By Sam Tornow, General Manager [QUESTION EVERYTHING, INC.; 2017] Rating: 7.5/10 Key Tracks: “GUMMY”, “SWAMP”, “TOKYO” Strip away the exterior context from SATURATION II and you are left with 48 minutes of diverse beats, a stacked (yet relatively unknown) cast of characters and a glimpse into a myriad of themes including blackness, queerness and the…
Tag: Sam Tornow
Nelsonville Music Festival: Four Days With Friends
By Sam Tornow, General Manager Locality is the core ingredient in the cocktail that is Nelsonville Music Festival. It’s the scent that is initially tough to distinguish, although easy to identify once pointed out. Goers treated each like neighbors because many of them are. The gorgeous green foothills that backdrop any and every direction you…
Album Review: Arca – Arca
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [XL; 2017] Rating: 8.5/10 Key Tracks: “Anoche,” “Reverie,” “Fugaces” Venezuelan-born Alejandro Ghersi has rightfully self-titled his latest album, Arca. Known for convoluted, otherworldly tracks which are inconceivably born out of the experimentation of everyday sounds, Ghersi was never one to conceal emotions. The warped atmosphere of his 2015 masterpiece, Mutant,…
Album Review: Pharmakon – Contact
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [Sacred Bones; 2017] Rating: 8.5/10 Key Tracks: “Nakedness of Need,” “Sleepwalking Form,” “No Natural Order” Pharmakon’s third release, Contact, is disgusting. It’s the gunk under your fingernails; the rotting corpse on the urban streetside; the smell of vomit on the bathroom floor; the most deviant side of society; the mini…
Album Review: Teengirl Fantasy – 8AM
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [Planet Mu; 2017] Rating: 6.5/10 Key Tracks: “Crash Soft”, “Star-rise”, “Wet Eyes and Exhilaration” The music of the night swivels into the ears of 100+ clubgoers, which they are unaware of; the cerebral beats mutate into continuous swells in their minds, peaking at irregular intervals, lacking any percussive bangs to…
Album Review: Mount Eerie – A Crow Looked at Me
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [P.W. Elverum & Sun; 2017] Rating: 9/10 Key Tracks: “Real Death,” Seaweed,” “Swims,” “Crow” “Death is real / Someone’s there and then they’re not / And it’s not for singing about / It’s not for making into art,” Phil Elverum gently coos into a mic that is situated in the…
Album Review: Charli XCX – Number 1 Angel
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [Asylum; 2017] Rating: 5.5/10 Key Tracks: “Dreamer,” “3 AM,” “Roll With Me” Charli XCX has become synonymous with wealth. Her high-octane tracks and guest appearances preach the grandeur of fast cars, diamonds, Tokyo skylines and most of all, status. This lofty image fits cleanly alongside raved producer SOPHIE on the singer’s…
Album Review: Nnamdi Ogbonnaya – DROOL
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [Father/Daughter; 2017] Rating: 8/10 Key Tracks: “Cindy OsO,” “HWT // nO nEeD,” “drOOl//drink that” Aristotle’s maxim “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” comes to mind when thinking about Nnamdi Ogbonnaya and his latest release, DROOL. The Chicago-based artist has put on a number of different masks,…
Album Review: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Flying Microtonal Banana
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [Flightless; 2017] Rating: 6/10 Key Tracks: “Melting”, “Open Water” There’s no getting around it: Aussie psych-rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have committed to five full-length releases in 2017 and it has the music community talking in hushed tones. For optimistic fans of Giz and their Lizard Lord frontman Stu…
Album Review: The Courtneys – The Courtneys II
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [Flying Nun; 2017] Rating: 7/10 Key Tracks: “Silver Velvet”, “Lost Boys”, “Frankie” The Courtneys are not asking much of the listener. Their candy-coated brand of slacker rock is easily digestible and can slip into the background of a light-hearted conversation. The Canadian-trio is not attempting to make the latest mind-boggling,…
Album Review: Meatbodies – Alice
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [In The Red; 2017] Rating 5.5/10 Key Tracks: “Alice”, “Touchless” Alice is a highly flawed album. At face value, the artwork mimics the worst kind of V A P O R W A V E A E S T H E T I C, the album title is one that…
Album Review: Aquaserge – Laisse ça être
By Sam Tornow, Editorial Director [Crammed Discs; 2016] Rating: 8.5/10 Key Tracks: “Tintin on est bien mon loulou”, “Si loin, si proche”, “Tour du monde” It’s easy to be weird: Learn to play the ocarina, memorize every line of the Mr. Bean saga, wear a fedora for Christ’s sake. To have Zappa-esque, “cool” weirdness is…
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