I started @noyokono's Music Writer Exercise (MWE) last year, but didn't get to finish it because reasons. So, I'm going to try again.
Every day this February, I'm going to listen to an album I haven't heard yet and write a tweet about it on this thread. Wish me luck.
@noyokono 1. The opening to Blue Lab Beats' "Voyage" is the same key as Daft Punk's "Voyager" and conjures the same feeling of shuttling into outer space. But @Sampa_The_Great's flow jolts you awake, with the rest of the album slowly cradling you back down to earth. open.spotify.com/album/7HJsSTwN…
@noyokono @Sampa_The_Great 2. (day late) Sinead Harnett's "Lessons in Love," like many good albums, makes its core subject matter clear within the first minute. But then the rest of the album feels almost *too* straightforward given its focus on love, a highly mysterious topic. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/17MS1oIT…
@noyokono @Sampa_The_Great 3. I tried to listen to Sudan Archives' "Athena" in the background while working, and failed; the spellbinding, mythical strings, beats and vocals commanded my full and immediate attention. Aching for more R&B that sounds and feels this symphonic. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/4HOPqliD…
4. “1000 gecs” by 100 gecs. AKA if Metric, Crystal Castles and Anamanaguchi had a musical baby that was processed through a GarageBand overdrive filter and then tasked with making the soundtrack to a horror movie set entirely in an amusement park. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/2uhB1Kiv…
5. (day late) Many Nordic jazz groups seem to have echoes of math-rock in them—their rhythms angular, rather than swinging, but not in a bad way. Jaga Jazzist's "One-Armed Bandit" is a prime example; weirdly, I also hear a strain of Philip Glass here. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/6Gk0nFXM…
6. Baby Rose's impassioned COLORS performance of "All To Myself" left me awash in so many emotions. Her album "To Myself" rounds out that song nicely with smoother R&B/soul bops, accentuated by her unmistakable voice that is at once rich & assertive. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/07PqTotv…
7. (2 days late) Dominic Fike is the same age as me, which makes the genre-hopping DFAMD so interesting because it somehow brings me straight back to the exact angsty emotions I felt at age 13—like a sense of nostalgia for a time I don’t really miss. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/05jbNkYo…
8. (1 day late) The opening tracks of Kikagaku Moyo's "Forest of Lost Children" seem sluggish, but then "Smoke and Mirrors" shuttles you into several minutes of hypnotic, shapeshifting grooves that feel, weirdly, like meditating on a rollercoaster. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/6wIs5eVE…
9. !!! Sasami's self-titled album is *exactly* the kind of music I've been craving lately—delicate but pithy stories told against a backdrop of edgy rhythms, hooks and harmonies slithering in parallel, its haziness unfamiliar but nonetheless cradling. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/5dJhE07J…
10. SiR's "Chasing Summer" feels like when I heard Snoh Aalegra's "-Ugh, those feels again" for the first time—like taking a long, brooding bath with all the right scented ingredients, but eventually feeling the urge to pull yourself out of the water. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/5zUDvKAy…
11. Streamed JPEGMAFIA's "All My Heroes Are Cornballs" sitting by a washing machine on high spin—which felt like going 100MPH in a convertible with the top down, each glitchy sample a Mario Kart-like obstacle flying from out of nowhere. 'Twas awesome. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/5ilsl5R2…
12. I'm so embarrassingly late to ROSALÍA's "El Mal Querer," which is a revelation in combining medieval + modern and local + universal storytelling in a singular journey, with lush strings and an unmistakable voice I'll be thinking about for a while. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/355bjCHz…
13. Also super late to this one: Prateek Kuhad's name was on the tip of everyone's tongues when I was in Mumbai last summer, and now I understand why. His songwriting in "In Tokens & Charms" is somehow both airy and extremely airtight—no note wasted. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/1no8c4PY…
14. TEK.LUN's "Dweeb" is a cinematic, lopsided beat tape that will take you around the world and travel back *and* forward in time, all in a matter of around half an hour. It's also one of the few albums I've heard that sounds just like its album art. #MWE open.spotify.com/album/2KmCOIqc…
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