Emancipator - Shook [Sigur Rós vs. Mobb Deep]

What do gangsta rap and post-rock have in common? Well, not a lot by their lonesome, but in the world of bastard pop, conventionality is not the name of the game. Mash-ups have risen immensely in popularity as of late with artists such as Girl Talk, Super Mash Bros, and Milkman slicing up tracks every which way, blurring and reshaping musical designs and fashioning new memories out of old ones. Downtempo artist Emancipator brings us the ethereal soundscapes of Iceland's Sigur Rós and warps them with a verse of one of hip-hop's most revered tracks of the 1990s' "Shook Ones (Pt II)," by east coast legends Mobb Deep. I'm not the biggest Sigur Rós fan for reasons I don't care to mention, but when one of the most impressive and raw verses of the 90s' is layered over it, I can't help but appreciate. The emotionally-driven piano and string instrumentation build and build with chopped up vocals pushing against the melody as spare breaks and the song eventually drops, the short but commanding discourse of Prodigy combining with Sigur's vivid background music, the presence of the song rather bleak and visceral. A chill vibe with a hint of lyrical dynamism. Genius. And another great song to sleep to as well.

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National Skyline - Bliss & Death

Rating: 9
Links:
- Official Website
- Last.fm

National Skyline is the kind of music you'd stare off into the distance to, but at the same time, remain blissfully aware of your surroundings, for fear of an impending attack. I barely have any idea what I'm talking about, really. To put it in not-crazy-terms, beautifully mixed shoegazing guitars, eccentric electronics and surrealist lyricism are the result of National Skyline's newest effort, "Bliss & Death." I hadn't heard of National Skyline before this, but from what I gathered, they came off as a normal "indie rock" band. I was serendipitously wrong, my expectations crushed. Of a far higher quality than anything I had expected, "Bliss & Death" from beginning to end never failed to impress me. From the catchy, Radioheadesque "Revenge" to the acoustic strumming against ranging, varied soundscapes of "Kingdom" to the album's very last song & instrumental fit for a king, "The Ghost II," National Skyline prove themselves to be a hell of a band and certainly earn my respect. Not many artists can consistently get better, and since I've, from first hearing this album, looked up reviews for previous albums and saw only good things, I must congratulate them on a job well done. My minor problems with the album stem only from "Bloom", a 7 minute song whose instrumental passages, as much as I loved them, could stand to be less lengthy; they lead into a rather abrupt ending for the song, and what seems to come off as a build-up reveals itself to be rather consistent playing. Other than that, bravo to National Skyline.

Album Highlights: Everything, especially "The Ghost II", "Solid Cold", "Driving Down", and "Kingdom".