Travis Scott - Astroworld (Grand Hustle/Cactus Jack/Epic, 2018)

Driving to work this AM and saw on Spotify this thing finally came out and ended up spinning it there and back. I've never been a big Travis Scott fan but this album has been in the works for so long and boasts such a ridiculous array of collaborators that I figured I'd have to at least check in on it. It's a monster, really. 17 tracks, I don't know the total length but gotta be in the 70 minute zone, and packed to the gills. Drake, Frank Ocean, Swae Lee, Kid Cudi, James Blake, a Stevie Wonder harmonica feature, Pharrell, The Weeknd x 2, 21 Savage, Quavo & Takeoff, let alone the production credits, which for me is the best part. For me, there are some good tracks here - the album starts very strong with "Stargazing", a total headtrip, Frank Ocean on "Carousel" and "Sicko Mode" with Drake. All 3 are legitimate bangers with some really adventurous, head-turning production. "R.I.P. Screw" is messy and disjointed but in a wonderful way that feels like an appropriate ode to screwed music. After that things get spotty. Maybe I owe the album a few more listens but I think at the end of the day my problem with Scott is that he's just not a terribly interesting rapper. And here he gets upstaged by the production and a lot of the features. It's an impressively put together record, but it feels strangely forgettable. We'll see if it sticks on a few more playthroughs.

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Nachtmystium/Leviathan - In the Valley of Death, Where Black Metal is King: An Homage to the Roots (Ascension Monuments Media, 2018)

What the fuck is that title. Okay I get the first part is a Judas Iscariot tribute, but did we really need "an homage to the roots" in there? Hey wouldn't it be funny if these were actually covers of the band The Roots? Anyway. This album was supposed to come out 10 years ago, but it was blocked by the bands' respective labels. Now I guess they've figured out a way, or Blake Judd needs money for drugs so he's figured out a way, to put this out. The Bandcamp version has 8 tracks, 5 from Nachtmystium and 3 from Leviathan, but I've seen a 10-track tracklisting elsewhere. On the version I have, we have Nachtmystium covering Judas Iscariot, Ildjarn (twice), Von and Burzum. Leviathan tackles Ildjarn (twice) and Von once. I seem to be missing Leviathan's Judas Iscariot cover ("Where the Winter Beats Incessant") and one of Nachtmystium's Von covers ("Von"). Weird. Wonder if there were some licensing issues or something. All four Ildjar...

Sunburned Hand of the Man - Get Wet with the Animal (Manhand, 2018)

I keep up with Sunburned only intermittently these days, they seem to be taking a more rock-ist approach lately. Like this one. Each track is about 4-5 minutes of pretty ramshackle, jammy, funky, boogie rock...almost spoiled by the throaty, beery vocals shouted over the top of each one of these tunes with nonsensical platitudes. I almost shut it off after a couple tracks but I stuck it out and kinda came around on some level. I was oddly reminded of My War era Black Flag sludge punk. The band sez "these Holy Grail fueled recordings are a mix of iphone and zoom recordings run through garageband, reaper and some plug-ins. We're still working on the much more listener-friendly Black Dirt session..." and point taken, listener friendly this ain't.

Jan Jelinek - Zwischen (Faitiche, 2018)

Last year's reissue of Jan Jelinek's Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records put him on his radar for me forever. This is an shortened version of a radio play he put out called Zwischen. Jelinek sources interview clips from a pretty diverse cast - John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Slajov Zizek, Lady Gaga, Yoko Ono, Marcel Duchamp - and extracts all the pauses, silences, gaps, ums, ehs, ahs, hahas, etc from their answers. So you get track titles like "Yoko Ono, you were born into a rich, aristocratic family in Tokyo. Do you see that in yourself?" and "Karlheinz Stockhausen, which difficulties are involved in conserving electronic music on magnetic tape?". On top of that the audio cues present trigger synthesizers creating undercurrents of sound amidst the quasi-verbal utterances. It's a cool concept, interesting listen - all the responses have different moods. Zizek's is particularly stressed as he seems to be rushing through an explanation of something important ...

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