Rapid Review - 8/21/20

Finally, we are back to rapid reviews:

Indie, Art rock band Young Jesus releases their fifth studio album Welcome to Conceptual Beach. The forty-six-minute journey into this conceptual beach gives the comfortable feeling of a genuine beach, but the visitor slowly realizes they are in some kind of fever dream. Young Jesus is not afraid of extending their songs to around ten minutes, taking their time to convey every lyrical and musical nuance. The album is an immense effort of catchy guitar riffs combined with euphoric, loud drones in the perfect places. Score: 8-9.

Fantastic Negrito is a singer-songwriter known for his R&B, blues, and roots music. This Grammy-winning artist releases Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? labeled as a rock album as his fifth studio project. In the beginning, you feel the influences of his aforementioned genres incorporated smoothly with the rock feel of the LP. There are some great rap features Negrito decides to utilize for the project, especially from E-40. Negrito’s vocals are emphasized at the perfect moments as he sings in sometimes preaching manners. My only critique is that as the album progresses, it feels as if Negrito is losing grasp of his rock concept as he falls comfortably back on his blues and jazz background. Score: ~8

Nigerian singer-songwriter Burna Boy releases his fifth studio album Twice as Tall. Burna Boy’s Afro-fusion, reggae, and dancehall music constitutes fifteen tracks of the record with a few interesting features like Chris Martin and Sauti Sol. The introduction track falsely gives the illusion of something more unconventional than usual with an oldies sample at the beginning. Then, the album proceeds into formulaic mainstream reggae fillers with some unique variations in tracks like Monsters You Made. Score: 4-5

Lastly, I have been listening to two legendary, behemoth ambient albums Everywhere at the End of Time and The Disintegration Loops. The first by The Caretaker is the 50-track, six-album release that spans six and a half hours long. This is not an easy listen; the listener delves into a terrifying simulation of the experience of dementia through music. The latter album is by William Basinski, and it is tied to the 9/11 attacks and his experience of the tragedy. As the name suggests, Basinski literally deteriorates loops of tape he recorded long ago in an extremely gradual manner to record the four-album project. Both are truly ambient masterpieces in their own ways.