(Sandy) Alex G

TEN BLONDES | 2026-04-20

Don’t look now, but this summer it’ll be a whole ten years since the release of Frank Ocean‘s Blonde (as well as his underrated visual album companion Endless, you abolitionists!). Notwithstanding the highfalutin subterfuge he pulled off to ensure his hotly-anticipated sophomore record would be fully owned, distributed, and self-released via his own imprint Boys Don’t Cry—completely outside of the major circuit grip—the 17-track, hour-long tape has been aging like the finest of red wines. Landing more and more Top <insert here> album accolades as the years go by, Blonde‘s undeniable impact and influence only worsens the holdout wait fans have been plagued by throughout the past decade.

Yet before unpacking musical longing and nostalgia by way of ancillary creative prisms, let us weave in a brief hoopin intermission, just as motivated by the present timely juncture as by our own volition. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that the 2026 NBA postseason officially kicked off this past weekend, with its first full rodeo of games across the Western and Eastern conferences. As it’s storied tradition within this corner of the web, we once again made sure to churn out our impulsive, instinctive, and impromptu Playoffs bracket prediction as soon as the final (disappointing, no wasps…) Play-in verdicts trickled in last Friday night. Peep it below in its full glory.

Suffice to say that through a mere linear extrapolation of projected first round series winners per the above, our post-game one hit rate stagnates at moderately mediocre 62.5%—having correctly guessed five match up winners out of the possible eight. While we are quick to concede that the Wolves edging out the ex-ex-Champs Denver Nuggets remains a daring call, we just can’t even coexist with the idea that a Dončić- and Reaves-less Lakers would actually go on to upset a, well, for now Durant-less Rockets (at least as of game 1’s IL). Even more stupefying was the out-of-nowhere road win that a harassed and blemished Orlando Magic-ally managed to conquer in the Michiganian lion’s den of the #1 seed in the East, Detroit. Yeah we know, it’s just the first game of the first round of a long postseason. Matter of fact, we’ll keep and stand by our predictions; not least because last year‘s didn’t exactly pan out all that better…

Back to Blonde. Frank, where the Goddamn album at already?! Glazing over the personally dispelled rumors of that lore-ridden pre-Pandemic Look at Us, We’re in Love tape (that nonetheless yielded us a string of incredible standalone singles), it’s been awfully quiet on the musical front for the 38-year old former Odd Future wunderkind. So naturally, as with every addicting product not immediately available on the market, folks have been resorting to derivatives or, worse, copycats as their blonded fix to get by. Thusly, we thought we’d both celebrate and hopefully summon the right Ocean-esque vibrations necessary to memorialize a decade of Blondes, and who knows, perhaps even Mandela-effecting a new thing from Frank sooner or later.

One fun thing that has been circulating under the title Blond (!llmind Remixed) is a six-track, free-download revisitation dating back to 2016, the same year the OG Blonde dropped. Less a conventional project than a kind of digital sample pack—it’s likely a spontaneous combustion artifact of the immediate, saturated, chaotic afterlife of the record. If our memory serves us right (we copped the remix bundle around the time it dropped), this project came and went from the Interwebs a few times throughout the years, probably due to IP fingerprinting reasons. As of this writing however, it appears to be available and supplied as a free SoundCloud download by one Roseville Music Group (RMG), “a music entity founded by !llmind” himself, according to their profile.

In his reimagined pack, the Brooklyn, NY-based DJ samples six significant tunes from the full tracklist, and only ever so slightly alters their sonic tapestry by minimally intervening at various nooks and crannies. One is left wondering whether !llmind ever managed to get a hold of the full DAW session and stems for these in the first place, for the closeness to the original sound recordings and the thinly invasive modifications have us believe he simply worked his way down from the main monolith mixed and mastered full track file. Although it’s certainly enticing to hear selector reworks of slower deep cuts such as “Ivy” and “White Ferrari“, we would have also been curious to check out more dancey and EDM-adjacent cuts such as “Nikes” and “Nights” getting the remix treatment too.

