scruffyshutter

Counting Down The Dayssong · We Come Alive · Jonathan Jeremiah4.0 out of 5 stars · 16d ago

No sample to trace on this one, which for a Jonathan Jeremiah song is normal, the strings are the sample. Damiano Pascarelli arranged them and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra played them, and they sit over an acoustic guitar that never once fights for room. My only note is the drums. They are warm, but the low end is politely tucked under the orchestra when I wanted it to carry the thing the way the bass carries a Roots record. Knowing the whole album is him working through losing his father makes the title land harder than any single line does. He posted a version played in his back garden wit

The Purple AlbumYoung Thug4.0 out of 5 stars · 27d ago

First five songs, that's the record. Thug sounds like he's out to win something and Gucci is content to sit back and let him have the room, which is generous of him. Everything after is a folder of loosies with a cover on it. What holds it back is the low end, no give in it at all, kick and vocal fighting over the same inch of space, and the ideas underneath deserve better than that. And no proper credits anywhere, on beats that clearly had somebody thinking hard about them.

Fantastic VoyageLakeside5.0 out of 5 stars · Aug 21

Dick Griffey producing alongside the band themselves, SOLAR at its peak, and that's why this one hangs together where most of Lakeside's run is two good songs and filler. Everybody knows the title track secondhand by now, Coolio built his 1994 hit straight off it, but at full length the bassline actually walks somewhere and the drums have air around them. Nothing squeezed. Your Love Is on the One is the one I keep returning to, tighter pocket and it went top 20 R&B without ever becoming the song people remember. A big band where every player is earning his place, which almost never happens.

Impalas&Bourbonsong · AsTheBluntBurnsSlow · Bones5.0 out of 5 stars · Aug 18

The credits aren't posted anywhere I can find, which is normal for a SESH drop and still annoying when the beat is this specific. Whoever cut it left room around the kick instead of squashing it up against the vocal, and that softness in the low end is the only reason a loop this plain can hold for two minutes. People keep pulling him back toward the melodic emo records and I understand why, but this stretch of 90s Texas and Memphis underground is the version of him I return to. Greaf is on the record and you can hear that lineage sitting under everything here. Fifteen songs in half an hour me

Ma chérie (feat. Amadou & Mariam)song · VERSATILE · Zaho4.5 out of 5 stars · Aug 16

Amadou has been gone over a year and that guitar still walks in first, nothing sanded off it. Zaho works around it rather than over it, and the drums stay back where they should on something this light, no push, no weight it doesn't need. Versatile had seven guests and most of those played like a favour getting called in. Not this one. What gets me is how little it's reaching for.

goldilocks xTommy Genesis3.0 out of 5 stars · Aug 16

Peppermint opens it and I sat there wanting the rest to hold that line, which it never does. Everything's pushed up to the same brightness, so a woman is a god just hovers with nothing carrying it from underneath. She's a presence, she's always been a presence, and these songs keep handing her nothing to lean on. Three years for a record that got finished before it was written. I put peppermint on by itself now and leave the rest of it alone.