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.

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.