au·ral·phet·a·mine

Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire - Lost Wisdom

Folk / Indie

It's been a while since I've been so immediately captivated by a recording from a few seconds listen.

Everything from lost wisdom is immaculately warm and beautiful, sweet and softly tempered with hushed vocal melodies.

MWill  - As Above So Below

Hip-Hop/Instrumental

This is an album of easy listening but severely head-nodding hip-hop beats. Superbly mixed with subdued samples (from the Alan Parsons Project), woven between fucking amazing hi-hat rhythms, opulent bass and punctual snare.

Oceanlab - Sirens of the Sea

Progressive Vocal Trance/Downtempo

Close your eyes. Imagine a beach. Imagine the sounds of waves, mellowed by a calm, yet warm breeze upon your skin. Imagine all of your memories, love, happiness, nostalgic melancholy, and desires have manifested into a singular, ethereal wave of emotion, one which passes through you and fills you to the core of your soul with nothing but a perfect combination of contentment, and beauty.

Welcome, to Sirens of the Sea.

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Katatonia - Dead End Kings

Dark/Progressive Metal

I'd give you a review, but this album simply renders me speechless. All I have to say is: your overall quality of life will significantly improve after hearing this album.

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Forgotten Tomb - Love's Burial Ground

Depressive Black Metal/Doom

My personal favourite album from these Italian misanthropes, this album explores musical voids that are so unique and innovative within the depressive black metal genre that it contradicts the utterly depressive mood by making you want to stay alive, just so you can listen to more. One of the greatest factors about this album and this phenomenal band as a whole is their utilization of such a wide array of musical techniques, fast riffing and blast beats, slow, despondent riffing with syncopated, mellow drumming, 3 minute piano solos and ambient pads, major and minor key changes frequently throughout tracks, every factor converges into one blackened masterpiece absolutely flawlessly.

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Piana - Ephemeral

Japanese/neo-classical/electronic/ambient

Let the heavenly sound of this perfectly titled 'Ephemeral' fill your soul. Piana, gifted with a voice reminiscent of angels themselves, creates breathtaking soundscapes which will take you to a place of daydreams, boundless meadows of beauty, and most likely lull you to sleep before you can even get half way through the album. I highly recommend this album for anybody who enjoys the feeling of aural bliss tingle and relax the senses they didn't know they had.

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Wu-Tang Clan - Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture Vol. 2: Enter The Dubstep

Dubstep/Rap

This album boasts more featured rappers than I can be bothered counting and the variety of producers makes for an interesting and diverse play-through. Each track is unique with it's own feel, flowing through laid-back and ambient to throbbing synths and drops, each verse fitting seamlessly into the mix.

Easily a must-listen for any Wu-Tang fan, even if you're not so into dubstep there are definitely tracks still to be enjoyed. The same goes for dubstep fans, some of these songs can be readily appreciated from that perspective alone. And if you tick both these boxes and haven't heard this then it's time to get down already.

The Great Old Ones - Al Azif

Atmospheric Post-Black Metal

You like stories of gigantic, mythical, universe ruling demons?

You like H.P. Lovecraft?

Or do you just like simply fucking incredible black metal?

If you answered yes to one or more of those questions, this album is for you. I'd go in depth about how musically proficient these guys are, and how unsurprising it is that France pumps out another godlike black metal band, but I'm just going to hope you take my word for it and download this fucking incredible album. Do it for yourself. Do it for Cthulhu.

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Zomby - Dedication

Experimental/Atmospheric Electronic

A beautiful and entirely unique blend of haunting, yet somewhat inspiring soundscapes. Straight off the bat with track 1 (Witch Hunt) this album sets up the melancholic journey that is about to ensue absolutely flawlessly.

Track after track, you will be constantly bombarded by revolutionary constructions of sounds, and soon enough you will find yourself lost. Lost in the void of the deliciously upsetting atmosphere that is Zomby.

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DyE - Fantasy (Official Video)

Jedi Mind Tricks - The Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological & Electro-Magnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness

rap/hip-hop/underground

Fifteen years old and this album is still fresh as fuck. Unholy and raw tracks both groovy and ominous, boasting a repertoire of skilled rappers dedicated to the art and negligent of the norm, to spawn a collaborative masterpiece that remains unique to this day. This is one of those significant releases, pushing the boundaries of rap in succession to past masters, incorporating subtle elemental influences (as well as samples) of Wu-Tang's lyrical proficiency and Kool Keith's perspective character-based rhymes.

Jedi Mind Tricks set a new standard with this debut album, which retained a cult following and strong influence among many underground rappers to follow, drawing on the dark and mystical materials of the ages to bust esoteric stream-of-consciousness flows of volcanic and mythological proportions.

Seekae - The Sound Of Trees Falling On People

electronic/ambient

Immersive music, to be embraced by its contemplative lull-like shimmer.

If These Trees Could Talk - Red Forest

post-rock/instrumental

Enticingly melodic in a nebulous and flowing manner, fluidly shifting through movements of powerful intensity, invoking cavernous soundscapes of painterly richness. So this is pretty much everything that great post-rock should be.

Clark - Body Riddle

idm/electronic

Earnestly idiosyncratic as the trembling hands that type this, this album suggests microchips and flesh intertwined. An electronic transmutation of humanity with such an organic feel, Warp Records' staple Clark deftly renders a mechanical synthesis of emotional expression through beautiful betrothal of order and inherently erratic elegance.

Quintessential thoughts and curious natures tapped like synapses to receiver circuits, neurons and nerve sparks subtly implored by every beat and each note that flares with its own unique flux of inferred personality. This is a good album.

BT - This Binary Universe

Ambient/Electronica/Orchestral/Glitch

That's right folks, you read right. On today's show we teach you how to cook one mind-meltingly brilliant album. First, take a worldwide esteemed genius composer, next, add in 4 beautiful genres to create a completely unique aural blend, and finally, throw in some obscure music cooking techniques like circuit bending and Csound and what do you get?

One of the most critically esteemed BT albums to date, and some of the most luscious, eargasmic, full bodied sounds ever to grace my ears. I highly recommend this album to anybody who likes music.

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JME - Blam!

Grime

JME of Boy Better Know is one of the figureheads of grime and it's not hard to see why when you hear this album. The word that best sums up this album is 'aggressive', the vocals are coarse, blunt, direct, and at times, absolutely hilarious. The instrumentals are mostly scattered, staccato electronic notes with extremely wubby, grimy, dirty low notes hovering below it.

I'd highly recommend this album to anybody who enjoys having their ears flattened by a chaotic steamroller of wub whilst laughing at the perpetrator shouting hilarious obscenities in his face at the same time.

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