Request Album Review: Childish Gambino - Camp

Childish Gambino - Camp (2011)

3/10

pop rap, west-coast hip-hop

In 1997, the music industry fundamentally unveiled a new face to hip-hop music, blending elaborate synth work, infectious percussion, and eclectic hybrids of electronic rhythms and quirky lyrics: Missy Elliot. From that moment in history, there has been an increased "artsy" movement in the hip-hop genre from such artists as Kanye West, Lil Wayne, The Weeknd, Kid Cudi, Drake and the like. Today, hip-hop artists/producers spend strenuous hours, days, even weeks perfecting and crafting the sonic beats and sound designs, which ultimately define a vital portion of their tracks. Songs no longer exclusively contain a kick, followed by a snare, followed by a kick, and so forth. The movement looks for something more; it synthesizes flavours from external music stylings and other forms of art, including a myriad of paintings and found-sound. The trick is, as the popularity grows, it must still be original and true.

Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, is better known as Troy in the popular TV comedy series, Community. However, as Childish Gambino, Glover enters a sonic tour of his psyche, replete vulgur thoughts, zingers directed at the superficial and judgmental, and even his lighthearted daily musings. However, the album, Camp, is near-pretentious, with clumsy unintelligible lyrics thrown on sensational instrumentals. Glover's voice is akin to distasteful typography on a beautifully designed concert poster.

Although Childish Gambino's beats are extremely close to Kanye West's style, they are still effective and interesting. I particularly love the arrangements in All the Shine and Backpackers. While All the Shine contains a poignant blend of punchy beats and somber strings, Backpackers brilliantly utilizes metallic-like percussion, mysterious distortion and sampling, providing a more gritty atmosphere. The lyrics, however, is another story. In rap music, lyrics are incredibly pivotal in driving the music; what you say and how you say it are important in terms of technical ability. Glover covers heavy topics like race, masculinity, relationships, street cred, and "real hip-hop" as props to construct a false outsider persona. As a result, he paints himself as a misunderstood victim of cultural preconceptions, and ignorantly contradicts himself and his relationship with "the hood". He isn't strictly a comedy rapper, but he flows like a comic actor: When he's trying to be playful, his voice obnoxiously represents a teenage squeak, and he tends to rap one punchline after another. His verses are mostly excuses for snappy pop-culture references and showboating puns, making himself seem bigger than he really is. There are plenty rappers today who are crafty and not from "the hood", yet do not show a grocery list of insecurities about it, but ignite much more emotional complexity than Childish Gambino.

Despite some nice instrumentals, Glover's exaggerated, immature, cartoony flow and overblown pop rap production are enough to make Camp one of the most unlikable rap albums of 2011. I just have to assume Glover has completely ignored the success of Kanye West, Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, EL-P, and Pharoahe Monch when he meekly moans, "Is there room in the game for a lame that rhymes/ And wears short shorts and tells jokes sometimes?" It's the perfect takeaway from Camp: preposterously self-absorbed, but not the least bit self-aware.

Bonfire by Childish Gambino

Album of the Day: Björk - Homogenic

Björk - Homogenic (1997)

alternative dance, art pop, progressive pop, trip-hop

Following the release of Post (1995), Björk had undergone numerous obstacles that she never had before in terms of her love life, music, and near murder. Sticking with her single word naming conventions, Homogenic (originally titled Homogeneous) is a testament to the poetry of her intuition that this creative watermark so beautifully corresponded with the most turbulent time in her life. Björk’s creative rebirth invited her to re-evaluate the way she had handled herself in the wake of such fame. For someone who had spent the past four years continually undone by travel and tour, concepts of home and belonging resonated strongly to her. Thus, the record is all about her embracing her homeland and reclamation of self as home.

Harnessing artistic bravery and strength, not only did Björk charge with full force in unusual sonic textures, but she wrote and co-programmed it entirely by herself. In addition, she collaborated with a few friends and idols including Dravs, Howie Bernstein, Guy Sigworth, and LFO’s Mark Bell to help her create the exact sounds that brewed in her head. Björk, therefore, gathered all her outrageous concepts and molded those ideas to create sonically captivating paint-on-canvas-like music. As a result, Homogenic consists of a strange but effective mixture of hard electronic beats and string octet performances embracing the beautiful glimmer of ice and rock. As for vocals, Björk stepped up extremely far, screaming out pain in such songs like Pluto and reminiscing tranquility in such songs like Unravel. From dramatic shell shock, Björk returns with a flaming album of fierce poetic expression. Let's delve into the songs more.

