “Damn, that sounded a lot like its predecessor.” While that seems like an insulting, shortsighted though, it wouldn’t be completely off-base. Ghostpoet knows exactly what he’s doing sonically and lyrically, which gives his music an innate confidence that few artists could imagine grasping. But he’s also not afraid to venture into new and more accessible territory, like on brilliant lead single “Meltdown” with guest vocalist Woodpecker Wooliams. She serves as a more traditional and refined juxtaposition to his near-mumble sing-song while providing a chance for listeners to coo along. The production, much like the rest of the LP, is instantly gripping as well. Ghostpoet’s knack for blending instrumental layers–be it an emotive strings crescendo or shuffling metallic drums–is masterful. “Dial Tones” falls into a similar realm, what with Lucy Rose adding some variety to the vocals, but it’s even darker.

While radio DJs are sure to be more responsive to a cut like “Meltdown”, fans of cold and self-aware rap-tinged music will be drawn to “Them Waters” and “Sloth Trot”, among others. The former is about as paranoid as we’ve heard Ghostpoet, as he contemplates boarding a train surrounding by driving instrumentation. It’s hectic and overwhelming, but his drawl-inflected vocals are almost soothing. There’s emotion there, but not so much that he draws it out of you cheaply. Rather, you can feel and relate to his lack of motivation and cubicle-residing afternoon. “Sloth Trot” is comparable but more wide open in its approach. It also embraces its name with Ghostpoet “thinkin’ slower” across the nearly seven-minute running time, which crawls with live drums, keys, and guitars.

Just as relationships and daily trials and tribulations play an important role on Some Say I, so does food. It’s not like Ghostpoet gets his Raekwon, Action Bronson, etc… on or anything like that. He simply boosts his narratives with thoughts about that sushi he ate and how much loves dim sum and noodles. Sometimes. Seriously, standout track “MSI MUSMID” skitters and jitters while reaching its piano-laced refrain of “dim sum and noodles make me feel alright.” As cute as that line might be, you’re likely to get stuck on ideas like “‘Patience is a parasite,’ my daddy once said.” It’s a lot, but it’s also apparently inspired by a dream Ghostpoet had wherein noodles and dim sum couldn’t stop fighting.

This combination of being endearing and confusing, relatable and distant, is what makes Ghostpoet and his music so engaging. Some Say I isn’t an easy listen if you’re trying to get through your day without questioning at least a few aspects of your life. While that might make for the type of album your friend rips out of the CD player in your car, you shouldn’t worry about it. You’ve made a new friend in Ghostpoet.

4 out of 5 stars

4 out of 5

I will level with you: I slept on Chance The Rapper. I slept on him for longer than I’d probably like to admit. I missed the 10 Day mixtape, regardless of all the coverage it got, and that’s something I really cannot explain. As I take my initial dip into Acid Rap, amid all the talk on Twitter, and I have some time to come up with my own opinions, I can say, as a relatively new listener, this is good. On the same track (“Pusha Man”), he can seem like a stand up comedian and a political-conscious beatnik; take note aspiring rappers, that’s versatility. A good piece of music should make a listener not only feel one or two feelings, but a multitude of feelings, and that’s something that 20-year-old Chance Bennett has nailed down early.

Acid Rap is a mixtape, err, album, but it’s not a meek collection of singles put together in one .zip file and forced onto the Internet; it is a clean, well machinated, thirteen track project. In his sophomore effort, he has managed to assert himself as a wordplay fiend- one listen through “Juice” will have your head spinning as you’re trying to figure out a line that he said thirty seconds ago- but on the flip side he comes off as worldly on tracks like “Lost” and political on tracks like “Everybody’s Something”. Given all of that, it’s no surprise that he’s recruited guys like Action Bronson, who seems to be all about fun wordplay, B.J. The Chicago Kid, who always has something to say, and Ab-Soul, who could run for president on the platform of his raps. But taking a step back, this is Chance’s project. So let’s get down and dirty with this bad boy.

When I imported Acid Rap into my iTunes, got into album view, and looked at the nice looking purple background that accompanied the album artwork and the thirteen tracks, I hit click on the first track, “Good Ass Intro”. A few things piqued my interest, the first of which being the fact that Chance called his first track on his album “Good Ass Intro”. If you call your first track “Good Ass Intro”, it better show and prove, and what do you know, Chance The Rapper managed to make a good ass intro. The first words are “Even better than I was the last time”, and even though I (sadly) skimmed through 10 Day, I could already feel that Acid Rap would yield a noticable improvement in Chance’s raps.

Thirty minutes later and halfway through the tape, I was getting really quite comfortable in it. And with the exception of the 30 seconds of dead air in “Pusha Man” in which I thought my MacBook Pro had spontaneously broken (joke’s on me), my first listen was entirely fluid. The continuity really seemed to accentuate how much fun he seems to be having; ”Favorite Song” with Childish Gambino and “NaNa” with Action Bronson are just stupidly, innocently fun to listen to, and the majority of his tracks feature his signature “na na na na” as the beat rides.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, tracks like “Cocoa Butter Kisses” and “Interlude” give the listener insight into Chance’s softer side, in which he talks about his parents, his home life, and his love life, all through his melodically high tessitura. The final cut, “Everything’s Good” aka “Good Ass Outro”, breaks the silence after “Chain Smoker” with a phone call between Chance and his dad, who tells his son that he’ll be doing “wondrous and remarkable things” with his career, and with that, the rapper named Chance says goodbye, and the project comes to a close.

Even though this is a project with over 10 different guest features, Acid Rap does exactly what a sophomore project should do: show that the artist has matured since his first project and show that he has room to improve on the next. Chance’s lovable, nonchalant flow and choice beat selection makes Acid Rap aesthetically great, but his poise and humanity are what make this one memorable.

4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5 out of 5

The first thoughts that come to mind with Bonobo likely include things about downtempo, trip-hop, and “pretty” or “beautiful” music. While all those things are correct to some extent, they don’t capture everything that makes Simon Green great. If anything it sells him short. With his fifth album, The North Borders, it’s true that Green doesn’t veer far from his set path, but he continues to improve on almost everything that makes his back catalog so enjoyable in the first place.

Much like Black Sands, or anything before it for that matter, The North Borders is on another level in terms of overall atmosphere. The only records that come to mind that have been as soothing in the past few years have been his. That’s not to say there’s been a lack of music in the same lane, but that Green is just making better music, and only improving upon his previous standard.

Continuing an impressive repertoire of vocal guests, The North Borders starts off with “First Fires” featuring vocals from Brooklyn-based Grey Reverend. For a singer/songwriter normally crooning over a guitar, it’s impressive how at home he sounds over the lush Bonobo palate. Also notable is album highlight “Heaven for the Sinner” with a vocal contribution from R&B Goddess herself, Erykah Badu, who, as expected, sounds right at home over the subtle upwell of strings and carefully arranged percussion.

Lead single “Cirrus” moves with an understated sense of urgency while the arrangement grows increasingly complicated, sounding fit dance floor more so than anything Bonobo has crafted to date. As a producer Green has evolved his skill enough that it’s hard to tell where the computers end and where the live instrumentation begins. The delicate sound engineering is ripe for a set of good headphones, but at the same time tracks like “Sapphire” could fill a room with ease.

Bonobo is entirely in his element on The North Borders. At the most basic level it succeeds for its atmosphere and beauty, probably capable as a medical treatment for lowering blood pressure. It’s important to note over the course of the hour-long runtime the back half tends to wash passed unfortunately quick, not for a decline in quality but more diminishing return with the extended runtime. Green isn’t making major changes to his recipe, but if he continues improving like this, it’s clear he doesn’t need to.

