#integrated tech solutions

[house-of-1000-corpses]

Come bounce around the house of flying rejects We been eating where upheaval is a feature not a defect [x]

[falloutbradreviews]

Aesop Rock – Black Hole Superette

Back in 2023, I finally got into rapper Aesop Rock, especially with his last album, 2023’s Integrated Tech Solutions, and I thought it was great. I had kind of listened to his work beforehand, but I wasn’t too familiar with it. I knew he was a prolific indie rapper, but there are a couple of small issues I have with his work: his albums are way too long, usually being over an hour, and they’re a bit dense in terms of his wordplay and vocabulary. Not that you have to be smart to get it, but his style is fast, tight, and dense, so he’s got a lot of ideas, words, and concepts flying at you. He also veers into surrealism a lot, too, and his lyrics can be hard to understand, but he has toned it down on subsequent albums. That includes his newest LP, Black Hole Superette. I really liked ITS, mainly for its loose concept that was about how technology is integrated into our everyday lives, but the album was full of vignettes and stories of himself and other people. This new album is the same idea, although it’s about how social media as an entity and how engrained social media is into our lives. It’s a rather mundane album, but I mean that in a good way.

Just like on ITS, the songs on Black Hole Superette are about a lot of random things that don’t really connect, but they’ve got an interweaving idea. A lot of these songs lean on surrealism, but they’re a lot of fun. One of my favorites is “John Something,” which is about how Rock recalls an artist coming to his school when he was a kid, and speaking off topic about boxing. He found the artist’s speech on boxing so passionate that he can remember the speech, but he can’t remember the artist that gave the speech. Another song, “Snail Zero,” is about a hypothetical snail invasion after him and his partner find a snail in a fish tank that they bought. The album follows that formula by being witty, weird, fun, and off the wall, but I like it a lot. Sometimes it can be a bit too dense for a casual listen, though. You can still listen to his stuff on a casual level, but with the amount of switch-ups he does, and how crazy his wordplay can get, some of his stuff you really need to sit with. That isn’t a bad thing, by any means, but I wouldn’t go into this expecting a pretty straightforward record.

Like with ITS, too, there are more pronounced hooks and more accessible production, so it’s not quite as dense as earlier albums, but the album is still pretty long. At 68 minutes and with 18 songs, it’s a bit lengthy, but it’s still a fun listen, regardless. Aesop himself sounds as sharp as ever, and it’s crazy how some of his best material is coming out now, but I’m all for it. This isn’t as accessible as the latest Lupe Fiasco album (who shows up on this album, by the way, and sounds awesome), let alone as short, but it’s got some catchy hooks that can get stuck in my head. If you hear one rap album this year, make it this one. I think I said that about his last album, too, but I mean it. I’m not much of a rap guy, either, but I knew I had to hear this the minute I saw it released a couple of weeks ago. Check this out if you get the chance, but it’s 68 minutes that you’ll enjoy. I guarantee that this album will be one of the best albums of the year for me, whether it’s in the top five or ten. It’s gonna be there somewhere, because it’s that good. You know when I give an album two thumbs up, it’s gotta be good, and this album is more than just “good.”

[ass-pushkin]

I'm on that Bauhaus, I'm on that Brutalist

I'm on that OG, you on that new to this

I'm on that matador, I'm on that bull fight

You on that bullshit, I'm on that dirtbike

[beatsforbrothels]

Aesop Rock - By the River

[eastofurban]

Been working on my ITS Housing and Nutrient Grid build in creative while I've been too depressed to edit and finish my latest YouTube video.

I've also been working on designs for a few general Create farms as well:

Cobblestone, gravel, sand, Clay, Flint, glass, and bricks all in one path.

Every color of concrete (needs an external dye farm)

Every color of Terracotta (also needs an external dye farm)

--

Clearly the next farm I need to make is a dye farm. The concrete and terracotta farms are designed to sit opposite each other in the same chamber and mirror one another with the dye farm sitting above and set back a bit. I've still got to figure out exactly how I want the dye farm to work, honestly.

I've also got an idea for a gold farm that is shaped like Mr. T (or at least Mr. T's head) to represent 100 Feet Tall on Integrated Tech Solutions. But gotta finish the designs I've already started first.

