It was only six months ago when Coldplay released their album Viva la Vida, and the villagers rejoiced. So much so that Chris Martin realised that he could make more money by releasing a couple remixes from Viva la Vaida plus some tracks that weren’t good enough for the album and charge full price for them. (Disclaimer: May not have happened)

To me, Viva la Vida was a mild disappointment. There wasn’t any tracks that were built aroun epic riffs in the likings of Clocks or Talk, and the more down to earth sounds weren’t as pleasing as the space vibes that I got from X&Y. Never the less people seemed to like it, and even I awarded it as one of the top 10 albums of 2008. Prospekt’s march is like Viva la Vida 1.3, and if you’re going to buy it you’ll most likely already have Viva la Vida so I can’t really describe it without telling you what you already know, so I’ll just give you a brief introduction to the highs and lows of the EP.

It starts nicely with Life in Technicolor II. Life in technicolor (1) was one of my favorites from la Vida, but it was too short and was only an instrumental. The sequel fixes these problems and is a strong opening for the EP.

Then comes Postcards from far away. It lasts less than a minute and has only piano in it. Nice playing, granted, but pointless.

When Rainy day starts I don’t know what to think. The beginning is so strange, I don’t know how I should feel about it. Then after the middle of the song you’ll see the big picture, and it’s a good song, but november feels like the wrong season for songs like this.

Glass of water could be a solid track, but it kinda dies after the chorus so it’s one of those songs that you wish didn’t have verses. Also, after about a minute it feels like the song starts dragging and you’ll just wish it was over.

Lost+ features Jay-Z, and oh boy is it a fail. Jay-Z’s verse is like underwear on your head; totally misplaced, but surely there are people think it’s cool. It feels glued on and provides nothing to the song, so I have to wonder why is it be there in the first place? Original lost was excellent and so is lost+, when Jay isn’t around but without him it’s just lost. Pontless remix that never should’ve been released. Definately the weakest song off the EP.

Lovers in Japan (Osaka sun mix) is also a remix. Although I couldn’t tell if I didn’t know it already. I guess the Osaka sun mix part just means that reign of love was removed (tell me if you know better)

So what’s my final verdict? As an own release, it’s lacking, but if you haven’t yet bought Viva la vida I would advise you to buy the new re-release that also has Prospekt’s march in it. Also if you can get it for a reasonable price it’s a nice little release, but right now they’re selling it for more than Colplay’s previous albums cost, so it’s way too much.

The Real is kinda like South Park, stupid funny but with a purpose.
Check out more of The Real.

Madlib: (see also) Madvillain: Young Jazz Rebels: Loop Digga: Quasimoto: Surpreme Team: Yesterdays New Quintet: Yesterdays Universe: The Last Electro Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble: Kamala Walker & The Soul Tribe: Monk Hughes & The Outer Realm: The Eddie Prince Fusion Band: Joe McDuphrey Experience: Otis Jackson Trio: The Jahari Massamba Unit: Jaylib: Lootpack: DJ Rels: Sound Directions: Jackson Conti: The Jazzistics: Suntouch: Malik Flavors: Ahmad Miller: Beat Konducta: And________

Available in Black, White and Silver.
Copped.

Brent Rollins has designed for Stussy, Nike, and is a member of the Ego Trip family. He also designed the famous Black Star albumcover among other cool stuff.

Buy over @ Stones Throw [dotcom].

Newly released double-video from Illa J’s new album Yancey Boys.

It’s dope.

Buy Yancey Boys, that is, if you haven’t already.

I wish everyone used Vimeo instead of YouTube, much better video quality..

Well here we go again, another album from Mr. West which I am sure is set to shift a few copies in stores all over the world. He certainly made his intentions clear with this album, he wanted to make something he felt he needed to make, and basically didn’t care what people thought about it, however people are going to think things about it, and Kanye will just have to accept that. As far as I know it’s an album to deal with the loss of his mother Dr. Donda West, God rest her soul, and the break up with what’s her face, Alexis. Unfortunately it seems this emotionally driven album has had some compromise with, well what’s an easy way to put this, ummm, good music! Go back 4 or 5 years and you would find Kanye singing soulfully on Spaceship, and doing it really well to make a brilliant track, but that was without autotuner (or whatever it’s called), jump back forward to the present day and you hear him singing an entire album (yes, the whole thing) in autotuner (I know, I can’t believe it either) and overall, not doing it that well.

