Cordavision Music Reviews

I mean, if I saw a whole ass wolf on Wall Street, I’d be out of there. I’ve covered Your Old Droog in the past, especially since he had such a prolific 2021 with dropping four separate projects. Two of them were collaborations with Atlanta rapper Tha God Fahim, Tha YOD Fahim and Tha Wolf on Wall St. . Even if I think Droog’s other albums were better than the first Wall St. installment, I’m still excited about this. I haven’t checked out any of Fahim’s music outside of Wall St., but I’m curious to see if they can keep the momentum of their other albums together. Let’s get into The American Dream . Like the last Wolf , the production is laid-back and eerie, and it’s done mainly by Nicholas Craven, Conductor Williams, Messiah Musik, Fortes, and Znakomi. I personally think the production is the best part of the project, but that doesn’t mean YOD and Fahim weren’t bad. Droog is as fiery as he’s been recently, and I think Fahim also stepped up his game from the first album. The concept from...

I mean, if you name your album W, that’s just peak confidence. If you don’t know about the Japanese rock scene, that’s totally okay. Even if they aren’t the most popular group, Boris is one of the huge pillars in modern Japanese music. They’ve been active since 1993 and have had a steady output since then. Their 2005 album, PINK , is widely considered to be one of the best noise-rock albums ever. The first part of this album was released back in 2020, titled NO . With the group’s new album being titled only W , I think I’m sensing a theme here. Anyways, let’s get into it. What’s most striking about this album is that this is a slight shift away from the group’s typical sound. Instead of the stoner metal that they perform so well, W has more of a shoegaze and even a dream pop sound. Because of this shift, it makes this album one of Boris’s least heavy albums yet, maybe even the least heavy music they’ve made so far. There may be some disappointment in that, but there’s still some heavi...

Seeing that we’re in an age where everything leaks, this coming as a genuine surprise was really nice. Honestly, this is going to be a short, maybe even one-paragraph review. Rich Brian has been on my radar for a few years now, and his last full-length album, 2019’s The Sailor , is an incredibly underrated album to me. Now, we got a surprise four-track EP called Brightside . Unlike his 1999 EP from last year, Brightside leans back into his hip-hop roots and it ends up being pretty straightforward. The only song that really didn’t land for me was “Lagoon,” but the rest are good bangers. The production is great, Brain has some great flows and good writing too, and it proves that Brian still should be on the public’s radar. Overall, Brightside is pretty fun. Short is sweet when it comes to Rich Brian. 7/10 Listen here YouTube Music Brightside is an 88rising / Warner release.

I provided the extra butterfly, by the way. I’ve been sitting here for almost 15 minutes now, trying to think of a good way to start this. So, I guess I’ll say that King Gizz is one of the most versatile groups I’ve heard in a minute. I may be repeating myself at this point, but they’re always going to keep my attention whenever they drop a project. That being said, their last full project, Butterfly 3000 , has grown on me since its release, but I’m pretty surprised that there’s a remix album for this project out of all of the Gizz albums. To my knowledge, I don’t think the band was fully involved in this side project, but Butterfly 3001 has the possibility of being caught in my net. With contributions from DJ Shadow, DāM-FunK, and The Flaming Lips among others, there could be some good stuff in here. Let’s get into it. This is one of the cases that I’m probably just going to appreciate that it’s a thing that exists. I do think that Butterfly 3000 is a pretty good King Gizz album to ...

God, the cover’s so dark. I love it. There’s a first time for everything and this marks the first for something. This will be the first live album I cover on the site, and I’m quite excited that this is the one. The Gothenburg-born musician Anna von Hausswolff has been an artist that’s been climbing onto my radar more and more as I dive into the neoclassical darkwave genre. Hausswolff’s fantastic Dead Magic is one of the first I’ve heard in the genre and the follow-up All Thoughts Fly is just as great. Now, her latest release is a 2018 live performance that has been hyped up a lot for the past few years. It’s finally available to the public, so let’s get into Live at Montreux Jazz Festival . You know, I’m one of the people that enjoy a live version of a song, but I do prefer studio versions of tracks more often. This album, though? I think these songs are the definitive recordings of each one. There’s really nothing bad about this. Hausswolff’s vocals are incredible, the instruments ...

