Cordavision Music Reviews

They’re just farming for XP to level up by the end of the year, don’t worry about quality over quantity. Since I literally wrote about these guys a few weeks back, I have no idea how to properly introduce you other than to link you to my Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava review so you can get the full picture. However, there’s even more context behind this release. In 2017, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard put out five albums, just as they did this year with this album, Changes . This album, however, was meant to be the fifth album of 2017. With most King Gizz releases, there’s a core concept, with this one having every track in D major / F# major chord changes. I’m not even sure if I worded that correctly, but you get the idea. There’s also a pretty visual reference to the track titles, if you’ve got a keen eye. King Gizz have continued to raise the bar all this year and this shouldn’t be any different. Let’s get into Changes and see how I felt about it. As I looked ...

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 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...

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...

Australians are fucking crazy, man. That’s the biggest takeaway I got from this. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard really have it going for them. They’ve been a functioning band for ten years now, and not including live albums, they have twenty studio albums. Twenty. I’m on a trek to listen to all of them right now, and I think I have about seven down. Their third release this year, Omnium Gatherum , is their longest studio effort yet with 80 minutes in length. The Aussies gave us a lot to unpack in this album, so let’s not waste any time and get into Omnium Gatherum . At this point, it’s predictable for King Gizz to be unpredictable, and I’d say that this is one of the most all-over-the-place they’ve released yet. If they were throwing ideas at the wall to see what stuck, they did everything and included the wall. The elements of rock, metal, pop, electronic, soul, and even rap just combine to make a smorgasbord of sound. Even one of the band member’s grandmother plays the role of a ...

Dot. Dot. Dot. Acclaimed Swedish house producers Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso make up the supergroup of hitmakers known as Swedish House Mafia. After 2012, the name pretty much disappeared for nearly a decade while the three producers still worked separately, even together in duos in some cases. All of a sudden, back in 2021, the name started popping up again, dropping a couple of loose singles. One of them, “Moth to a Flame,” ended up featuring one of the biggest musicians in the world right now, The Weeknd. It became such a success that it not only ended up on this album, Paradise Again , but it also ended up on the deluxe edition of The Weeknd’s latest album Dawn FM . They even shared a set at Coachella together just last night. Believe it or not, Paradise Again is the group’s first studio album. Does it live up to the decade-long hype? Let’s get into it. Admittedly, house and EDM music has really grown off me and my ever-evolving music taste in the past couple of ...

Catching up on the lore, don’t mind me. Whenever I’ve covered Australian band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, I’ve tried to keep up with their insanely large output. However, for the first time in almost two years of this brand’s existence, I’ve failed. King Gizz has already announced a new album that’s set to drop next month. It’s all satire, I know, I’m not genuinely that upset, but King Gizz albums have their own loose lore to them that I really don’t know yet. Anyway, Made in Timeland is yet another turn in the band’s varied discography. What did they do this time? Let’s see what happened. So, even in a unique discography, this album is quite different: this is intermission music. For context, the band were originally set to do a bunch of long shows in 2020 tied to their own Timeland Festival. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but it’s still set to happen later this year. There are only two tracks on this album, and each of them run for 15 minutes on the dot. They essentially mad...

Okay, who gave Eddie the sword? Iron Maiden is one of the most iconic and beloved metal groups ever. They don’t need much of an introduction, so I’ll just leave it at that. They recently dropped their first album in six years, Senjutsu , and it’s reportedly one of their more progressive releases. Having been more in the progressive rock/metal area more recently, I find this to be pretty exciting. The shortest song on here is just over four minutes, while some of the longer songs reach eleven, twelve, and even thirteen minutes long. So, can the British outfit capture lightning in a bottle once more? Let’s find out with Senjutsu . Let me just say this one thing about the album: I can really appreciate that the band isn’t taking the safe route with their music. They never seem to stay boring when it comes to creating music and simply putting it out there for not only them to enjoy but for their fans to enjoy. This is the time for pretty long albums, and this is no different with its 82-mi...

