Masterpiece Crate ∞: TOOL - Lateralus 25th Anniversary

TOOL - Lateralus 25th Anniversary Analysis and Review

I'm a few months late, but I have a good excuse, promise. You'll find out in very soon! Let's discuss this album now. Maybe it was destined to be, but TOOL became one of my favorite bands growing up and remain to this day one of my all-time favorite artists. Their music actually called out to me unlike any other music some 20-something years ago. Allow me to explain. 

Upon hearing their title track’s soft, opening guitar melody for the first time in my early teenage years, a meditative, almost religious-like refrain, at an undetermined time and place, the knowledge of who it was was lost to me, because as soon as it had come, it was gone, and I didn’t have the clarity to find out who I had heard. But the melody of Lateralus continued to whisper to me in many quiet moments for several years after, without me knowing who or what was replaying in my head. It felt like a lullaby or a comforting mantra that gave me this sense of peace that cut through all of the noise and the pain and the inner struggles I had growing up. 

It wasn’t until several years later on a fateful day a short time after moving with my family to Connecticut that I heard the sound again, playing on a neighbors computer. “What is that song?!”, I could hear myself thinking. My eyes fixed upon the computer screen and on the dark, ambiguous album cover (the original one before streaming) and the title underneath it: Tool - Lateralus. At that moment, I had one of my great musical awakenings.

New Archive Release, DJ Dark Flow - Allone (Experiments)

 

Hi guys. This is just a previously archived pair of tracks that I made but never released. They didn’t fit any projects I was doing at the time because they were more experimental, no pun intended, and a little avant-garde. Today I decided to release them as Allone (Experiments). 

Stoner Rock and Metal band Sleep, release their first new album since 2018, Hemispheres, with a new lineup and new sounds

Sleep - Hemispheres Review

 

This was one that I've been waiting for, from my favorite stoner rock and drone metal band, Sleep! Having enjoyed my fair share of Dopesmoker, and really going hard on The Sciences (more on that in a future article), Sleep are one of the coolest and curiously chill metal acts out there. How can metal be chill? Well, there's something to be said for their overarching theme of herbal sonic pleasures and deep low-end frequencies, which birthed an entire genre that Sleep almost single-handedly created. 

AirdriftSignals Recommends: 4 Electronic Albums You Should Listen To

 4 Vastly Different Electronic Albums You Should Listen To

 

Greetings, humans! If you haven't noticed by now, it's been a few months since my last article, which was for Nine Inch Noize's self-titled collab album. I have a tendency to post on this website in short creative bursts with a tightly sequenced lineup of current album reviews and classic album deep dives when the inspiration comes. I strike when the iron's hot and I give everything I can when I publish music articles. In the long gaps that follow though, I am regularly taken away on creative detours or for my own professional development. At the present time, I'm working on my biggest update ever for AirdriftSignals, which I will unveil in October...

As time passes by, there are albums that have been out for quite some time that I've wanted to recommend, or recent albums released within the past few years that I have missed for one reason or another. I like listening to them and I wanted to find a meaningful way to present them and share them and the reasons why I believe they stand out amongst the ocean of music that's available nowadays.

AirdriftSignals Recommends is something that I've been meaning to start for a while now. It is my way of grouping random music releases together and sharing my thoughts and ideas and why they are worth your time and energy.  

After finishing up the final leg of their Peel It Back Tour, industrial rock superstars, Nine Inch Nails, and their prolific opening act, electronic DJ Boys Noize, surprise fans with their remix collab album, Nine Inch Noize

Nine Inch Noize Review

If there ever was a time to be a Nine Inch Nails fan, now would be the time! Given how many years it’s been since a complete fully realized NIN LP, 2013’s Hesitation Marks, fans have plenty to be excited about. Yes, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have been at it with their Trilogy EP releases Not The Actual Events (2016), Add Violence (2017), and its final LP Bad Witch (2018), their ambient nightmare-scapes Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts (both 2020, same release), the seemingly endless film scores they’ve composed, and most recently their NIN-branded Tron: Ares soundtrack. 

