Blog: The Needle Drop

Great track from Nneka featuring Black Thought from The Roots. Both these artists are known for having topical, hard-hitting lyrics and this track is definitely holding to true to that form as both of them talk about the nature of man and evil. The beat hits really hard with a solid bass line and snare heavy percussion, that builds into a solid guitar riff for the hook. It's the production that really kinds the theme of the song across making the lyrical impact much heavier. I think there needs to be more tracks with Black Thought, please. Soul [...]

Following in bandmate Rostam Batmanglij 's footsteps, Vampire Weekend bassist Chris Baio has started up a solo project of his own. Simply dubbed Baio, the project is looking at a May 21 release for its debut EP, titled Sunburn . Our first sampling of the release is the Matias Aguayo feature "Tanto," which will appear as the EP's closing track. Baio takes the song's six-and-a-half minutes to embark on a steel drum-heavy Balearic Beat excursion that might make fans of John Talabot 's most recent offering happy. Aguayo's contribution, a set of wordless yet catchy melodies, sits [...]

Ty Segall doesn't play metal, but the cover to his forthcoming album is almost the most metal thing I've seen all month. Under the monicker "Ty Segall Band," Ty has dropped a new track to his forthcoming album titled "Wave Goodbye." It's a heavy, acid-soaked, lo-fi psych rocker with plenty of guitar solos and sour vocals. A real attitude on this one. Clenched teeth. Sarcastic remarks. A descending bassline that reminds me of a Beatles song or two. Look for this new album, Slaughterhouse , on In the Red on June 26th. Check the album [...]

Squarepusher drops another track from his forthcoming album on Warp Records, Ufabulum. It's set to drop next week. You can catch Tom Jenkinson going into detail about this new album, his art, and music in general in t his new mini-documentary produced by the Creator's Project .

Thought Torche's stomping grounds are firmly rooted in loud rock and metal, the band's latest album is so bright, catchy, and sweet, even the most biggest of metal cynics can get something out of it. WATCH THE REVIEW

Download: Open Mike Eagle- Rent Party Extension Los Angeles-based rapper Open Mike Eagle recently dropped a five-track EP that, like many of the best things in life, is free. Titled Rent Party Extension , the EP brings in a handful of features, including Milo, who put out the Loved Listed I Wish My Brother Rob Was Here last year, and Roots collaborator Hot Sugar . The release serves as an appetizer for the full-length that the MC is supposedly putting out [...]

AETERNA (2012) by Black Swan To those of you who prefer their ambient music as dark and eerie as possible, allow me to direct your attention to the experimental drone project Black Swan. I've heard plenty of artists toy with "dark ambient" music with underwhelming results, mostly at the hand of a weak atmosphere and/or uninteresting sounds, but Black Swan sidesteps these issues by creating soundscapes that are engaging. With thick and airy drones, lo-fi field recordings, and appearances from a chillingly solemn choir at its disposal, the music's atmosphere is anything but weak. It's the [...]

Members Trap Arnold and Rewrote of the trippy, electronic group M|O|D dropped some singles on SoundCloud recently. "MoreLoko" using some really squeaky sounding synthesizers and a boom-bap beat, it is definitely styled like a hip-hop instrumental. That being said it is still a stimulating track with a good use of layering on top off an already compelling beat. "Koola" is unique from the other song, it is more of a dance electronic track with club styled synthesizers and some really deep wobbling bass. The track builds into a swirling synthesizers that almost begin to sound like a chip-tune composition without the 8-bit aesthetic. These two tracks provide [...]

Drokk: Music inspired by Mega-City One by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury Geoff Barrow (Portishead) has teamed up with composer Ben Salisbury to make a soundtrack dedicated to Mega-City One from the Judge Dredd comics. With that in mind they have successfully created a moody, progressive synths composition reminiscent of the Social Network soundtrack crossed with Tron Legacy . A lot of the songs on here are more complex and interesting to listen to outside of the context of a movie with smooth humming synthesizers and a constant, shifting progression using a variety instruments. As I listened to it I [...]