Gonna be flexing some religious/Renaissance painting knowledge here. Halsey has been an artist that’s been incredibly hit or miss for me. Her first couple albums really didn’t do too much for me, if I’m being honest, but her last album, 2020’s Manic , really caught me. Unlike the title, that album seems very refined and ended up really intriguing me to see if Halsey was going to progress as an artist. Right as this album was announced, though, I felt that there was something new happening. I mean, that’s with most albums, but this was special. Before any other details came out about this album, it was revealed that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from Nine Inch Nails would be producing the entire album. Then, the title got revealed to be If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power , and with that, I was pretty excited about this. There’s even an IMAX short film, but I personally haven’t seen it yet. There really weren’t any expectations for this since there weren’t any singles released before it,...

Look, these guys are cool, but calling them the King Crimson of our time is a little much, isn’t it? If I’m being totally honest, I’ve never gotten the hype around black midi. If you don’t know, black midi is a part of this new wave of British prog-rock like Squid and Black Country, New Road. black midi’s debut album, Schlagenheim , and while I found it to be technically impressive, nothing else was that impressive. Honestly, I forgot about it until their new album, Cavalcade , was announced. That’s a bit of a hot take in the nerdy music world, but after the single “John L” from this project, my excitement grew. They were taking a more jazz-rock style and it was pretty exciting. That’s pretty much all I have to say, so let’s get into Cavalcade . Let’s get some positives out of the way first. I absolutely adored the closing track “Ascending Forth” mainly because of how ambitious it was. It’s definitely my favorite track and a surprisingly great ballad. “Diamond Stuff” was pretty cool to...

There are sadly no sea creatures involved in this album :( Call me crazy, but this post-punk craze in 2021 has been a tiny bit underwhelming. Bands like Idles and Shame have had decent records in the past few months, but what really picked up the scene for me was Black Country, New Road’s debut record For the first time . That album is one of my favorites of the year so far and has really inspired me to dive into the post-punk scene. When I had entered this scene, I had heard rumbles of a relatively new band, Squid. They had dropped a few singles from this album, Bright Green Field , and I decided to intentionally avoid them, just like I did with For the first time . Simply put, I had to give this a few extra listens before I sat down and wrote this out. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Let me tell you. Going in without listening or even knowing the singles from this album was a pretty great decision. God, this album is catchy as fuck. My favorite track off this was “Narrator...

The crayons on the cover are just not that pleasing to me, just saying. You remember when the disco revival was going down last year? Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, Kylie Minogue, and Katy Perry were all getting in on that trend. In all of that whirlwind was an album that completely slipped under my radar: Róisín Murphy’s Róisín Machine . I only heard it earlier this year, and while I thought it was good, I just simply enjoyed Dua Lipa’s album better. Now, when I had heard that there was a reinvention of this album coming out this year, I had to see what was going down. Crooked Machine is a remixed version of Róisín Machine , and instead of a futuristic new take on disco, her frequent collaborator Richard Barratt decided to move into a completely different direction: house. Specifically, deep house. It’s very unexpected, but something that caught my eye enough to write about it. Who knows, this review will most likely flop, but I hope it doesn’t. Let’s get into Crooked Machine . As stated, Cr...

AUTHOR’S NOTE: It’s an honor to be in the early review circuit of legendary French metal outfit Gojira’s first new record since 2016, Fortitude . I’d like to extend a very special thank you to Gojira and the people over at Roadrunner Records for the opportunity to listen to such an anticipated album as this before it drops this Friday. Gojira has been evolving ever since their debut album back in 2001, Terra Incognita . For each album since then, they’ve dabbled in new sounds and their experimentalist approach to metal has been quite progressive and forward-thinking in recent years. For their first album in five years, Fortitude , they lean into the more groove metal side of things rather than death metal or sludge metal. I’ve been pretty excited to get my ears onto this album, and I’m so glad I can finally speak about it. Let’s get into it. I’m just gonna say right out of the gate that Fortitude is Gojira’s most diverse album yet. I’m not sure how the fan reactions are going to be, b...