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koganbotThe last album I really listened to as an album was Taylor Swift's Fearless. Which isn't to say that there've been no albums since then that have had an identity for me, such as a common sound to the whole thing or interesting ways the tracks play off and sometimes against each other. In Babes Wodumo's Crown, for instance, from my 2021 albums list, every single song on it has a density of sound and interplay unlike anything else I've heard in gqom or amapiano. So the album itself has a signature sound, just as Blackout or Exile On Main Street have. Maybe even more interesting along those lines is the Sounds Of Pamoja compilation, also on the 2021 list, a bunch of different artists from Dar es Salaam scratching the same itch and clawing the same walls.*
Except the way I use those two albums isn't as albums (in the way as a teenager I'd decide to listen to Side Two of Crown Of Creation). Rather, the songs on them became fodder for playlists, basically. Essentially that's what I do with albums these days; pull tracks from them. Or listen to them several times for "context." Or, near the end of a year, listen to a number of them (not that big a number) for the sake of finding titles for end-of-year poll ballots.
As for end-of-year polls, I use them for schmoozing, partying, and proselytizing; less for taking stock of a year much less deciding what's good or not. But it's always interesting to see if anyone likes what I listen to, and it's instructive and kind of funny to see sheets and sheets of stuff I've never heard of. Of course singles are way better than albums for sampling morsels off the passing food trucks. But albums are still what these polls center on, and if I want in on the party then I'll make a list of albums. And hope someone listens to one of those albums.
So for the sake of doing it I made a last-second list of albs for the November 30 Uproxx poll (results here), leaning heavily for my listening on recommendations from my friends Don, John, Chuck, and Dave. And then the idea was that for a bunch of weeks in December I was going to listen to at least one new-to-me EP or album a day, and of course relisten to others, and so on, in time for the Pazz & Jop Rip-Off poll. And, of course, this rarely happened, between my submitting a song for TSJ's Amnesty Week and my watching football highlights on YouTube. Then in January, um… Anyhow, with my P&J Rip-Off ballot done on Jan. 1, ballots for the Expert Witness Poll are due in one-and-a-half days [EDIT: make that one day] and I'm sort of panicking. In the meantime, this was my Albums ballot (half of which are actually EPs) for the Jan. 1 Pazz & Jop Rip-Off Poll (poll results here):
DJ Jeffdepl - Forrozinho CD De Carnaval 2023 - 14
MTS No Beat - Outubro 2023 - 13
D'Athiz x Ke-nny x Locomeister - What's The Sound? - 11
DJ Ws da Igrejinha - Caça Fantasma, Vol. 1 - 10
MC Madan - Controle Mental - 10
99 no Beat - Tremzinho do 99 - 10
Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra - America: The Rough Cut - 9
NewJeans - Get Up - 8
V/Z - Suono Assente - 8
Actress – LXXXVIII - 7
DJ Jeffdepl - Forrozinho CD De Carnaval 2023
The Jeffdepl CD is part of a trend whereby someone presumably from the Brazilian northeast takes a rural or rural-like rhythm and throws a whole bunch of urban baile funk songs or samples on top, possibly including a whole bunch of non-baile funk material as well. Or that's what seems to be going on, though Jeffdepl's collaborations with MC Danny seem to be originals. And seemingly every month Jeffdepl puts out a mix CD and usually his fans upload it as a YouTube mix (I'm including in the category "fans" people who want to attract Jeffdepl listeners to their own YouTube channels). The Carnaval CD was February. And I'm giving you two links for it, the first to one of these uploads (same as the embed above), and the second to a playlist I made separating it out into discrete standalone tracks rather than forcing you to swallow the whole thing in one breathless continuum. Also, you can find the title as Forrozinho - CD Carnaval 2023 or Forrozinho Carnaval 2023 or 2023 Forrozinho CD Carnaval or CD de Carnaval 2023 (Forrozinho). And some of those have an extra eighth track, a different one on each, which seems to be uploader's choice and sounds nothing like the rest or like Jeffdepl.
