LATE NIGHT. REVIEWS. FILM. MUSIC. TV.
Blood Orange treads the same scattered, misty, non-linear paths as To Pimp A Butterfly-era Kendrick Lamar or latter-day D’Angelo on Negro Swan. Tracks lean and dart at weird angles. Sometimes it feels vexing and distant and you wish the focus narrowed. But most of the time, it’s beautiful kaleidoscopic chaos. It’s an album that feels refreshingly ambitious and unrestrained.
There’s a line on Slime Language that sums up Young Thug’s appeal better than any music nerd essay ever could. On the heavenly “Oh Yeah”, the track floats like a cloud while Thugga buries deep in his verse, his voice rising slightly higher with each bar. And then he squeals, somehow both elegantly and desperately, “send me nudes when I’m on the rooooad”. It’s absurd, douchy, slightly embarrassing and weirdly, weirdly romantic. If you hated him before, you’ll still hate him. But if you love the rapper who once said he would change his name to ‘SEX’, you get a bunch of these gloriously oddball moments.
— 01 Aug 2018 —
Written by Charlie Harver
Every now and then, a new artist emerges from seemingly nowhere, feeling completely disconnected from everything else hovering around the current sonic landscape. So goes Channel Tres, former songwriter for the likes of Duckworth and Kehlani. The difference here is rarely has an artist arrived so fully-formed. After his cult-hit ‘Controller’, Tres drops his self-produced EP. It’s glorious summertime driving music, but it also announces an artist with an uncommonly magnetic confidence. You’ve only just discovered him, but he knows he’s been good for a while.
After their surprising 2015 breakthrough album Ego Death, The Internet are suddenly the darlings of the indie music world. Their lead singer, Sydney “Syd” Bennett, has become a genuine star. Their bass player is about to follow suit. The follow-up in the wake of this success is Hive Mind, an album that tries to capture that same creamy fusion of jazz, hip-hop and R&B from their breakthrough. The result shows a band perfecting its craft while offering some true daringly artistic promise. It will make you want them to unshackle the chains on their next one.
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL 