Posted on 04/10/2008 4:24 PM
Babylon; great city of the ancient world. This Is Babylon; album from Y-Love. I can see where the correlation is presented, but in terms of a solid connection, maybe Cincinnati should have been picked. It's weird, listening to beats as imaginative as those found on Y-Love's album, only to be matched with poor lyricism. The beats, are even more than imaginative, they're fantastic. Large in ever sense, with impressive approach and direction, that progress in a...

Posted on 04/08/2008 4:44 PM
Things change over a decade. Hairlines recede. Tarantino heroin chic gets nudged out by the ill fitted hipster coke binge. I've been traveling a lot lately, looking for epiphanies, tangible feelings like the first time I heard "Glory Box" and got goose bumps during some meaningless freshman sex. I've come to accept that I can't recapture or recreate. The past has no legs. But it pleases me to say that Portishead is still great and that...

Posted on 04/08/2008 4:39 PM
If the music world isn't completely hopeless then St. Louis soul singer/ songwriter Coultrain is on the brink of something truly amazing with The Adventures of Seymour Liberty (released November 2007). Inches away from being a perfect album (If it weren't for a few decent, yet slightly forgettable tracks), Coultrain's debut effort is easily one of the best releases of 2007.

Posted on 04/08/2008 4:31 PM
For Project Gampo, Atlanta's Beatchefs find residence behind the cool, frosty flow of Minneapolis emcee, Prof. Prof borrows a little from the Eminem handbook, hinting at daddy issues and other domestic dysfunction, but for the majority of the album he expounds on random, carefree subject matter rather than elaborating on his personal pain. When Project Gampo scores, it's because the record doesn't try too hard to live up to any one genre or region, but if...

Posted on 04/08/2008 1:00 AM
Steel Pulse, long stalwarts in the ever-buzzing reggae scene, are depicted in true clarity in Door of No Return, a concert documentary that follows the pioneering British band around as they tour the African Continent. The personnel of the band changed through the years, but by the time of these late-nineties concerts there was still the main trio of vocalist/guitarist David Hinds, drummer Steve "Grizzly" Nisbett, and keyboardist/vocalist Selwyn "Bumbo" Brown. More than a collection of...

Posted on 04/08/2008 1:00 AM
Having just moved flats (apartments to y'all Americans), I know what a painful process it can be. So given that Merz made this album to a backdrop of regular evictions, you could forgive him for feeling a litte bit sorry for himself on Moi et Mon Camion. But rather than wallow in his own misery, he's made a wonderfully uplifting album that calls to mind influences as diverse as Nick Drake, Brian Eno and even Orbital,...