By contrast, there’s also something called Piano Tribute to Frank Ocean—a fully realized, if enigmatic, solo piano cover concerto by the imaginatively named artist Blond Piano. Released in early 2017, the album presents a near-comprehensive instrumental rework of the Homer-founder’s eponymous LP, translating its layered, loose, and experimental production into sparse keyed arrangements. Stripped of vocals, effects, and ambient textures, each Blonde song (minus the two spoken interludes “Be Yourself” and “Facebook Story”) is reduced to its melodic and harmonic foundations. In case it still weren’t clear enough to someone, these renditions go to reveal just how structurally robust compositions like “Pink + White”, “Skyline To”, and “Seigfried” truly are.

Equally striking is the creative anonymity behind the project. Unlike Frank’s carefully managed and syndicated mystique, Blond Piano’s identity appears entirely absent. Aside from organic trade press speculation at the time, no promotion, no interviews, no context. This vacuum lends the album a quiet, almost accidental quality, as if it simply appeared and was discovered rather than released. The good people over at DJ Booth called the classical fifty minutes of keyed Blonde conversion “the closest you will get to being purified in the waters of Lake Minnetonka without traveling to Minnesota”. For some reason, it’s kind of no cap.

Together, these two Blondes show that Frank’s timeless 2016 record can be both endlessly reworked, and radically reduced. Functioning at once as a mutable cultural artifact and a deeply rooted piece of musical concoction. Blond (!llmind Remixed) and Piano Tribute to Frank Ocean are but two expressions of the artistic vastness the gifted singer/songwriter allows us to swim within. While there is no amount of words or images that can aptly describe the salivation we and all of his fans are producing as we eagerly await his next musical output in agony, there is also no end to the gratitude and grace we should feel knowing he’s given us this decade-old masterpiece. Happy tenth anniversary, Blonde.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2025 | 2025-12-21

SAULT — ACTS OF FAITH & 10 (FOREVER LIVING ORIGINALS)

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LISTEN HERE.

BLACK MILK & FAT RAY — FOOD FROM THE GODS (COMPUTER UGLY/FAT BEATS)

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SAM FENDER — PEOPLE WATCHING (POLYDOR RECORDS)

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BOLDY JAMES — TOKEN OF APPRECIATION & LATE TO MY OWN FUNERAL (1301 LLC, NICHOLAS CRAVEN PRODUCTIONS)

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BOB MOULD — HERE WE GO CRAZY (BMG RIGHTS)

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TUNDE ADEBIMPE — THEE BLACK BOLTZ (SUB POP RECORDS)

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VARIOUS ARTISTS — SINNERS (ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK) [SONY MUSIC]

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STEREOPHONICS — MAKE ‘EM LAUGH, MAKE ‘EM CRY, MAKE ‘EM WAIT (EMI)

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ROME STREETZ & CONDUCTOR WILLIAMS — TRAINSPOTTING (MASS APPEAL)

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TURNSTILE — NEVER ENOUGH (ROARDRUNNER RECORDS)

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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN — TRACKS II: THE LOST ALBUMS & NEBRASKA ’82: EXPANDED EDITION (COLUMBIA RECORDS)

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KEVIN ABSTRACT — BLUSH (X8 MUSIC)

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CLIPSE — LET GOD SORT EM OUT (ROC NATION)

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OPEN MIKE EAGLE — NEIGHBORHOOD GODS UNLIMITED (AUTO REVERSE)

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ALEX G — HEADLIGHTS (RCA RECORDS)

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FREDDIE GIBBS & THE ALCHEMIST — ALFREDO II (ESGN LLC)

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JID — GOD DOES LIKE UGLY (DREAMVILLE RECORDS)

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CHANCE THE RAPPER — STAR LINE (CHANCE THE RAPPER)