One of the main criticisms of Kanye’s last album (Graduation) was the amount of tracks, only 14. Well there’s only 12 on this album, which I’m sure a few people wont be too happy about, I suppose you could look at it from a good point of view too, less singing. There are glimpses of Kanye’s real talent on 808’s, only glimpses, and as soon as you think you’ve heard something good Kanye will just shoot you down with one of many really really REALLY bad songs. One positive thing is that this sounds better than the early recordings that leaked months before release, that’s mainly due to Kanye listening to his fans opinions on how bad some of his singing was, and he apparently re-recorded everything, and changed a few beats aswell. The whole thing was originally completed in just a few weeks, that really doesn’t impress me what so ever, and it really shows when you hear some effortless and poor singing from Kanye, it’s just as if he’s not even bothering to try. I refuse to comment on the addition of Jeezy and Weezy, *Stelf sighs*.

There are a few good beats on this, good meaning they wouldn’t sound bad if you took away the singing, mainly Paranoid and Welcome To Heartbreak. However the rest are poor at best, with primitive drums that lack inspiration and have countless stupid sound effects that just ruin any sort of creative direction Kanye would have been even possibly been attempting to try and pull off. I must say this album does disappoint me, I know I wasn’t expecting much from it, but part of me expected to be blown away by some amazing display of raw emotion fused with some new age soulful beats, but I’m just left with a mainstream album that lacks a lot of things, Kanye seemingly try to seek approval from a new genre, as this certainly is not hip hop. It’s some sort of depressing pop genre that I would rather not deal with if I had the choice.

To try and sum up this review then, 808’s & Heartbreak is everything I imagined it to be, not much. Maybe if Kanye we’re to bring in some better featuring artists, sort out his bloody vocals, sort out his bloody beats, sort out his bloody lyrics, sort out that bloody crappy sounding guitar that plays behind his singing, and lose the bloody autotuner then we could have had a better album, but I guess we’ll see how that venture goes come July 09 (or whenever it is he’s releasing this next “RAP” album).

Favourite track: Welcome To Heartbreak

I could have gone into a lot more detail of the things that I don’t like about this album, but I thought I would might get bored after a while. Also just a little sympathy shoutout to all those Kanye fans from the good old days who have force fed themselves this album until they were convinced it was good *cough*marty*cough*.

Serious Kanye is serious.

Happy Birthday Pål (pronounced: “Paul”). Read more about Pål here…

Several extraordinary people share Pål’s birthday, including; Johann Sebastian Bach’s son Wilhelm Friedemann, Steve Van Zandt (the actor of Silvio Dante in The Sopranos, HOW FUCKING BADASS!), Jamie Lee Curtis & J. Holiday.

I can’t believe he was born on the same day as Sil without me knowing, I fucking love The Sopranos.

This is also the day of the assassination of JFK… R.I.P, but I still can’t believe how awesome the fact is that Pål shares birthdays with Sil.

I leave you with some shit I found. BOOM.

Now that you’ve had almost three weeks to listen to both, I have to ask (since i’m suffering from a serious writers block, that’s also why I’m inventing stupid shit like Unrelated Dialogues and now Monthly Duels) which album was better? Both albums strong, but depending on your taste, the diversity of the two albums bounds you to like one more than the other.

so..

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…That image looked a lot funnier in my mind.

What the hell ever happened to a review of this thing? Unbelievable..

Q-tips last solo album was out nearly a decade ago, not to speak of a long time with A tribe called quest, the amazing part is though, that this has a rookie feel to it. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, not at all. It just doesn’t sound like a hip hop veteran put together an album, it’s a fresh contemporary breeze in other words.

In contradiction to some people, I pretty much love this joint. One of my fave albums of this yerrro.

Q-Tips flow gets old, it really does in this album. But if you like/love classic Tribe, you’ll very likely fall feet in the air in love with this too. And how can you not love an album with a pop-art cover, but the music isn’t whack?

