Ari Lennox, "Whipped Cream"
I really know very little about modern R&B, and mostly I just kind of randomly stumble on albums from year-end reviews or whatever. And then even when things come up here, I'm not sure I can say a whole lot. This is good?
U-SCO, "high and rising"
oh hell yes goddamn fuck yeah gimme that shit i need it i wanna deliberately concentrate and inhale this
Jan Jelinek, "Lady Gaga, You Once Said in an Interview That You Write Music for the Fashion Industry. Is Fashion as Important to You as Music?"
Zwischen ("Between") is an album comprised of songs assembled out of the in-between bits of an interview. So not the words, but all the other noises that the celebrities emitted between the words. Furthermore, the synths are controlled by the samples, resulting in meandering music. I love this sort of formal experimentation, and the resulting album is interesting even without the background on it. With the background? Top notch stuff.
Floor, "Scimitar"
OK, today rules. Don't fuck it up, final track!
Smashing Orange, "Look Behind You"
Oh nice! Forgotten psych-inflected rock, very much in the vein of Love Battery, Smashing Orange put out four records in the 90s that were quite good, but didn't have a ton of impact and are now largely forgotten. I had a very amusing cold email a while back when someone found an old review of mine from Usenet where I said nice things about the band, and they asked if by chance I happened to have any live bootlegs or anything. Apparently, my review was about the only writing they'd ever found on the band. Alas, no, I didn't. I wish I could have helped them.