so yeah new clipping.'s not quite Midcity but they're about to become the first hip hop outfit I've ever given 4.5 stars to two of their albums, so that's nothing to sneeze at.

Plastic Records knows good library music when they hear it: the Stroboscopica comps are all pretty dang great, as is Phase 6 Super Stereo, excepting, naturally, the "I'm a Man" (Spencer Davis, not Jobriath) cover, because how could that song ever not be execrable?

Ivo Perelman's the Ventriloquist is obviously good but man I listened to it in a funk that practically no music could ever penetrate - for most of its running time I used it simply as a way to block out the noise around me at Moe's and that's not an ideal situation for any album that's not harsh noise, if that.

Disco Discharge: Pink Pounders may have two of my fav singles ever on it but boy howdy hi-NRG can get grating when there's this much that's not that good.

The Chimurenga Renaissance album really does nothing interesting or particularly well - then again, I never truly loved Shabazz Palaces, either. On the other hand, TO​: ​AM - FREE​: ​AM by Obba Supa is weirdly magical - the main hook here, the main thing that sets it apart from virtually all other music with rapping ever, is that emcee hey!zeus very rarely spits rhymes - this adds a hypnotic stream-of-consciousness feel to his verses and perfectly fits the early morning rainy haze vibe of the beats, as hinted at in the album title, and the beats are really really chill - think the Midnight Eez meets Siah & Yeshua DapoED or like cloud rap if cloud rap were jazz rap. The more I listen the more I realize that that hey!zeus keeps saying that I was hoping was "raze" or "raise" or "rage" actually is "rape" so um maybe fuck you?