MORBIDMINDZ

Somewhere in the 10 years between Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus and his previous solo record, I'll Sleep When You're Dead, El-P's production style snapped its leash. Not like it was all that tightly restricted in the first place-- his late-90s/early-00s work knocked with dread but included both hardcore hip-hop breaks and glitchy squalls. Still, his work's gotten to the point where it can take a longtime fan about 10 seconds to recognize one of his new beats, and anothe

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs [2010]

Published on 2010-08-14 07:50:51

Arcade Fire never aim for anything less than grand statements. That quality has played a huge role in making them very, very popular; it's also their greatest weakness. Funeral was wracked with agony and grief, but what made it one of the transcendent records of the 2000s was that it avoided easy answers. It proposed that the fight of our lives is just that, a fight, but a winnable one. But when they turned that same all-or-nothing intensity outward on Neon Bible, otherwise propulsive and elegan

Skream - Outside the Box [2010]

Published on 2010-08-14 07:33:22

If you're Ollie Jones, a musician who's made his pseudonym on pushing an underground dance sound further into the mainstream without compromising its strengths, what do you do when it's time for a straight-up pop move? Maybe you drop a free mixtape or two (like his Freeizm releases) that stick to the formula that made you a dubstep champion, with the side effect that if the Big Album flops the longtime diehards will still have something to retreat to. Maybe you look back to a pre

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