The following EPs and albs are still in play for Expert Witness, not just because I'm always changing my mind and have several new discoveries but because it has five more slots, owing to Brad's including a separate five-entry EP** category.
MC Rogerinho - "085"
DJ Alef Rodrigo - Evolução do Mandelão
DJ Arana - EP A.Mago (Playlist do Mago)
MC Rogerinho - DVD Pode Crê (Ao Vivo)
DJ Jeffdepl - Casca de Bala
d.silvestre - Espanta Gringo
Felo Le Tee x Mellow & Sleazy - The III Wise Men
DJ Black Low - Impumelelo
JPEGMafia and Danny Brown - Scaring the Hoes Vol. 1
Lakecia Benjamin - Phoenix
Jason Moran - From The Dancehall To The Battlefield
...plus whatever else I scrounge up or stumble across in the next day and a half.
The What's The Sound? EP edges out the other two South African long-players by being the most arty and abrasive of the three, also therefore getting along better on this list with my Brazilian entries (abrasion contains five-sixths of brasil).
D'Athiz x Ke-nny x Locomeister – "Gumba Fire"
I will interrupt this disquisition to say:
EOY, EOY Oh!
JJ Fad "Anotha Ho"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrcZNTYfmA&t=91s
Here's the link to the Controle Mental album, as it's harder to find on MC Madan's YouTube page than the two (!) separate four-song EPs he also calls Controle Mental. Of course, I'm not always sure that what's assembled and streaming as an "album" wasn't assembled by a YouTube bot rather than by the artists themselves.
MC Madan – "Cyber Gaia"
In any event, Controle Mental is the album most able to challenge Mrs. Duff's definition of music (to our first-grade class in 1960) as "organized sound." Basically has a lot of yelling and noisy electronic sounds that in years past might've been defined as rock, or should've been defined as rock, anyway.
Am listening to the Sparks album in bkgd (The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte); I'd rate it as likable PLUS, a possible honorable mention: nothing goes dancing, despite the title of one of the songs, but some stomp solidly. Choice track "A Love Story." Did listen to the Stones alb, but only once and not w/ more than the half attention I'm giving to Sparks, so will hold off making comments. (Hold off? Are you kidding? So, initial and maybe way wrong Stones impressions: the track w/ McCartney on bass is the messiest and pushiest and the one I most want to return to. The Muddy Waters cover is better than adequate but not remotely within-light-years as exciting, queasy, compelling etc. as "Midnight Rambler" live 1969 which had the very same "Rolling Stone"/"Still A Fool" riff slithering and squirming right in the midst of it. The rest of the new alb seems too hard and post-'71 Stonesy and samey in its precise strumming, unless I'm wrong about the saminess; feel the record needs better songwriting.) (Fwiw my favorite 21st-century Stones track is "It Won't Take Long" back on A Bigger Bang – "It Won't Take Long" still gets stuck in post-'71 depth of strum, but on "Long" the strum makes everything seasick (that's a compliment) – and Mick, in sound and lyrics, is anguish-disguised-as-sarcasm and sarcasm-disguised-as-anguish and jokes-disguised-as-arrogance and arrogance-disguised-as-jokes just like it's heart-of-stone 1964 and the rugs are being pulled out from under us and floorboards are caving in, though "Take Long" is a level or two down from being as good as that.)
To pose and answer the question Chuck Eddy in his 2023 albs writeup referred to someone else asking: Is rock dead?
The quick answer is "Not dead at all, live-r than you'll ever be," etc., though that's if I'm using rock as verb. Anyhow, my 2023 number one single, MC Pipokinha & DJ Kleytinho's "Bota Na Pipoka," rocks hard, goes hard, as young people in their late forties in Tom's Twitter polls like to say – not necessarily saying it about that song, mind you, though Kat Stevens, who plays rock music in a band with, like, guitar and bass and drums and such (as I once did) and likes the Fall (as I do), calls the song "a 100% banger."