The paranoid snares and aching violins work in excellent and darkly contrast with Björk's haunting vocals opens Homogenic in the song Hunter, which explains the omnipresent fear of abandonment. Following Hunter’s chaos is the poignantly gorgeous tune, Joga, which is a track of gratitude for her friend Joga. The song’s beats were unbelievably constructed and manipulated from Icelandic volcanic bubble sounds adjacent to patriotically played strings. Rising and falling to the actual sounds of Iceland's volcanoes, the lyrics explain how love and hate as parallels disappear with greater love. Unravel is one of the most heartbreaking songs of Björk's career, accentuating her misfortune in a gentle yet brooding atmosphere within the pit of a gently thumping heart and blood coursing through the veins. Here, Björk effortlessly combines hope and disaster majestically. Additionally, the lyrically metaphoric song of Bachelorette surrounds listeners in gorgeously haunting violins, chaotically toxic beats, and powerfully painful vocals. The thickly textured tune describes a woman who personifies herself as this loving passive object, while the man she loves is an active animal (or person who comes and goes as he will). The crunchy distorted tune, 5 Years, is Björk’s frustration for a guy—who is acting as if afraid of love—to be straight up with her. Similar to Joga, 5 Years is constructed by manipulated earthquakes, dancing with a Nintendo-like synthesizer tucked away behind the punches and pounds of the beats, and the always brilliant harmonious strings. Trance styled, Immature takes the listener to a less aleatoric surrounding, showing how lyrical repetition is highly effective without any tedium. The rhythmic beats with Björk’s emotional vocals turn infectious within seconds. The track begins with stunningly eerie Björk humming to her own tune, before she scolds herself for being immature, and questioning her actions. Alas, the album ends a massive duo of songs encompassing a contrast sonically and similar brilliancy. Pluto is the most hardcore and audacious songs in Björk history. Consisting of extreme, outrage of shrieks, it is a song of Mars, but radiantly composed. About ending rebirth; shedding your skin on purpose, Pluto is undoubtedly conjured up from a great deal of aggravation. In complete contrast, Pluto follows up with the album closer, All is Full of Love. The tune is none other than pure driving and uplifting beauty. Beginning with an almost electrical serge sound and the gradual enter of cold crisp strings, All is Full of Love is stripped from beats from the aforementioned songs and left with shimmers of enigmatic tones. The rain comes crashing down on all physical matter in its molecular density containing seeds of love. Björk then enters with an umbrella in the dead of night staring at the starry sky and lamenting for one last time. I am in awe by this album, I really am. Not only did Björk show her most inner deepest and darkest soul, she created an unforgettable world to mourn in.

Homogenic is unquestionably a tour-de-force. Riveting form start to finish, the album overflows with brilliant and intellectually structured songs: creative sounds and one of the greatest voices of modern electronic music. Every track is indispensable, genuine, astounding, each flowing to the next perfectly like blood streams. This is the record that characterizes Björk completely: eccentric, emotional, childlike, reflective, distinctive, and forevermore changing. Within Homogenic, Björk manages to present herself fearlessly. As a result, the album displays exterior textures of robustness and intensity, and interior textures of warmth and emotion.

Album of the Day: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - The Doldrums

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - The Doldrums (2004)
lo-fi, psychedelia, psychedelic rock

After years of recording in relative seclusion in the hills of Los Angeles, Ariel Pink—or otherwise known as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti—makes his official Paw Tracks debut with The Doldrums, an avant-guard psychedelic album. Originally a handmade CD-R release a couple years before its official release, The Doldrums was discovered by Animal Collective during one of their west coast tours and became an immediate favourite.

Ariel Rosenberg (his real name) creates music that stretches imagination in incredible depth and surrealism. Recording at home with only a guitar, keyboard, 8-track, and drum sounds unbelievably created with his voice, Rosenberg manages to blend lo-fi pop with 70s mono-rock into something beautiful and confusing, yet highly addictive. The album tends to paint a picture or poem in the air from that era. However, I think Rosenberg did something interesting to the 1970s. It wasn’t what was heard, it was more of what the child’s minds was thinking during that time, especially his. Most people in the 70s do not have many luxuries that we have today. They did not have cable, and so Rosenberg escaped to some place quiet and created his entertainment from the memory of things he picked up in his head. This clutter of synths, drugs, cheap drum loops and effeminate young men with lined eyes was all that was needed to amuse a child to salvation.

