Cordavision Music Reviews

The cover used is gorgeous alternate art for this album and might be cover of the year for me. I’ve reviewed SAULT before, and I’ve liked pretty much everything the group has released. Only one out of a couple of the known members, Inflo, has come out of the shadows since nearly every other member is anonymous. Their two UNTITLED albums, Black Is and Rise , are all great alongside their Nine album, which is currently only available on physical media like vinyl. Their signature neo-soul/R&B sound works very well, but on Air , we’re getting something entirely different. What is it? Let’s get into Air and unravel the mystery. Let’s just get the cat out of the bag: this is just a classical album. No way to sugarcoat it, this is a modern classical album. I’ve never heard SAULT go in this direction at all, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. One of 2021’s best albums, Little Simz’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert , which has gorgeous classical-style production, was...

If you want to see my spoiler-free review of the movie Spider-Man: No Way Home , click right here ! Really? At this point, was I not going to cover this? Either way, Michael Giacchino has been one of the most in-demand film composers working right now. He’s had his handprints on nearly every modern franchise still going today like Star Wars , Mission: Impossible , Jurassic Park , Planet of the Apes , and Star Trek , along with Pixar’s most memorable movies like Up and The Incredibles . Most of all, he’s been very involved with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even composing the fanfare that has opened every installment since 2016’s Doctor Strange , which he composed as well. Hell, the bits of his upcoming score for The Batman is already memorable. Giacchino has composed the other Spider-Man films in the MCU, so let’s just say he has the experience. Let’s not waste any more time and get into the score for No Way Home . A constant theme in all of Giacchino’s scores is that the titles are...

kiCK iiiii concludes Arca Week on a very luscious note. Okay, after hearing the major differences between KicK iii and iiii , I honestly had no idea what to expect for the final entry in the KiCK series, and boy was I wrong. This is essentially a modern classical album done by an electronic music producer. It’s certainly something I’ve never heard of, but it’s a welcome one. Like the last one, there’s a lot of ambient references too. Arcambient? Let’s go with that. It’s mainly instrumental pieces, and I honestly don’t know how else to explain it. It acts as a very fitting conclusion and a very fitting end to an ambitious project. Conclusion: On the day of the final album’s release, Arca put out a statement about the release of the series. Part of it read ‘For me it is a cycle, like most phenomena in the universe. A prenatal KiCk is the first undeniable evidence that there exists an individual with an expression distinct from one’s mother and father. through this kick, this gesture o...

I got a couple links for you. So, click here for my review of the movie Dune , and click here for my review of Hans Zimmer’s official score . If you haven’t watched my review of the Dune movie, I’ll just keep it at this: It’s my favorite movie of the year so far. It’s incredible, and since the sequel isn’t confirmed at the time of me writing this, please go support it any way you can. Either way, watch it, it’s great. Behind the scenes, though, one of the most intriguing things is happening right now. There’s an art book called The Art and Soul of Dune available to buy, and since composer Hans Zimmer is such a huge fan of the Dune series, he’s decided to create three separate scores for the new movie. The first was based on concept art sketches he got, called The Dune Sketchbook , the second is the one you’ll hear in the movie when you watch it, and the third and final is the score to the official art book. Let’s get into the companion music for The Art and Soul of Dune . Now, this ...

Alright, I’m reviewing the score of a movie that hasn’t even been released yet. This is my redemption arc. If this is successful, I’ll be in the upper echelon. I gotta admit, I’ve never heard of a concept like this. Legendary composer Hans Zimmer is known for his pretty great track record for his film scores. His work in film has been absolutely stunning, and this is a brand new experiment for him. Denis Villeneuve’s new film, an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune , has been in the works for a while now, and it has a massive cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem all star in it. When I heard that Zimmer was going to compose the score, I was so excited. Along with that, word got out that Zimmer had made not one, not two, but three separate scores for the movie. The first ...

I literally went four months thinking that this album was called Sometimes I Might Be An Introvert only to find out there’s no ‘an.’ Little Simz is an artist that has been praised quite a bit over in the U.K., and I know quite a few American fans too. Her last full-length album, GREY Area , is one of the most praised albums of 2019 and ever since I’ve heard it, I totally understand why. Announced back in the spring, her newest album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is highly anticipated by her fans and it’s been highly anticipated by me as well. Unlike most albums that are anticipated by me, I went into this without hearing any singles. It was pretty painful to go four months without listening to it, but I feel like it’s gonna be worth it. So, let’s not waste any more time and get into Sometimes I Might Be Introvert . Um, how do I start this? To my knowledge, I have never started a review like that before. Okay, I’m just gonna go through the basics. The production here is absolutely g...

