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(11/23/15 3:41am)
Upon postponing his debut album, Talib Kweli stepped onto the hip-hop scene with rapper Mos Def, creating the duo known as Black Star. The pair quickly became the game’s warranted political justice gurus, lighting up two successful solo careers with social commentary and political strife fueling the release. Now 17 years later, Kweli’s will to shake the public conscience becomes a shared effort. This time he teams up with veteran producer 9th Wonder and a handful of guest spots on Indie 500.
(11/10/15 4:31am)
Matt Berninger’s main work with The National earned him the role of indie music’s most despondent heartthrob. His new project with Menomena’s Brent Knopf places that famous baritone muttering in a fresh, yet sometimes unsuitable, atmosphere. Berninger and Knopf team up as EL VY on their experimental debut, Return To The Moon.
(10/23/15 9:23pm)
The chillwave label has been tossed around quite loosely as of late–any band adopting those whirly synths and cheeky basslines immediately becoming arbiters for a movement to prove the 80’s never truly died. The sudden surge characterized 2009, with founding fathers Washed Out, Toro y Moi and Neon Indian pioneering the psychedelic dance fever. Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo debuted Psychic Chasms as a lackadaisical trod through soundscapes, mutually original and retro. A song like “Deadbeat Summer” established his purposefully apathetic sound, humorously trapped within the virtual space-age dreams of previous generations. Palomo would revisit the sound on Era Extraña, but decidedly less cheerful day-tripping, and more apprehensive voyager with a heavy case of sea-sickness. Neon Indian returns with electrifying confidence on VEGA INTL. Night School, Palomo’s most well-rounded work yet.
(10/12/15 2:44am)
Kurt Vile is one of few artists that can still embody the American rocker moniker in the most laid-back, daydream-y sense of the word. Vile’s latest effort strips away the Americana feel he produced for 2013’s Wakin On A Pretty Daze, a nostalgic, reverb-heavy lead guitar that he’s been refining since his work with former band The War on Drugs. b’lieve i’m goin down… strips down to an acoustic tone, putting Vile’s abilities as a songwriter at center stage. While the psychedelic charm of those reverb-soaked melodies steps back from the main attraction, Vile’s embracing the “solitary man and his guitar” vibe lets the introspective musician shine in his own way.
(10/01/15 5:29am)
Follow-up albums are difficult. They’re especially challenging when your debut attains critical success, as the Lawrence brothers received with Disclosure’s masterful premiere in 2013. Settle not only hit the top of the charts and critical reviews, it reinvigorated a genre in desperate need of a face-lift. House music was toiling away in uninspired dreariness, as dubstep took a prominent role in asserting the same builds and drops we all came to expect and detest. Settle was divisive in not only modernizing the UKG two-step sound of ’90s English house, but coating it with enough polish and features to move the genre forward, into a realm of pop R&B psychosis melded to impeccable hip-shaking production. One might come to expect a lot from the duo’s latest release Caracal, but with the blazing trail left behind by Settle, it’s easy to see how Disclosure might trip up. Caracal is by no means a failure, but rarely do we see lightning strike twice in the same spot.
(09/23/15 2:29am)
Travis Scott has been a bit of a buzzword for the last few years in the hip-hop community. After signing with Grand Hustle records and landing production spots on both G.O.O.D. Music’s Cruel Summer and Kanye’s Yeezus, people became curious over Yeezy’s newest disciple. “Who is Travis Scott?” some asked. Following 2 EPs and several delays, Scott makes his grand entrance on the debut LP Rodeo. But, upon completion, both new listeners as well as adamant followers of the young rapper may still be asking, “Who is Travis Scott?”
(09/10/15 5:36am)
Now having released their fourth album, Foals’ ability to stay afloat these past seven years is quite remarkable. The British rock scene has seen better days, but somehow this group out of Oxford has made a slow climb into the limelight, where they intend to stay. Does What Went Down give Foals the chutzpah they need to keep their heads above water? Maybe. If anything, it’s another fine-tuned entry, one that packs a punch when it needs to, and showcases that music is second nature to them.
(04/28/15 4:26am)
Danny Leonard and Michael Penn II, known as Lord of the Fly and CRASHprez respectively, are two Madison-based rap artists joining forces as LORDprez for their Revelry performance Saturday. Both artists came to the UW-Madison on the First Wave scholarship program for young musicians, helping them persevere their commencement into the music world.
(04/16/15 2:00am)
Perhaps the way of the future for creating music has less to do with music and more to do with visuals. At least that’s the way of the future for Pete Lawrie Winfield, frontman of Until The Ribbon Breaks. Originally a film student, Lawrie Winfield’s path took a slight detour when he discovered his love of making music, but his career as a musician can’t move forward without acknowledgement of his original ambitions. When the band is recording at their studio, Lawrie Winfield has a tradition of bringing a movie projector and watching a movie silently as the group proceeds to produce new tracks. Lawrie Winfield’s explanation is that the muted films allow him to meander through his creative think-space further than he could normally, and the images give meaning to the music they create. With the amount of range Until The Ribbon Breaks provides in sound, it’s clear that Lawrie Winfield’s cinematic interests shine through.