4 out of 5 stars

4 out of 5

Much of Sene’s early success can be directly attributed to his involvement with Blu. But it wasn’t until the Brooklyn MC broke free from that association that he was able to find a musical comfort zone of his own. His 2012 effort Brooklyknight was a solid step up from the Blu-produced A Day Late & A Dollar Short, but it was clear he just wasn’t reaching his full potential. With a melodic mindset and rap as a vehicle, perhaps things just needed to be switched up a bit for Sene to see things turn out the way he always thought they could.

That’s where Denitia comes in, and more importantly, R&B. Rap worked for Sene, it truly did. But the more you listened, the more you could tell it was holding him back from reaching his true calling. Writing songs for himself and the lovely voice of Denitia, backed by whispering, silky smooth production, just seemed to work. Right off the bat, with the release of the blah blah blah EP, it was evident this male/female duo had something special on their hands. And, thankfully, it sprouted a full-length record in His And Hers.

Ticking in at just 35 minutes, Sene and Denitia’s debut album is the perfect length to draw the listener in without asking too much of them. With lullaby-esque rhythms like “trip.fall.” and “again. (new ride.)”, the lack of tempo might lose a few people. Luckily, where similar sounding groups like the Weeknd or even the xx fell victim to monotony, this duo is able to pick things up every now and then with a slapping track like “stupid world” or “she’s not the only one”. That additional spice of tempo and pace can be attributed to Sene’s hip-hop background, mixed with a small dose of production from longtime collaborators like J57 and Illingsworth.

What sets this R&B album apart from the many other similar outfits out there operating within the genre is how organic and natural it feels. Sene and Denitia, musically, are two peas in a pod. They know when to let the other have their shine, like on “how to satisfy.”, which features Denitia, alone, rocking out to an incredibly infectious pop soundscape. On the other hand, when the two decide to share vocal responsibilities, like on “casanova.”, Denitia hums in the background at just the right time while Sene pours his heart out over the microphone.

Reflecting on this album after several listens, it’s difficult to find much fault. Perhaps one could hold Sene’s less-than-powerful voice against him, but he makes it work all too well. The songwriting, while naive at times, grasps exactly what this duo set out to achieve: lovable pop songs with a hint of loneliness. But what failed to put this album over the top is that there are only a handful of songs to which you can truly sing along. That aside, the sequencing is on target, and everything flows together rather smoothly. It’s safe to say Denitia and Sene have a real winner on their hands with His And Hers.

4 out of 5 stars

4 out of 5

Justin Timberlake’s last album came out in 2006, which means it came out before Twitter, before your mom was on Facebook and before we had one of Jay-Z’s friends in the White House. Back then we had Hope, Jobs and Cash, and now we have the Music Internet, where albums—and your thought-out, reasoned, well-attended-to considerations of said album—go to die. The album came out this morning—not a joke, it literally came out this morning—and it’s possible that this will be one of the last websites to publish someone’s overwrought thoughts on an album that will be bought by hundreds of thousands of people who will never read any of the reviews. But the Music Internet won’t care; we’ve already moved on after publishing all our WE WERE FIRST! reviews 12-to-24 hours after the iTunes stream of this went public last Monday afternoon. Instead of maybe, you know, taking some time to live with the album and trying to figure out what’ll mean to people, we’re now hand-wringing indignantly about a terrible band playing SXSW complaining about playing SXSW. This is why people hate us.

So, despite this album almost certainly being the biggest seller of the year—this is going to have at least six singles like the last one—despite this being the first true mainstream music “event album” worth listening to since Watch the Throne, despite it sounding like a million bucks—no matter what anyone tells you that is NOT a negative thing, ever—the prevailing opinion is that it “sucks” and you should move on.

