Cordavision Music Reviews

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 ...

This cover just looks like a fever dream. We have an odd case for me here. I know what Matmos is, but I haven’t heard any of their projects yet. I’ve also heard about some of the odd concepts about some of their albums. Plastic Anniversary has music made entirely from plastic sounds, and The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form got almost 100 musicians in a room to do their thing for 3 hours worth of material. The concepts here are pretty outlandish, so I figured we’d be getting something similar with Regards / Ukłony dla Bogusław Schaeffer . What is the gimmick behind this? Reworking the work of Polish composer and artist Bogusław Schaeffer to make new music. Let’s get into this odd idea. Since this is made entirely off of previous samples, would this be considered a plunderphonics album? Either way, covering more plunderphonics is pretty cool. When it comes to the music itself, it actually sounds like more vintage electronic albums from the 70s and there are some very omin...

The perfect example of saving the best for last. Okay, I’ve officially covered only one vaporwave project ever, and that was my favorite one, Late Night Delight from luxury elite and Saint Pepsi. I consider death's dynamic shroud.wmv to be one of the more influential acts in vaporwave still around next to luxury elite, but what I didn’t know was that dds dropped a whopping eleven albums this year. No, I’m not going to cover all of them, but since the final album in this series, Faith in Persona , was the one that hit my radar (and seemingly other’s radars), I’ll cover this one. Let’s get into it. To know some fan opinions about this album, I dove back into the vaporwave community long after my phase in that community came to an end. People are saying that this whole dds series, especially this album, is the second coming of vaporwave. Honestly, while I may not agree with that statement, I kinda understand why. It’s also probably dds’s grooviest album yet, mainly because I found my...

You know, we might as well close out the year with an Alchemist film score. Why not? As I said above, this just came out of nowhere for me. The Alchemist, arguably one of the most prolific producers in music right now, has been on an insane hot streak in 2021 alone. Only one week after his second album with Boldy James this year, he released his first film score to accompany Jason Goldwatch’s short film of the same name, Cycles . Let's get into my thoughts of Alc’s score. I actually really enjoy how unsettling this album is. I watched the short film that this score is a part of, and it’s pretty surreal. The score reminds me a lot of the video game Subnautica’s score, in a very weird way. I don’t know how I made those connections, and I honestly can’t even provide a good example from the game to bolster that point, but it just reminds me of it. The film itself seems like a cult initiation, and Alc’s score seems fit to do that. Yes, it’s a shorter review because it’s a shorter album,...

To read my review of the first album she dropped this past month, The Makin’ Magick Album II , click right here ! Alright, there isn’t gonna be much lead-up to this one because it was mainly done in the first review, but to sum it up, DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ is quickly becoming one of my favorite producers ever. Her previous two albums, 2020’s Charmed and the other album released on the same day as this, The Makin’ Magick Album II , are some of my favorite electronic albums in recent memory. Now, we have the wonderful Christmas gift of covering not one but two DJ Sabrina albums. Let’s get into my thoughts on the second album, The Other Realm . See, having to review two albums from the same artist in one day is a little tough. I have to admit, seeing Sabrina go ambient on the opening track “Transcendence” is a welcome surprise. I know we have a working formula in DJ Sabrina’s music, but the ever-so slight change without completely diverging from her sound tends to work in their favor...

We’re gonna close off 2021 with a massive series of reviews, starting with this magical one here. This past March, I reviewed what was possibly one of the best electronic albums in recent memory, and that’s the nearly three-hour epic Charmed from London producer DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ. I didn’t say it in my review, but after listening to Charmed quite a bit, I could honestly say it’s up there with one of my favorite albums ever and I think it’d eventually be as influential as The Avalanches’s debut project, Since I Left You . After dropping the Charmed review [and receiving a very kind message from Sabrina herself], that’s when I took the deep dive on her discography. Luckily, just as I finished it, I saw that not one but TWO new albums dropped. The second review will drop a little bit later today, but the first album is the sequel to her first full-length project, Makin’ Magick . So, let’s just jump into The Makin’ Magick II Album . For shits and giggles, I’m gonna run back to t...

Cache Saturday is a series of unranked reviews where I’m gonna catch up on albums I’ve listened to, whether it’s for the first time or not. I’ll also cover new albums I’ve missed from earlier or were cut from my schedule. Also, they’ll all be done in one paragraph. This week’s entry is the comeback (at the time) of one of the most beloved electronic and plunderphonics groups ever, The Avalanches, with their second album, Wildflower . For those that don’t know, plunderphonics is a subgenre of electronic music where songs are entirely composed of samples, and The Avalanches are masters of their craft. Their most recent album, We Will Always Love You (which celebrates its first anniversary today), actually earned the Cordavision brand’s first perfect score. If I’m being honest, The Avalanches has one of the best discographies of any band working right now. Wildflower is the feeling of that one summer you don’t want to end wrapped in one album. The beat on “Frankie Sinatra” with Danny Br...

Serotonin fans, this one’s for you. It’s not too often that I sit down and listen to some long-ass albums. One of my favorite jazz albums, Kamasi Washington’s The Epic , is three hours long. The other written review coming out later this week is of an album that’s nearly four hours long. When it comes to long albums like this, it really makes me realize that music can be made, and a large amount of time can be put into this. For any artist, making a long album is a very risky move. Migos made Culture II , and it ended up being a nearly two-hour mess of an album that should’ve been a large mixtape instead of Migos’ next studio album. While it may not be to an extent, Drake’s 2018 double album Scorpion had some of the same issues, even if the songs were at least better. Now, in 2021 (or 2020, when the project dropped), we have one of the longest electronic projects I’ve ever heard: Charmed by DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ. I had never heard of DJ Sabrina at all before this, but a friend of...

 

Daniel Lopatin has gone by many names throughout his career. Chuck Person, Dania Sharpes, KGB Man, and his most famous persona, Oneohtrix Point Never. The last time he put out music under the 0PN name was in 2018, with his James Blake-assisted Age Of. Between then and now, he’s produced multiple tracks on The Weeknd’s latest project After Hours and wrote the original score for the Adam Sandler film Uncut Gems under his real name. Back under the Oneohtrix Point Never name, he’s back to studio album capacity in Magic Oneohtrix Point Never . He’s going back to his more sampled-based roots, and taking his new friends Caroline Polachek and The Weeknd with him. I was pretty excited for this project, so let’s not waste any more time and talk about Magic Oneohtrix Point Never . Magic Oneohtrix Point Never is an electronic album with synthpop, plunderphonics, and vaporwave vibes. For those that didn’t know, the ‘Oneohtrix Point Never’ came from Lopatin mishearing the FM station 106.7, which ...

Plunderphonics has always been an oddball in the music world. For the uninitiated, plunderphonics is the use of different audio clips put together to make an original composition. Anything could be used, but most examples are from news reports or very stereotypical educational videos from the 50s. One of the most mysterious groups in this genre is the 90s Boyz. While they have made mixtapes before this album I’ll be talking about like Mikhail Gorbachev: Alive and Kicking and …Meets Tha Gobbernopper , none have been more ambitious than their ‘debut’ album Instant Hero Status . This trio, known only as Oyster Tag, Secular Rhino, and Irony Hog, have presented their opus, and they certainly have no sign of stopping any time soon. Let me guide you through Instant Hero Status , if you can make it, that is. Instant Hero Status is a plunderphonics album. At first listen, it seems like it’s going to be just noises overlapping each other. The opening track starts off with the beginning of a Go...