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KAYTRANADA — AIN’T NO DAMN WAY! (RCA RECORDS)

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EARL SWEATSHIRT — LIVE LAUGH LOVE (TAN CRESSIDA)

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NOURISHED BY TIME — THE PASSIONATE ONES (XL RECORDINGS)

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MOBB DEEP — INFINITE (MASS APPEAL)

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RICHARD ASHCROFT — LOVIN’ YOU (VIRGIN MUSIC GROUP)

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DANIEL CAESAR — SON OF SPERGY (REPUBLIC RECORDS)

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DE LA SOUL — CABIN IN THE SKY (MASS APPEAL)

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I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time. And happy holidays this time around.

AV

A DEAR IN HEADLIGHTS | 2025-07-20

It appears as though we’re in the midst of another summer of bars, ladies and gentlemen. With new full lengths from everyone from Rome Streetz, Wayne, Kevin Abstract, Boldy James, Clipse, Open Mike Eagle, Tyler the Creator, Freddie Gibbs & Al, Joey Bada$$, and JID all within the span of two months and change, there sure remains little room during the year of our Lord 2025 for any other outings to stick their head out. Unless they’re… head-lights. Very unassumingly, 32-year old American musician, producer, and singer-songwriter Alex G, a proud Philadelphia native, dared to swing his indie toy axe at the moon and challenge the aforementioned hip-hop avalanche by revealing his tenth studio LP Headlights right in the midst of that enemy crossfire. We’re pleased to report that both him and his music came out unscathed.

The project was released this past 18th July, couched right in-between the hallmark summer rap drops of Clipse and Tyler, the Creator, amongst others—not exactly two negligible acts at the turn of this decade. Believe it or not, Headlights is Mr Giannascoli’s major-label debut, marketed by Sony Music-owned RCA Records, and it follows the iconic and accomplished four-album deal run on British indie stalwart Domino Recording Company, between 2015 and 2022. That particular stint included perhaps his best overall, 2019’s House of Sugar, and culminated a few years ago in what at the time was his most well-rounded and wholesome effort with God Save the Animals. His latest offering is twelve tracks long, and clocks in at just about forty minutes of runtime: Alex G self-produced most of it himself, with additional help recruited in Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s bass guitarist Jacob Portrait (who had previously worked with Giannascoli on his aforementioned previous two studio albums). Less excitingly, before kicking off the Headlights cycle, the artist FKA (Sandy) Alex G also found time to score two official soundtrack albums for Jane Schoenbrun’s indie flicks We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2022) and I Saw the TV Glow (2024).

On this record, Alex G confirms he’s a naughty, albeit friendly, singer/songwriter. One that very deliberately exhumes public images of himself as if shunning away from the spotlight, and perhaps even suffering from it—all the while appearing more comfortable with this laidback set up than diving headfirst into the distribution and promo machinery that a major label would call for. Mind you, this is not inherently bad, and he is well within his rights to spin doctor such a framing onto his prime creative endeavor, particularly as it fits a narrative continuum started fifteen years ago. Hear us out on this though—as anticipatory singles for this project he plucks “Afterlife“, a pretty and catchy gem out in late May alongside the project announcement (featuring the drumming of none other than the E Street Band‘s Max Weinberg!), the kind “June Guitar” a month later, and finally the soft-spoken “Oranges” a day before street date. Are these three the best tracks on Headlights by quite a margin? Yes, probably.

Who does that, though? Who picks the cleanest, lushest, and glossiest numbers and de-contextualizes them from their housing record as teasers, if you’re Alex G? Everything from the gentle acoustic and electric guitar flourishes, the enveloping strings, and the timeless piano keys on these three cuts are something to behold. Were they a short single bundle issued by, like, James Taylor or Neil Young, people would scream for them to put out a whole album’s worth of this shit. Truly, all three are incredible exploits of pristine folk-pop, without Alex G’s trademark homespun low-fidelity enriching or spoiling them—depending on what side of the lore fence one stands on. Moreover, their lyrical ineffability transcends anything he has done before: “Love ain’t for the young anyhow / Something that you learn from fallin’ down“, “Let me write down / Every word / Once I was a mockingbird / Not an angel / But I’m your man“, and again “Wash in the river with the one I love / Every good thing with a little bad luck / You can cry baby, now, I ain’t bluffing / Wash in the river on bended knee“. I mean, come on?

