Frampton & Pope

Woman, if their next two albums are as good as Galaxies Like Grains of Sand, Hampshire & Foat are gonna' wrack up major sleepytime and decompression listens - this is supreme chill-out music, with panache!

e: And Nightshade proves as canny a library pastiche as you'd heard/hoped!

Who is Murk?, or the Makings of an Enigma

I found him by accident while looking for the house duo: Murk, a rapper who just released the least creatively titled album of 2018, the Murkmatic, which is in classic 90s/18 excess fashion, a hundred and forty minutes long. I'm naturally intriqued because I like ambitious musicians (I fucking 4.5'd Culture II for fuxake) and I especially delight in misplaced ambition, which this would surely be, right? I tried to find something about this Murk fellow, though, and like apparently he doesn't exist? Cuz he's not the Christian femcee Murk, nor the late Atlanta-based Molly Murk. Murkmatic is on Deezer, Spotify and iTunes, yet there is, as far as I can see, absolutely no reviews of it anywhere, no press releases, no interviews, big fat nuttin'. It's perplexing. Fuck's RYM profile consists of one guest verse attribution and not even a more telling descriptor than [RAPPER].

The album, I regret to inform y'all, doesn't really reveal anything about Murk that would distinguish him from literally every other trapper on the scene. It's a perfectly competent example of the current state of the genre with nothing whatsoever to make anyone take notice beyond its length, which in this year is practically de rigeur. S'good, of course - trap is nearly impossible to fuck up - but it's got zero diversity, lyrically or musically, and the only people with less charisma than Murk himself is the guests. Imagine 28 variants on "Bodak Yellow" each slightly better than the original but without the insistence on their own hooks. There's no real pop sense, which means nothing on the level " When all of your songs are virtually identical, you're always running the risk of quickly annoying the audience, but on the other hand, if you can knock out multiple songs a day, it's nice to give your fans a big package. No one other than rock critics thinks Kanye's 22-minute albums had anything more to do without giving a more coherent product than just being another wacky-goofy Yeezy gimmick. Trap is a genre, like its forefather Memphis rap, that can accommodate huge marathon-listens, and maybe even benefits from them, so the hunnid-minute mix is a good fit. But neither eight merely mediocre songs or twenty-eight of the same can really rise above "slightly above mediocre."

So we're 2/3rds of the way through the album and back to not knowing anything about this dude other than he has a rolodex full of the Most Hardcore Generic Trap Producers and he says things like "fishscale like Sosa" and honestly I kind of wonder if the whole reason you can find nothing about him is because he's actually a cracker and wants anonymity to say the n-word every other line, cuz he really does sound white sometimes. God, I hope not. Unless that is true, which would be reprehensible, the music just isn't interesting enough to warrant or explain the weird secrecy around it. Basically, it's RIYL: trappers who name their album a variant on Illmatic in 2018 and write songs called "Foreign" and in no way justifies it's length. 3/5

Ever notice?

that with white folk playing black music that there's always this dichotomy in terms of acceptable genres, and it's practically always based on the vocalcentricity of the music? White people can't sing the blues, but they can play jazz (they can, usually/sometimes, sing it, as well) - white people can't have soul, but they can be funky - reggae is off-limits but we can do dub - crackers aren't supposed to rap, but nobody says they can't produce hip hop.

See?

I don't think anything like this exists in EDM, despite being invented by gay black men, because, like rock, it's become so thoroughly colonized by straight white men.

This is probably either not as pervasive as I'm making it seem, or it's been talked to death and I just missed all the discourse, heh. 

ZIa's "The Frontline"

might be the best pop album I've heard since at least the Ann Steel album, if not E-MO-TION. Even the ballads aren't, y'know, just ballads. "Foolish" is a goddamn jam amongst jamz. That afrosynth mediafire download folder is revealing itself to be a goldmine.

somebody please show this to the relevant RYM mods:

Hello. I know that this request will likely be cast aside with a sigh and the thought that you've long ago dealt with me and it's presumptuous and aggravating that I should try to weasel my way back in, but I assure you I come with only the humblest of hearts and most transparent of intentions: I think I'm ready to be allowed to use RYM again. I was a jackass in the past and I may still have a little jackass in me, but I have made major strides in my quest to simply be a better person, I meditate every day and have experienced the first blooms of a spiritual awakening of sorts, which has melted away most of the animosity that once animated my spirit. My priorities are rapidly being rearranged. I've gained more than a modicum of self-discipline. All that to say that, as hesitant as you surely are at letting me have a voice on this website that I have so abused in the past, I really am a new, better being, and I swear that if I go afoul again, that will be the end for me. I'll never darken this url again.

Honestly, I've spent just as much time making custom charts and perusing lists in the  months I've been "gone" as I did when I was an honest member! It would just be nice to be able to interact more with the site again. I'm not requesting you republish my reviews or let me post on the forums - I have little interest in the former and none whatsoever in the latter, and even though I am ashamed to think of how flagrantly I abused the system for adding albums and artists, I'm not even asking directly that I get that privilege back either. I want to be able to rate music and make lists and I will be perpetually overjoyed if I am allowed to do so again.

I'd make a reference to second chances but I know that this is more like a seventh or eighth chance at least and I know that my request for reinstatement might meet with some displeasure but I've thought long and hard over this matter, and I promise that if you allow me to rate again, you won't regret it.

"What Does Fish Is..?" by Zapp Zapp has just been brought to my attention

and that's also a good album title, for the record.

the all-time greatest band name/album title combination is Yall So Stupid's "Van Full of Pakistans" like a van brimming with entire Pakistans. not Pakistanis, multiple entire Pakistans. it's a big van.

the best album title or band name and album cover combination is the sole eponymous album of that 70s free improv outfit Chamberpot, which is just a drawing of a hippo yawning.

and I was going to say the best a-side/b-side title combination for a single was Bessie Smith's "Gimme a Pig's Foot and a Bottle of Beer" b/w "Them's Graveyard Words" but apparently that single doesn't actually exist in this timeline. still, both of those are fucking fantabulous on their own, anyway.