WILL's mix

The Frightnrs escort Daptone into the world of long-playing reggae with both the sweetest and the roughest record of the decade. Crafted under the meticulous eye of black-belt reggae mastermind/producer Victor Axelrod (AKA Ticklah), Nothing More to Say is a rocksteady masterpiece the likes of which has not reared it's head since the golden era of Studio One. However, you'll find no imitation here - none of the faux-jamaican cliches of lesser reggae bands. Like all things Daptone, this record is above all soulful and honest.

HIVE MIND is the new album from THE INTERNET, and is the follow up to 2015's critically acclaimed and Grammy nominated album Ego Death. With this new album, THE INTERNET present enormous growth in their creative chemistry and prove they are a five-person force whose singular talents created one phenomenal whole. The album is written and produced entirely by THE INTERNET - Syd (vocalist/songwriter), Matt Martians (producer), Steve Lacy (guitarist/vocalist/songwriter), Patrick Paige II (songwriter/bassist), and Christopher Smith (songwriter/drummer). And it is with a sense of togetherness - not just for them, but for everyone - that the band chose to highlight as a major theme for Hive Mind. "After making a few songs we realized that we really want to use this album to live by example and promote camaraderie amongst young black people," Syd reveals. "We realized that we're the only band of our kind. And we want to really solidify ourselves as that, as the best." With the chaos of the current world considered, all of THE INTERNET wanted to champion good feelings and the joy of following your heart and passions, in addition to using their own positive relationships and experiences to inspire their community. The band unearthed an even deeper purpose as they collaborated on HIVE MIND. The result is not just one of the greatest records in the band s already phenomenal catalogue, but is easily one of the best albums of 2018, from five amazing people already leaving an indelible mark on pop music.

Stimulator Jones’s music never draws on just one place or time, instead dipping in and out of classic styles from the 1970s and ’80s to the present day. On his debut album Exotic Worlds and Masterful Treasures, his elastic voice and instrumental grooves effortlessly evoke the heady feel of R&B favorites like Rick James, K-Ci & Jo Jo, Aaron Hall and The Gap Band

2005 reissue LP on green vinyl. Jazz influences took their effect on the shortly lived emo band American Football. All through their self-titled 1999 debut album, you can hear jazz rhythm and timing while the instruments trade off solos like they are talking to each other. Yet, blended with true emo lyrics and musical stylings, the jazz flavoring makes for a one-of-a-kind experience. All of it is due to the understated creative genius of drummer and trumpeter Steve Lamos, guitarish and organ player Steve Holmes and guitarist, bassist and vocalist Mike Kinsella. As a band, American Football disolved into the history books almost as soon as their album was released, but its success continues to grow in their absence. Fan requests for vinyl pressings were eventually acted upon, and several early editions sold out almost instantly. The now standard nationwide reissue on green vinyl remains in print.

A person whose words are so potent that they cause the people and beings around them to vibrate is said to have a "silver tongue." It's apt, then, that Mackenzie Scott-who has spent the 2010s making boundary-pushing pop music under her Torres moniker-has chosen to call her fourth album, and first on Merge, just that. Recorded at O'Deer in Brooklyn, New York, Silver Tongue is a full-scale realization of the world Scott has created over Torres' last few albums. Even when singing in more subdued tones, Scott's voice is fervent, her lyrics stirring and unyielding as she draws from both the divine and the everyday

Nick Hakim is a DC-raised and NYC-based singer and multi-instrumentalist whose music experiments with soul, psychedelia, and R&B. He cites artists as diverse as Marvin Gaye, Portishead, Shuggie Otis, Bilal, and My Bloody Valentine as influences. His debut album Green Twins is a lush, ambitiously expansive project recorded over the last three years. Its production layers analog demos with more polished studio recordings, and it features NYC jazz experimentalists Onyx Collective and Jesse & Forever, artists Nick frequently performs with in the close-knit Brooklyn DIY circuit.