One can tell Headlights is an Alex G record by the LP’s vicarious middle section, though. It’s the Pepsi test. Cuts like the loose and scattered “Spinning” sounds uncannily like a House of Sugar-adjacent cutting room floor extra, while the following “Louisiana” at number six on the tracklist harkens back to the legendary pre-Domino era of self-released hypnotic Bandcamp drops. It’s so direct and on the nose that one would think it’s bidding farewell to that DIY zeitgeist, for good. Perhaps it is. Regardless, it fits on the record, and it matters. Meanwhile, “Bounce Boy“, at number seven, comes close to us fantasizing how Alex G saw fit to dust off some of the guitar effects and pedal pre-sets he so unceremoniously championed on Frank Ocean‘s Blonde and Endless almost ten years ago. Yet he’s doing so in a self-referential and, yes let’s use that word, experimental way. Bottom line is, can anyone name us any major label artist who puts something like “Oranges” and this thing on the same marquee record? Well, in 2025 that might be less of a tall order, but still. You get the point.

What hasn’t changed throughout Headlights is Mr Giannascoli’s childlike naïveté, the earnest innocence at the core of these sound recordings. And yes, his extremely pleasant to the ear melodic layering is still in these tunes, too. Such pureness continues to belie distinct creative choices, though. For instance, he chiefly misses the mark on the record’s third act. But that’s ok. For we’re not going as far as declaring the tangible drop in quality from track number nine onwards as intentional, because that’s precisely Alex G’s inscrutably mystical quality. He comes across as knowing better than committing to tape the nasal and contrived vocal delivery on “Far and Wide“, yet does he really? Absent the self-indulgent and rowdy live take of album outro “Logan Hotel“—he isn’t new to bookending a project with a live version, see House of Sugar—and conceding that the title track is a bit of a grower with inherent replay value, “Far and Wide” and penultimate cut “Is It Still You in There?” are simply too lukewarm for his standards. Let us not forget, this is his tenth studio album after all.

Yet, part of it is what makes him so endearing and gentle to the outer world. Deep down we (wanna) know he does have the full album of pristine folk-pop in his bag, but either willingly or unwillingly, he opts for linear evolution over abrupt revolution. However, does he realize he’s playing in the major label leagues now? Most likely. On the dire and forlorn front-end standout “Beam Me Up“, he nods both that degree of revelatory self-awareness (“Some things I do for love / Some things I do for money / It ain’t like I don’t want it / It ain’t like I’m above it“), and sketches a long-shot metaphor borrowing from American football, not a foreign signifier to him: “Coach, I’m on the rocks / Coach, I’m threading needles / I leave it on the field“. We like to think that the titular headlights he finds himself surrounded by are the ultralight beams of the mainstream music circuit—while for someone like him it would be tempting to withdraw and burrow even more deeply, he instead chose to fight back with love and kindness. This album is proof.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2022 | 2022-12-20

NEIL YOUNG WITH CRAZY HORSE — BARN, TOAST & WORLD RECORD (REPRISE RECORDS)

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EARL SWEATSHIRT — SICK! (TAN CRESSIDA)

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SABA — FEW GOOD THINGS (PIVOT GANG)

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EDDIE VEDDER — EARTHLING (REPUBLIC RECORDS)

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STEREOPHONICS — OOCHYA! (IGNITION RECORDS)

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ALEX CAMERON — OXY MUSIC (SECRETLY CANADIAN)