I never wanna hear fragments of music, you know? I’ll just listen to stems if I want fragments. If I’m being totally honest, I don’t know anything about Bonobo. All I know about him is that he’s a British producer based in Los Angeles. I’ve never heard a single Bonobo track before this album nor have I heard his production. I really do enjoy going into an artist blind. What caught my attention to cover this album was that one of the singles features Joji, and I really dug that song. So, Fragments is the producer’s seventh album, and after doing some research, it seems like 2010’s Black Sands is regarded as his best album. I personally haven’t heard that project yet, but will Fragments inspire me to check out the rest of his music? Let’s get into it and find out. I like any kind of electronic album that’s great at building an atmosphere, and this album really does that well. I really liked the use of orchestral pieces on this too. If this is a constant theme with his music, I’m alread...

I dig the cover, but I really don’t know what’s going on in it. Okay, is it weird that I have no idea what to write about this as an intro? Yes, I like Cordae, I like his debut album The Lost Boy , and I’m excited about his new album, titled From a Bird’s Eye View . However, there’s been an odd feeling surrounding this album to me. It may just be me not remembering shit, but were there any official singles for this? Yes, the Roddy Ricch track is on here, but it’s a bonus track. It’s not that I’m thinking it’s gonna be bad, but there’s something… weird happening. What took so long for this? I totally understand waiting to drop your debut, but this rollout has been happening forever. Either way, I’m still excited to get into From a Bird’s Eye View , so let’s just jump into it. In a weird way, Cordae reminds me a lot of Common. He has some wit, has pretty great rhyming ability, and his voice makes him seem a lot older and wiser than he seems. It’s nice to see that potential that most have...

Is this a play on Capricorn or Capri-Sun? Because we literally have the same birthday and I’m a Capricorn, but Capri-Sun just really sounds like it. If there’s an enigma in music right now, it’s FKA twigs. twigs is a pretty boundary-pushing artist, and 2019’s MAGDALENE , her last album, cemented that fact in my mind. I honestly never know what she’s going to do with her music. MAGDALENE was about a woman on the edge of a mental breakdown, and it’s a beautiful album, but who would think to put Future on Skrillex production and make it work? On the same album, especially? Well, twigs has always been taking risks, but I honestly got nothing on CAPRISONGS . We only have one single from it, “tears in the club” with The Weeknd, and I think it’s great. Either way, let’s see what we’ve got going on with CAPRISONGS . Even in the few days that this has been in the public, this has proven to be a controversial project. Most dedicated twigs fans I’ve seen are quite disappointed with this for bein...

If an album title ends with an exclamation point, you’re in for something else. Look, I gotta throw something out there. Out of all the artists that I’ve been waiting to drop, this is on the level of Kendrick Lamar dropping to me. I’m so fucking pumped for this album. It’s no secret that Earl Sweatshirt is one of my favorite rappers in recent memory. The one-two punch of Some Rap Songs and Feet of Clay is some of the best the 2010s have to offer. Recently, he’s been on a hot streak of features on songs mainly from The Alchemist, Boldy James, Armand Hammer, Navy Blue, and Roc Marciano, among many others. Now, nearly four years (and a scrapped project titled The People Can Fly) later, we now have Sick! , the first official full-length album from Earl since 2018. How does it sound? Let’s get into it. Along with quite a few artists, Earl has become an artist that I need to listen to a couple times before forming my overall thoughts on an album. Like his past two projects, Sick! is no di...

