2020 has been a really great year for music. Being creative I’m told is a healthy coping mechanism and haven’t we all just been tryin’ to cope?! When there is a forest fire then all the little seeds go on the ground and for a hot minute it looks pretty ugly but if you give it a bit then you will find the best Christmas trees ever there. This year we burned it down, some forests, and some old ideologies, and lots of people died. Right after that happened or while it’s happening because human beings are amazing animals we started rebuilding and the songs we’re singing while we do it are powerful. Here are my faves this week:
Kid Cudi- Man On the Moon III: The Chosen
I have been waiting 10 years for this album to come out and it absolutely does not disappoint. Kid Cudi has released sever albums since the last iteration of the MOTM series, and with them taken us on an exploratory journey. If you like Mr. Solo Dolo you will like this album. Cudi gives us everything we have grown to appreciate from him, namely humming, dope beats, smooooth flow and soul. This album has soul. There is a banger on there feat. Pop Smoke (RIP) and the grime legend Skepta. I would like to have seen him work with Slowthai for dat Brit. bit but it’s a club banger and will bring in the widest general appeal. Favorite track so far: Undecided
James Blake- Covers - EP
James Blake is singing and he is playing the piano and he is singing other people’s songs and sometimes he sounds like Antony and the Johnsons and sometimes he sounds like Nina Simone and its lovely.
Burial, Four Tet & Thom Yorke- Her Revolution/Sis Rope - Single
Hello, did you see who made these songs? Don’t you want to hear them already? The Brits come together to give us Yanks something nice to listen to. Burial is a dubstep pioneer, Four Tet is an experimental electronic artist, Thom Yorke is Radiohead. Listen to this.
Max Richter- All Human Beings - International Voices
Max Richter is a modern German composer. Germans are good at making music that makes me want to dance but these songs did not do this. The track starts with a reading of the preamble from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If you end up listening to any of these recommendations listen to this song, it will be good for your heart.
The Avalanches- We Will Always Love You
The cover of the album features an image of Ann Druyan that was turned into sound with a spectrograph and then processed back into an image. Ann was the lady behind the Voyager Golden Record, blasted into space in 1977 and it is her heartbeat that the Golden Record features. The Avalanches put sounds together that you have probably never heard to create songs that seem familiar.