(A/N: I’m already apologizing about all the Skylanders jokes I make in this.) If you wanna know my thoughts on the movie itself, here’s my review of that: https://youtu.be/Wf9yeXj1Pwk Some movies didn’t come out last year. It sucked, but we had to understandably wait for some of the bigger films set to release in 2020. Finally, over a year after it was supposed to, the newest Marvel film Black Widow released last week to critical acclaim and box office success. Being connected to the franchise, both personally and quite literally as an actor, I kind of feel obliged for pop culture mediums to collide so I could take a look at the score for the Cate Shortland film. This score’s been composed by Lorne Balfe, who’s done legendary scores like Megamind and every single game in the Skylanders franchise. Outside of that, he scored the latest Mission: Impossible movie, the His Dark Materials series, and even the new sci-fi/action film The Tomorrow War . How did his work for Marvel go? Let’...

CLASSIC ALBUM #2: THESE ALBUMS ARE NOT RANKED OR SCORED BECAUSE THEY’RE, WELL, CLASSIC. Something I did this summer was binge the original run of the legendary Japanese anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion and its finale movie, The End of Evangelion . It really has been a pretty mind-blowing series, and with the four Rebuild films coming to the U.S. later this month, I decided I somehow had to get some of its music onto here. I’ve thought about reviewing the recent compilation, Evangelion Finally , which is essentially a greatest hits album, but the more I’ve thought about it, The End of Evangelion ’s score/soundtrack really deserves some praise and recognition. They might be the same in this case, but who cares, this is my website. Let’s get into what makes Shiro Sagisu’s score/soundtrack to The End of Evangelion a classic album. Let me just come out on record that this soundtrack has one of my favorite classical pieces of all time. It’s Sagisu’s rendition of Johann Sebastian Bach’...

Something unlocked in my mind while listening to this. I’m still working on what that is, though. These days, folk music goes very underappreciated. A lot of people gravitate more towards the more iconic folk artists from the 60s and 70s like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and it’s pretty easy to become fans of artists like Simon and Garfunkel. Sadly, not a lot of newer folk artists are getting the love they rightfully deserve. Right off the top of my head, artists like Bon Iver, Laura Marling, and even Ichiko Aoba deserve just as much love as the Dylans and the Cohens of the world. Focusing on foreign folk (or basically foreign to me, someone who was born and raised in America), it’s vastly overlooked. The aforementioned Aoba, who has quickly become one of my favorite artists ever, has a new competitor in this field of foreign folk music: Natalia Lafourcade. The Grammy-nominated singer has put out a new installment of her Un Canto por México series, this being the second volume. I’ve h...

Wow, the second film score I reviewed. Pretty awesome. Should this review come with a disclaimer? I actually haven’t seen Zack Snyder’s Justice League yet. I’ve seen some viral clips of it and I definitely plan on seeing it in the future. I’ve enjoyed a good amount of Tom Holkenborg’s score work, and if you don’t recognize his real name, just look up Junkie XL and see his work. I personally think his work on Batman v. Superman with Hans Zimmer is some of the most underappreciated pieces of music in the past five years. Now, after the fabled Snyder Cut debuted on HBO Max last week, Holkenborg released his score for the cut, which was entirely reworked from the original version. Let’s get into this behemoth. Is it odd to classify this as ‘neoclassical darkwave?’ The music nerd in me kinda jumped out because I was listening to Lingua Ignota while writing this, and I found some similarities when it comes to the sonic tone of this. Some elements from Snyder’s previous DCEU films are here, l...

Ólafur Arnalds has been one of my favorite composers lately. I’ve been doing a little dive into his music, and I’ve been having a good time. He’s also composed scores for the shows Broadchurch and Defending Jacob , and I enjoyed these as well. With 2020 in the home stretch and everyone being stressed out, I’ve also been diving into ambient music, which Arnalds is also known for. While I was listening to this, I saw that he recently put out a new album, titled some kind of peace . After I listened to it, I decided to write about how I felt about it, which is what happens here, after all. Let’s just get right into some kind of peace . some kind of peace is an ambient album with electronic and even some classical vibes. A good interpretation of this album is to bring peace to a world where there’s no peace at all, and I think that’s a beautiful way of describing it to me. The opening track “Loom” has additional production from Bonobo, and it’s probably the most electronic-sounding song ...