That response makes sense in one regard, because of all the things The 20/20 Experience actually is—a weirdly sequenced, sometimes overblown, but ultimately rewarding song cycle and not to mention the most fun album of 2013 so far—it’s certainly not a sequel to Futuresex/Lovesounds, which is what this needed to be for the Music Internet to do anything other than dismiss it in 24 hours and move on. Because when you’re trying to write a review 12 hours after a stream of the album comes out, it’s easier to just go, “This isn’t as good as the last one,” than to try to unpack the eight minute songs here. The expectations for 20/20 are understandable—Futuresex is the best pop album of this century, and that’s not even debatable; there isn’t even another album that is in its solar system—but they are an untenable illusion. That album has grown in estimation in the last seven years as people realized that it wasn’t insane to think that Justin “I Had Unironic Cornrows As Recently As 2001” Timberlake made a classic album. It wasn’t like the praise for that was universal. Far from it. It’s only gained “perfect” status recently.

That maybe bodes well for the long-term prospects of 20/20 Experience, an album that melds some of the sonic flourishes of Futuresex (Bollywood samples, grooves you could run a train on, grandiose outros, Timbaland stepping on some choruses with his bellowed vocals) with some of the developments in recent big budget pop (the “retro” soul, the attempt at Frank Ocean/Weeknd R&B sound sculpting on “Blue Ocean Floor”). One of the more refreshing things about 20/20 is that you get the sense that Timberlake and Timbaland could have just gone for broke and made 10 songs of EDM euro-pop and sold a billion downloads. Instead, they’re doing eight-minute big band ballroom soul with string arrangements (opener and highlight “Pusher Love Girl”), audacious re-writes of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” complete with samples of African music (“Let the Groove Get In”), big hair ballads with guitar solos (“Mirrors”), and doo-wop songs wherein Justin Timberlake fucks an alien in a space car (“Spaceship Coupe”). This lack of bending towards the Pop Radio of Today has been presented as one of 20/20 Experience’s biggest weaknesses, but imagine the response if this had a song like “Scream & Shout” on it. This would have been eviscerated more than it already has been.

Which is not to say that 20/20 Experience is some flawless thing that people are ripping to shreds for no reason. It’s just that kneejerk reactions 12 hours after the album stream comes out* aren’t going to focus on the real negatives here. Like that it’s shoddily sequenced; the intro of the band happens on the seventh song for some reason. The most mellow, worst track here (“Blue Ocean Floor”) is the closer, while the song with the Futuresex pedigree of being a song you will freak out to hear at 3 a.m. at a party in July (album highlight “Tunnel Vision”) is buried between two long crawlers. Or that basically every song has a two-minute outro, for some reason, as Timbaland and Timberlake have clearly confused (at least at times) length with importance.

Probably the most undersold part of Timberlake’s solo career–since Justified, when he put his career in the Neptunes’ hands—is how slaved over his music sounds. You know there were serious discussions over the composition of these songs; Timberlake confirmed as much in every interview leading up to the release. That makes him a rarity in the pop landscape. How much time do you think Robin Thicke’s record company lets him experiment in the studio? You think Chris Brown has the power to do two-minute outros on every single song on an album, even if that doesn’t work out all the time? Do you think that Justin Bieber’s handlers would let him pair up exclusively with one producer, even if that producer hasn’t had a huge hit in years? You think Trey Songz could convince Timbaland to back off the synth-scribblings and go back to slow BPM R&B production? Timberlake has taken a kind of control over his sound that allows him to be both mass appealing—my mom loves “Mirrors”—and sonically forward—“Tunnel Vision” is something that won’t be caught up to in a while—at the same damn time.

In the last week, we’ve been sold the idea that this album is somehow a “sellout” because Timberlake is one of the most famous people on earth, that he represented the “Suit & Tie” set before he made a song about wearing a suit and tie, and he took some Budweiser money, so he is too much of a “brand” to make music that really “connects” anymore (or something, I don’t get it either). According to Buzzfeed, he’s a luxury brand who can’t live in the world of Macklemore. If any of that was true, why are all the songs eight minutes and all over the place genre-wise? Why does the lead single have three untenable beat changes? That doesn’t sound like a sell-out; that sounds like a pop star using his considerable leverage to make a weird, sprawling album that people couldn’t digest in a 24-hour blog cycle.

