But most importantly, The Rebellion Sessions was put together in a week with a focus on live performance. As a result of stripped-down production, the album feels raw, intimate, and quietly forward-thinking.

Black Milk is only a producer on the record, leaving all the writing and musicianship to the Nat Turner Band. The first spoken word comes in the opening seconds of Burn, when one of the men in the band says, “What I want to bring back is the feeling” before they all jump into a jazzy bass riff and keyboard line.

And it is all about that old-school jazz and funk feeling on The Rebellion Sessions. On rare occasion, it feels like we’re all waiting for Black Milk to start rapping — no doubt a result of him producing with the ear of a hip hop performer. But for the majority of the time, The Rebellion Sessions are layered with a surprising amount of density — especially given the size of the trio performing the music.

The best tracks on the record are the ones with playful attitudes and an emphasis on the funk aspect of the jazz fusion. Just a Thing and Electric Spanking are highlights for me, showing off the band’s propensity for great funky jams, but also revelling in their ability to create beats that feel timeless and familiar all at once.

Most impressive, though, is the way Black Milk manages to make all these sounds approachable for an audience that might not be ready to embrace jazz the way he and some of hip hop’s luminaries already have. Despite the virtuosity (Take 2 and You Need This Light both belong on Robert Glasper records, for example), The Rebellion Sessions feels like a love letter to jazz that was made for everybody. It’s Black Milk’s way of demonstrating what makes the genre so wonderful. I hope he allows even more jazz on his next rap record.

That being said, it’s impossible to talk about The Rebellion Sessions as if it’s solely a Black Milk record. This is Nat Turner’s project through and through. The band was named for a slave revolutionary in the nineteenth century. In 1831, Nat Turner led a rebellion of slaves in Virginia that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of black and white people. He was hung in November of that year.

Both the Nat Turner Band and The Rebellion Sessions are named for a man that is now remembered as a forward-thinking vigilante, a precursor in many ways to Malcolm X. And while I don’t think the musical comparison is incredibly apt, there’s something to it: The Nat Turner Band are writing jazz for a genre whose fans are still yet to embrace it and rebelling against the norms. The Rebellion Sessions is a spellbinding record.

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Gallant has the emotional range and vocal timbre of Chet Faker, but with the muscle of Justin Timberlake at his finest. His falsetto-laced R&B croon would be enough to make hearts swoon, but his music has a deep emotional core mired with the weight of his own struggles as a musician. As the period of time between Zebra and Ology might suggest, Gallant is a perfectionist who’s too hard on himself.

On Weight in Gold, one of the album’s particularly strong moments, Gallant sings, “I’m pulling my weight in gold. Call me anxious, call me broke, but I can’t lift this on my own.” The chorus’s backing track is a giant, loud synth that pulls back just in time for Gallant to come back with the John Mayer-influenced line over a subdued bridge: “Oh, Universe, hold me up. You tried your best; is it ever enough when it’s already dragging me down?”

Perhaps the album’s finest moment, and its most memorable for me, is Episode. An old-school R&B rhythm track holds down the verse, and Gallant sings the song almost entirely in falsetto. For just a moment, he feels like Jackson’s heir apparent.

Unlike Michael Jackson, Gallant’s scope is intentionally smaller. He’s not focused on solving the world’s problems with music; he’s just working through his own anxiety and loneliness. In that way, Gallant consistently reminds me of Chet Faker. Both of them are using synths and drum kits to give us modern takes on old genres that never feel like throwbacks or vintage apparels.

In an era of alt-R&B stars primed for radio time as if they were brand new, Gallant actually tries to be something new. And while he doesn’t always pull it off — sometimes he wears his Frank Ocean influence on his sleeve — Ology is admirable and refreshing.

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In the case of some artists, streamlining can work remarkably well. Sharon Van Etten and Local Natives expanded their palette and streamlined their sound without sacrificing the qualities people loved about them (all thanks to producer Aaron Dessner as well). Mumford & Sons, on the other hand…

Painting of a Panic Attack is the sixth record from Frightened Rabbit. Their previous album, Pedestrian Verse, saw them streamline their sound into something more palatable for mainstream taste. This record sees them streamline it even further.

The influence of Aaron Dessner is pretty clear: Painting of a Panic Attack sounds like The National. The two bands have always rubbed off on each other as touring friends and label mates, so this doesn’t come as a surprise. But Dessner’s focus on minimizing the extraneous instruments and sounds that Frightened Rabbit bring to the table results in a record that isn’t very different from his own band.

Death Dream and Little Drum are great examples of that style: staccato-like drums that serve as accent pieces, simple piano chords that are allowed to ring out, and clear focus on the morose vocal work. The album closer, A Lick of Paint, represents the sound that the band is going for at its best I think: several instruments working together, but all of them working as smaller parts of a whole.

Simply put, under the helm of Aaron Dessner, Frightened Rabbit has become much more restrained.

Should it be surprising? No — the band has been moving in this direction for years. In a lot of ways, this makes Frightened Rabbit better: the band’s morose vocal performance has always been its highlight, and the scatterbrain instrumentals haven’t always been on the same page.

If anything, Painting of a Panic Attack and Pedestrian Verse marry together well as complementary records. But Panic Attack sounds more cohesively depressing. It’s a National record from another band, perhaps, but it’s also one that marks where Frightened Rabbit is at emotionally. It’s a powerful record that shows the band maturing, even while they remain as morose as we’ve always known them (perhaps more so). And undoubtedly, these songs would sound even better live.

