@@@ Ami Dang: Raiments (Leaving Records, 2022) I got to these two listens today via the boozhy club National Sawdust in Brooklyn, they send out a weekly email blah blah blah. This is the opening track and it’s a mashup of world music and electronic music. The question with these mashups is how many New Age feels are we going to get and the answer here is medium. Here it’s centered mostly in the arpeggiated synths that are panned out to the side while a traditional stringed instrument takes the melodic lead in the center. I like this more than I expected as boozhy New Age electro can often annoy me. Often as in almost always. I even kept the Apple Music player rolling into the second track and there’s a rolling dark sound here that I’m actually into. Well kiddies, that’s why you always listen for yourself despite what you might expect or read in a marketing tidbit. Not my favorite shit ever, but this is pretty good.
@@@ Reuben James: All I Wanna Do (Rufio, 2022) I don’t usually go for what I consider to be enlightened boom bap but with this first track Vegan Butter I think they took hooked it up pretty stylishly. You gotta remember normies gonna norm and while this music is pretty straight in its own way, it’s focused and well executed. I’m on the third track and I can confirm this is normie music — big beats, big as in high in volume in the mix which I love, lots of friendly smooth vocals (I like that less) and solid arrangements. Highbrow loverboy r&b, that’s what we got here.
Deep In the Music 