new music roundup #6
20241102
night palace by mount eerie
night palace marks the first relatively-normal release in the mount eerie catalogue since the death of phil elverum’s wife from pancreatic cancer in 2017. that death was followed by the beautiful, heart-wrenching a crow looked at me, and the similarly death-focused now only, and then a collaborative record with julie doiron called lost wisdom, pt 2, a sequel to their lost wisdom collaboration from 2008.
where a crow looked at me was stripped down and laser-focused, night palace is much more freewheeling, tackling a range of topics and styles; there’s cuts here that would fit right in on sauna, clear moon, and wind’s poem, and they’re all executed with the ease and grace of a master craftsman looking back at nearly 30 years of making beloved, groundbreaking music. phil elverum’s music will always have a place in my heart, and i will always make time for a new record from him. i recommend you do, too.
chromakopia by tyler, the creator
by far the biggest release of this week, and one of the biggest of the year. tyler has reinvented himself to such a great degree on each of his last three albums that i’m a little bit disappointed in how similar this one sounds to his existing body of work, but it’s still quite good. it’s more of a visual reinvention than a sonic one; the music videos are extremely good.
it’s interesting to see a few rappers moving in a more guitar-oriented direction; we also saw this with the JPEGMAFIA album from earlier this year. in part this is gesturing to a broader critical reassesment of nu metal, but a lot of the sampling on this record also recalls to me the way run-DMC used rock samples on their best records.
pastel by optic core
just last week i posted about discovering optic core, and there’s already a new album for me! yippee!!
halloween by venturing
more new venturing! much like the last song in this batch, sister, halloween is louder and more aggressive than previous venturing releases, which hewed more in a laid-back dream pop direction. as always, check this shit out if you like the 90s.