TranscendNoise

This mixtape is worth your time! Up until now I was pretty oblivious to the fact that Saba was featured on Acid Rap´s “Everybody´s Something” but immediately felt familiar with this voice. This mixtape boast some of the best beats of this year. Lucid, others soulful and still as experimental as pure banging. You can feel some familiarity with Chance´s positive sounding work but there isn´t anything “strange” to Saba´s voice or style or rapping. He just goes off and does this with technique and vigor. It´s a perfect mixture of darker and introspective songs and those that deliver a feel good idea. But still, this young rapper comes through with good content and something to say on his work: “Scum” is a great commentary on being categorized and pushed into a corner on accounts of race. A clear standout and if one thing, this comes close to something Kendrick would do. Expanding on this note, Saba doesn´t have any particular sound and executes every familiarity with othe...

Admittedly, I had to listen to this maybe 15 times until enjoyment was the outcome. But thank god I did. For someone never having heard of Cloud Nothings, their sounds is a mixture of singing one might classify between emo and Hardcore and the dirtiest rock instrumentation a indie band could deliver. The voice was my gripe in the beginning, but after some getting used to, it just fits perfectly. With it, and their gear and in just a little over 31 minutes Cloud Nothings burn a hole in your heart. Pressing play will be the only cure.  In one word: Raw. The raspy voice of the singer going between actually trying to hit notes and just howling his words of despair, heartbreak and nihilism. The guitars and drums are the steam roller sucking you in for the words to do their damage. “Psychic Trauma” feels like a surf rock anthems worst nightmare and the pick up one minute in has you thinking of smashing everything around you. “Pattern Walks” shows just how easy the band can exp...

This might give the wrong impression, but Wonderland is fairy tail pop. Not the kind you might expect from a dolly-like figure hailing from Japan, more like the much darker Lewis Carroll version it. ceo constructs something that could pass as radio singles, but listening deeper, or seeing that the first tracks title is “Whorehouse”, there is much more meat to it. Everything jumps and sounds like prancing through Candyland and yet the lyrics tell you “I´m still lost inside a whorehouse…”, so there is this dark narrative to the euphoria. The following tracks all go the same route: If you´re not listening to the words, all is well and Wonderland plays as one dreamy piece of bliss. But lines like “sacrifice life when you say love” give a much darker context.  Wonderland is highly enjoyable on both levels and most of the time I listen to it and feel pretty uplifted. For it being a swirl that might come close to an excess of alcohol and drugs, Eric Berglund shows ho...