I guess what I’m trying to convey is that it’s a weird, discordant experience reading an ocean of kneejerk reviews that bury this album, when a week after hearing this I like it more than when I first heard it. It’s too fun of an experience and it sounds too good to dismiss in a 800-word dissection after two spins. It’s literally too big to fail. I mean, we’re burying this DOA when it’s, by a not inconsiderable margin, better than any pop album out this year. Are people really content with a pop radio dominated by Macklemore? How could Justin Timberlake, the pop star of this generation, being back–and doing an album that’s greatest crime is that it’s just good, instead of great—become such a divisive thing?

4 out of 5 stars

4 out of 5

*I know I keep repeating this idea, but I want to highlight how insane it is that we accept this as a consequence of modern record reviewing. How is it even possible that some of the first reviewers got more than like three spins of the album in? They had to have listened to it on their computer with an open Word document. That’s Live Blogging a record. And more importantly, are the rewards for getting a review up “first” really worth it? Who is it benefitting? Are people clamoring for the “first” review or the “best” review do you think? And not to say that this is the best, because it’s not.

We all know that the whole PBR&B thing got way out of hand way too fast last year. It’s not that the four acts people really wanted to talk about twelve months ago didn’t sound R&B-ish in their own way, but rather that none of the sounded at all like each other. Frank Ocean made distanced, theatrical pop music, the Weeknd made the same post-dubstep Houston amalgam as album-era Drake, How to Dress Well made straight experimental music with Inoj-inspired vocals, and Miguel made modern-radio R&B with an artsy and nostalgic edge. If there was a larger aesthetic going on, its supposed existance had a lot more to do with an eagerness on the part of the media to connect the dots than any sort of real-life cohesive scene.

Even so, it would be tempting to recapitulate last year’s arguments after hearing the duo Rhye’s debut album Woman, if only because it is the most easily available comparison and the story works. Last year’s clusterfuck must have given birth to a second wave. We’re finally here: post-PBR&B! Well that would be just fine if Michael Milosh, Rhye’s resident soft-voiced skinny man hadn’t already been making very similar sounding music for almost ten years. Sure, Milosh’s vocals are smooth as glass and the album is coated in a generally sensual aura, but one could say just as much of Bon Iver and I don’t think anyone’s willing to accept him into the new pantheon of rhythm and blues.

In fact, comparing Rhye to Bon Iver is much more productive than any nu-R&B act, because Woman is actually the quiet culmination of a number of recent explorations on the softer side of indie music. Milosh’s vocal’s have a distinctively casual tone, certainly not emotionless, but less urgent than comfortably wanton. In a larger historical perspective, they are most reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, the sweet yet raspy voiced ballad singer who spoke infamous lines like “for you, there’ll be no more crying.” Sad, certainly, but digestably so. Through a more holistic lens, the music’s tone mimics that of Paul Simon’s crowd pleasing exaltery anthem’s of the 1980s, minus most of the African rhythms. While not nearly as political and slowed to an easier pace, Woman embodies the same warmth and untortured feeling of soft rock’s classics.

What makes Rhye particularly compelling in 2013 is that such a richly classic feeling has been compiled from relatively recent sources. The album’s slow pace may throw you. As before, slow build R&B precedents like Al Green or D’Angelo might immediately come to mind, but unlike either, Woman almost never aims to promote tension. Far more comparable are the experimentally droopy sounds of trans-Atlantic indie acts like the xx or James Blake, guys and gals who ride on negative space and minimalism as method of creating emotion.

On the production side of things, however is really where Woman gets creative. The beats range from smooth jazz, to soft neo-disco, to post-rock string arrangements. And while Milosh’s voice tends to ground his vocals in comfortable influences and inflections, Robin Hannibal’s production shows a kaleidoscopic yet controlled approach to the album’s very specific tone, yielding thirty five minutes of some of the most assured and intricate music to come out so far this year.

