I wouldn't count myself as an avid listener of dub, but then again, Dub Matrix with Stereo Sound is hardly your average dub release. Constructed primarily out of the bleeps and bloops from disrupt's "Gamebwoy" - a modified Gameboy system capable of providing "maximum bass weight" - Dub Matrix is a wonderful diversion which introduces the sonics of 8-bit chiptune to the tried-and-tested dub sound. If it sounds a little gimmicky, think again: according to Jahtari's website, "this mini LP is not a joke ting", so take their word for it and stream "Babylon Wavetables" above (also, consider downloading this thing from Boomkat).

Following on from yesterday's hypothetical //APEX nominations for this year's BRIT Awards, we would now like to reveal our winners (sponsored by MasterCard of course). Some difficult decisions had to be made, but myself and Mr Gilbey are confident that our ruthlessly democratic method of selection - some 10 minutes deliberating on a Facebook chat - has returned the correct results for the blog's widely-flung taste.

Almost a year has passed since the 2013 BRIT Awards whereby Emeli Sande and Ben Howard surprisingly picked up two awards each over the night, and so we can only speculate what this year will give us considering the nature of the nominees. Household names such as David Bowie, Ellie Goulding and Arctic Monkeys have all been shortlisted for various categories including British Group and the "prestigious" British Album of the Year award, but are these nominations testament to the greatest pieces of musical art that have been released in the UK over the past year? With Jake Bugg losing that original novelty that shone through in his eponymous debut album through his latest release, Shangri La, and Tom Odell receiving a hefty 0/10 from Mark Beaumont of NME who then went on to say "I wish I could say there’s a place in Hell reserved for Tom Odell", it can be quite easily argued that the British Male Solo Artist, and all of the other categories for that matter, are severely flawed. For this reason, Joe Sherwood and I have decided to collaborate in order to create an alternative set of nominations for each BRITs category for those who we feel are most deserving of the title.

It's been just under 2 months since The BasedGod dropped the monolithic, dizzying 101-track opus 05 Fuck Em, and now he's back with a new tape, titled Basedworld Paradise. Peep that #rare cover art up there! But just remember this, children: on 2012's superlative White Flame tape, Lil B declared that he ain't no joke, and given the quality of the "leaked" tracks from this latest release, he clearly ain't stuntin' on Basedworld Paradise either. Cop this #based art while it's hot, and, as ever, love and protect the BasedGod. *SWAG*

Sun Kil Moon Benji (Caldo Verde, 2014)


Despite having a back catalog of over 30 full-length albums dating back to 1989 and being a profuse frontman for Red House Painters, and unforgettably Sun Kil Moon, it feels like it has taken nearly 25 years to actually get to know Mark Kozelek. He has never been shy when expressing feelings towards his idols or openly grieving over various family members or ex-girlfriends, but like Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d City or any of Thom Yorke's releases alongside alt-rock legends Radiohead, Benji is a personally driven story highlighting Kozelek's painful life experiences by draining repressed memories and recounting life events that shaped his career, for better or for worse.

Of course, an ever present theme in Benji is that of death, which is hardly surprising after learning of Mark Kozelek's boxing fanaticism and the history of fatalities that go along with the sport that influenced his own musical sound and direction so strongly that he changed the band's identity from Red House Painters to Sun Kil Moon in homage to Korean lightweight boxer, Sung-Kil Moon. Kozelek was in attendance at the Manny Sanchez fight in 2001 whereafter Sanchez was brutally murdered, and stated to Mark Ortega of The Queensberry Rules boxing blog that "it hurts when anyone dies young, but when you see the backgrounds of these guys and the path they've taken to try to find some light in their lives, it hurts to see them die young." This draws strong parallels to the opening track, 'Carissa', whereby Kozelek gratingly intones "Carissa was thirty-five, you don't just raise two kids and take out your trash and die"; he doesn't just want to put you in the situation of those directly affected, he intends to relate these emotions directly to the lives of the listeners.

Like many of Sun Kil Moon's previous releases such as Ghosts of the Great Highway, Benji is an unpredictable array of meandering folk-rock sounds that is primarily distinguished by acoustic guitar riffs and underlying instrumentals, but then other overpowering contemporary sounds suddenly begin to prevail as the listener is dragged deeper into the gloomy macabre. 'Pray For Newtown' demonstrates this through the introduction of dispiriting drums whilst Kozelek pleads his audience to "think of their families and how they mourn and cry", clearly referring to the massacre of 20 children and 6 adult teachers in the 2012 Connecticut shootings. The album isn't all doom and gloom however, with tracks such as 'Jim Wise' being accompanied by a vintage electric keyboard to give it an air of natural simplicity, and 'Ben's My Friend' supplying us with one of the most dubious saxophone solos of the year thus far.

Whether you have followed the work of Mark Kozelek for the past 25 years or you've only recently discovered his projects as part of Sun Kil Moon, he has nothing left to hide. Benji is the perfect exposition of both the beauty and ugliness in society, and whilst it is an autobiographical album that is very much personal to Kozelek, it is one of the most accessible albums of 2014. It investigates the way in which darkness is constantly affecting our everyday lives, which is a topic that's seldom explored in popular song; "everybody got up and stretched and yawned and then our lives went on", and that's what makes it such a profound listen.

D/P/I 08.DD.15 (Leaving, 2014)

One of my favourite paradoxes is the existence of an underground community of musicians on the Internet. The World Wide Web is surely the way of getting your music out there, but for every Chance The Rapper out there riding a tidal wave of web-induced hype, there are a huge number of names who, while not commanding the popularity they often deserve, are sticking to their guns and releasing some of the more peculiar, but nonetheless intriguing music of the day.

