I haven’t played the game Death Stranding, but I know one thing: The score, composed by Ludvig Forssell for prepared piano, synthesizer, and found percussion, is beautiful.
Author Archives: Lucas Fagen
Lucas Fagen's favorite artform is popular music, and that means popular music—bland corporate trash and faceless functional product in addition to critically respectable touchstones and obscure dregs of arcana. He writes reviews for Hyperallergic arguing this preference.
Posted inMusic
The Marvelous Variety of Straightforward Rap
Fans and critics will tell you that 2019 was a lousy year for consensus in rap.
Posted inMusic
Jpegmafia, Isolated in His Own Head
The more you listen to All My Heroes Are Cornballs, the more it teaches you how to listen.
Posted inMusic
Big Thief’s Haunting Musical Dreamworld
The Brooklyn folk-rock band’s two 2019 albums invent an imagined environment with its own internal logic, a densely wooded forest with strange, benevolent creatures lurking in the shadows.
Posted inMusic
New Takes on Christmas Music
You wouldn’t know it from listening to the same old hits on Christmas radio, but every year a flood of new Christmas music hits the market.
Posted inMusic
Taylor Swift’s Lover Surprises With Its Calm
Even on Swift’s most dramatic songs there’s an underlying calm to Lover, a sense of gratitude and relief at having made it this far.
Posted inMusic
Four Approaches to Sonic Immersion
When the world encroaches, aural blankets are comforting, but they can also function as weapons.
Posted inMusic
An Explosion of Alternative Noise
Tired of contemporary pop’s mild spareness, craving music packed tight with crunch? These are four the noisiest albums rock albums around.
Posted inMusic
R.I.P. Ric Ocasek, Icon of Blankness
Whenever the chugging intro to “Just What I Needed” or “My Best Friend’s Girl” plays, fans of adolescent drama pump their fists and say yeah.
Posted inMusic
The Disquieting Tranquility of Alternative Rock
New releases from Clairo, Oso Oso, Lindsey Stirling, and Tyler, the Creator.
Posted inMusic
The Pranksters of Pop
1000 gecs by 100 gecs should leave you feeling vaguely targeted and mocked.
Posted inMusic
Megan Thee Stallion, a Hardcore Master of Rap
What makes this music hardcore, a term that has meant many things to many genres, is technical mastery.