Label: Rough Trade Genre: Math Rock / Jazz Pop / Prog Pop Reviewed by: Hayden Swenson For Fans Of: Black Midi, Frank Zappa, Steely Dan The New Sound sees former Black Midi frontman, Geordie Greep, apply his immense musical prowess to an all-new set of influences. This album deftly explores genres such as jazz-rock, prog, and samba with bombastic, theatric flair. The instrumentation here is fantastic! With his one-of-a-kind singing voice and masterful lyricism, Greep vividly depicts narratives and characters that are at once macabre, sinister, and sexual. Track 2 stands out with its Brazillian-inspired composition. It's a shame most of this can't be played during the day!
Label: Western Vinyl Genre: Baroque Pop, Chamber Folk Reviewed by: Baile Liu For Fans Of: Bjork Fight the Real Terror flexes the artist's wide breath of multi-instrumental abilities. Most of the tracks use acoustic instrumentation, but track 4 comes in with an upbeat electronic drum beat. The artist's voice is somber/Bjork-like but gets a bit bold and aggressive in Rocket in a Pocket. The lyrics on this album walk the line of cringe to poetic. Tracks 2 and 5 are especially cringe. However, track 7 has majestic angelic vocals and is beautiful. Overall I think this is a good album to add to your show stack!
Is that. . . New Music I smell! I hope you're as excited as I am for our new music selection this week. See you next time!
Knitting - Some Kind of Heaven
Label: Mint Genre: Indie / Slacker Rock Reviewed by: Edison Lee For Fans Of: Sonic Youth, Ride, Feeble Little Horse, Sebadoh, Pixies, Pavement Knitting’s sophomore album blends dreamy indie rock atmospheres with noisy slacker rock guitar work to create a pleasant, albeit monotonous, album. Nothing is revolutionary about any of these songs, but much like other noisy pieces of indie rock tinged with dream-pop/shoegaze elements, they get the job done. The guitars are generally thin and bouncy, contrasted with thick and noisy effects. This, along with dreamy vocals, makes for a slightly shoegaze feel reminiscent of bands like Ride, Lush, and Slowdive, but the songs aren't fuzzy/dreamy enough to be considered shoegaze or dream pop. I would compare them to more traditional indie rock acts like Pavement and Pixies. The songs are solid and dynamic, but they tend to bleed into one another. While it's nothing groundbreaking, there's enough fun indie rock antics and hazy guitar noise to keep it interesting throughout its half-hour runtime.
Another week, another roundup of awesome new music being played on-air! See you next week!
Magdalena Bay- Imaginal disK
Label: Mom + Pop Genre: Left Field Pop Reviewed by: Griffin Paddock Imaginal disK is the best album from Magdelena Bay so far. It very much has their synthwave/pop citypop style heavily featured, but it also feels a little bit matured from minimix and Mercurial World. Tracks like 6 have these really beautiful harmonies with just the right amount of dissonance over the gliding and airy synths that form the backbone of the album. The tracks are wispy and drifting but never aimless, each song taking a wonderful journey to it's peak. Overall chill and honestly just gorgeous sound design, this is SO good!
Hello, music lovers! We've been searching for some more in-depth album reviews, and boy did we find some! This week, we have WUVT DJ Skyler Rapp reviewing two of his favorite albums, Because Maybe! and Police & Thieves, with more coming soon!
In 1976, a young Junior Murvin wrote and auditioned just a single song for famous reggae producer Lee “Scratch” Perry’s iconic Black Ark Studio. The song, being about police brutality and gang wars in 1970s Jamaica, immediately caught the producer’s attention. Perry found the song to be so moving that he would record it the same day. That powerful song would be known as Police & Thieves, and it would quickly become a major hit in not just Jamaica, but the US and especially the UK as well. Abroad, it became an anthem against the police and famously caught the attention of famous punk rock band, the Clash, who later famously released a cover of the song (which sparked an interesting chain of events on its own). A year later, Junior Murvin would work with Perry to release an album of the same name, which would see some success too. Junior Murvin would release more music, but nothing would ever come close to matching his initial success with that one hit single. Nowadays, he’s best known for it and his later single, Cool Out Son, which famously appeared in the popular 2010s skateboarding game Skate 3. Knowing this, is there a reason that not many people talk about his other work- particularly his first album?
ClickRead morefor Skyler's FULL review of the Album, as well as his review of Because Maybe!