Matteo Grilli

Underrated french touch gem. slightly more hip hop funk in vibes than the usual french house records of the era with lots of samples and scratching. Another album and band that time forgot. Pick it up if you see it in the bargain bin.

a collection of great songs, amazing performances and very strong writing. At times reminded me of Sade which is something that I have never thought of any other artist, pretty remarkable.

Great. Strong melodies, beautiful voice, powerful sound. The production is immaculate, every sound comes through crystal clear and earth shattering deep. Mabe's cello rips sound like somebody stabbing you with a knife.

smooth playing, great takes, cool cover art.

21 years old to the day, still a stone cold classic.

Their blend of classic golden age rap and r&b feels perfectly tailored for my taste so maybe I’m not super objective about it but to me this sounds genuinely incredible. Their previous collaborations were already good but this is more refined. The production is elegant and expansive and Paak lets it shine by picking his spots perfectly.

great showcase of Dilla’s overall musical talent and also a blueprint for every beatmaker album that followed. Classic.

I believe it takes a good artisan to make something in the style of somebody else and get very close to it, but it takes a great one to go beyond that and turn all your influences into something new and fresh.

Kaytranada seems to be able to pull ideas and inspiration from about every corner of the last 50 years of r&b and still push it way forward into the future.

Masterful album, covering an expansive territory from jazz to deep ambient synth but still painting a cohesive picture. Love pretty much everything about this from the great cover art to the beautiful harp tones throughout.

il gruppo di improvvisazione nuova consonanza is kind of an acquired taste, Morricone, Micalizzi and their friends scratched their darmstadt school itch when playing in this band and the results are slightly too avant-garde and atonal for a pleb like me, but and there's a big but, the title track here has some of the greatest breakbeat action ever committed to magnetic tape, and the rest of the record has plenty of weird percussion sounds so for sample heads this is still worth owning on vinyl.

Personally I’m more fond of Aphex Twin’s more experimental and ambient releases but the tracks in this ep are eternal, undeniable bangers.

Also it's very interesting to listen to the extended version re-release which features both remastered versions and alternate takes restored from original dats and cassette tapes from the early 90s, a perfect time capsule of the thick, hazy sound from that era

Vince Staples is my favorite rapper these days, and personally I think this record is better than Ramona Park Broke My Heart but not as good as his self titled album from 2021, which is a take that seems to be controversial with everybody. There's something deeply personal about Vince Staples's flows and storytelling and that record will be always enmeshed with my own memories from that period of time and I will defend it forever.

The tone here is definitely darker, more moody and Vince's voice seems to come from further back, as if he's at the back of your mind narrating your intrusive thoughts.

The music soars in places with great playing and soulful sounds while at times… More

Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina only worked together on one record, this one, and it's a concept album dedicated to the unfinished adventure novel 'Le Mont Analogue' by Rene Daumal. This has already the making of a legendary, forgotten classic, and the music doesn't disappoint, at all.

Long ambient washes, motifs coming in and out of focus from the haze, hypnotic harp sequences, vocal textures, piano licks and warm synth tones make up an incredible collage of sounds painting a mesmerizing but slightly unnerving picture. It really feels like a long climb up a mysterious mountain while reality slowly warps and bends in strange ways.

Legendary producer Marta Salogni starts her day by listening to an album all the way… More

at some point in the last few years a switch has flipped and music based on synths went from being used to describe the future to being synonymous with nostalgia and the past.

This record is a great way to get reminded of how the weird sounds of synths were used to evoke alien landscapes, weird machines and fast moving technology. Geesin is a master at work.

Very interesting bit of library music, originally released on the Colorsound label. Lots of high energy tracks, ranging from funk and rhythm and blues to more manic, weird psych jazzy tension numbers.

A really cool blend of different textures and colors. Originally intended to be used alongside scenes of factory work and assembly lines the music here feels not so much as high tech and clean but rather frantic and quite alienating.

Great album and great piece of social commentary as well.

this album feels like a more cohesive and atmospheric trip rather than a collection of outtakes and unused bits from Mike Dean's superstar collaborations. Sonically rich with amazing classic analog synth tones, hypnotic vocoder lines and heavily effected saxophone riffs.

Masterful use of sparse melodic elements, flutes, clarinet, electric piano mixed with all kinds of percussion sounds evoke feelings of mystery and tension throughout.

Beautifully recorded, hypnotic and evocative.

Sometimes I think it's kind of annoying that an ever growing chunk of all the stuff that gets released on vinyl today is reissues but then again I get to buy a pristine, perfect sounding copy of an album from 1967 that's still one of the best ever recorded and plays smoothly and perfectly from beginning to end.

warm, soothing, beautiful and melancholic, evoking a powerful feeling of nostalgia.

impossibly soft songs, cinematic jazz, soothing crooner poetry, minimalist production.

