From a musty 70s basement to the sound of future rap, today's Five Songs has you covered.
Space Rock, "Dark Days"
So, here's a true oddity for you. Numero Group, a record label primarily doing reissues (and doing a great job!), released Cities of Darkscorch, a fantasy board game where you're playing as a hard rock band, traveling around the world defeating monsters and questing. It was accompanied by a double LP, Wayfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles, which was full of Sabbath and Zeppelin inspired heavy rock from a variety of acts. It all kind of tries to function as a time machine back to the early days of gaming, and ends up being a pretty unique package. I'm not sure it's all good, exactly, but I'm sure glad I own it.
Yo La Tengo, "Song for Mahlia"
From Yo La Tengo's 2006 record, I Am Not Afraid Of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, which is a fantastic record name. For this record, Yo La Tengo re-embraced the noisy side of their personality, which had been mostly missing for a couple of albums. Big freakouts bookend the album, which is otherwise mostly filled with mellow tuneful stuff, like this song. Great record, one of my favorites from them.
Naked City, "Hellraiser"
From avant guard jazz weirdo John Zorn, Naked City is a band dedicated to traversing as many genres as possible in as short a time as possible, while adding lots of grind-y breakdowns, squonking sax, and incoherent howling. If that sounds good to you, lemme tell you, you're in for a treat. Mostly, Naked City is really good at clearing parties.
Tombs, "Way of the Storm"
Sort of black metal, sort of sludge metal, Tombs occupies an interesting place, and their last two records have been really good. This track comes from The Grand Annihilation, which just came out this year.
Antipop Consortium, "Get Lite"
Experimental rap group Antipop Consortium used electronic and glitchy beats as the basis for their music rather than the traditional sources. The result was a pretty interesting departure from just about anything else you could listen to at the time. The even had music released on legendary electronic music label Warp. This track comes from Fluorescent Black, which was a reunion album released in 2009.