The best word I can come up to describe this album - labyrinthine. From the album itself to the songs itself. This album is in some ways a severe corruption of pop music while maintaining all the gnarly-ness, of Daniel Lopatin's past efforts. His OPN project has moved past merely bizarre synth/ambient/electro/vaporwave/whatever and into whole new waters. "Babylon", "The Station" and "Black Snow" are almost undeniably poppy (albeit very twisted) while tracks like "Same" and "Still Stuff That Doesn't Happen" are among the weirdest and harshest that Lopatin has ever produced, here augmented by a sharp and smartly selected group of collaborators like Prurient, Anohni, James Blake and others. It's a real interesting album, one that will take a few more spins to get my head around, but I like it.
DOPE re-ish of Midori Takada's 1981 debut album as MKWAJU Ensemble - you may recall last year WRWTFWW released Takada's Through the Looking Glass LP, but this one's even better - a wild mix of Japanese ambient and African rhythms played on marimba, vibraphone, synthesizer and percussion. RIYL Terry Riley or Tubular Bells, or even more new age-y weirdness like Vangelis, but these rhythms are so wild I wouldn't bat a lash at all if you told me the Animal Collective bros stayed up nights listening to these. Check out "Angwora Steps", totally out of pocket. "Hot Air" is a spacious breather, the other tracks pile up the rhythms in slowly-shifting crescendos...crazy stuff.

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