While UK-based producer Actress creates some really beautiful sounds on this new album, very few of them last long enough to leave a real impression on me-much less progress very far. WATCH THE REVIEW

Currently, the TND camp is in the midst of a bit of Death Grips fever, and there's no cure in sight. Addiction, addiction, addiction. So, late last month, what seems to be a few Death Grips demos surfaced on YouTube, but they haven't really received the blog buzz they deserve. To my knowledge, YouTube user MichealMcNanner was the first person to have shared these tracks on the internet, and how he came about these songs is bluntly explained in the comments for "Fryd Up": [...]

MP3 Dope Body drops yet another track from its forthcoming LP, Natural History . "Weird Mirror" is a fantastic piece of subtly reverbed punk-effing-rock. No prisoners. Break a sweat. Put someone in a headlock. The riff on this thing has an incredible amount of force behind it. The drums hit hard, and the vocals are enthralling as well. Everything about this song says, "Hey, lose control! Get lose. If you break something, whatever." Hear another track from this album, which I put on the Loved List earlier this month . [...]

• Dope Body - Weird Mirror

GRVRBBRS remixes one of my favorite tracks from Active Child's last album, You Are All I See . With a punchy beat, the song is catchier than ever. Active Child's passionate falsetto vocals still come through with a lot of strength, too. Love it! This remix comes with the announcement of a new Active Child tour. Catch all the dates right here .

Some dark and noisy sounds coming off this newly released Nihiti track, "My Fantasy Has Gone Too Far." I'm not sure what the specifics of this fantasy are, but it sounds pretty twisted from the industrial combination of bang-clang percussion unsettling synth drones. Check out the previous track to drop from this new album, " Ghosts and Lovers ," too. The project's forthcoming album, For Ostland will be out on May 27th.

El-P drops a new track from his forthcoming album Cancer For Cure , featuring verses from Killer Mike and Despot. I love the song concept, too. To me, it seems to poke fun at the ongoing race in hip hop to come off tougher than the next guy. C'mon, guys. We all know that race has already been won . But seriously, it's a dimension worth attacking, and El-P does it with both guns blazin'. Despot and Mike come through just as hard, creating a superhero trio of ultra-aggressive rappers that tag team this beat like [...]

Thrash metal has a surprisingly large amount of its older acts still alive and kicking. Overkill just released a new album, and it wasn't too long ago that Megadeth has a new release, too. Plus, there's always the rest of the "Big Four" to take account of. Between all the older bands still doing their thing and newer acts like Havok , Toxic Holocaust , and Vektor bringing the style to a new generation, Thrash isn't going anywhere for a while. Kreator is one of these more "classic" acts I just mentioned. [...]

Trioscapes is a heavy, new jazz fusion projected featuring Between the Buried and Me bassist Dan Briggs. It's a surprising release for Metal Blade Recs, and I question whether or not it would have been released if it weren't for the BTBAM connection. However, that's not to say the music isn't good. Briggs and co. have some incredible chemistry on the seven-minute "Wazzlejazzlebof," playing together with a level of tightness few band's achieve. The trio progresses through moments that feel akin to jazz, metal, and Mahavishnu Orchestra-influenced jazz rock. However, the music doesn't feel gimmicky as Trioscapes changes [...]

Singer-songwriter Phil Elverum drops another song teasing toward the eventual release of the new Mount Eerie album, Clear Moon . Is it too early to gather a sonic theme from this album? Because between this track and the other to drop from this album thus far , Phil is making use of a lot of long, drone-y, and drawn-out repetitions. The slowly growing instrumentation and saxophones on this track make immersion easy. Phil continues to be a master as creating not just songs, but interesting soundscapes.

Not only is the title to Lil B's latest mixtape hilariously clever, but a lot of the tracks on the tape are absolute bangers. There was a time when I thought the Based God's schtick would fade, but he seems to be doing better than ever in 2012. Between his recent lecture at NYU and the hype-worthy God's Father mixtape , Lil B's got enough momentum to keep Based World growing for the rest of this year. Keep those Datpiff downloads comin'.

Perfume Genius drops a video for one of my favorite tracks from the project's new album, Put Your Back N 2 It . Check out our glowing review of the album right here , and find the album on Matador Recs.