"Natural Disaster Baptism" by Heath McNease Song Review

"Let me be 'till the levee breaks / Baptize the streets / Oh! So much blood on my hands / Ain't no way we'll ever be clean"

Heath McNease, "Natural Disaster Baptism"

Heath McNease has been one of my favorite rappers for a while now. I first discovered him by his album The Gun Show, which he released on 7Spin records a while ago, which is one of my favorite rap albums. He embraces a very experimental sample-based brand of hip-hop, which really shines through on his recent mix tape Straight Outta Console, which features a lot of solid 8-bit inspired beats by For Beat's Sake and guest appearances by guys like Playdough, Redcloud and KJ-52. That album is easily one of my favorites from last year, with so many excellent songs. When I heard that a new non-mixtape album was coming out, I was quite excited.

"Step Back" by TheGuitahHeroe Album Review

"There are far too many stories to be told / But you don't want to listen / Your stone wall I can't break through / So tell me why I should even try"

TheGuitahHeroe, "I'll Fly Away (ft. Jordan Wynne)"

Step Back is a free 6-track EP by independent Electronica artist Jamison "TheGuitahHeroe" Randall, who uses the album to investigate his own style of the popular genre dubstep. He's not only a dubstep DJ, he also has released house and trance tracks, as well as a lot of high quality video game remixes. If you want to hear the rest of his awesome music, go check out his Youtube channel. Step Back is pretty basic in it's approach as it really seamlessly blends trance and dubstep sounds. It really is made for the dubstep crowd, but if you like trance-like music, you'll probably find something you like on here. 

The album starts with "Watch Where You're Going", which ups and kicks you right in the face, leaving behind long intro builds and just attacking right away with a trance drop. This song has a very trance-like intro, until the real drop lays into you with some gigantic wubs that will do very well at rattling your subwoofers. "Chip Monster" is the song that I hear everyone raving about, which really builds up to a massive yet reserved wobble bass that counters a beautiful synth lead that just weaves in and out of the song. "My Fax Machine Is Broken (What In The Hell)" is another song that fakes you out a little, with a very long, drawn out trance intro and a fake drop before what is arguably the weirdest wobble bass on the EP drops in and just massacres it. It's amazingly glitchy yet smooth. 

"Video Games" by Lana Del Rey Song Review

"It's you, it's you, it's all for you / Everything I do / I tell you all the time / Heaven is a place on earth with you / Tell me all the things you want to do"

Lana Del Rey, "Video Games"

When one hears of a song with the title "Video Games", one would probably expect some kind of a nerdy pop song with a bunch of unnecessary references to the titular entertainment medium. At least, that's what I expected when I heard of American singer/songwriter Lana Del Rey's first single off of her second album Born To Die. I thusly ignored it and didn't get around to actually hearing the song for the first time until a few weeks ago, when I watched a review of the album. The style of the album piqued my interest and I located the music video for it.

"Video Games" actually has very little to do with video games, though they are mentioned. I've heard it's supposed to be about trying to get the attention of a video game addicted boyfriend, but I didn't get that feeling from the song. It's really a simple love song, referencing good times that Del Rey and the object of her affections have had with each other. However, the feeling of the song is bipolar at best. 

Top 10 Electronica Albums of 2011

Hey guys, and welcome to the Top 10s of 2011! To kick it off, the Top 10 Electronica albums.

Now, this is only of albums that I have heard over the year. I plan to expand my horizons more in 2012, so hopefully the Top 10s of 2012 will be more expansive.

Links to some songs from each album included.

10. X Rated by Excision

Excision is a electro-dubstep artist on Deadmau5's Mau5trap label. I was first made aware of his music by a song called "8 Bit Superhero", a remix of the Opening Theme from Mega Man 2 and the Storm Eagle stage theme from Mega Man X. I was immediately addicted and got the song (and another of his, "Execute") on iTunes. I'm quite impressed by these songs and the rest of the album. If you're not into the more popular aggressive style of dubstep, you probably won't like this, but it is a good album all in all.

"8 Bit Superhero", Excision

9. TRON: Legacy Reconfigured by Daft Punk


I do love the soundtrack from TRON: Legacy. The two French House musicians that make up Daft Punk really did well. It's got the epic orchestral bits and the tasty synth licks throughout. Even so, I love the remix album even more. Grabbing some big names like Kaskade, Boyz Noize and Pretty Lights to remix, and showing off some good new names that I hadn't heard of before, like Teddybears and Com Truise. While not all the mixes are great, it's a really fun album with a lot of variation.

"Solar Sailor (Pretty Lights Remix)", Daft Punk

The Top 10s of 2011: Coming Soon!

Yo everyone, what's up.

I know I haven't updated this in a while. Sorry about that. I plan, however, to do music reviews and such much more often this year as a resolution. And to start it off, I'm going to do some top 10 lists in different genres of music!

Isn't it exciting?

So, they should start soon. Some genres I found out I don't have many songs from 2011 in... so I'll have to do some research. But until then, I'll start with my top 10 Electronic albums of 2011 and then my top 20 or so electronic songs! I'll try to update this weekly, and I should finish the top 10s by March or somewhere around there.

Here's to a happy and productive 2012!

~Zero