Devour marks the fourth full-length record from Margaret Chardiet's project Pharmakon and her most intense output to date. Like her previous albums, Devour comes with a strong concept that is exorcised throughout the five demolishing tracks on the album, using imagery and language of self-cannibalism as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans. Each of the five songs echoes a stage of grief associated with this cyclical chamber of self-destruction and the chaos surrounding us that leads us to devour ourselves in an attempt to balance the agony. The album was recorded by Ben Greenberg (Uniform) and is the first Pharmakon album recorded live in studio. The A and B sides were each recorded as a continuous take with vocals from start to finish, marking a totally new process for the artist that allows the ferocity and immediacy of her live performance to resonate throughout. Devour also explores new sonic territory, with denser electronics, groovier hooks, and moments of her most unhinged vocal deliveries to date. As one of the premiere vanguards of modern industrial and power electronics, Chardiet continuously pushes the genres and everyone involved in them, and with the release of Devour, she has once again changed the game. Artist Statement: "Devour" uses self-cannibalization as allegory for the self-destructive nature of humans; on cellular, individual, societal and species-wide scales. In our cells, our minds, our politics and our species, humans are self-destructing. But this behavior does not happen in a vacuum. It is an instinctive inward response to a world of increasing outward violence, greed, and oppression. Turning these wounds toward ourselves can be seen as an attempt at "balancing feedback", within a never-ending positive feedback loop of cause and effect. With this view, the blame is placed not within the individual, but with the world they must contend with, and a society that is designed to fail them - to keep them gnashing and wailing, inflicted with an all-devouring hunger that inevitably turns in on the self. Those that pit them against each other grin from the sidelines, bellies full. Those who see beyond the veil need to obscure the horrid sight by any means necessary, but respite is always brief - nothing can dampen the glare from behind the veil. This album is dedicated to all who were lost to their own demise, all who have been institutionalized; whether in prison, psychiatric facilities, or drug rehabilitation. It is for all those ostracized by and isolated from a totality which chews them up alive in a self-cannibalizing caste system. Here, where martyrs, slaves, and pharmakos are not eradicated, but simply called by another name. "ABOUT THE SHALLOWNESS OF SANITY"... To be well adjusted in this system is to be oblivious and unfeeling. This is for the rest of us, who understand that chaos, madness, pain and even self destruction are natural and inevitable responses to an unjust and disgusting world of our own making.

Thundercat is set to release his new album It Is What It Is on Brainfeeder Records on April 3, 2020, and shares the first music; 'Black Qualls (featuring Steve Lacy and Steve Arrington). The album, produced by Flying Lotus and Thundercat, features musical contributions from Ty Dolla $ign, Childish Gambino, Lil B, Kamasi Washington, Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington, BADBADNOTGOOD, Louis Cole and Zack Fox. It Is What It Is follows his game-changing third album Drunk (2017). That record completed his transition from virtuoso bassist to bonafide star and cemented his reputation as a unique voice that transcends genre. 'This album is about love, loss, life and the ups and downs that come with that,' Bruner says. 'It's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at different points in life you come across places that you don't necessarily understand' some things just aren't meant to be understood.'

Madvillain: Madlib, MF Doom. Additional personnel includes: Lord Quas, M. E. D. , Wildchild, Viktor Vaughn, Stacy Epps. Two years in the making, and combining two of the best underground hip-hop artists of the early 2000s, this collaboration between MF Doom and Madlib has been appropriately dubbed MADVILLAINY. With both men known for their stunning soundscapes, rhyming skills, and schizophrenic personalities, the duo decided to have Madlib concentrate on the beats and let Doom handle the lyrics. In mixing their comic-book-like personas, Madlib and Doom play to their nearly superhuman strengths; while some other collaborations of this caliber seems forced and lop-sided, there is absolutely no filler here-just undiluted beats and rhymes, best exemplified by the singles "America's Most Blunted" and "All Caps. " Lib's inventive production leans towards the jazzy side of his repertoire, and Doom unleashes outrageous lyrics on par with his solo efforts (and even his work as Zevlove X in his stint with K. M. D. ). Never flashy or glamorous, MADVILLAINY is served straight up, the way hip-hop was meant to be.