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RYAN ADAMS — CHRIS, ROMEO & JULIET, FM, DEVOLVER + NEBRASKA (PAXAM RECORDING COMPANY)

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DENZEL CURRY — MELT MY EYEZ SEE YOUR FUTURE (LOMA VISTA RECORDINGS)

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JACK WHITE — FEAR OF THE DAWN & ENTERING HEAVEN ALIVE (THIRD MAN RECORDS)

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ALEX G — WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR, OST & GOD SAVE THE ANIMALS (MILAN RECORDS / DOMINO RECORDING)

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RANSOM — NO REST FOR THE WICKED & CHAOS IS MY LADDER (MOMENTUM ENTERTAINMENT)

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KENDRICK LAMAR — MR MORALE & THE BIG STEPPERS (TOP DAWG ENTERTAINMENT)

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JAMIE T — THE THEORY OF WHATEVER (POLYDOR RECORDS)

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DANGER MOUSE & BLACK THOUGHT — CHEAT CODES (BMG RIGHTS MGMT)

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FREDDIE GIBBS — $OUL $OLD $EPARATELY (ESGN/WARNER RECORDS)

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CORY BRANAN — WHEN I GO I GHOST (BLUE ELAN RECORDS)

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ARCTIC MONKEYS — THE CAR (DOMINO RECORDING)

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CARLY RAE JEPSEN — THE LONELIEST TIME (INTERSCOPE RECORDS)

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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN — ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE (COLUMBIA RECORDS)

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BROCKHAMPTON — THE FAMILY & TM (RCA RECORDS)

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I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time. And happy holidays this time around.

AV

ALEX REVIEWS MUSIC (ARM): ALEX G, A$AP ROCKY, BLACK THOUGHT & TBS SINGLES | 2022-06-19

As the feel good heat of the Western Hemisphere summer nears and approaches arts patrons the world over, so it seems a brand new sorcerous episodic ARM segment touching down on a gauntlet of unrelated and loose singles accompanied by rapid (vapid?), forthright, passionate, and gate-kept opinions. It is a jolly and momentous round up of enthusing one-off, lead, and follow-up records alike—in some cases anticipating a pre-announced full album release, whilst in others simply dangling the pendulum of disparate speculation and excitement for more to come in front of thirsty music pundits’ noses. A few of these are long-awaited, highly-anticipated returns to form, others flat out surprise drops, all with the addition of a perhaps once unthinkable crossover no one really asked for, yet in twenty-twenty (surgery) hindsight of its release genuinely asserting its rhyme and reason.

Philadelphia-native and 2000s lo-fi indie royalty Alex G does truly appear to be back on his dragged feet as of late, following almost three years of near noble silence since offering the mystical, God-forsaken, and form-less art pop exploit House of Sugar—a quasi-benchmarking essay in late stage capitalism’s induction to morph purposeful noise and tender melody in a hodgepodge of feels. Mere months ago, the 29-year-old Domino Recording Company talent showed up and delivered on the unlikely role of principal scorer for Jane Schoenbrun’s coming-of-age horror drama We’re All Going to the World’s Fair soundtrack. The Utopia-distributed, Sundance Film Festival-premiered feature-length film comes through attached to a glowing, foreboding, and glacial 13-track OST album, wholly curated by Alex G. Such an extra-curricular outing by the normally insular and elusive singer/songwriter features both a “Main Theme” opener and an “End Song” coda reprising the motion picture’s primary musical and lyrical undercurrent. Both manage to effortlessly gallop alongside the frail and cathartic razor’s edge courtesy of the Frank Ocean-protégé’s trademark musical ethos. Bone-less bendings leaning from the edge of gloomy bedroom pop leakages atop of a self-deprecating throne. Pure, raw, and untouched Alex G canon.