The reason I say it’s their first fully realized NIN project since 2013 is because all these previous releases, while all amazing in their own ways, have been projects that have felt adjacent to what a proper NIN release should look and sound like in the late 2010s or 2020s. These projects are worth their weight in gold, but they all feel like creative detours and not a true NIN experience from beginning, middle, and end. The closest we can get to this full realization though, is a collab album with Boys Noize, which as it turns out is a reimagining, or remix album, of past big Nine Inch Nails songs. If you’ve been a fan, you already know that a remix album is actually legit for NIN, and this one frames the brooding industrial rock gods through an electronic, hybrid-EDM lens, and puts classic Nine Inch Nails songs to the test.    

Masterpiece Crate 7: Daft Punk - Discovery 25th Anniversary

Daft Punk - Discovery 25th Anniversary Analysis and Review

Kicking off the next deep dive article in my Masterpiece Crate series is an electronic album that is beloved to me. It had to be my very first electronic CD, which I asked my dad to get me. It's artwork (look at it!) and sound were incredible and mesmerizing to me and they dared to be the epitome of what our world would be transitioning into for the 21st century, but all the way back in 2001, which is shocking that it seems so long ago! Its synth-laden computer gloss shined outward and into mine and generations of young millennials' minds in a way that no other music had done before. It was a gift to grace our ears then and is still treasured to this day, a bonafide masterpiece of electronic robot rock, Discovery by Daft Punk.

For more on my Masterpiece Crate series doing album deep dives you can go here.

Flying Lotus and Essay 4: Following on the heels of his sci-fi horror film, Ash, FlyLo drops his latest EP, BIG MOMMA, and unexpectedly becomes the center of the question that's on everyone's minds - What is AI's place in human creativity?

Flying Lotus - BIG MOMMA Review, and Thoughts on AI and Creativity

Click hear to read my other Flying Lotus reviews

Go here to read my other essays in my Essays series

This Essay Comes First

Before I can even begin to review Steve Ellison's new music, we have to get a very important topic out of the way. Unfortunately, Ellison decided to become the subject and the question on everyone's minds: Now that AI is traveling at lightning speed, what is its place in our world, human creativity, and integrity? This is a question that needs to be discussed at this point in our collective consciousness. AI is taking over, fooling almost everyone, making all of us give a universal sigh at its ability to fake what many of us might have thought to be genuine, authentic, human moments. This is quite literally the matrix being created before our eyes. 

Gorillaz are back and as fresh as ever, with their brand new album The Mountain, and their short film, The Mountain, The Moon Cave, and The Sad God

Gorillaz - The Mountain Review

Another year, another new album by the well-oiled and shapeshifting music machine, Gorillaz! The love child of multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and vocalist Damon Albarn and visual artist Jamie Hewlett, who draws and animates all four virtual band members, Gorillaz has had an illustrious and successful career in their nearly 30 years of music making, which is full of standout guest features and a colorful carousel of genres. Having recruited a third permanent member, producer and percussionist Remi Kabaka Jr, who has also been the voice of band member Russel, this trio has been knocking it out of the park ever since their 2017 album, my personal favorite, Humanz, and again with their follow up, 2018's The Now Now, which I wrote about at the time. Nearly a decade and several stacked albums later, Gorillaz are back with The Mountain, full of deep themes, a short film, an art book, and more musical styles to share. 

Puscifer release their best album yet, Normal Isn't, projecting anxiety, anger, and protest into one of the most explosive albums of this past year

Puscifer - Normal Isn't Review

Puscifer were never ones to shy away from the news of the world. On the contrary, Puscifer always seemed like a direct response to whatever snapshot our society is in. Given all that has gone down in this historic year of societal collapse, mass deportations mirroring one of the worst times in modern history, social media as a disease, and the conspiracy-theorists' validation of a global elite's satanic trafficking ring, Normal Isn't sounds like a scream into the void for the sins that are beyond unforgivable, and what all of us have to grapple with in this life and the next. 

A Premium Web Experience, Free From Ads, And Curated By A Human: Thank You For Helping AirdriftSignals Cross 400,000 Web Visits!

 A Sincere Thank You (!!), With Important Website Updates

First of all, I have to give a very heartfelt thank you to all of you who have subscribed and given my website and music writing a chance, and given it, even if only for a minute, your precious time and some space in your minds. By giving AirdriftSignals even a moment of your attention means the world to me. This website I built from the ground up for more than a decade, without any outside assistance. It’s been a long journey and a gradual learning curve for me, but I am feeling myself reaching the peak of my abilities for what I have to offer folks in terms of the richest music journalism and user experience on the web.