There are many highlights on The Doldrums. The album opens up with Good Kids Make Bad Grown Ups, an almost nauseating acid-trip tune with Ariel Pink’s David Bowie-esque vocals when he sings in his lower register. For Kate I Wait and Among Dreams are two of my favourite songs. There is a sense of innocence to both songs, being upbeat yet gentle at the same time. He sings in his higher register in Among Dreams, bringing out a more annoying nasality to his voice; whereas in For Kate I Wait, he dips down in his Bowie-sound-a-like, bringing out his more haunting and less playful atmosphere. The Ballad of Bobby Pyn is a collection of hypnotizing and mad sounds from synths, voice and found sounds. I love how this song starts as a structured song, and gradually transforms into the most indescribable trip through the brain. There is something to say about the simplicity and complexity of the song, and the entire record for that matter. The Doldrums is very avant-garde for this century because of this ability to combine hot and cold together yet separate simultaneously.

It’s really difficult for me to describe this album. It is unlike anything I have heard or felt before, and I love every minute of it. The music is nostalgic, psychedelic, confusing, dreamy, and utterly insane. I am immensely pleased that there are people who still believe in breaking boarders beyond the first boarders to begin with. The Doldrums is a piece of fascinating art that literally takes one to another galaxy; no-man’s-land if you will. Being the first non-Animal Collective member on the Paw Tracks roster, Ariel Pink proves to be a highly creative individual that lets nothing stand in his way to create the sounds he wants with the voice of many octaves warped by the sun. Thank you for messing with out minds, Ariel Pink.



Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - For Kate I Wait by ajay-patel

Album of the Day: Akron/Family - Akron/Family (2005)

Akron/Family - Akron/Family

Alternative Folk, Freak-Folk

The Brooklyn, NY-based collective of four multi-instrumentalists combine a variety of modern and pre-modern styles into a strong, singular whole. Their self-titled debut is a string of acoustic glides recalling rural folksy warmth and fractured folk-rock experimentalisms with tender carnival-esque stories. The raw, natural, unprocessed feel ironically presents an authentic and engaging album from the once lost aesthetic folk-rockers. Their slow-burning songs are well decked with alien metallic clacks, skittering tones, tape hiss storm clouds, and field recorded thunder. There is also a poignant strength of spirituality in every tune they orbit around us, bringing forward lush and dreary swells. For, as this world gets older, and novelties increase along with our exposure to everything, we must consider that everything we are exposed to influences us in some way.

Like a lot of modern creative folk recordings, Akron/Family’s debut triggers a great deal of emotions, sometimes complex and contradictory with imaginative sounds and lyrics. The record starts off with Before and Again, opening beautifully with sweeping folk of plaintive nylon strings and distant, electronic homing signals. Following up is the soft and freely tune, Suchness. The poignant and quirkily playful song is a morph into a poor-man's rumba. The unforgettable eight-minute epic, Italy is a sonic journey and a soar to heaven at that. Stumbling on easily the best percussion work, Running, Returning throw in as many strange and random noises into the track. With lead singer Ryan Vanderhoof calling over a dissonant swirl of guitar, percussive noise, and a chorus of distant, shout-sung voices, the tune is rhythmically enthralling. The melancholy scrap of Afford catches a soft jet-stream of air and float elegantly into a dusky campfire sing-a-long. The quiet incantation of hidden track, Untitled, ends the album appropriately with gentle and majestically sways into slumber.

Akron/Family are a folk band at heart, and beneath all the off-note harmonizing, stretched out electronic buzzes and awkward silences is a band wholly obsessed with where a room full of instruments and some youthful ambition can take some poignant acoustic tracks. They are rare in that they can work effectively on both sides of the mystic-folk and indie-rock divide. This debut is well written, produced and delivered. The introspective depth achieved in this album is absolutely unparalleled. They exists in a dimension unbeknown to us, and occupies a space of its own.


Akron/Family - Italy by ajay-patel