Perhaps more relevantly, just weeks after the release of said full OST project, the six-string troubadour saw fit to also dish out what for all intents and purposes oughta be considered the first real lead single from his yet to be announced forthcoming ninth studio album cycle. Unveiled officially on 23rd May, “Blessing“‘s three minutes and change of uncut 90s alt-rock-borrowed distortion, mixed with a tight straightforward rhythm section, comes and goes as a flickering tide of melting sonic verses and intelligently woven counterpoint melodies—delivered in a suspiciously forlorn beck-and-call whispering mode that results ever so out of place vis-a-vis the balls to the wall synth layering earmarking the cut’s post-chorus, or outro. Deceivingly enough though, the singular tune wonderfully sticks its experimental landing, and actually proves to render itself more and more memorable with time, unfolding ounces of sticky and addictive replay value with each listen: it’s esprit d’escalier galore if there ever was one.

Meanwhile, Lord Pretty Flacko himself blessed the mainstream hip-hop lore with the comeback hit single “D.M.B.” (aka DAT$ MAH B!*$H) earlier in May—a hallucinating chopped-and-screwed tape-mounting experience masquerading as his very personal joie de vivre ode to both narcotics and women, to be understood as fitting marijuana and Rihanna’s descriptions. The experimental number was first teased online as part of an advertisement for disgraced Swedish fintech company Klarna as far back as summer last year, and is slated to be appearing on A$AP Rocky’s speculative and crowdsourcedly-named forthcoming fourth studio album, ALL $MILES. Sonically, the RCA Records-earmarked song is a warped and invertebrate psychedelic rap cloud of multi-layered overdubs, spanning viscous samples, a sweet and endearing electric guitar lick, as well as an expansive and spastic drum machine syncopation—sporting the joint venture trademark production of a slew of co-signs including grime heavyweight Skepta and D33J.

Soaked and buttered in many of the stylistic aesthetic inklings prevalent on his formidable last major project Testing—coasting through everything from sly vocal manipulation to phasers set to stun—”D.M.B.” reveres in a ridiculously elliptical and hivemind hook (“Roll my blunt, fill my cup, be my bitch / Hold my gun, load it up, count my slugs / Yeah, they don’t know nothin’ / Roll my blunt, be my bitch / They don’t know nothin’) and rises above the fray by way of the endulced, serenading, and heavenly bridge kicking in 2:40 minutes into the track: “Baby / It’s been a little time since we both / Felt full since our first encounter / And baby / Don’t let another n**** try my baby / Girl you know I’m one call away / It’s nothin’ / And baby / My angel and my Goddess, when my head get clouded / You’re my soulmate, my Goddess / And baby / Took a little time in a gray place / For nothing, nothing“.

Elsewhere, it is a bona fide meeting of the underground hip-hop minds the one that finds 44-year old musician, songwriter and record producer Danger Mouse sculpt modularly poignant tapestries of soulful spine-bending backtrack beats for the unparalleled and envelope-pushing wordsmithing craft of The Roots’ mainstay MC Black Thought. Cheat Codes, the brand new back-to-back collaborative LP set for release at the tail end of summer, sees its anticipatory lead up campaign already in full steam mode inasmuch as two abstract and elusive teasers unveiled ahead of its full street date on 12th August. “No Gold Teeth”’s cleverly laced, dramatically sensual samples paved the promotional way with a somewhat soft surprise drop in early May, piercing through with Black Thought’s both life-affirming and tongue-in-cheek sixteens alike. Lending a substantial urgency to every verse, the joint ushers into gangster territory in a ‘heat of the moment’ fashion, hitting a runtime cul-de-sac before one quite wishes to realise, despite its formal two minutes and a half of clockwork.