The issue is not that simple, of course; not everything that bangs, bangs with the same meaning and sensibility. But this is my answer for now. And I'm sticking to it (for now).
Finally, this was my Uproxx ballot back on Nov. 30...
ALBUMS 2023:
DJ Jeffdepl / Forrozinho CD De Carnaval 2023
MTS No Beat / Outubro 2023
DJ Ws da Igrejinha / Caça Fantasma, Vol. 1
Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra / America: The Rough Cut
NewJeans / Get Up
DJ Arana / EP A.Mago (Playlist do Mago)
DJ Black Low / Impumelelo
Felo Le Tee x Mellow & Sleazy / The III Wise Men
JPEGMafia and Danny Brown / Scaring the Hoes Vol. 1
Jason Moran / From The Dancehall To The Battlefield
SINGLES 2023:
MC Pipokinha, DJ Kleytinho / "Bota Na Pipoka"
Jiraya Uai, MC Tarapi / "Hoje Tem Rodeio, Baile De Favela"
Billie Eilish / "hotline (edit)"
MTS No Beat, MC Pipokinha / "Bota Na Pipokinha, Quando Morre Eu Quero Ser Entrada De Quatro (Forrozinho Remix)"
Sho Madjozi / "Chalé"
...and for completeness this was my Expert Witness ballot for 2022, which I don't think I've ever posted anywhere except on Brad's comment thread.
ALBUMS 2022:
Hook - From, Hook - 14 points
Ada Rook - Ugly Death No Redemption Angel Curse I Love You - 14 points
DJ MT7 - Pior é Nada - 13 points
DJ Travella - Mr Mixondo - 12 points
Moonchild Sanelly - Phases - 11 points
Phelimuncasi - Ama Gogela - 10 points
Bali Baby - Baliprint - 7 points
Juninho Count - Avalanches Dos Baile 2.0 - 7 points
WeFreeStrings - Love In The Form Of Sacred Outrage - 7 points
Bas Jan - Baby U Know - 5 points
SINGLES 2022:
DJ Guuga - "Mostra O Que Ele Perdeu"
Zoi De Gato, Marlinho RDC, Laryssa Real - "Os Ratos Da Favela"
MC Danny & Turma da Bregadeira - "Soca Tudo"
MC Pipokinha, DJ MT7 - "Fala Fala"
A Turma da Pisadinha - "Na Onda do Berimbau"
MC Buraga, Bebll & Pétt, DJ Patrick Muniz - "Like Like Piquezin Piquezin"
MC Madan & MC Kalyu - "Fortnite Das Favelas"
MC RD, DJ Bill - "Piui Tic Tac vs Camisinh4 De Chocolate"
Ecko Bazz - "Mmaso"
Clayton da Bagaceira, MC Mari e Matheuzinho - "No Sigilo"
EPs 2022:
A Turma da Pisadinha - Rabetão Mágico - 3 points
Bragglights - End '22 - 3 points
Panic Shack - Baby Shack - 2 points
MC Madan - Terror do Multiverso - 1 point
Hyuna - Nabillera - 1 point
Felo Le Tee x Mellow & Sleazy - "Gorgeous"
Turma da Pisadinha - "Novinha Tarada"
*Not that that's supposed to be an ideal in albums (that there's an overall mood or style, any more than that would be an ideal in people or books etc., and Exile is far from my favorite Stones album). Just that those two albs are really distinct as albums (and the stuff on Crown is distinct from anything else I've heard from Wodumo or Mampintsha, her collaborator on it).