4 out of 5 stars

4 out of 5

The recent revival in independent New York rap music has been a surprisingly divided one. Being vaguely retro is one of the few things that they all have in common. On one end of the scene are A$AP Mob and the Flatbush Zombies, postmodern resurrectors of southern flows and re-appropriators of recent tumblr-rap sounds and attitudes. They succeed not necessarily through performing any of their influences very well, but  being very good at curating an altogether cohesive sound out of disparate historical pieces. On the other end are the Pro Era crew, reappropriators of mid-nineties Queensbridge flows and the production of the late-nineties underground. Their success depends on brute force and the deep swamp of 90s nostalgia that lots of hip-hop fandom still sits in. Sometimes their music is interesting-if-derivative boom-bap. Other times they make, as one perceptive Potholes commenter once labeled it, “elevator music for 90s hip-hop heads.”

The Underachievers aren’t really that different from either subsection. For one thing, they’re loosely associated with Joey and the Progressive Era through the Beast Coast movement (somebody needs a naming consultant). More importantly, they’ve absorbed the basic elements of both the tumblr fashionistas as well as the old-heads. To a large extent, the Underachievers rap with the same gruff Three 6 Mafia and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony inspired flows as the A$AP Mob and the same retro-underground beats as the Pro Era’s best tracks.

What separates them from either crew, however, is that they combine both sounds and music that is arguably more compelling than either. The general mood of Indigoism is woozy in the recent fashion, but tied down by particular genre-awareness. “Land of Lords”, for example, uses the same “Synthetic Substitution” drum loop as Danny Brown’s “Die Like a Rockstar”, Ghostface’s “Mighty Healthy”, and so many other songs. That core of hip-hop traditionalism is, however, tempered by the duo’s commitment to a particularly specific flavor, in which a sort of psychedelic swank meets the canonical sounds of Illmatic. As far as rapping is concerned, the dudes may draw from the same influences as Joey Bada$$ or A$AP Rocky, but you are much less likely to notice that fact, because both MCs rap with an impressive level of vocal intensity. While Rocky often sounds like he’s constantly trying to come up with new words to say, these two sound like they’ve got too many. They’re constantly switching from one flow to another as they crash stuttering double-times into one another from verse to verse. It can be very entertaining.

If Indigoism lacks anything, its lyrical content. Their imagery is a mix of standard newb rubberband postering with the kind of religious thematics that conspiracy theorists really like to talk about. Take a look at that pyramid on the cover if you’re not sure what I mean. While UA’s new age spiritualism certainly fits their album artwork and production, it just isn’t a very fruitful tree to pick from. They end up saying the phrase “third eye” far more than you would want them to. This is, however, but a small shortcoming. While both sides the New York indie world share a style-over-substance kind of attitude, aiming more for a general sound than anything particularly new on a song-by-song, line-by-line level, the Underachievers are making consistency and fiery passion a part of New York conscious hip-hop again.

4 out of 5 stars

4 out of 5

“I am going to release a new Four Tet LP today.” This was the perfectly simple sentence posted from Four Tet’s Twitter account just a few hours before dropping his latest album 0181. If any other widely loved musician or producer tweeted this news, the Internet would have probably imploded on itself, but this is Kieran Hebden we’re talking about. This is the same man who drops 12”s on his label Text Records seemingly at will, plays obscure cosmic jazz and funk DJ sets at the drop of a hat and calls his latest single “The Track I’ve Been Playing That People Keep Asking About That Joy Used In His RA Mix & Daphni Played On Boiler Room”. So naturally, when Hebden posted that tweet, the world collectively smirked and calmly muttered: “tskkk…you’ve done it again Four Tet”.

0181 isn’t a completely new Four Tet album per se, but a collection of unreleased material spanning from 1997 to 2001. Furthermore, the LP is presented as one single track spanning 38 minutes and eight seconds. Once again, this is not surprising seeing as Four Tet’s Boiler Room appearances and other DJ sets tend to come without a track list, and Hebden seems to get a kick out of trolling his fans (the name of his latest single being a case in point). But with 0181, a tracklist really is the last thing that’s necessary.