A few months later—and sequenced right after the aforementioned dental blonde on the full length’s tracklist—the dusty and rough-around-the-edges stream of posse consciousness inertia encapsulated by “Because” significantly upped the realness ante. Trading fierce and inflammatory flows navigating through a smokey, cavernicolous, and woody production whilst periodically getting re-centered by Dylan Cartlidge’s affable refrain, Philadelphia-native Tariq Luqmaan Trotter, Joey Bada$$, and Russ get (listeners) in meticulous line and build upon each other’s pamphlet of maximes and truisms about notions of survival of the blackest/fittest as well as success’ fatalist nature. With such additional guests poised to be featured on Cheat Codes‘ remaining joints as the above A$AP Mob leader Rocky, the late MF DOOM, as well as A-list rap collective spinoffs like Run the Jewels and Griselda Records’s very own Conway the Machine, it’s safe to say that the anticipation is running high for what might well turn out to be one of the most essential hip-hop listens of the year.

Lastly, there are so many ways in which a Taking Back Sunday and Steve Aoki collaboration could have gone terribly, irreparably wrong in 2022. Out of the myriad of parallel universes that cohabitate our existence, it’s both baffling and flabbergasting that the one graced by our very own human sentient presence would have been the one to gestate it. And to think that it’s not that TBS were scraping their creative barrel out of content saturation anxiety as of late. On the contrary; aside from questionable band anniversary bundles, throwaway acoustic B-sides left on the cutting room floor, a legitimate Weezer cover song, as well as the upteenth reissue of their modern emo classic Tell All Your Friends, the Long Island alt rock veterans have essentially kept quiet and passive for nearly seven years since the straight up no frills alt rock of Tidal Wave. During that time, really nothing much to report—absent the regrettable departure of founding member and rhythm guitarist Eddie Reyes in 2018, their cutting ties with California-based indie Hopeless Records, as well that Fuckin Whatever side supergroup project. Hence why, the improbable outfit pairing between John Nolan, Adam Lazzara, Mark O’Connell, Shaun Cooper and the 44-year old American DJ, record producer, and Dim Mak record executive strikes as all the more haphazard.

Yet amazingly so, the riveting musical joint venture revealed around a week ago on “Just Us Two” panned out strong and convincing throughout. Thankfully, the one-off collab follows admittedly more of a third act Taking Back Sunday trademark formula with the sparkled addition of peppered Aoki flairs on top of it, rather than the other way around. This manifests primarily in the form of the DJ’s bouncy, elastic, and spacious synths playing second fiddle in accompany mode to the odd 6/8 song’s principal edgy refrain (“I remember the way that it felt / I remember the way that it felt / Watched the sun go down / Sitting on your roof / And the air was thick / Yeah our heads were too / Watched the sun come up / Sitting on your roof / Yeah, the air was thick / It was just us two“), as well as the anthemic and triumphant post-chorus group chants. However, one can’t help but feeling like it’s giant shame lost on our zeitgeist’s ears, for if it weren’t for today’s jeopardising goldfish memory span, the latter are made of the stuff that could define a generation: “These are the days / Always remember / These are the days / Always forever“.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

ALEX G

BLESSING

2022, Domino Recording

http://sandyalexg.com

A$AP ROCKY

D.M.B.

2022, RCA Records

https://www.asapmob.com

BLACK THOUGHT & DANGER MOUSE

CHEAT CODES

2022, BMG Rights Management

https://twitter.com/blackthought

TAKING BACK SUNDAY & STEVE AOKI

JUST US TWO

2022, Dim Mak Records

http://www.takingbacksunday.com

ON (SANDY) ALEX G’S MYSTICAL LOW-FIDELITY MELODY LAYERING | 2019-09-15

I’m just so unbelievably glad and fundamentally content that I stuck to my warm initial instinct and kept on believing its by-productized original hype, when it comes to Philadelphia-born singer-songwriter (Sandy) Alex G. Hailing from the somewhat overcooked and saturated strain of post-2010 homegrown, DYI, Zoomers-appealing bedroom-extraordinaries who conquered much of Bandcamp’s real estate during this past decade, the 26-year old yours truly-namesake arguably still touts his personalised claim to fame as him being the main six-strings architect and arranger behind Frank Ocean‘s summer of 2016 legendary release combo Blonde + Endless. Reverse engineering and unpacking the latter two album’s contents over the past couple years often led me to him, in one way or another. Too bad the many tries and attempts at delving into Alex’s existing discographic repertoire to date pretty much always yielded nothing more than metaphorical cul-de-sacs, with little to nothing in the way of deeper creative connection to be established with his confused, hazy, and spotty musical work including everything up until his 2017 LP Rocket. Yet something inside me kept whispering that there was merit to be rescued somewhere in there.

