Favorite Albums/Recent Spins
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Deadline - Blackpink (YG, 2006)
Genre: K-Pop/Electronic/Dance
I am a hardcore Blink. I stan Rosé and Lisa. And the main reason for that is that none of their recorded material has disappointed me. Ever. All the songs are great. What is disappoining about this release only comes down to one thing: the length of the relezase. This is a fifteen-minute EP. and a lot of their group releases have come up short (even their "full-length albums", The Album and Born Pink, had only eight songs apiece and ran a half-hour each when your average album is usually nine to twelve songs and runs forty to forty-five minutes. Even three of the four lsdies' solo alnums ran an average of forty minutes apiece (Only Jisoo cheaped out and did a four-song, twelve-minute EP; she'd been too busy acting during the solo hiatus the band took.) Will we ever get more than eight songs at a time from the biggest girl group on the planet? I certainly hope so. This will just have to tide all of us Blinks over in the meantime.
Evangelic Girl Is A Gun - Yeule (Ninja Tune, 2025)
Genre: Alternative/Electronic
The summary: Yeule’s fourth album is basically the perfect blend of the electronic glitchiness from Serotonin II and the grungier, shoegaze vibes of softscars. It’s awesome hearing Nat use her natural voice more often on tracks like "Saiko," saving the heavy vocal effects for when they really count. My only real gripe is that it’s way too short—the whole thing clocks in under 33 minutes. The closer, "Skullcrusher," cuts off right when you expect it to explode, which is a bit frustrating, but hopefully, that’s just a tease for where they're going next.
Flaunt It! - Sigue Sigue Sputnik (Manhattan/EMI, 1986)
Genre: Electronic
Back in the day, critics wrote these guys off as "style over substance" because of the hype and the commercials between songs, but honestly? The music holds up. With Giorgio Moroder producing, it’s basically like if Suicide got a massive major-label budget and decided to make a rockabilly-cyberpunk record. The pulsing synth bass and Elvis-style vocals are addictive, and forty years later, it still sounds ahead of its time. If you want a deep dive, Cherry Red put out a great box set recently that is definitely worth tracking down.
Alan Vega and Collision Drive - Alan Vega (Sacred Bones, 2026)
Genre: Rock
If you know Alan Vega from Suicide, you know he was a pioneer, but a lot of his solo stuff was hard to find in the US for ages outside of some patchy reissues. Sacred Bones finally stepped up to release his self-titled debut and Collision Drive, and it’s about time. These records lean way harder into his Elvis and rockabilly roots than his pure electronic work, and they’ve been missing from the racks for too long - the last time they were on CD in the US, they were paired together on one CD from Henry Rollins' reissue label Infinite Zero in 1996 (that disc itself being a clone of a 1989 import CD). Here’s hoping the label keeps the momentum going with the rest of his post-Elektra catalog.