Meili Xueshan I&II, curated by the wonderfully named Hi-Hi-Whoopee, is an exemplary survey of the Internet's underground scene as it stands right now, featuring the likes of *ahem*: D/P/I, 18+, Foodman, AyGeeTee, Ahnnu, YYU, E+E, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, Giant Claw, Seth Graham, C V L T S, Sofa Pits (aka JCCG), but to name a handful. So, to you I say this; check this the hell out, and remember these names, because I have no doubt there'll be plenty more where these came from.

Young Fathers DEAD (Big Dada, 2014)

Ever since leaving Black Sugar Records in 2011, this Scottish alternative hip-hop trio have moved further and further from their self-proclaimed "psychedelic hip-hop boy band" sound and into a far darker realm of the genre, carrying with them their trademark percussive sound and ever-faithful young hipster fan base. DEAD perfectly embodies this vehement movement as it isn't only a showcase of their most emotion-heavy work to date, it is also a conscious blend of the group's mixed heritage of Nigeria, Liberia and Scotland, with proof of the latter coming through eminently in the droning bagpipe and military drum ridden opening track 'No Way' which sets the tone for the rest of the album; a raspy procession of intoxicating rhythm and blues numbers, with strong overtones of abstract hip-hop and intelligently cultivated production.

NME dubbed the band as being "locked somewhere between De La Soul and 3T, but re-imagined for the hipster generation." which is an undoubtedly fitting description as DEAD clearly wasn't created with the intention of appealing to mainstream audiences, it appears to be more of a statement of anti-genericism which is also a strong theme in De La Soul's critically acclaimed 1989 debut 3 Feet High And Rising. Despite the unconventional feel, however, all tracks bar one clock in at under 4 minutes long, making it a tightly wound project that is constantly shifting between the twisted and distorted beats that effortlessly merge together in a sonic frisson similar to that of the works of Seattle-based Shabazz Palaces.

Actress Ghettoville (Werkdiscs, 2014)

Sometimes, a new album comes out and questions my very relationship with music, and my own consumption of it. The last record that significantly challenged me in such a way was probably Far Side Virtual, James Ferraro's nightmarish ringtones-turned-performance-art dystopus (if I may invent a word for it). While a lot could be said about Ferraro's philosophical influences and conceptual insight, channeling Baudrillard, grime and Second Life, what made Far Side Virtual such a hellish cultural hallmark was that it reconfigured seemingly redundant sounds - MIDI, computer blips, the Wii start-up menu - into a Frankenstein-ian monstrosity of a generation's maximalist values. Beneath the chintz and the promises of the digital age, the scariest thing about Far Side Virtual was that it was grounded in reality; as noted by its creator, "people kind of live in it already."

What's the connection, then, between this ersatz album and Ghettoville, the latest (and possibly final) release from Darren Cunningham's Actress project? The niches carved out by the respective artists couldn't possibly be further from each other: while Ferraro crafted a claustrophobic, densely layered simulacra of new age synths and Garageband drum loops, the two preceding Actress albums have been spatial, micro-repetitious deconstructions of house and techno. Ghettoville, however, is an intriguing entry into Cunningham's artistic lexicon, as it forgoes the cosmic sonics of R.I.P and Splazsh and retreats into a congested, dusty headspace which recalls industrial music and crud-infused beat tapes.

Naturally, Ghettoville can be viewed as a direct sequel to Actress' slept-on debut album, Hazyville: not only in name, giving the impression of a release cycle coming to an end, but also in the atmospherics conjured up by Cunningham. If Hazyville spent the majority of its time shrouded in a mysterious fug, Ghettoville takes the haze to its logical extreme, with a scraping, scratchy aesthetic imposed on near-enough every last congenital fiber of the album. Moments of clarity are few and far between: this is a nebulous record, and as such it's possibly the most aurally challenging of Actress' transmissions to date.

Cunningham's deployment of vocal samples had always been subtle, a secondary aspect to the loops, beats and keys of the music itself, but Ghettoville subverts this by not only making vocals a central element of the sound, but in some instances the focal point of the track. Some commentators have noted the parallels between Actress' treatment of samples and the Internet micro-genre vaporwave, which similarly dislocates and reimagines vocal cuts from sources such as pop, RnB and soul. The vaporwave connection becomes an extremely significant one upon further examination: indeed, the aforementioned Far Side Virtual is very much stylistically attached to the vaporwave genre, and a notable element of the ethos of these enigmatic online presences (INTERNET CLUB, New Dreams Ltd. et al.) is that they explore our fascination with the Internet's convenience as a platform for distribution and the ensuing throwaway culture it consequently creates.

It's telling that one of the most poignant moments contained within Ghettoville is a simple vocal loop, accompanied by a three note progression. "Don't", which spans just over a minute in length, carries the intonation "Don't stop the music", possibly extracted from a rather ubiquitous pop artist. With the album's press release calling for music's eulogy, this track can be straightforwardly dissected: the "pseudo artists" run rampant, reducing the essence, the wonder of music into a hollowed-out void. No hope - "Zero satisfaction." The unbearable truth; the music will, at some point, stop.

The perceptive unity of what is actually a rather diverse release is a testament to Cunningham's hoodwinking approach to sound. Amidst the crushed sample-and-loop aesthetic, the sophisticated inner workings of Ghettoville will reveal themselves with intent listening: it's formed upon the basis of a ghostly shell of techno, fused with productions tics from the left-field. However, I still must ask myself - does Ghettoville question my relationship with music as Ferraro and the plucky web enigmas have? In a nutshell, yes. With what is possibly the final release in the Actress image, Cunningham has evoked a hopelessly bleak existence - the musical ghetto - and while our innate desire for music will continue, we are already living beyond music history. R.I.P Music 2014.