**Brazil has found the sweet spot, consistently making aggregations of songs that are longer than what I call EPs and shorter than what I call albums. South Africa, meanwhile, seems to assign the term EP randomly to anything up to 70 minutes. This is complicated by YouTube channels that call everything with more than one track an album. I haven't decided yet what I’m going to do for Expert Witness, which is the only poll that gives EPs their own category. Got more EPs and mongrels than albums on my longlist. May put my top EPs and mongrels on my albums list, 5 more EPs/mongrels on my EPs list, and if there are any worthy ones left over they'll go on the bottom of my albums list.
Except the way I use those two albums isn't as albums (in the way as a teenager I'd decide to listen to Side Two of Crown Of Creation). Rather, the songs on them became fodder for playlists, basically. Essentially that's what I do with albums these days; pull tracks from them. Or listen to them several times for "context." Or, near the end of a year, listen to a number of them (not that big a number) for the sake of finding titles for end-of-year poll ballots.
As for end-of-year polls, I use them for schmoozing, partying, and proselytizing; less for taking stock of a year much less deciding what's good or not. But it's always interesting to see if anyone likes what I listen to, and it's instructive and kind of funny to see sheets and sheets of stuff I've never heard of. Of course singles are way better than albums for sampling morsels off the passing food trucks. But albums are still what these polls center on, and if I want in on the party then I'll make a list of albums. And hope someone listens to one of those albums.
So for the sake of doing it I made a last-second list of albs for the November 30 Uproxx poll (results here), leaning heavily for my listening on recommendations from my friends Don, John, Chuck, and Dave. And then the idea was that for a bunch of weeks in December I was going to listen to at least one new-to-me EP or album a day, and of course relisten to others, and so on, in time for the Pazz & Jop Rip-Off poll. And, of course, this rarely happened, between my submitting a song for TSJ's Amnesty Week and my watching football highlights on YouTube. Then in January, um… Anyhow, with my P&J Rip-Off ballot done on Jan. 1, ballots for the Expert Witness Poll are due in one-and-a-half days [EDIT: make that one day] and I'm sort of panicking. In the meantime, this was my Albums ballot (half of which are actually EPs) for the Jan. 1 Pazz & Jop Rip-Off Poll (poll results here):
DJ Jeffdepl - Forrozinho CD De Carnaval 2023 - 14
MTS No Beat - Outubro 2023 - 13
D'Athiz x Ke-nny x Locomeister - What's The Sound? - 11
DJ Ws da Igrejinha - Caça Fantasma, Vol. 1 - 10
MC Madan - Controle Mental - 10
99 no Beat - Tremzinho do 99 - 10
Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra - America: The Rough Cut - 9
NewJeans - Get Up - 8
V/Z - Suono Assente - 8
Actress – LXXXVIII - 7
DJ Jeffdepl - Forrozinho CD De Carnaval 2023
The Jeffdepl CD is part of a trend whereby someone presumably from the Brazilian northeast takes a rural or rural-like rhythm and throws a whole bunch of urban baile funk songs or samples on top, possibly including a whole bunch of non-baile funk material as well. Or that's what seems to be going on, though Jeffdepl's collaborations with MC Danny seem to be originals. And seemingly every month Jeffdepl puts out a mix CD and usually his fans upload it as a YouTube mix (I'm including in the category "fans" people who want to attract Jeffdepl listeners to their own YouTube channels). The Carnaval CD was February. And I'm giving you two links for it, the first to one of these uploads (same as the embed above), and the second to a playlist I made separating it out into discrete standalone tracks rather than forcing you to swallow the whole thing in one breathless continuum. Also, you can find the title as Forrozinho - CD Carnaval 2023 or Forrozinho Carnaval 2023 or 2023 Forrozinho CD Carnaval or CD de Carnaval 2023 (Forrozinho). And some of those have an extra eighth track, a different one on each, which seems to be uploader's choice and sounds nothing like the rest or like Jeffdepl.
The following EPs and albs are still in play for Expert Witness, not just because I'm always changing my mind and have several new discoveries but because it has five more slots, owing to Brad's including a separate five-entry EP** category.
