This is an excellent new album from Gifts From Enola, post-rockers from Virginia (which pretty much makes them the only good band ever to come out of Virginia). There is a ton of similar-sounding post-rock music these days, so it can be hard to tell what is worth listening to. From Fathoms stays true to the genre but is not limited by it, showing that Gifts From Enola can experiment while still retaining their style. The songs aren’t just the straightforward quiet-then-get-louder-and-louder-until-the-epic-climax formula that so many post-rock bands churn out (I believe we have Explosions in the Sky to thank for that)- song stuctures and musical elements are varied enough to make the whole album interesting and unrepetitive. This album may not restore jaded fans’ faith in post-rock entirely, but it proves that the genre is still relevant and valuable.

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Many thanks to my friend at Optimistic Underground who turned me onto this (and a lot of the best music in my life, to be honest). Bullion is a young DJ/producer from London who follows in the vein of recent instrumental and experimental hip-hop pioneers such as J Dilla, Dabrye, Prefuse 73, Daedelus, and Flying Lotus with these two releases.

He’s acclaimed by artists and producers such as Busy P, Mary-Anne Hobbes, and my all-time favorite Osborne, so with such star support I decided to check him out. Sure enough, the music’s good as gold. Opener Young Heartache weaves seamlessly between old romantic pop samples and the dreamy syncopated beats that scatter around it to create a timeless hip-hop composition that J Dilla would be proud of. These old-timey pop samples continue to crop up amongst chuggy, layered beat instrumentation that dispenses with the spacey ambiance of Flying Lotus, instead recalling a jazzier, more densely introspective J Dilla. This guy is gonna be huge soon, I can tell.

Favorite tracks: Rude Effort, Young Heartache, Time For Us All To Love, Are You The One?

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This is a masterpiece of sample-driven instrumental hip-hop. From a DJ and producer named Exile, who is known for his work with up-and-coming emcee Blu on their album Below The Heavens from 2007. Here, Exile crafts an astonishingly complex work (a concept album, apparently) entirely out of samples from the radio. It’s easy to listen to the album once and hear hints of Daedelus, Prefuse 73, Flying Lotus, and even J Dilla. Most songs close with a disturbing montage of radio clips from political and news shows, exposing a dialectic between the similar samples which form such an organic body of music and the assaulting progression of technology, media, and culture which continues to erode our humyn liberties and existence. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, as several of the political references are a little old (PATRIOT Act? how 2003), but I do think that the album itself has much to offer stylistically to other producers in the same vein - his beats sound classically composed, but not in a predictable way. The pop culture soundbites self-reference the milieu of the project in a way which stitches each track together to form a cohesive whole, and thus complement the smooth, loungey hip hop beats that layer over each thick synth loop. This guy Exile knows what he’s doing, and the album as a whole feels very much like a classic.

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Nostalgic montages of better days (old times are always better, amirite? will this rocky era be referred to with a grin and a twinkle?)…pretty instrumental pieces. Music your folks can grieve after they’ve tossed you into the earth. (sorry to bum yall out). maybe music for stroking yr chin to, for thinking about life, the universe, and everything. what does it all mean?? dim the lights and tell me.

Fav track: Horseshoes & Handgrenades

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