[gekken]

Aesop Rock - Integrated Tech Solutions - Mindful Solutionism

[house-of-1000-corpses]

[x]

[falloutbradreviews]

Aesop Rock - Integrated Tech Solutions

You know, I gotta be honest — I haven’t listened to a lot of hip-hop this year. I’m not too much of a rap fan, at least these days, but it’s kind of just because I don’t seek it enough, minus some of the bigger albums. I listen to a decent amount of 80s and 90s rap, but a lot of newer stuff from the last few years is something that’s not familiar to me. I mean, I like the new Jack Harlow album from last year okay, even though it was a little disappointing in retrospect compared to his label debut, but if there’s one hip-hop album that I’ve been looking forward to, it’s Aesop Rock’s newest LP, and first in a few years, Integrated Tech Solutions.

This album follows a loose concept like a lot of his other albums do, but this one is about a technology company in the vein of Silicon Valley, and the introduction is a short little cheesy infomercial that foreshadows what the album is about. Listening through it, however, you may not pick up on the concept, because this album does feel like a loose collection of songs. The best way I’ve seen it explained is that the album is about what Aesop Rock can’t get with technology, versus how technology is making our world worse. He has songs about eating copious amounts of fast food, enjoying various rivers across the United States, meeting Mr. T in the late 80s (and ultimately meeting one of his heroes as a kid), and many more things that seem trivial, but they really mean something.

As always, Aesop Rock sounds wonderful, and he’s one of the best kept secrets of rap, but he does something that surprised me a bit — held himself back. Normally, Aesop Rock is a very fast and technical rapper, and switching up his flows in the middle of a song, but with this record, he keeps it simpler and more straightforward. Sure, he’s quick, witty, and interesting, but he sounds more relaxed. He’s a man with nothing to prove more than 20 years into his career. Aesop Rock is doing just fine, and he’s riding a lot of these beats (most of which he crafted himself, I believe, but I could be wrong on that). The production is great, though, and there’s a lot of very jazzy and light instrumentation here. It’s a very easygoing album, well, until it’s not, because if there’s one song on this record that showcases the best that this album and Aes has to offer, it’s “Aggressive Steven.” Appearing in the second half of the album, the song is rather bleak, as over a really nice flow that oddly feels conversational at times, and an energetic beat, Aesop Rock talks about a mentally ill homeless man that broke into his apartment, and goes into how both the managers of the building and the police mishandle the situation. The managers knew about this guy, yet did nothing to prevent anything bad from happening, whereas the police outright admit that they want him to be the victim, so they find an excuse to arrest the guy, but Aes knows that the guy will be back on the street in a matter of a couple of days, and that there’s nothing that the police can really do. Ultimately, it’s a somber tale of the mental health system failing yet another person.

I went on a tangent about that song, because it’s the best song from the album, and one of my favorite songs of the year. This song encapsulates everything about this record that works, and really, this song may seem like an outlier despite its concept, but you can interpret this as Aesop Rock saying that homeless and mentally ill people don’t have access to the technology they need, whether it’s medicine, housing, food, a job, or whatever the case may be.

This record is a bit long, clocking in at over an hour, but this record has something that I never expected from him, either: hooks. This album’s catchy, and even features a few sung choruses, which is awesome. This is easily the most accessible album he’s put out, and it’s a great starting point if you want to get into his music. It’s a little long, but the songs are catchy, the subject matter is interesting, and he does have a great voice. This is one of my favorite albums of the year, despite it coming out so late. I’ve sat with this album for the last couple of weeks, though, and it’s been worth the wait.

[fangomusic]

Aesop Rock, Integrated Tech Solutions

New music Wednesday

The ninth album from the New York rapper highlights a shift in his approach from energetic performances on the microphone to more expressive, inventive, and abstract styles. Supported by some of his finest production to date, the album continues to draw attention primarily for his captivating wordplay. His skill in maintaining the listener's interest remains evident, especially as he explores diverse lyrical and conceptual paths. It contains collaborations with Billy Woods, Hanni El Khatib, Rob Sonic, Nikki Jean, and Lealani Teano.

[ass-pushkin]

I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you

[maniakmonkey]

"I.T.S. is not a cult"

New Aesop Rock album is off to a great start.