The above leitmotiv fiercely and completely fell out of the window a few days ago, upon arrival of his latest Domino-issued studio album, House of Sugar. His third on the trailblazing and influential British indie label, the record is a gorgeously hallucinating compilation of layered harmonic sound waves just short of forty minutes in length. It’s by far unlike anything I have engaged with in very, very, long, and I’m not simply referring to the musical realm here. Right off the bat, and throughout its thirteen cuts, House of Sugar’s sonic mantel glues together perfectly woven instrumentations, assembling tenderly infectious motifs, licks, and riffs in both uncomfortable yet stupendously gratifying ways. From the cradle to the grave, this is a map for the lost. Almost too pristinely doctored to still be filed under Alex’s conventional lo-fi musical wheelhouse, the record’s raw and loosely defined contours are perhaps best gripped through a bird’s eye view of the whole, instead of artificial partitioning them across thirteen different chapters. Here, the artistic compromise of track-listing the project into separate songs feels more like a resentful trade necessity, rather than a creative boilerplate to interact with at the songwriting stage. The input might even be lo-fi, but the output is decisively HD.

In an era where former Presidents flex cool Spotify playlists, it should come with no surprise that this thing has no genre. Tracks like “Near“, “Project 2”, and “Sugar” are flat-out indescribable in their spatial-infrastructural depth and variegated melodic density. Yet, their inability to make heads or tails of single components acts as the creative statement’s unequivocal poignant strength, as opposed to it representing a lack of compositional clarity. Throughout House of Sugar, brace yourselves to be stoked head-first with elements ranging from mid-naughties alt-acoustic emo, to experimental lab beats and some of the most enduring Smashing Pumpkins-esque melancholic aesthetic refuges. One might as well throw in peppered nuggets of easy listening IDM, adult alternative radio rock atmospheres, unconventionally paired-up instruments, highly introspective and revealing lyrics, and suddenly one arrives at a place where they could begin to translate this record’s spirit and soul into dried words. Beware, as the act of pressing play on album opener “Walk Away” rapidly decays into a void and senseless protocol, fully overtaken by the full length’s mystical sonic might, one that centrifuges the whole 38 minutes into a unified vortex of light, beauty, and redeeming splendour. It would be easy to imagine House of Sugar as a short movie of sorts, plugging into multimedia sensory experiences exclusively by way of its sounds and aesthetics, an illusory plateau that perfectly comes to mental fruition with each repeated new listen.

I’m just so unbelievably glad and fundamentally content that I stuck to my warm initial instinct and kept on believing its by-productized original hype, when it comes to Philadelphia-born singer-songwriter (Sandy) Alex G. This album is fantastic, an interstellar journey venturing into otherworldly sound sensations, allowing one to come out of the other way with their filthy hands cleansed top to bottom. Perhaps leading us to states not too unlike the graciously cathartic ice skater’s depicted on the record’s sleeve, this collection of tracks’ dazed gripping potency places itself as an unquestionable frontrunner for modern day self-serving modularities of escapism. Let us not kid ourselves. There are no lead singles here. No official music videos. Just an enthralling and continuous stream of consciousness music tape supplying seamless stylistic mood transitions between thirteen not-so-distinct acts, all veraciously accompanying personal enlightened ascensions climbing metaphysical stairways to heaven. Come to think of it, this might just be the Bandcamp generation’s Endless.

I’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and I hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

Sandy Alex G_House