They say it's your birthday/Well it's my birthday too, yeah!One sentence-or-so/grade each:
Fennesz - Black Sea (Touch; 2008): Sound of God speaking through a vocoder. A+
Flying Lotus - Los Angeles (Warp; 2008): Sound of God rapping through a vocoder. A-
Lil Wayne - Dedication 3 (internet mixtape; 2008): Sound of Lil Wayne rapping through a vocoder, badly. Sound of Lil Wayne's friends rapping without vocoder, badly. D
Belle and Sebastian - BBC Sessions (Matador; 2008): Early B&S, which is like the part of the biopic where Buddy Holly's got the band in the garage back in Lubbock, looking for that damn cricket. Before dying in a plane crash with the Big Bopper and Richie Valens. B
Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil (Vice; 2007): Good things happen when you put down the sugar packets, write songs. B+
Squarepusher - Music Is Rotted One Note (Warp; 1998): The album Miles Davis never made because he's dead and not into techno. A
Wire - Document and Eyewitness (Mute; 1981): Band slags fans live with bizarre unrecorded material; worth it all for the "12XU" bait-and-switch. B-
John Martyn - Solid Air (Island; 1973): GF: "Is this guy black?" B
Lou Reed - Street Hassle (RCA; 1978): LR: "I wanna be black." BS: "Tramps like us, baby we were born to pay." B+
The Beatles - The Beatles ("The White Album") (Capitol; 1968): Credit where credit's due: there is no 40th anniversary edition of this record, so you're already caught up on the plot. A+
