Back at it for mini-reviews, the second!

First up is a double release from Anthony Weis, consisting of Sound Continuous, and SC Singles. Sound Continuous is a unique take on music and field recordings, where compositions accompany the recordings. SC Singles consists of only the musical composition part, without its field recording counterpart. Musically, it draws from acoustic music, rock, classical music, and a bunch of other genres and styles. The songs themselves are decent, but their incorporation into the long field recordings is what makes them special. Give it a try!

Musical genius Jacob Collier, after many videos on Youtube, finally released his album. In My Room. It’s mainly jazz and classical music, but it’s influenced by many other things that I couldn’t disclose. The guy plays many instruments and sings incredibly well, and has a natural gift for composition and understanding of music. This album is, simply put, a treat.

Aussie band Fat Guy Wears Mystic Wolf Shirt just release a short EP, named Accord/Dance. It’s pretty different from what they’ve done before, getting into mathcore and post-hardcore. It’s really good, and even features some electric violin, as well as a few other guest instruments. It’s rather short, but it gives something wild, unexpected, and really good!

Temples‘s new album, ladəs, is a fairly standard post-rock effort. It’s decent, but not very interesting to me. The compositions are mostly low to mid tempo and don’t seem to develop into anything, it just… goes. Maybe, if you’re a real fan of post-rock, you’ll enjoy this, it’s not bad by any means, just not really engrossing.

I talked about Laksamana, last year, and had no news about the band since, until I discovered, this week, that they released another album, in February, called False Prophet. It’s very different from Antagonist, but it’s for the better. Instead of making a computer metal album, this one goes a lot of places: hip-hop, world music, and noise to name a few, all with harsh, unapologetically artificial synths. It’s awesome, and you should listen to this.

Intonate are a band from Montréal bridging the gap, somewhat, between progressive death metal and dissonant black metal with their debut album, The Swerve. It’s great to hear such dissonances and black metal aesthetics but with a prominent fretless bass and progressive death metal-like song structures and blatantly death passages. I’m sure you’ll really enjoy that album that’s kind of like the bastard child of Fallujah and Gorguts.

Noire is a Canadian atmospheric black metal band, and they will release their newest album, The Tracks of the Hunted, this week. It’s an okay album. Strangely, it has two songs that could be thought of as introductions: the unoriginally named “Piano Intro”, and “Eternity”, which is an all-acoustic track. This puts the first metal track in third, which is a bit odd, but not unprecedented. However, their take on atmospheric black metal doesn’t coincide with my tastes. Acoustic guitars on death metal riffs sound more like early Opeth than atmospheric black. Oh, and have I mentioned that this third track is the only metal track on the album? That sounds kind of weak for a band that calls themselves atmospheric and progressive black metal. IV is an almost-silent interlude, and V and VI are two acoustic tracks. Needless to say, the album is underwhelming in many ways.

Finally, Floa, by Mammal Hands, is an outstanding modern jazz record. It’s melodic and well-crafted, and the musicians are all on point at any time on the album. On top of that, add a bit of time signature experimentation, some ambient phases, and world music elements, and you’ve got a great formula! The band itself is very minimal in its members: it’s a trio consisting of saxophone, piano, and percussions. A really enjoyable ride!