Ex Omni

Invincible is hardly new to the Detroit rap scene, in fact, it’s hard to think of a more embedded and time proven emcee in the city still ravaged in the hip-hop scene by the loss of J. Dilla. With “Shapeshifters”, Invincible has crafted the best Detroit hip-hop album in far too long, and perhaps the best rap album of the year.

The first ~25 minutes of this album are simply mindblowing. This is detroit through and through, with the most brilliant raps I have heard in years. Invincible knows how to write, the lyrics are piled on in multisyllabic rhymes and double entendres galore, and the message she pushes through the lyrics comes through as a coherant and powerful political statement. Two thirds through the album the tracks slow down, the effects of the Sledgehammer wear off, and perhaps the weakest tracks on this album are the title track and those around it. However, it comes back strong on Locusts, with Invincible’s oft-present cohort Finale.

The production througout is pure detroit, and fantastic on the first ~25 minutes, with strong beats and cuts. 

This is probably the best rap album of 2008, and while hip-hop may be dead, Invincible is carrying the light, and giving a knock out punch you’d have to be a complete fool to sleep on.

Verdict: Highly Recommended.

Gotye’s 2006 album does some commendable things, his unique vocal approach combined with effective track work makes for some great songs. If Like Drawing Blood does anything, it’s convince you that, with more polish and a better producer to nail him down, Gotye shows promise. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to make an album. A little more than halfway through the album, Gotye switches from his unique vocal offerings to instrumental Dub and Lounge vibes, and even then he doesn’t remain consistent, jumping across styles from west to east sans grace, and when he comes back in with his vocals again, it just feels like a slip-shod hamming up of things.

Gotye doesn’t mix dub extraordinarily well, he doesn’t sing extraordinarily well, he doesn’t write extraordinary lyrics, but he does them all well enough there really could be something here. I can’t enthusiastically recommend this album, but I’ll look forawrd to his future offerings (unfortunately his latest album was a divergence into a compilation of covers, so we have yet to see another effort from DeBacker.)

Verdict: Wouldn’t enthusiastically recommend.

Grails is another far-too-prolific instrumental rock outfit, but with Doomsdayer’s Holiday, they break out into something rather new and exciting. With a dark menace layered over each track, Doomsdayer’s Holiday is a bad trip in a good way. Increasingly eerie, foreboding, and hopeless, Doomsday’s Holiday injects a quiet hallucination of nihilism and menacing supernatural darkness into the listener, managing toproduce an effective and captivating listen.

Perhaps the most commendable accomplishment in this recording, is how Grails perfectly executes the flow of the album. Every track is in its proper place, and ever moment accentuated and supported by its position in the flow of things. Each time the album hit new heights I expected it to back off and fade out in mediocrity, but the denoument of the entire trip is fully satisfactory.

Verdict: Recommended

You have to give Matthew Cooper credit for consistently putting out enjoyable ambient music, but while the Travels In Constants series is filled with fantastic recordings, this particularly entry fails to stand out or do anything particularly well or exempliarily. Only recommended for fans of the genre. Check out Cooper’s Miniatures instead, his latest work which showcases the artist’s fullest potential.

Verdict: Skippable

Trevor Wishart has crafted an enthralling composition, exploiting and manipulating the human voice in the most trhilling ways. Absolutely captivating throughout, though each set of pieces are separate one from the other, and one may be wise to take a break to digest one before moving on to the next.

Verdict: Highly Recommended

Overlooked East Coast Hardcore, Showbiz delivers on production, holding up to his fantastic work o the Runaway Slave debut from this great 90’s crew. Excellent beats, classic hardcore raps.

Verdict: Recommended.

Passage starts out with a re-release of The Six Stigmata EP, followed by tracks from the Playing With Knives 12″, and finally some new material with some 2008 remixes.

It is a wonder that, pieced together in such a way, the album stands so well as a whole. Excellent tracks. Quality breakbeat.

Verdict: Recommended. Especially for those without The Six Stigmata EP, and for those who have listened to that, well I’m sure you’ll be checking this out as well.

Darnielle’s The Sunset Tree was the last singularly stand-out release from his Mountain Goats outfit. Satanic Messiah just continues Darnielle’s prolific output. The songs are simple, pleasant, well written and minimally orchestrated folk rock. While Darnielle doesn’t smash apart the Folk Rock status quo with outstanding work like Okkervil River, he is quite comfortable with his place in indie-rock.

Verdict: Only for indie-folk fans.

In World Music one often finds very poorly made music by very proficient musicians. But Diabeté has not only become one of best kora players in the world, he has also managed to assemble a group of wonderfully talented musicians, and produces real, quality music of its own right, transcending the “world music” stigma. A couple of tracks, Mali Sadio, and Tapha Niang (which will receive much attention for recently embroiling a certain video game in controversy) stand out on their own.

Verdict: Recommended.

This is a 20 minute EP that sounds more like a demo tape. With 10 tracks, you’d expect a couple memorable ones. In a genre so focused on song writing, you’d expect a few grabbing lines. Alright, maybe there’s a couple of the latter, but I’ve already forgotten.

It’s decent noise-pop, but it neither stands out in its own genre with a hook like Cub, nor transcends its own genre in the vein of simply great bands like Sleater-Kinney.

Verdict: Very skippable. Unless you love the genre. Then again, if you don’t love the genre, that can be rectified with a dash of Sleater-Kinney.