The Dear's Missiles Reviewed
The Dears latest cd isn't quite the departure that you have come to assume. Sure, they've changed around their lineup a bit, and sure the music's backdrop may carry a slightly different melody...But the overall tone that you've come to expect from the band has not only been sustained, but refined. I'm not going to lie to you, Missiles isn't perfect, but when it hits, it explodes and let's just say that there aren't many duds. The sound that is crafted is dark, but no not completely pitch black, but rather one that glosses and shines like a granite countertop. With Murray's spooky sensorial vocals dissipating and condensing in and out each sentimental ode. If there is one thing about Missiles that is apparent it is that its most successful pieces are affective right from the beginning, and with no wasted breath, they swim around subliminally in a smoky haze.Murray's croons sound less like they are yearning for something, but rather that they've come to an acceptance. Ethereal maybe trite but it is the perfect word for this particular release.
Key Tracks
Demons
Dream Job
Lights Off
Meltdown in a Major
Money Babies
Crisis 1&2
Overall- 7/10
I recently picked up the latest release from Flying Lotus (Formerly of Adult Swim Fame), Los Angeles, and it is all I've been listening to for the past week. If you like electronica and hip-hop, this should be a must buy for you. Los Angeles is pretty much perfect from start to finish, and it is the most enchanting thing I've ever heard. Lotus provides hypnotic beats, while incorporating a sharp sonic dissonance, and melodic outside influences. The only producer that comes close to perfecting a similar sound would be Prefuse 73, but this cd is miles ahead of anything he's ever done. It sounds like the kind of music people we'll be listening to hundred of years from now, electronica, produced by super advanced robots with a knack for melody and at simulating human emotion. Each song seems like a different tale, but they all go together seemless, so I would almost say that feel more like episodes in an ingenious musical plot. I usually put this cd in on late lonely nights, while I'm reading, or when I'm trying to do anything creative whatsoever...And so far it has been my most able muse, and has already become like a ritual. Please check this album out if you've ever been curious about electronica, and if you are an electronica fan and you don't have this album you should feel ashamed. From the first track I was entranced, and with each following track I got deeper and deeper into a trance, this is album's mystique is just that special. And judging by your ecletic music tastes, Flames you especially will love this album just as much as me.
I give it a 9/10 (And I'm An Extremely Tough Critic)
You know an electronica album is awesome when pitchfork gives it an 8.5.
Excerpt:
Sharing passing similarities with two of modern indie hip-hop's top producers, Madlib and the late J Dilla, Flying Lotus has constructed an album of static, texture, and rhythm that, at its most stirring moments, can be soothingly meditative, an accomplished blend of debris and warmth, b-boy head-nod and laptopper experimentalism. If Prefuse hadn't fallen off after One Word Extinguisher and continued to push the envelope with each record since, he might sound close to this in 2008.
