But rarely do they melt into each other in the way they do on MIKE’s Tears of Joy. Sometimes those two things complement each other nicely sometimes they don’t. Most rap songs are composed of two main elements: the rapping and the beat.
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal On these four songs-ranging from gnarled chaos in “The Giza Power Plant” to the psychedelic slow burn of “Inner Paths (to Outer Space)”-Blood Incantation find their own corner in a storied cosmos, where even the most familiar textures can feel thrilling and extreme. Yet the real brilliance of this music lies in how free it sounds from what’s come before. Even the side-long closing track, “Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul),” seems like a nod to the ’70s prog acts whose dark visions helped inspire countless subgenres of heavy music. The warped, intricate death metal of the Colorado quartet’s sophomore album takes influence from legendary bands like Death and Morbid Angel, while its all-analog recording and illustrated sci-fi cover art feel further rooted in the past. In one sense, Blood Incantation are traditionalists. Blood Incantation: Hidden History of the Human Race
At times, listening to PROTO can feel like being immersed in a language you’re only just beginning to understand, where obvious phrases seem to stick out of inappropriate contexts and the familiar is not quite so. The thundering “Frontier” builds a battle anthem for the climate emergency against anxious AI wails, while “Godmother” interpolates the fragmented rhythms of Herndon’s friend Jlin, chopping and scattering Spawn’s voice as if it were being fed through fan blades.
According to Herndon, who recently earned her PhD in artificial intelligence in music, Spawn learns on “her” own, and Herndon uses the technology to create an album that thrills even beyond its futuristic context. But Spawn isn’t a computer simulation made to appear human, like other recent CGI novelties. PROTO plays like a document of the creation of Spawn, the neural network that experimentalist Holly Herndon trained to sing using her voice alongside the voices of some 300 collaborators.