Three of hip-hop's most creative left-field visionaries join forces to give you a taste of the world to come. The Automator cooks up lush soundscapes overflowing with fresh beats and hyper-obscure samples. Del gets seriously loose with the verbals, smashing wack emcees while traveling through the post-apocalyptic 30th century. Koala goes off on the tables slicing and dicing like an intergalactic prep cook. While super-abstract space-rhymes are strangely popular with a number of subterranean squads, none are up to this level of technical genius and sonic superiority. The future is now.
Aside from their very first release -- a cassette of which only 33 copies were made (!) -- F# A# (Infinity) ("F sharp, A sharp") is Godspeed You! Black Emperor's debut. It consists of only three songs, each stretching over 15 minutes and marked by the GYBE trick of creating meticulously constructed, deeply complex music that somehow retains humanity with its emotional accessibility. But they don't let you forget they are still a rock band (go 14 minutes into "Providence"). The vinyl version of this ends with a locked groove, a never-ending loop that explains the "infinity" in the album title.
One listen to The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond and it's clear that the featured artists have captured the book trilogy's darkness to eerie perfection. Produced by T-Bone Burnett, the soundtrack employs the sort of sinister, ethereal sounds that have become synonymous with Burnett's work. Highlights include Arcade Fire's chilling "Abraham's Daughter" and The Secret Sisters' haunting "Tomorrow Will Be Kinder," but it's the nearly indistinguishable Maroon 5's "Come Away to the Water" and The Carolina Chocolate Drops' stunner "Daughter's Lament" that offer the biggest return.
Young dudes with synthesizers never tire of Bowie worship -- just ask Melbourne's Midnight Juggernauts. Main man Vincent Vendetta, who often wears a Members Only jacket, croons in that same futuristic robo-baritone that the Thin White Duke used on Heroes and Low. The Juggernauts, however, are at their best when they ditch the retro fetish and toss out some patented electro tricks. So ditch the moody ambient new wave, boys, and kick out those dancefloor jams.
Forget the Grammys, Muse deserve an Oscar for The Resistance -- an album filled with more drama and romance than a year's worth of Best Picture nominees. It could easily score a new rendition of 1984, and the novel itself gets ample nods in "Uprising," "Resistance" and "United States of Eurasia." Even the arrangements are as ambitiously and diligently plotted out as the conspiracy theories referenced: glimmers of Queen, Radiohead, U2 and Floyd seamlessly fuse with opera arias ("I Belong to You") and classical epics (do not miss the remarkable three-part "Exogenesis" symphony).
The fragile soul behind NIN scrutinizes a greater existence beyond his own torture with a concept disc that runs like CliffsNotes for 1984 -- ones that have been sealed with rage and stomped through Trent Reznor-patented machinery. In Reznor's mad scientist treatment, sci-fi gets kinky with modern reality and a dystopia ripens in 2022 (Year Zero). An intriguing cacophony of tension-building minimalism, crunching metal hooks, grimy factory beats and paroxysmal distortions, the album is an astute echo of terror, chaos and urgency. Dance, conspire theories and freak your friends out with it.
Possibly the coldest music ever committed to tape, Animals is a negative trip with unbelievably cool guitars (four minutes into "Dogs" and all of "Sheep"), brain-shattering synthesizers (animal sounds continually turn into coded messages from the Grim Reaper) and songs longer than should be legally allowed. Still, it's near perfect.
David Bowie scrapped a planned musical based on 1984 and came up with this degenerate mix of sleazy rock and totalitarian disdain. The title track plays like a lost Stones classic, "1984" sounds like a theme song to a whitesploitation movie and (best of all, by far) "Rebel Rebel" became the defining single of the glam rock era. This edition comes remastered and houses a bonus disc that includes "Growin' Up" (a fantastic Springsteen cover) and a version of "Rebel Rebel" that somehow manages to best the "it can't get any better" LP version.
The futuristic world of androids and draconian dating laws Janelle Monae fleshes out on her first full-length sounds awfully ... retro. Monae's pop program music dances from psychedelic rock to folk revival, from disco to Debussy ("Say You'll Go," which filters Clair de Lune through what sounds like the soundtrack to a vintage Disney film). It's a genius move that musically encapsulates the overlap of kitsch and futuristic utopianism that characterizes scifi. But don't let her compelling cyber-narrative and erudite android artistry distract you from Monae's organic gift: her soaring soprano.
Radiohead beef up the rock here while still playing with wacky alien soundscapes that linger in gloom. A post-9/11, snarky undertone is apparent from the start with "2 + 2 = 5" referencing Orwell's 1984 and the ominous repetition of "Sit Down. Stand Up." reflecting the social phenomenon of obedience. To match the hefty subject matter, Jonny Greenwood's eerie ondes Martenot creeps in and out as cavernous piano lurks around bouncy beats ("There There") discordant whirrs ("Backdrifts"), static, haze, pops and bleeps ("The Gloaming") and, of course, Thom Yorke's chorus-boy quivers.
This Portland band's third album takes a sardonic indie punk peek into the god machine. Original sin, Armageddon, the moralization of condoned military killing -- all the fodder of a mega-church near you is in this hymnal, but the musical approach varies slightly from that of past fervid releases. That's not to say that the Thermals have calmed down any on this glorious, full-of-feedback mission to take a good thwack at the religious right.
After a five year break, El-P is back for another round of post-apocalyptic dread. The production here is more melodious than on previous album, Fantastic Damage, but it's only a matter of degrees; tracks like "Tasmanian Pain Coaster" and "Drive" feature waves of cacophony breaking against jittery rhythms. Lyrically, El-P focuses on the conceptual. On the beautifully twisted "Habeas Corpus," he assumes the persona of a futuristic slave executioner who has fallen in love with his subject. It's jarring and perfectly realized.
Released in 1979, Replicas was where Numan began to fully develop his robotic, disconnected stance. The drum-driven tracks are augmented by quavering synthlines that still sound otherworldly, albeit more retro-futuristic than futuristic. "Are 'Friends' Electric?" was one of the best tracks to come out of the New Wave explosion, and it still sounds incredible.
The Jersey boys go from flirting with mortality on The Black Parade to time-traveling to 2019 as the Killjoys, a group of revelers out to destroy evildoers Better Living Industries. The concept is a tad flimsy, but in the hands of the Queen of pop-punk, it's a grandiose affair. The madness comes to a head with ragers "Na Na Na," "Planetary (GO!)" and the surf-punk "Vampire Money," while new-wave synths give a futuristic glow to mid-tempo ballads "Summertime" and "Sing." It may just be the most fun sci-fi comic punk opera ever; watch out, Green Day, MCR may be your future rivals on Broadway.