The LP kicks off with a soft, arpeggiated loop before veering away into a four-to-the-floor beat at the 01:06 mark that doesn’t sound a million miles away from the kind of soothing house music heard on Four Tet’s 2010 record There Is Love In You. The beat then dissipates and is replaced by a haunting piano motif, which is then also swiftly replaced by a jazzy, acoustic guitar-laden breakbeat. And this is before you’re even five minutes into the record. Hebden has always been one of the most eclectic electronic musicians on the scene – his love for all kinds of jazz is well renowned (this BBC Radio 2 interview with Jamie Cullum is well worth checking out), and he manages to also stay right on top of the goings-on in house, garage and grime – and 0181 is the perfect showcase for that eclecticism.

Naturally, this collection of unnamed tracks bears resemblance to a lot of his earlier albums including 2001’s Pause, 2003’s Rounds (regarded by many as Hebden’s magnum opus) and the 2005 album Everything Ecstatic in the way that organic, natural samples are incorporated and presented in a simple but elegant style. Take the layered guitar samples at 09:49, the horn section that enters the fray at the twenty-minute mark or the acoustic guitar harmonics that serve as the outro to the album. The sheer rawness and human feel of these tracks make it somewhat hard to believe that they were created on nothing except a computer.

Elsewhere on this LP there’s hip-hop infused jazz at 14:01, some glistening, ambient synth work at 24:20 and even the babbling of an innocent baby at 16:46. If nothing else, it’s a cinematic journey that touches on far more sounds and influences than most great DJs manage to fit into a 2-hour set. And the lack of a tracklist makes that journey even more special.

If 0181 is a compilation of unreleased tracks spanning just four years, just think what else Kieran Hebden has hiding on his many hard-drives that remains to be heard. It’s almost scary.

4 out of 5 stars

4 out of 5

For Anything In Return, his third proper full-length as Toro Y Moi, Chaz Bundick told Interview Magazine he was “trying to make a pop record.” That’s a noble aim, a common sentiment, and- as anyone with ears knows within moments of pressing play- a perfectly accurate (if a bit reductive) statement. Anything In Return is most certainly a pop record, complete with four-on-the-floor beats, gleaming synths, and dancefloor-rattling bass to complement hooky songwriting and an expertly produced (never over-produced) aesthetic. Clearly informed by his deep house experimentation on the Les Sins project, as well as his previous genre-defying pop output under the Toro Y Moi moniker, Bundick has cobbled together the first addictively listenable, unanimously appealing release of 2013.

2011’s Underneath The Pine was a varied effort, including lo-fi disco tracks alongside soaring neo-Beach Boys vocals with a dreamy, shoegaze-y sensibility. For Anything In Return, Bundick keeps the variety, multiplies the disco basslines, tones down the Brian Wilson worship, doubles the dreaminess quotient and stops looking at his damned shoes. He channels Prince on the steamy, pulsing “Grown-Up Calls” and affects a gentle delivery for the open, understated “Touch”.

The subtlety that made his previous work so rewarding comes through on “Cola” and “Day One”, but moments later he’s all bluster and bombast on anthemic cuts like “Never Matter” and “Say That”. As a singer, dude plays it cool even at the most musically over-the-top moments, which is always a smart move- a less nuanced delivery in conjunction with the arena-sized bass on “Never Matter” would catapult the whole project over the shark into Black Eyed Peas territory, and there’s little evidence he’s got those kind of pipes anyway. Bundick works his voice smart rather than hard, using it as a complement to his genius-level production rather than vice versa.

All told, Anything In Return is scintillating upon first listen and gets better with repetition. It’s a laid-back enough to bump at the afterparty, with parts robust enough to have been the party. It’s a funky record, to be sure, but never self-consciously so—you can bump Anything In Return with that special someone and not want to turn it off afterwards. Bundick said right off the bat that his new Toro Y Moi album would be a pop record, and he was spot-on: it’s a delightfully weird, highly addictive mixture of equal parts yacht rock, disco, chillwave, house and R&B.

4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5 out of 5