This art kicks ass, for real. I’d kill for this physically for the art alone. So, here’s where I get to flex my K-pop knowledge. Girls Planet 999 is a reality competition show where they got 999 contestants from South Korea, Japan, and China with the intention that the final nine contestants would form a new supergroup and become titans in the South Korean music industry. In the finale, the winners were officially announced and became the group KEP1ER. After a couple of delays, they’ve finally released their debut EP with killer art, FIRST IMPACT . The project has already broken a massive sales record, with the first day sales being the highest in the history of Hanteo, South Korea’s equivalent to America’s Billboard. I know all that was a bunch of stuff to read, and I don’t blame you if it was a little boring, but this is a pretty big deal. So, let’s just get into FIRST IMPACT . This EP’s divided into two halves: three original songs and three made for the Girls Planet 999 show. Per...

You know, 2022 is starting off pretty well so far! Honestly, I had no idea what this project was. I had never heard of the name Daniel Son, but I had heard of Futurewave before because he produced an entire Rome Streetz album last year, Razor’s Edge . Son and Futurewave have worked together before, but this is the first time I’ll be listening to Daniel Son. With some pretty gorgeous cover art, Son Tzu & the Wav.God was one of the first projects I listened to in 2022 during my review break. Let’s not waste any more time and get into it. I gotta admit, like Razor’s Edge , the production was my favorite part of this album. Not to say that Daniel Son was bad at all, I actually liked Son’s lyrics a lot, but his voice was setting me off just a tiny bit. I’ll say that Futurewave’s beats really match Son’s voice and their partnership makes a lot of sense. It’s very possible that I could like Son on his other projects, but the jazzy beats here were definitely the standout aspect of this al...

Alright, I’ll just say it now. The cover goes hard. Gunna is a rapper that hasn’t really clicked for me yet, and honestly, I don’t know if he ever will. I’d like to be wrong at some point, but personally, I don’t see the hype he gets. On features, he isn’t horrible, but I just think he sounds real bland on most of the songs he releases that are just him. If I’m being honest, I typically listen to his solo stuff for the features. However, I do feel cautiously optimistic about DS4EVER , the final project in his Drip Season series that helped put him on the map. Will this be the time he finally gets my attention? Let’s get into it and see. Let me start with some praise. The production here is pretty star-studded and it’s actually pretty great. The beat on “livin wild” is insanely catchy and it’s probably my favorite song on this whole album. Most of the features, if not all of them, deliver great contributions too. 21 Savage continues his streak of great feature verses, Chlöe Bailey als...

Nothing like a good January ambient album, am I right? I’m sure you haven’t heard the name Mydreamfever before, but this isn’t the first time I’ve covered them. He’s more popular under the name Parannoul, who made it onto my radar last year with two incredible albums: To See the Next Part of the Dream and a split album with Asian Glow and sonhos tomam conta Downfall of the Neon Youth , the latter garnering a perfect score when it dropped this past October. Now, the first album under the Mydreamfever name, he sets out to create something brand new and separate from Parannoul: an ambient album titled Rough and Beautiful Place . Let’s get into it. Something that people might not know about me is that I’m a sucker for a good ambient album. I typically don’t go back to them on my own time, but I do like to appreciate what I hear in music in general. When it comes to that, I absolutely adore this album. The piano-driven tracks, most if not all of them, are fantastic, and the ambient landsca...

If I haven’t said it yet, happy new year! And cheers to some great new music this year! Alright, it stands to reason that I’m a massive fan of The Weeknd. Before the tour refunded my tickets, I had nice seats at the After Hours tour, but I’m hoping to get those seats back when he comes back to my area. Either way, a release of this magnitude in the first week of the new year is generally unheard of in this day and age. I’m not complaining, but I was gonna be on a break for a couple weeks, but Abel over here decided to drop an entire fucking album. After The Weeknd’s massive After Hours era, he comes back in to give us a sister album to it, Dawn FM . He has many big names coming with him, and not just in the music world. Tyler, the Creator, Lil Wayne, Oneohtrix Point Never, Quincy Jones, and Jim Carrey come along the ride this time. Let’s not waste any more time and get into the first big release of 2022, Dawn FM . I’d say that the biggest inclusion on the musical end is the extensive ...