Words In The Earth

Monsieur Job are a Columbian collective lead by Cali based producer and songwriter Toby Holguin . Their eclectic mix of chill-out, breakbeat, hip-hop, dub, reggaetón and latin jazz was displayed to a great extent on debut album Bass Pa$$i , as well as it's subsequent follow up releases. Now with more collaborators on board, Monsieur Job have constructed their next album, the sprawling opus that is W.T.F! . Stylistically it follows in a similar vein to Bass Pa$$i , so it would be easy to look at the seven and half hour runtime of  W.T.F!  and think that this is some kind of self indulgent project that's inevitably bloated with throwaways and filler. That really isn't the case however, primarily because, at 120 tracks long,  W.T.F!  isn't supposed to be listened to in the same way most commercial albums are. In 1970 J.G. Ballard published his surrealist dystopian masterpiece The Atrocity Exhibition, a book broken up into loosely connected short chapters, or "condens...

It's not always a guarantee that when you put together experienced names with a rich musical history that what you'll get is a great piece of music. In pop music particularly in recent years the quality of collaborations has gone down while the supply has gone drastically up. However, when those names are perhaps less well known than the music they have produced it's probably more likely, from my experience, that the music will be put first and as such the song will more likely be a success, not just commercially but artistically too. Such is the case with Le Sonic,  the production duo made up of   Mike Rogers  and  Gary Lefkowith , and their debut single Any Moment . You probably haven't heard of Mike Rogers , but you have definitely heard Groove Is In The Heart , Deee-Lite's massive 1990 hit which he co-produced. You may not have heard of Gary Lefkowith , but you of course know Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger and Fleetwood Mac, just a few of the artists he has been...

There's a self-deprecating joke amongst fans of New York noise rock pioneers Swans that goes something along the lines of: 'What's your favourite Swans song?' 'The one with a single guitar chord repeated for ten minutes while someone screams "suicide" over the top' 'But wait... isn't that all of them?!'. Cue a chorus of laughing music nerds. Joking aside, there's something to be said for the mind-melting experimentalism of repetitive music, and while that Swans joke is a bit of an exaggeration, there are times when a simple hypnotic loop can offer something quite fascinating to listen to. In this regard, I wonder if that was the intention of Hollywood Video Game Kill-Bot on their latest single Shaker, or whether the track's trance-like effect is simply an incidental effect of it's composition? Hollywood Video Game Kill-Bot is a rather enigmatic artist, with little information available about them other than the name and location...

Despite some people's assertion that everything in music has been done already and nothing is original, there are certain artists who manage to refresh familiar styles in a way that adds something new and special to it. The sound of 90s R'n'B was the dominant form of pop music during my youth, a time when TLC, Destiny's Child, All Saints and Aaliyah were some of the biggest voices on radio and MTV. That sound has been a strong influence on a number of artists in the last ten years, ranging from Ariana Grande to The XX, but rarely has it been such a pure inspiration as it is to Gaviana. On her latest single Let Go, the singer/songwriter from Long Island, NY appears like the great lost artist of 90s R'n'B; but rather than feeling like a vintage relic, Gaviana balances the classic and the modern together in harmony, producing a track that is catchy, fun and hugely entertaining but also has a sense of drama and empowerment. With a string of successful singles under ...

Although I am someone who has a real penchant for weird sound experimentation and boundary pushing artists who challenge the very nature of what we call music, I am also someone who loves a good pop song too. The best thing is when you find artists who do a bit of both, but that is a rare thing these days, and while the talent it takes to work on deep sounds and sonic textures is admirable, there is also a lot to be said for those who can write an immaculate pop song that manages to sound both familiar and original at the same time. It's here we find Soda Cracker Jesus, the solo project of singer/songwriter Regan Lane whose previous output has come from bands like Baby Knockors, Strypes and Strangely Alright. As a project Soda Cracker Jesus certainly has it's own cultural pinpoints, but what makes the music special is it's well-crafted song-writing and a sound which manages to sit squarely in the middle of 60s Psychedelia, 70s Powerpop, 80s New Wave, and 90s Indie. The late...

On reviewing Telamonia's track Salt In My Eyes , the lead single from the Here's To Death EP, I was taken aback by the abnormal soundscapes that were created, but revelled in the delightfully dark nature that was exposed from a simple trap beat structure. It made me eager to hear the EP from which it was taken, and how the track would mould itself into the context of the project. The one thing Salt In My Eyes perhaps didn't purvey so much was the personality and thematic sense that Telamonia has aimed for, but with Here's To Death this is resolved completely. The EP maintains much of Telamonia's experimental and warped sonic palette, for the most part sounding as if Aphex Twin had decided to dabble in trap. However, what it also does is bring to the fore the dark lyrical themes of emotional pain, mental health issues and substance abuse. It approaches these topics in an often stark and very raw fashion, and it gives Telamonia's musical creations a whole other de...