MC Rogerinho - "085"
DJ Alef Rodrigo - Evolução do Mandelão
DJ Arana - EP A.Mago (Playlist do Mago)
MC Rogerinho - DVD Pode Crê (Ao Vivo)
DJ Jeffdepl - Casca de Bala
d.silvestre - Espanta Gringo
Felo Le Tee x Mellow & Sleazy - The III Wise Men
DJ Black Low - Impumelelo
JPEGMafia and Danny Brown - Scaring the Hoes Vol. 1
Lakecia Benjamin - Phoenix
Jason Moran - From The Dancehall To The Battlefield
...plus whatever else I scrounge up or stumble across in the next day and a half.
The What's The Sound? EP edges out the other two South African long-players by being the most arty and abrasive of the three, also therefore getting along better on this list with my Brazilian entries (abrasion contains five-sixths of brasil).
D'Athiz x Ke-nny x Locomeister – "Gumba Fire"
I will interrupt this disquisition to say:
EOY, EOY Oh!
JJ Fad "Anotha Ho"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrcZNTYfmA&t=91s
Here's the link to the Controle Mental album, as it's harder to find on MC Madan's YouTube page than the two (!) separate four-song EPs he also calls Controle Mental. Of course, I'm not always sure that what's assembled and streaming as an "album" wasn't assembled by a YouTube bot rather than by the artists themselves.
MC Madan – "Cyber Gaia"
In any event, Controle Mental is the album most able to challenge Mrs. Duff's definition of music (to our first-grade class in 1960) as "organized sound." Basically has a lot of yelling and noisy electronic sounds that in years past might've been defined as rock, or should've been defined as rock, anyway.
Am listening to the Sparks album in bkgd (The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte); I'd rate it as likable PLUS, a possible honorable mention: nothing goes dancing, despite the title of one of the songs, but some stomp solidly. Choice track "A Love Story." Did listen to the Stones alb, but only once and not w/ more than the half attention I'm giving to Sparks, so will hold off making comments. (Hold off? Are you kidding? So, initial and maybe way wrong Stones impressions: the track w/ McCartney on bass is the messiest and pushiest and the one I most want to return to. The Muddy Waters cover is better than adequate but not remotely within-light-years as exciting, queasy, compelling etc. as "Midnight Rambler" live 1969 which had the very same "Rolling Stone"/"Still A Fool" riff slithering and squirming right in the midst of it. The rest of the new alb seems too hard and post-'71 Stonesy and samey in its precise strumming, unless I'm wrong about the saminess; feel the record needs better songwriting.) (Fwiw my favorite 21st-century Stones track is "It Won't Take Long" back on A Bigger Bang – "It Won't Take Long" still gets stuck in post-'71 depth of strum, but on "Long" the strum makes everything seasick (that's a compliment) – and Mick, in sound and lyrics, is anguish-disguised-as-sarcasm and sarcasm-disguised-as-anguish and jokes-disguised-as-arrogance and arrogance-disguised-as-jokes just like it's heart-of-stone 1964 and the rugs are being pulled out from under us and floorboards are caving in, though "Take Long" is a level or two down from being as good as that.)
To pose and answer the question Chuck Eddy in his 2023 albs writeup referred to someone else asking: Is rock dead?
The quick answer is "Not dead at all, live-r than you'll ever be," etc., though that's if I'm using rock as verb. Anyhow, my 2023 number one single, MC Pipokinha & DJ Kleytinho's "Bota Na Pipoka," rocks hard, goes hard, as young people in their late forties in Tom's Twitter polls like to say – not necessarily saying it about that song, mind you, though Kat Stevens, who plays rock music in a band with, like, guitar and bass and drums and such (as I once did) and likes the Fall (as I do), calls the song "a 100% banger."
The issue is not that simple, of course; not everything that bangs, bangs with the same meaning and sensibility. But this is my answer for now. And I'm sticking to it (for now).
Finally, this was my Uproxx ballot back on Nov. 30...
