Deeper Down to the Sleepy Glow

Gorillaz “Every Planet We Reach Is Dead” – On the first Gorillaz album, it was easy to see how the music could have been the work of a cartoon band. Though the record mostly sounded like a collection of Blur outtakes, the general tone corresponded well Jamie Hewlett’s design/animation aesthetic, enough so that it convinced a hell of a lot of people who wouldn’t ordinarily care about Damon Albarn’s regular band to buy the album and make it an unexpected hit. Demon Days is a strange follow-up to that record, mostly because it seems to be more of a continuation of the gloomy, groovy sound of Blur’s last record Think Tank than a proper sequel to a generally peppy party album. That is, unless they had intended for this to be like their version of The Empire Strikes Back, and intentionally went for a darker, bleaker tone. That may be their explanation in hindsight, but I would think that it is obvious that Albarn is just writing music for himself and getting it out on records however he can. This could just as well be a Blur record or a solo album that would be quickly dismissed by both critics and the public, but he’s clever enough to smuggle his most self-indulgent material on to a record that isn’t fully tied in with his identity, letting him off the hook in more ways than one. All that, and he gets to bring in Ike Turner for a keyboard solo on this song. Pretty sneaky, sis. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Sensational “Money Maker” – Sensational makes stoned lo-fi hip hop that straddles the line between oblivious amateurism and inspired artiness. His beats are generally canned and simplistic, but he’s fond of eerie keyboard textures that drone like cheap horror film soundtracks, mixing his vocals so loud that they seem like he’s broadcasting them into your skull telepathically, and distorting his vocal tracks to the point of rendering his lyrics incomprehensible. On this track, he runs two raps together simultaneously, derailing his flow and resulting in a disorienting abstraction. (Click here to buy it from Forced Exposure.)