Don’t feel like reviewing much now, and this wasn’t really a review I’ll just name my favorite songs cus theres a lot of them:
Johnny is dead, Won’t trade, Gettin up, Official, You, WeFight/WeLove, ManWomanBoogie, Move, Dance on Glass, Life is Better
That was all of them except three that’ll probably grow on me eventually. Buy now if you havent, but you have so what is there to remind you of?
Oh yea…

MINUTE AFTER MIDNIGHT DEC 16

I know, I know. WTF, Right? I can understand the Emma Salokoski Ensemble part. Barely. But what does ‘Veden alla‘ mean? It means under the water, when translated literally, and it’s my favorite album this year.

Back in the days of 5 years ago the band was called Emma Saloksoki Trio and they only released one EP. Luckily they realized that a singer, a bassist and a guitarist don’t form a very good band, so they decided to pick up a pianist and a drummer. Thus Emma Salokoski Ensemble was born.

Back in the days of 2005 the Ensemble released their debut album called Kaksi mannerta, Two continents. The album was the 4th best selling album in Finland for at least a week and their song Miksi sä meet (a cover version of Por que te vas) was the most played song of one radio station “for a long time”. Veden alla was heavily Brazilian influenced and is usually filed under bossa nova.

I’m a man opposing changes in artist’s or band’s new artistic directions. If you want to do some new kind of music you should just form a new band/use a different name instead of using your existing fan-base to sell more albums. [Magnus goes: "WORD!!"]

Back in the days of last August (now it’s a gimmick) Veden alla was released, but because Emma Salokoski Ensemble isn’t some über mainstream crap they don’t get many radio plays, so I had no idea that, instead of getting a solid bossa nova album, I would get an excellent progressive, Finish folk rock influenced album with a clear Helsinki sound. If the album would’ve been even slightly worse than their previous I would’ve been furious. You got lucky, Emma.

Veden alla has clear direction. It’s very emotionally charged, instruments are acoustic and Emma’s singing is more beautiful than ever, although I’m not sure if this emotion transfers if you can’t understand a word.

The album was Finland’s best selling album for a week or three but still didn’t get any radio time, which just proves that most of people are too stupid to listen to music, so they need to be told what sounds good and is worth their 3,5 minutes plus commercials.

Favorite tracks: Veden alla, Kehtolaulu (lullaby), Ja sun äänesi (and your voice), Tiistaieuforiaa (tuesday euphoria)

88-Keys, Kanye West’s best friend and a relatively unknown figure in hip-hop has (finally?) released his debut album The Death of Adam. The Harlem based producer/rapper has made songs for Black Star, The Pharcyde, Macy Gray and Consequence, and ever since he dropped the free(!) mixtape Adam’s Case Files in june, I have been looking forward to this album.

so uhm

Over to the review:

I would not call this album directly incredible, but there are quite a few light-spots in this album and it has a funny concept. Oh yes, “the concept?” you may ask. Well, the album follow the investigation of the death of a guy named Adam and as 88 said himself: “The entire album is about the power of the punani, if you will. It follows the story line of my man Adam who passed away and basically how he died.”

The songs on the album have all something to do with the story, and with titles like Morning Wood, and M.I.L.F., it will at least catch some people’s attention. The production is tight, and with guest performers, ranging from alternative rock-group Shitake Monkey (even though I mention them, does NOT mean that I like them) to Redman, this album is fun-filled and something different from all the other stuff coming out today. But.. like every other album, this one has flaws to it. Like The Friends Zone (with Shitake Monkey) sounds like some crazy-ass T-Pain Shit gone wrong..

The Album is executively produced by good-Kanye West, not the bad one, and contains a little bit of the soul-y feeling from the College Dropout days. Good-Kanye also makes an ok appearance on the single Stay Up (Viagra), which was recorded ages ago.

This is a good, innovative and uncompromising (I mean, the album artwork tells that much right?)) album for people who need some jolly and rollicking music in their life, and for all those who miss the old College Dropout feeling.

Buy here.

Favorite songs: M.I.LF., The Burning Bush, Morning Wood, Handcuff’Em