Inside Noise Week of 11/10
We had some significant releases on the alternative side of pop music this week. Come check them out with us!
Integrated Tech Solutions by Aesop Rock
Underground hip hop legend Aesop Rock returns with Integrated Tech Solutions, a scifi skewed concept album that pokes fun at the bloated buzzwords of hyperindustrialist tech bros. Musically, it’s about what you’d expect from Aes with chill beats and deep bass with the addition of some glitchier synths which support the project’s concept and blend in nicely. The concept pleasantly doesn’t weigh things down at all, covering a huge array of topics through his relentless flow. Cited as having the largest vocabulary in hip hop, Aes’s lyrics are cryptic yet personal, complex word choices painting vibrant stories with an impressive level of detail. As you listen to the lyrics, you get the sense Aes is subverting the concept a little bit, ITS is almost an ode to humanity’s need for slowness, especially in creative fields. 8/10. -Carrie
Autopoietica by Mon Laferte
Combining traditional latin sounds with a dark electronic sensibility, Autopoietica by Mon Laferte soaks up all the rich creative juices of Mexico City. This sound appeals to every piece of the zeitgeist, overlaying the dark bedroom pop sounds of Billie Eilish with a steady latin groove that keeps things moving. Unlike the dark alt pop that Mon Laferte pulls from, however, her over-the-top, versitile vocals deliver the record from any sort of bedroom amaturness, lending support to both the contemporary electronic and traditional acoustic elements of the record. The world feels inundated with dusky, edgy pop right now, but where else does this sound come with a full brass band and traditional percussion? 7/10. -Michael
Long Is the Tunnel by Daneshevskaya
When we describe music as "escapist," we generally think of a sound bursting at the seams with warmth and positivity, a style that opens our sleeping eyes to the love and harmony of nature that we tune out in our day to day lives. However, self-described escapist Daneshevskaya's new record Long Is the Tunnel diverts our escape route down an unexpected path, setting us up for a head-on collision with a deep, hyperrealistic melancholy. This baroque singer-songwriter tape exposes us to the inevitability of endings: endings of love, of our physical bodies, and of the sorts of daydreams that Daneshevskaya's writing induces. Our escape deposits us face-first with the most distressing aspects of life, but this reckoning with our underlying fears and anxieties helps us put those mundane day-to-day struggles in perspective. 8/10.
