Cordavision Music Reviews

Still mad that I never got the vinyl release of his last album. Every time I review something that ended up being a surprise release, I always talk about how nice surprise releases are. Even if it’s by an artist you’re not a giant fan of, a surprise drop is always something cool. Memphis rapper Cities Aviv is one I got real excited about. Then again, I was always gonna be excited to see what he did next after his two-hour-long epic MAN PLAYS THE HORN , which is in my top 10 favorite albums of this year. I would’ve never expected there to be a new album so soon given just how large his last project was. Now, we have Working Title for the Album Secret Waters , a damn good surprise release that genuinely caught me off guard. Knowing that this project is only a fraction the length of HORN , does that addictive, hypnotic sound translate into a shorter project? Let’s tread into Secret Waters . What I think stands out here the most is the production, more specifically the sampling done here.

If it’s not blocked in your country, I reacted to this album live on my YouTube channel. Click here to watch it. Okay, let me start off with this. I don’t have to do an intro to Taylor Swift. Whether you like her or not, she’s one of the most recognizable names on the planet. Hell, a testament to this is that this album, Midnights , is set to be the first album in six years to sell over a million copies in its first week. The last time this happened was Swift again. In an age where it’s tough to reach half of a million, it’s really impressive. But I’m not here to talk about sales, I’m here to talk about the music. During the height of the pandemic, she dropped two indie-inspired albums, folklore and evermore . Both of these albums, especially folklore, opened my eyes on how good she was at writing these relatively complex stories into her songs when she teams up with The National. I was blown away by it and, for lack of a better term, I realized I was a Swiftie. Now, in the middle of

I’d like to throw this cover into the fray of one of the most recognizable cover arts of the 2010s. Alright, this may be a surprising revelation to some, but I’ve never heard an Arctic Monkeys album in its entirety. Sure, I’ve heard a couple of songs and most of their last album, Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino , but never a whole project. The only song I’ve heard from this project, AM , is “R U Mine?,” which I think is a pretty good song. To my knowledge, AM is considered to be the sellout album in Arctic Monkeys’ discography, and that’s mainly why I decided to pick this as my first dive into the group. On top of their first album in four years releasing this Friday, I figured now would be a better time than ever to finally see what this group’s about. Let’s get into AM . I’ll say this off the bat: you can tell that most of these were singles or really wanted to be. Six of these songs were singles, that’s half of the album. It’s not as bad as the last Joyner Lucas album where there w

Well, it’s time to peel back some layers. billy woods is yet another reason why I changed up my review schedule. If you’ve heard anything by woods, you know that you’re gonna get into more of a deep listening experience. I don’t mean to sound pretentious, but that’s really how it is. woods’s lyrics are cryptic and coded, and the songs themselves are pretty out there and experimental. Listening to a billy woods album usually means that it isn’t a background listen, it’s gotta have your full attention. Earlier this year, woods dropped Aethiopes with Preservation, one of the best albums of the year that I’m still trying to dissect. Every now and then, he drops two projects a year, whether it’s a solo project or an Armand Hammer release with Elucid, and this year’s no different. Entirely produced by Messiah Muzik, Church might be one of woods’s most rich projects yet. Let’s get into it. Like his last album, I’ve given this multiple listens. I’m still diving into the lyrical content and p

I just want this cover framed. Experimental music can be a tough sect of music to get into. I know it’s the basic line for this, but what else do I have to start with? Especially when it comes to electronic and ambient music, it can be very off-putting, yet it can also be hypnotic and genuinely great to listen to in a good amount of settings. If I’m being totally honest, I’ve been dying to talk about this project ever since I began writing reviews like this. Daniel Lopatin has had a hell of a career, with basically pioneering a whole genre with vaporwave over a decade ago under the Chuck Person alias, getting into scoring films with the Safdie Brothers, and also becoming an all-star collaborator with The Weeknd for his past two albums. I’ve written about his last studio album, 2020’s high concept Magic Oneohtrix Point Never , and I still enjoy it. However, this one is, cutting out all the fluff, the one. The first time I heard this album, 2011’s Replica , is one of the only moments in

I have a poster of this cover in my room, yet I have no idea why I have this over IGOR . Tyler, The Creator is arguably a superstar now. For the past few months, he’s been on a wildly successful tour, been doing features on some great projects since his last album, CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST , and he’s actually legally allowed to enter some parts of the world now. Personally, I think he’s one of the best artists working today. I definitely wouldn’t have thought that over a decade ago, mainly because I was a kid, but it’s mainly because he was known for Goblin , an album that I think had great ideas [especially that opening track, holy shit] yet is now plagued with material that hasn’t aged well in many different ways. I thought about reviewing Goblin , its better follow-up Wolf, or even give his first project Bastard a second shot. However, I chose this project, 2015’s Cherry Bomb , which I could safely say is Tyler’s most divisive project as of now. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and

This is proof that AI art can sometimes be beautiful. I recently hit a milestone that I’ve been wanting to hit with my music-listening journey: I’ve gotten through every single studio album from King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, just in time for them to ANNOUNCE THREE MORE ALBUMS RELEASING THIS MONTH. Yeah, that’s how these little Aussies roll with their music. King Gizz’s previous release, this past April’s double album Omnium Gatherum , is one of the best rock albums of the decade so far, in my opinion, so they’re setting the bar pretty high. With their third album of 2022, Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava is tackling a pretty big concept: Seven tracks that are built around the main 7 Greek modes of music. It’s an interesting idea, so let’s see what tricks these little goblins have up their sleeves. As I mentioned earlier, each track on the album is built around and/or inspired by the seven major Greek modes of music. I’m not someone who knows about music theory or a

The moment I found out that this guy has a song called “I Personally Wouldn’t Revive Queen Elizabeth (Pack Watch)” was when I knew I’d like this guy. Most of this new set of reviews is gonna consist of two things: Whatever I heard in my backlog or a newly-released project that I’m excited about. This one lands as more of a backlog entry, but this dropped this past summer and I only found about it last month. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but Anthony Fantano’s pretty positive review of this gave me the motivation to finally give this a shot. I pretty much have no idea who Ghais Guevara is, and both the title and cover of this already show something unique with the project. Let’s talk about There Will Be No Super-Slave . Right off the bat, I adore the production on this. It’s grimy and tinged with industrial undertones that really began to stand out as I was hearing the project. Even the wild, frantic samples on the intro track introduce Guevara as a producer in an interesting way. S

I’m gonna avoid using ‘wintery’ as a descriptor because, if I’m being honest, it’s just way too easy. Well, hi everyone. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been here. I’ve had some great life updates that gave me less time to write, so I’m gonna accommodate that. I’m gonna review whatever I wanna review, and I’m happy that this was the project that the new era of Cordavision Records is going to kick off. I’ve talked about vaporwave before here, but I’ve never dove into the backlog of albums I have like this so I can write. Either way, let’s get into one of the genre’s most chilling releases, Arctic Circuitry . The first of two releases from Dennis Mikula, a.k.a. Electric Specter 電妖怪, Arctic Circuitry feels most like a soundtrack to an old SNES game, but a blizzard froze the cartridge and corrupted the files. The project’s haunting, cassette-like cover fits this image perfectly, especially with the little hits of static and aged computer graphics. After some extra listens, I even notice