It takes time to digest this monster but the nausea remains persistent nonetheless. For this concept album, Eminem, true to himself, stuffs the container with his fist to squeeze in sixty-five minutes of the United States of America, excess, insults, convulsions, armed violence, generation clash, incomprehension and even assumed or shameful stupidity, all spewed out alternately by two irreconcilable poles: Marshall Mathers III, 51 years old, and Slim Shady, his lawless alter ego. The scenario does not go further than the title: Marshall has matured, Shady has not, so it is a question of eliminating once and for all this horrible hateful puppet. This will be done at the end of a final clash on track 13 (Guilty Conscience 2), which leaves six in the hands of the grave-faced Eminem who has been apologizing for twenty years with a lot of pathetic instrumentals for not having taken enough care of his daughter. Let’s move on – the first part of the album is fascinating.
As with many rappers practicing the increasingly outdated art of diss, It’s the punchlines that scratch such a nice personality that get people talking, while the first target of his barbs has often been his own apple. Self-deprecation pushed here to the point of fighting against this part of him that no longer understands anything about the world around him, screams in caricature of himself, like an unbridled Bret Easton Ellis: “Fuck the blind! The deaf suck! The cripples suck too! Fucking quadriplegics!”overtaken by Tiktok and non-binarity and who shows his ass to the “political correctness police” to try to make «cancel» but at the same time addresses this plea to Gen Z: “When will you realize that we need each other?”
His longest personal attack goes to YouTuber Candace Owens, “MAGA shitbag in a skirt” Who “forgot she was black”. The gunshot with which Eminem finishes off the clown Slim Shady is immediately followed by an alarm clock ringing – so is he really dead, or not? Marie Klock
Two techno legends (Surgeon and Regis), a joint project with a name that’s too good, too stupid, the kind of thing that’s appreciated in the ephemeral, instantaneous discharge. And which we didn’t think we’d hear about again twelve years after their last maxi. Since then, the archives had flourished (mixes, live), but the story had remained as it should have been: short, beautiful and brutal. Until this first real album, a seemingly unforgivable betrayal – the pale flash returned like any band with an empty bank account running after a faded chandelier. We put away the machetes: the album is fresh, fulminating, worthy of a foggy and crackling sequel to past attacks, which even opens a door to more enduring horizons, between ghostly post punk (Killer I Said) and ragga for combat zone (It’s What You Hide). Today Jimmy Batista
Return of one of the Congolese gangs specialized in the trafficking of crazy sounds. Of the five characters from the first disc, only the Kinois Makara Bianko remains, atalaku (crier), and Débruit, a French producer at the controls. Electronic music – Angolan kuduro, South African kwaito – takes the place left by the ex-Slum Robots who hit tin cans, typewriters and other salvaged junk. On this woven carpet for dancefloors further west, Makara Bianko’s high-pitched words are striking, even if the eruptive power of DIY made in Kinshasa seems to be in the background. To get a taste of it, we recommend watching the internet for the zagué deliriums, a style that mixes urban stories, tapped rhythms and electronic tinkering, while waiting for the arrival of Nyata Zone, the modern-crazy soundtrack to the glory of Congolese gangs. Jacques Denis
Who is Philippe Lavigne? Is he really an agrégé literature professor, post “trying” which man decides to “escape through song” according to his bio? What does this album say about the malaise of the teaching condition? Should we be worried about Mr. Lavigne’s hypothetical students? So many questions raised by listening to this cursed masterpiece which consists of covers of classics of French variety interpreted by shifting the lyrics by one syllable in relation to their melody. A few bars of Masked ball at theand we sink into pure madness, the nervous system pushed to the limit by this process as irritating as a kid who strives to fit the square into the circle, against a backdrop of karaoke instrumentals. And yet, the spell works: we want more. To be experienced live on July 26 at the Cour Denis festival. M.K.
He is hotthis album by the Frenchman Basile3. Grime, electronica, sensual, loaded with bass and caliente syncopations, this renowned producer of our underground (he has worked with and for Oklou, Sabrina Bellaouel or Deena Abdelwahed) has found a cool voice for this new album that warms the heart and the buttocks, between English house, futuristic soul and hypermelodic techno pop à la Plaid. But the album is also preoccupied. 43°it is much too much when measured in Celsius, when the air quality (Air Quality) leaves something to be desired, when the body starts to mess up (Love Machines). Neither too mental to empty the beach bar, nor too rough to prevent himself from inviting himself into the train traveler’s headphones, 43° by Basile3 is an ideal summer disc for those who ask themselves, like Bashung once did: “How many summers have passed without ever meeting?” Olivier Lamm
There’s never a dull moment with the Meridian Brothers. The project led by Eblis Álvarez begins a second quarter century with this album “born from the desire to explore the untapped potential of the electric guitar in a Latin-tropical context”. One can be surprised by the preamble as the prolific guitarist from Bogotá has been devoting himself to it for all this time. We can just as easily count on him to continue to surprise us, faithful to the motto of the Meridian Brothers, “a play ground” or to the improbable to which he has always held. This time, in a vein anchored in African spinning (rumba, soukous, highlife…) on which he grafts sounds of cumbia, champeta and so on. All with the right amount of humor, notes included, relating the tribulations of a petty bourgeois who has run out of self and is in need of everything. J. Day.
We have already heard harsher and more desperate Concerto for violin and orchestra by Sibelius than this one, recorded live at the Oslo Konzerthus, but rarely such brilliant readings of Prokofiev’s No. 1. Janine Jansen recorded it in the studio, with the same Oslo Philharmonic and a Klaus Mäkelä in tune, like few conductors, with the whimsical character of this gem. A keen sense of phrasing and structure in the squeaky and dreamy Andantino and Moderato; dazzling attacks and devilishly imaginative expressive nuances in the Scherzo, without ever sacrificing the power and beauty of the sound: the Dutchwoman breaks the house down for her return to business. Eric Dahan
Source: www.liberation.fr
