Top Artists this Week (see more)

9 Mar 2008 – 16 Mar 2008

1		MF DOOM
2		J Dilla aka jay dee
3		The Go! Team
4		Cee-Lo
4		Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins
4		wale
7		Lupe Fiasco
7		Burial
9		Jay Dee
10		Justice

Last week's purchases/pickups: ...and all the pieces matter, Five Years of Music from The Wire and

Surgelator Action

Chris Joss

Joss’s crisp and clean songs have a throwback feel and could easily be mistaken for some loungin’ oldies but goodies from the ‘60s and ‘70s, but his technical trickery keeps him firmly in the future. He seems to be inventing new hybrids by sampling different vocal textures and playing with tempos and styles that are supposed to be disparate. “Atomic Tape,” for example, melds rockabilly guitar warbles, hip-hop scratches, sitar riffs and samples of sneering young voices. And it all seems to make sense.

- Chris Joss, 'Teraphonic Overdubs', Metromix Chicago, 02.11.08

Last.fm recommended (we're going to go back a couple weeks since I missed last week): Camera Obscura, The Noisettes, Lil' Mo, Mick Boogie & Little Brother, Menomena, and

Black Mags

Cool Kids

From their forthcoming Totally Flossed Out, "Black Mags" starts with a deep, slowed-down voice like the one on another album track, "Gold and Pagers" (which itself opens like Fabolous' "Diamonds"). Here the Cool Kids rap laconically about their bicycle, managing to tie in "MacGyver" and further the Pack comparison with a shout-out to Nike. As usual, the beats are laid-back and streamlined, the bass burbling.

- Pitchfork Forkcast, Pitchfork, 05.17.07

Song of the Week:

D-D-D-Dance

Micatone

or maybe it was:

D.A.N.C.E.

Justice

Whatever it was, we danced it out.
 

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Archangel

Burial

if it's the reclusive life that Burial seeks, he might just be his own worst enemy, because his new album, Untrue, bests Burial's fans' wildest hopes for the followup. Burial was a worthy, sometimes thrilling record-- an impressive debut-- but it sometimes lost focus, particularly when it attempted to carve out something closer to "proper," clubwise dubstep. But Untrue maintains the style and the vibe of the first album and yet does it better. It's a deeper album-- richer, more complex, more enveloping. The irony is that almost nothing has changed. Burial still makes his beats (at least, so he claims) with relatively lo-fi audio editing software, eschewing the comfort of sequencers and MIDI clocks. His string sounds, which on Burial let many a critic to call his music "cinematic," sound as unabashedly canned as they did last time, and his manipulated vocals-- warped, time-stretched, pitch-corrected-- are just as unabashedly emotive.

-Pitchfork Record Review (8.4/10), 11.13.07

I've only had this album for a week so I'm not ready to call it "Album of the Year" but it just might be. It's haunted me since the day I bought it (8.99 in the Amazon mp3 store, also available on eMusic) and I find my mind constantly returning to its complicated rhythms. Right now, it falls as #3 on my 2007 album chart.

It's just that good. When listening to this track, I want to sing along. I randomly break out in dance. I head nod. I listen intently. I listen casually. I listen all the time.

I haven't sat with the album enough to form a compelling review and maybe I'll get to that later. For now, I just want you to enjoy as I am.

Ghost Hardware

Burial

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