(04/07/15 3:38am)
Chancelor Bennett, also known as Chance The Rapper, is an eccentric 21-year-old rapper from Chicago, though binding him to the title of ‘rapper’ does no justice to the young star’s capabilities. Chance’s style is unorthodox in every sense: rarely maintaining any consistency to his flow, his half-singing/half-rapping verses twist through elaborate song palates.
(03/26/15 2:22am)
The youngest of the Odd Future crew, Earl Sweatshirt, has had a strange rise to fame. After being sent to boarding school by his mother, spawning the “Free Earl” movement, Earl entered the rap scene with a wave of fans anxious to hear more of the talented young wordsmith. His debut, Doris, gave wonderful insight to the greenhorn performer and his sudden appearance in the spotlight, which very much guaranteed his spot at the top of Odd Future, alongside Tyler the Creator and Frank Ocean. The limelight begins to fade, and now, two years later, Earl is back with his second album, I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, a dark and isolated trip into the psyche of the more cynical than ever Earl Sweatshirt.
(03/19/15 12:41am)
Inventions is comprised of Mark Smith, guitarist for post-rock giant Explosions In The Sky, and Eluvium’s Mathew Cooper. Being both labelmates as well as tourmates makes their union as expected as the sound they produce together on Maze of Woods.
(03/13/15 10:22pm)
With the disbanding of the satire-heavy hip-hop trio Das Racist in 2012, each artist has gone on to pursue their own musical path. After a spiritual trip through South Asia and two mixtapes, Himanshu Suri, known as Heems, is back with his new solo project, Eat Pray Thug.
(03/04/15 4:02am)
Brendan Angelides, performing under the name Eskmo, released SOL, his second studio album, Monday. Eskmo is a Los Angeles-based electronic artist, made from a certain breed of musician that grew out of the LA area. This type of musician envelopes a style based around atmosphere building, and using music to create emotions, images and ideas, rather than a simple dance beat. Flying Lotus, a fellow LA musician, released his album You’re Dead last year, and was met with high praise for his death-centric record. In a similar manner, Eskmo has whipped up a concept album of his own, which focuses on, if the album title didn’t already give it away, the Sun.
(02/16/15 5:57am)
The hip-hop scene has been on the rise as of late, with new tracks dropping left and right from some of the genre’s top artists. That being the case, it’d only make sense that Drake got in on the action as well, releasing his pseudo-mixtape If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late last Thursday. Complete with a price tag and over an hour of content, IYRTITL feels like a traditional release, but with Drake having already picked out the name for his next full feature album, Views From The 6, it’s safe to say this is just a prequel to something bigger.
(02/11/15 4:45am)
Rock has always been an evolving creature. Every time the genre starts to feel a little stale, bands twist and bend in new ways to create innovative sounds. These changes usually stick together, with popular groups at the time capturing the distinctive sound until new groups of artists sweep in and start the next wave of rock. The Districts, releasing A Flourish and a Spoil Tuesday, are an exciting new act that’s full of energy, but somehow feels late to the party and lacking in novelty.
(02/04/15 4:36am)
John Carpenter, director of cult-classics such as “Halloween,” “The Thing,” and “Escape From New York” has recently decided to focus less on optics and more on sounds with his first album, Lost Themes.
(01/27/15 5:46am)
Inspiration is a key component to the development of music. Aspired youngsters have always taken to their instruments and tried replicating the songs of their heroes. A small handful will be successful in recreating that sound and, in some cases, will take the next step of making a sound of their own. Cotillon’s self-titled debut delivers an assortment of tunes and styles, served with modern flavor while simultaneously remaining bound by its musical influences, reflecting the history that gave lead man Jordan Corso his inspiration as a musician.
(12/02/14 6:37am)
Since the materialization of the punk rock scene in the early 1970s, rebellious rockers have experimented left and right, spawning countless subgenres and genre fusions. Aside from its various stylistic changes over the years, there was always a standard of stripping away the unnecessary clutter created by typical rock ’n’ roll. Two Inch Astronaut holds themselves up to these standards, while simultaneously blending the genre’s different elements that have been made available over time.
(11/18/14 4:57am)
Shortly after the release of Nine Types of Light in 2011, TV on the Radio’s bassist Gerard Smith passed away after a brief battle with lung cancer. Now several years later, TV on the Radio have delivered Seeds, which is in many ways a eulogy to Smith, expressing the band’s collective overcoming and acceptance of his loss.