ALBUMS 2023:
DJ Jeffdepl / Forrozinho CD De Carnaval 2023
MTS No Beat / Outubro 2023
DJ Ws da Igrejinha / Caça Fantasma, Vol. 1
Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra / America: The Rough Cut
NewJeans / Get Up
DJ Arana / EP A.Mago (Playlist do Mago)
DJ Black Low / Impumelelo
Felo Le Tee x Mellow & Sleazy / The III Wise Men
JPEGMafia and Danny Brown / Scaring the Hoes Vol. 1
Jason Moran / From The Dancehall To The Battlefield
SINGLES 2023:
MC Pipokinha, DJ Kleytinho / "Bota Na Pipoka"
Jiraya Uai, MC Tarapi / "Hoje Tem Rodeio, Baile De Favela"
Billie Eilish / "hotline (edit)"
MTS No Beat, MC Pipokinha / "Bota Na Pipokinha, Quando Morre Eu Quero Ser Entrada De Quatro (Forrozinho Remix)"
Sho Madjozi / "Chalé"
...and for completeness this was my Expert Witness ballot for 2022, which I don't think I've ever posted anywhere except on Brad's comment thread.
ALBUMS 2022:
Hook - From, Hook - 14 points
Ada Rook - Ugly Death No Redemption Angel Curse I Love You - 14 points
DJ MT7 - Pior é Nada - 13 points
DJ Travella - Mr Mixondo - 12 points
Moonchild Sanelly - Phases - 11 points
Phelimuncasi - Ama Gogela - 10 points
Bali Baby - Baliprint - 7 points
Juninho Count - Avalanches Dos Baile 2.0 - 7 points
WeFreeStrings - Love In The Form Of Sacred Outrage - 7 points
Bas Jan - Baby U Know - 5 points
SINGLES 2022:
DJ Guuga - "Mostra O Que Ele Perdeu"
Zoi De Gato, Marlinho RDC, Laryssa Real - "Os Ratos Da Favela"
MC Danny & Turma da Bregadeira - "Soca Tudo"
MC Pipokinha, DJ MT7 - "Fala Fala"
A Turma da Pisadinha - "Na Onda do Berimbau"
MC Buraga, Bebll & Pétt, DJ Patrick Muniz - "Like Like Piquezin Piquezin"
MC Madan & MC Kalyu - "Fortnite Das Favelas"
MC RD, DJ Bill - "Piui Tic Tac vs Camisinh4 De Chocolate"
Ecko Bazz - "Mmaso"
Clayton da Bagaceira, MC Mari e Matheuzinho - "No Sigilo"
EPs 2022:
A Turma da Pisadinha - Rabetão Mágico - 3 points
Bragglights - End '22 - 3 points
Panic Shack - Baby Shack - 2 points
MC Madan - Terror do Multiverso - 1 point
Hyuna - Nabillera - 1 point
Felo Le Tee x Mellow & Sleazy - "Gorgeous"
Turma da Pisadinha - "Novinha Tarada"
*Not that that's supposed to be an ideal in albums (that there's an overall mood or style, any more than that would be an ideal in people or books etc., and Exile is far from my favorite Stones album). Just that those two albs are really distinct as albums (and the stuff on Crown is distinct from anything else I've heard from Wodumo or Mampintsha, her collaborator on it).
**Brazil has found the sweet spot, consistently making aggregations of songs that are longer than what I call EPs and shorter than what I call albums. South Africa, meanwhile, seems to assign the term EP randomly to anything up to 70 minutes. This is complicated by YouTube channels that call everything with more than one track an album. I haven't decided yet what I’m going to do for Expert Witness, which is the only poll that gives EPs their own category. Got more EPs and mongrels than albums on my longlist. May put my top EPs and mongrels on my albums list, 5 more EPs/mongrels on my EPs list, and if there are any worthy ones left over they'll go on the bottom of my albums list.
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