Anamanaguchi - Dawn Metropolis (V0)

I spent my childhood playing SNES and Sega genesis, and that's completely unrelated to this album being that I have no memory of playing them at all other than actually doing the act, oh and that one level in Donkey Kong Country 2 or 3, whichever one you were the girl and the baby (not Diddy) and I think it was the lava level and I kept losing and, well I don't know where the fuck I'm going with this.

I guess my point is, this is a happy, childlike album, made up of all your favorite 8bit sounds but also using actual instruments to make it even more awesome. Now, you could turn away now and say this is too childish and stupid to look into, or you could look into this because of how much you love childhood (in which case you should just click the link and stop reading, because there's nothing more after this), but this isn't a novelty album. This isn't Cee-lo's "Fuck You" which will in time be looked back as nothing more than a novelty hit played as much in movie scenes as "Walking on Sunshine", this is an actual piece of artistic work created with the idea of making you re-experience the one time in your childhood where you were in an actual trance without the use of drugs, the time that you spent playing video games. You probably won't find another album as happy and childlike as this without hitting some kind of joke act or something terribly un-listenable to, so this is your only choice, John Conner.
Get the album if you want to live.

This is going to make your underpants wet.

This is what you should download while you're getting a new pair.

Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (V0)

While the favorite Crystal Castles album of many is Crystal Castles (II), which was released this year, the experimental nature of Crystal Castles' eponymous debut has always managed to draw me inwards in a way that the sophomore never has. I know, and have been told by many a CC (II) enthusiast that Crystal Castles' first album was the one where they "tried to find their sound," and that it is messy and directionless, with too little structure and too much "filler."

I can understand how one could see the album as being disfigured and disheveled, but that is exactly what makes it so astounding. Crystal Castles, the album, never struggles to be something that it is not. It is perfect in its chaos and mighty in its power to produce strong, brash music that is also capable of being danced to. There are songs like Through The Hosiery and Xxzcuzx Me that seem to have been created to breed mosh pits, and other tracks like Untrust Us and Courtship Dating that were obviously made simply for the purpose of recreational dance.

With Ethan Kath delivering imaginative, abrasive yet catchy beats, and Alice Glass providing noise rock vocal styles that are almost impure and unclean in their rawness, this album is a brilliant mash up of dirty and clean. Even with the second Crystal Castles album being more accessible and party friendly, I still struggle to understand how it is at all better than its older brother.

Favorite songs: Untrust Us, Air War, Courtship Dating

My Rating: 9.0/10

Download.

The Depreciation Guild - In Her Gentle Jaws (V0)

You could be my cloud,
You could follow me around,
And you'd promise me the shadows,
Because the sun is not allowed.

I floated in from listening to this.