Monthly Recommendations: October 2018 - CTEBCM: Can This Even Be Called Music?

Big Lad – Pro Rock

The London duo plays hard-hitting drum and bass with the uncommon quality of featuring live drums. The drummer’s work in here is brilliant and quite impressive. You don’t get the same inhuman chops as some breakcore artists, but there’s definitely a focus on musicianship on drums. On top of that, the different synths throughout the songs are often massive and totally face-melting! That’s a seriously amazing album!

Birushanah – 灰ニナルマデ (Hai ni narumade)

灰ニナルマデ is very atmospheric and quite lightweight, for a sludge metal album, but this changes in the latter half of “潮風ニ吹カレテ” (Shiokaze ni fukarete), which sees its heaviest passage and the only blast beat present here.
Overall, 灰ニナルマデ is an odd and interesting album. Sludgey doom metal with Japanese influence is hard to come by, so I suggest you take advantage of this opportunity to get something quite unique and challenging.

Ellen Kirkwood and Sirens Big Band – [A]part

The album is lyriclessly about many contemporary social issues, and uses similarly modern jazz to convey them. This is an album that not only needs to be listened carefully, but also read into. This is an absolute must!

Philip Zoubek Trio – Outside

Philip Zoubek Trio‘s newest album, Outside, is a magnificent album of modern, at times avant-garde jazz. Each composition is interesting in its own right and played to near perfection by the three talented musicians on record. I have nothing but flattering words for the music[…]