I had been a huge fan of Earl Sweatshirt in my early high school years and I wanted to take a listen to his most recent collaborative effort with hip-hop artist MIKE. I have grown familiar with MIKE within the last year or so and I genuinely like his laidback and confident style. I think both Earl and MIKE's style shows that they think on a very poetic level and they display a lot of expressive clarity which I enjoy. I have quite a few songs that I casually throw into my rotation from this album. I'm also quite fond of the unorthodox production and tags from the SURFGANG team. AOK by Earl is one of my favorites because the effortless nature of the still holding its clarity, but I often rotate quite a few songs from this album into my playlist such as: Minty by Mike and Hot Water by Earl.

Senko no Ronde is a video game series released by SEGA that had an incredible soundtrack to accompany it. Yasuhisa Watanabe is responsible for the composition of this game's futuristic sonic atmosphere. Watanabe's ability to capture many different genres and fuse them in a very fitting and progressive manner is so impressive to me. My fondest memories with this album was around the time I had recently discovered this soundtrack and my brother and I would drive to go pick up food after work on Monday nights and listen to this soundtrack all the way through to the end. We were captivated by the detail and chord changes in the music. Assemble (Mika Phase), Little Witch (lili phase 1), Brave Heart (sakurako phase 3) are among some of my favorites, but I can certainly listen to this album all the way through. (Also, I'm a huge fan of the bonus VA dialogue at the end. Such a great inclusion to the OST.)

I found Overdoz. on an old blog post back in high school. They were, at the time, hailed as the spiritual successors to Outkast. They were a group that had a very eclectic sound and they had their reoccuring producer THC (formerly known as THunderCat)that created this really unique sound at the time. I genuinely miss how up and coming musical artists (and groups) had these very interesting and different pockets that they ministered in. The Funktion from this album is a song I often revisit because the instrumental is incredible and reminds me of a time when I wished to go to parties and have fun with my group of friends at the time. 

I recently discovered this album on youtube. I don't have a particularly interesting back story to this album. I listened to one song from Daydreamer and I thought it sounded really interesting. The first track I heard was 'Warn Me' which I had first listened to when I was driving home from the gym at night. I thought the instrumental and Michiko's vocal perfomance was really endearing and I'm quite  the fan of downtempo/lounge music as typically has this sound that tickles my brain in just the right way. I then listened to 'Feels So Nice' and at the point I began sending some of her songs to my brother who I thought would perhaps like her sound as well. Eventually, I ended up setting up this album on my room's speakers and played the entire project. It was quite interesting considering that I sat there and quite intensively listened to the album looking up at my ceiling. I wasn't doing anything else in particular at the time. 'Miss You' is a standout track to me because the Bossa Nova bassline and ethereal stringed chords are so tender... (also, the style of this song reminds me of one my favorite albums by The Internet.)