bit late...



cLOUDDEAD

Someone has already described this album perfectly on the Amazon.com user reviews, I'll quote from that review now: This album has a blender solo. If that frightens you, avoid this at all costs. ...it bloody well does too! Probably one of the finest examples of kitchen equipment based solos I've ever heard. Seriously though, this is an astonishing CD from the Anticon crew, specifically Dose One, Why? (more of him later) and Odd Nosdam. It has tracks - but often these will contain several completely unrelated tunes; it has rhymes - but they are more like another layer of ambient texture, the lyrics appear as a stream of consiouness, often the vocals are reversed making the lyrics even more obscure; it has beats, but never too harsh to take away from the gorgeous ambient layers used elsewhere in the songs. Anyway great CD - if you need a quick dirty frame of reference, think Boards of Canada with vocals.



Why? - Oaklandazulasylum

Why? is one of the vocalists in cLOUDDEAD, in some respect this CD is even further away from hip-hop territory than the cLOUDDEAD one - it's more in the realm of the vaguely singer/songwriter world of Fog, maybe due to the use of instrumental samples it could be described as folktronica. Frankly, who cares how it's labelled? It's good, a proper album that needs to be appreciated in one go - and it has some great lyrics, my favourite has got to be "I just found out today, the girl I have a crush on is a lesbian"... Says it all really.



Cex - Being Ridden Instrumentals

This is more like it Rjyan! As much as I like Cex's vocal talents, they are far more suited for live freestyling and I think can detract from his instrumental work. There is some great stuff on this CD, most of the songs are lead by an acoustic guitar riff while various beats, clicks, whizzes and pops fill out the background - I get the impression most of the tracks have been composed on the guitar which gives the whole collection a much more melodic structure to many recent 'electronica' (for want of a better word) albums.



Prefuse 73 - Extinguished

The previous Prefuse 73 CDs I've owned are characterised by a very much cut and paste attitude to sampling, this CD answers the question of what happens when you take this methodolgy to the next level, basically this is the previous Prefuse 73 album and all of the out-takes cut up, re-arrranged. This CD contains 23 tracks spread over about 35 minutes, although essentially the number of tracks is irrelevant, this CD needs to be listened to in one go - I'd go as far as saying it's better than the album it's remixing.