http://www.buzzcritic.com/ Latest buzz at BuzzCritic. Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:26 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/Nine Inch Nails/The_Slip-65425.buzz Give away his music for free, apparently. "This one's on me," reads the note on Nine Inch Nails' Website, where visitors can download The Slip in a variety of file formats — for nary a red cent. Reznor has been sticking it to the Man with distribution gambits for a while now. In 2007, he urged fans to "steal" NIN's Year Zero online to avoid getting gouged by his then-label, Interscope, and stashed USB drives containing "clues" to the whereabouts of additional music in the bathrooms of concert venues on his European tour. Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/Subtle/Subtle%2C_ExitingARM-64663.buzz ExitingARM is Subtle's "pop" album. And by that they mean it's their most accessible album to date, and an answer to a problem that's plagued them since they started: How do you make something dense and personal, a body of work that demands time and dedication-- and then hook a wide new audience, hang onto their ears, and make them understand it? Their new album highlights what's always been catchiest about Subtle's music: it's full of short, fast bangers that you can enjoy out of the corner of your ear. But scratch the surface, and you find something far gnarlier-- the most intricate realization yet of the vision of frontman Doseone, a.k.a. rapper, poet and visual artist Adam Drucker. Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/The Duke Spirit/The_Duke_Spirit_-_Neptune-61964.buzz When The Duke Spirit came onto the stage with the broody, dark, "I Do Believe" playing through the speakers, the tone was set for the night...to an extent. What that song failed to capture was the unchained energy that would be released as soon Liela Moss took the microphone. Her brand of unchecked skill was something to behold as she channeled the likes of Janis Joplin, Beth Gibbons, and even Björk... Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/Tokyo Police Club/Elephant_Shell-57878.buzz Many songs on this spiky Canadian quartet’s full-length debut are best appreciated with a Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary close at hand — especially with lines like “Dead lovers salivate/Broken hearts tessellate.” Tokyo Police Club’s 2006 EP, A Lesson in Crime, earned them copious blog love and frequent comparisons to the Strokes, but Elephant Shell makes clear that the band’s ambitions are as much literary as musical. Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/Matmos /Supreme_Balloon-56788.buzz Ever since the IDM scene they emerged from in the late 1990s withered away and died, Matmos have thrived, in the process making a compelling case for themselves as electronic music's resident white coats. Beginning with 2001's A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure, the combined output of Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel so far this decade has seen them work within the form of some pre-established conceptual constraint. Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/Animal Collective/Water_Curses_EP-54766.buzz Animal Collective have followed each of their last three albums with a short companion EP closely related to its predecessor. Right on schedule, here's Water Curses, containing three tracks from the Strawberry Jam sessions and another recorded at Brooklyn's Rare Book Room studio. Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/Santogold/Santogold_-_Santogold-52549.buzz On her awesome genre-blurring debut, Brooklyn singer-MC Santi White (a.k.a. Santogold) wrestles with the challenge of self-determination. As she puts it, “I pay for what’s called/Eccentricity and my will to evolve.” Her set celebrates the joys, and burdens, of making weird-ass street jams like “Creator,” a dancehall joint engorged by overmodulated freak beats. Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/Atmosphere/Atmosphere_When_Life_Gives_You_Lemons%2C_You_Paint_That_Shit_Gold-49685.buzz Drug addiction is bad, but drama addiction might be worse. That is the lesson of "Shoulda Known", Atmosphere's salvo at that stock character, the enabler. Taken from Minneapolis duo's fifth studio album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold, the song is more dramatic monologue than soliloquy-- one of those rare moments when Slug isn't plumbing the depths of his favorite subject, Slug. Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/Del the Funky Homosapien /Del_the_Funky_Homosapien__-_The_11th_Hour-49682.buzz Del the Funky Homosapien was one of indie rap's leading stars by the end of 2000, and he did it with a pair of albums that couldn't be much more diverse: Deltron 3030, a conceptual space-rap opera about an AWOL mech soldier turned supernaturally powered anti-corporate freedom fighter, and Both Sides of the Brain, where his lyrics concerned things like Dreamcast games and weed and people who smell really bad. Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles http://www.buzzcritic.com/Music/Radiohead/Radiohead%3A_No_more_free_stuff_for_you-48247.buzz Just as Radiohead’s “pay what you want” download model is being adopted by more musicians and artists — including Nine Inch Nails, Coldplay, The Charlatans UK and others — the band that launched the model says it doesn’t plan to do it ... Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:27 America/Los_Angeles