A lot to like here.

Solid album, a good summation of Justice's career. Sure soundwise this might not punch as hard as their first releases but I feel like the whole culture has moved on from that era and nothing sounds as abrasive anymore, which I ultimately subjectively prefer (but that's like my opinion man)

I generally think it's very hard to have a long career on the bleeding edge of cool when the thing that's 'in' changes every other year, Justice have survived with a bit of cunning conceding something to pop music, but they definitely have a knack for writing catchy and weird tunes, and their choice of collaborators with indie cred like Tame Impala, Thundercat and Connan Mockasin ensures they still get… More

Surround was commissioned by Misawa Homes Institute of Research and Development as a set of soundscapes for the company’s prefabricated houses, I didn't know this before stumbling into this album but in retrospect it makes a lot of sense.

Yoshimura approaches the task with a very delicate touch and you can easily get lost between the tracks of this album for hours.

I am in love with the sounds used throughout, a blend of the organic and synthetic with a soft, tender quality.

This record is definitely too cool for me. A series of detailed and rich jazz covers of very interesting tracks. It feels like a lot of thought went into this work, from the players involved to the mixing to the sequencing of the tracks. The beginning is very atmospheric and deep and then slowly the tempo picks up until we get to the cover of Roni Size's Brown Paper Bag and then the Flying Lotus track Do The Astral Plane which are pure dancefloor bangers.

was reminded of this because the song "Street Fighter Mas" is used in the opening credits of the apple tv show "Sugar".

An excellent album that expertly weaves strong solo performances from Kamasi and a lot of other strong players into a tapestry of expansive orchestral tones. Really high level stuff.

"Street Fighter Mas" is probably one of the most millenial-coded artistic achievements. A song that blends Jazz, Funk, Hip Hop and a cinematic theme which seems lifted straight out of Morricone dedicated to a beloved early nineties capcom fighting game. There's probably some parallels in the finger dexterity and improvisation skills needed to play high level Street Fighter that Jazz musicians can appreciate and respect. Textbook case of Game… More

Some of my favorite sounding tracks ever committed to tape. Production wise this is probably my personal best sounding album of the last few years, definitely one to reference when recording and mixing. Vintage warm tones to die for, bass, drums, guitars and keys, all expertly played and recorded.

A record so good that made me go and check out all the music of the featured artists as well, Parthenope, Enny, Rosie Lowe, all great stuff.

Opening track Summer Breeze is a personal standout.

I wish I could see these boys play live.

one of my favorite ambient records of the last few years, very inspired work, organic textures from saxophone, harmonium and sitar mixed perfectly with deep synth tones and soundscapes. Haunting, melancholic compositions that would make a perfect soundtrack for a Tarkovsky film.

Davachi and Kalma are from different generations and backgrounds and found themselves perfectly half way to record this in a single day, the vibes are immaculate but I wish they had recorded and worked together more!

I've been bumping into John Tejada's music since forever. The first time was maybe 20 years ago when I visited the local dj only record store in my hometown, I was buying IDM, illbient and weird beats cds, everybody else was tracking the latest club music, and Tejada had been suggested to me by the owner, something about his synth sounds was resonating with me, it felt like elegant stuff compared to other stuff they were blasting.

But now it's the time I finally and properly get into his music, and this collaboration with Reggie Watts out on Brainfeeder is the perfect jumping point for me.

The grooves are extremely cool, the bass synth deep and punchy, the songs catchy… More

Probably my favorite record by Khruangbin, feels slightly more intimate and stripped back. There's loads of different elements and influences, blended together really well. I really love the production, the vintage warm tone of the bass, the crispy drums, the guitar, everything is to die for.

Favorite track: Todavia Viva

I just love this record so much, I don't really have a lot to say. I remember when it came out many people in my 'bubble' seemed disappointed by it, probably expected something else but I honestly have been completely floored by the first listen. It's a small world that I love to inhabit. It's an incredibly well crafted record that has attention for the smallest details and never loses sight of the bigger picture.

A perfect album.

great little piece of italian library music by Giuliano Sorgini. Heavy funk stylings with brass, guitar and woodwinds over a tight rhythm section. Drums sound deep and heavy, everything else sounds pristine. Perfect collection of old school sampling material.

*originally released in 1980

Nice collection of mostly instrumental music by Johnny Jewel, ranging in tone from soft and elegiac to dark and brooding. Not a huge fan of the sequencing of the tracks and it feels more like a collection of tracks than a proper flowing and cohesive album but there's a lot of good tracks here