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In the past two years, John Talabot has become an exemplar of a new breed of producers working at the intersection of deep house, disco, and indie pop, and he has carved out his own niche somewhere between the slow-motion theatrics of artists like Mark E and Tensnake, the globe-trotting jewel tones of Four Tet and Caribou, and the psych-pop rush of Animal Collective and Delorean. Across his triumphant debut's 11 tracks, the Spanish producer builds upon his distinctive sound-- bursting with color, nostalgic but never retro, easy-going yet slightly unhinged-- without repeating himself. A kind of happy melancholy informs most of ƒIN, but that unity of mood doesn't get in the way of the songs' potential to surprise.
Schoolboy Q is the most promising foot soldier in Kendrick Lamar's Black Hippy crew, a small circle of talented rappers currently reinventing West Coast hip-hop. His dark and moody second LP is a sumptuously produced and deeply enjoyable hour-plus slab of weed-clouded rap, but it's more than that. Schoolboy is an odd, genuinely unpredictable presence who sometimes seems to be rapping entirely for his own amusement. With his wearily flat voice, his lyrics deal with all the dark stuff of gangsta rap-- poverty, violence, drugs, hopelessness-- but it never bogs down in momentum or succumbs to despair. It's hard to imagine that there will be many more original or satisfying hip-hop long-players this year.
Now a roaring, technically adept band rather than Dylan Baldi's bedroom solo project, Cloud Nothings undergo a total overhaul on their bracing Steve Albini-recorded second LP. It's an aggressive, catchy collection full of blunt lyrics, big choruses, devastating dynamics, and lots of screaming. Baldi's vocals are close-mic'd and raw, the drums loud as hell. Folks who grew up on Drive Like Jehu, Braid, and Jawbreaker can listen to these eight songs and sense their artistic legacy is in good hands, but there will inevitably be teenagers for whom Attack stands to be that kind of record to call their own.
On their full-length debut, the New York duo of Praveen Sharma (Percussion Lab, Braille) and Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) nimbly incorporate current bass music trends and arrive at a sound-- politely mysterious rhythms put to life by haunted vocal samples-- that's familiar and rich. Straightforward descriptions of Sepalcure-- a finely manicured mix of dubstep, house, UK funky, and footwork-- make it sound pedestrian, even contrived. The reality is anything but; Sharma and Stewart have found an alleyway that few other producers have bothered to traverse in 2011. That Sepalcure is so balanced and organized can be attributed to the experience and seeming calm of its principals; that it sounds so lively and inviting is the greater achievement.
Kate Bush's second album of original material in the last 17 years is haunting and gorgeous, filled with lengthy story-songs that unspool with her characteristic imagination and wit. 50 Words for Snow is teeming with classic Bush-ian characterizations and tales-- fantasies, personifications, ghosts, mysteries, angels, immortals. But the singer continues to infuse her narratives with a beguiling complexity while retaining some old-school directness. While much of 50 Words for Snow conjures a whited-out, dream-like state of disbelief, it's important to note that Bush does everything in her power to make all the shadowy phantoms here feel real.
Drake is the perfect avatar for the era of reality television and 24-hour celebrity news, and his new album finds him putting his talent to use on his strongest set of songs so far. While Thank Me Later banked on a sonic tableau that was slow, sensual, and dark-- equal parts Aaliyah and the xx-- Take Care moves that aesthetic to an even more rewarding place, spearheaded by Drake's go-to producer Noah "40" Shebib, who gets a writing and production credit on almost every song.
In the past, Oneohtrix Point Never-- the main project of the busy producer Daniel Lopatin, also of 1980s pop revivalists Ford & Lopatin-- had drones and moods and thematic movement that hinted at some kind of on-screen drama. But the new OPN album, Replica, Lopatin's best work to date by far, is coming from somewhere else. This is music that exists on its own, each track a tiny universe with its own cracked logic. It's by turns dark, ethereal, frightening, and silly, but it is above all playful, carrying with it a feeling of joy. There's a real sense of discovery here, or possibilities being probed. Aside from the intricate production detail, what's most striking about Replica is how well-constructed these tracks are. Lopatin doesn't just introduce sounds, add loops, and fade out; his pieces move, tripping from one place to somewhere far away over the course of a few minutes. Replica is "experimental" music that also feels open and, somehow, participatory.
The first mixtape from Rakim Mayers sidesteps the usual pitfalls of the heavily anticipated debut. Rocky's ear for beats is worthy of Rick Ross or early Game. Courtesy of Clams Casino, Burn One, Beautiful Lou, A$AP Ty Beats, and SpaceGhostpurrp, the stellar production makes this something like a swag-rap generation The Documentary. Piloted by sweat-free cool and stellar production choices, LIVELOVEA$AP is a triumph of immaculate taste.
Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox's self-doubt tends to manifest itself in his solo project Atlas Sound, where he often feels small, alone, and cut adrift from the world. That sense of isolation still pervades Parallax, but the way its songs breathe suggests he's more comfortable in his own skin, allowing him to draw his audience closer than ever. In the past, Cox's affinity for masked vocals allowed him to keep his guard up, stopping listeners from encroaching on his malaise. But the cleaned-up sound on Parallax feels closer, more direct, and more intimate, focusing his strengths into a concentrated beam.
Cleaner, sharper, and stronger than Real Estate's 2009 self-titled debut, the classic-sounding Days is like a single idea divided into simple statements-- a suite of subtle variations on a theme. No note feels wasted, and nothing happens at the wrong time or in the wrong place. Its coherence sounds remarkably effortless, as if stringing together catchy gems is as easy as, in the words of one song, "floating on an inner tube in the sun." Like the stirring scenes of suburban Texas in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, these songs find meaning in daily mundanities-- in houses and gardens, phone lines and street lights, names carved in trees and leaves pressed by footsteps.