EPROM - HALFLIFE
ELECTRONIC/EXPERIMENTAL
SIMILAR ARTISTS: ALIX PEREZ, G JONES
Welcome to the dark side of electronic music. Bass tones that destroy speakers and are distorted beyond your standard hip hop production trick. Arrangements that are devoid of a beat in some cases. Songs that sound like the Transformers dying painfully. Most importantly though, some of the most interesting electronic music I've ever heard. EPROM is a type of computer memory, and that reference certainly betrays the style of music he creates. There are little to no live instruments on this album—sampled drums are usually crunched to oblivion, and when they survive in their normal state they take a very background stance to the bass melody being played out in distorted and dirty synths above them. It's a little bit disingenuous to say that this is an album with no root in other genres, because it absolutely takes notes from trap. And no, I don't mean the type of beat most rappers use/abuse these days. Trap as an electronic genre is usually pretty different—take RL Grime as an example—but this album is so far removed from even the darkest of standard trap that it's hard to NOT be disingenuous. If anything takes a defining role on this album, it’s absolutely texture. No matter the pitch of the synth, the dirtiness of the bass, the pace of the song—everything is filtered through until you can really feel it and then amplified. It's hifi lowfi, in a way—clear distortion that almost lets you see the oscillation in the synth as it gets crushed. This stuff is great for creativity, just like most experimental music, so I highly recommend it if you're ever really feeling some creative block.
DAFT PUNK - DISCOVERY
FRENCH HOUSE/ELECTRONIC
SIMILAR ARTISTS: JUSTICE, KAVINSKY
I hate to say this, but if you've never listened to a song off this album you have a serious problem and have probably also been living under a rock. Sample heavy, disco influenced, gloriously groovy, and hugely influential, Discovery is basically Daft Punk's remix record, combining original vocals or ideas (Digital Love, Something About Us, Face To Face) with some of the most bombastic and incredible sample work ever done (Aerodynamic, High Life, Crescendolls), creating iconic and incredible tracks (One More Time, Harder Better Faster Stronger). The instrumentals, even ones without samples (Voyager, Veridis Quo, Short Circuit) are equally interesting, proving their producing ability to be much more than a fluke supported by the crutch of sampling. Daft Punk's signature style is instantly recognizable, and even in their smaller moments, like the aforementioned no sample instrumentals, the hifi and perfectionist feel is still inevitably present and proves that not only are you listening to a Daft Punk album, you're listening to a good one. That presence simply doesn't go away.