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Alcoholics, the first single, comes out of the gate strong with a clear attempt at sounding like a vintage Lamar single. Songs like Recognize and Burn Bridges are familiar radio staples with a fresh rapper laying down his tracks overtop of them.

So what makes all this work? It’s not like Mars is that original. But his style is uniquely laid-back and remarkably cohesive, considering that he’s earned the nickname the Lonely Stoner. He’s not different from the rest of us, and he’s making hip hop that sounds like something we can all relate to — unlike many of his contemporaries.

In an interview with XXL, Skizzy told them he’s “going to be the next kid to revolutionize music” and compared himself to Kanye West. In an 808s & Heartbreak, way he’s not very dissimilar, and they clearly share a similar ego. And the music feels a little manufactured, but at the same time, it feels like Skizzy has something to say.

Maybe it’s his laid back style, or maybe it’s the way he raps about his loneliness and search for tangible love. He’s a perfect hip hop complement to BJ the Chicago Kid, another one of the new soul-influenced generation who feels like he’s struggling with the loneliness that comes with our digital age.

The album highlight Girl on a Train is captivating, and an easy way to sum up what makes the album great: familiar without being comfortable, with a unique flow, Skizzy says something we’ve all heard before in a pre-packaged way that, thanks to his unique flow, feels entirely magical. And at the end of it, after observing the girl, after seeing her on the train, musing about her, missing his chance, Skizzy goes home alone. And he captures that profound sense of missed opportunity beautifully.

Skizzy Mars is making popcorn music, but he’s better than a lot of the other popcorn music out there. And it might be his age that gives him a bit of his edge — I’m Ready feels like a real edgy blues-influenced hip hop track that could only come from an angry, loveless 22-year-old — but I hope that Skizzy Mars matures well. Alone Together marries a lot of familiar elements with a strong and fresh new voice.

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The Life of Pablo features Kanye at his most confused: who does he want to be? When everybody sounds like Kanye (his words, not mine), what’s next for him? How should his music sound? If he can’t redefine hip hop anymore and he’s exorcised all his ideas, what’s his next move?

Kanye West’s next act is to make (again, in his own words) “a living breathing changing creative expression”. Since the album has been released, it has been updated multiple times on Tidal and at least once on competing music services. To my knowledge, its most recent change was on March 30th, over a month after the album’s released. And Kanye has made no bones about his continuing work on the record.

This is the next watershed moment in music. In our always-on, streaming era, we’ve hit a point where this is finally possible: constantly tweaked, alternate versions of a single song or album, changing as the artist’s intent changes.

Music was always meant to be heard this way.

Part of the thrill of the live show has always been seeing ways the music has been tweaked over time, and finding out how the artist optimized it for the live setting. Hearing medleys, new guitar solos, and the like, all because nobody likes to play the same thing every single night.

With The Life of Pablo, Kanye flips that script and says the same thing should apply to recorded music. If you aren’t releasing a physical copy of a record, you aren’t beholden to its limitations. Recorded music doesn’t have to be static. For the first time, we can treat recorded music the same way we do a live show.

We’ve hit a point where this is finally possible: constantly tweaked, alternate versions of a single song or album, changing as the artist’s intent changes.

Kanye is the first artist to do this on such a large scale, but he isn’t the first to ever make changes after the fact. We’ve been listening to remixes and remasters for years (and buying them in droves). In some cases, that’s no different than what Kanye is doing.

But in 2014, I bought a digital copy of Shad’s Flying Colours during release week. About a year later, I was thrilled to discover my iTunes copy had a couple bonus tracks retroactively added by the artist — two new singles that were attached for free.

The difference between Shad’s additions and Kanye’s tweaks is pretty simple: Kanye is changing music that we’ve already heard in an attempt to give us a better experience. Often, that might mean remixing it, but sometimes it means creating two songs where there were one, or replacing a verse.

Music was always meant to be heard this way.

If other artists start mimicking this release style, you’re going to see a lot of changes in the music industry. The first is that we’re going to see more Beyoncé-style releases, dropped without any promotion. This is a natural result of the internet (Radiohead did it first with In Rainbows, if we’re being fair), and it’s to be expected.

More importantly, a shift like this poses a cultural problem: if we begin to expect artists to tweak music over time, after its release, it means that artists will have to spend more time in the recording studio with fewer assurances than ever that they’ll get a return back. It means we’ll hear more home-recorded music. For an indie rock band to release music in this way, they’d almost have to do it live, leading to session-style arrangements similar to what we had in the 1960s with Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

This is a problem, though, because it raises the barrier to entry in music. For all the good technology has done to make it easier for all of us to learn new instruments and record great music, an approach similar to The Life of Pablo risks homogenizing the industry in much the same way that large tech companies risk homogenizing San Francisco. The prevalence of trends that only the rich can afford prevent the poor from entering the business. That’s bad for all of us.

I don’t expect that everybody will start updating their music after it hits iTunes or Spotify, but I do believe that this won’t be the last time an artist makes changes to a record after the fact. In the age of Soundcloud, I’m frankly surprised it’s taken this long to begin with.

It’s every creative person’s dream: a project that never has to end, fuelled by a desire for perfection. While Kanye hasn’t changed the world of hip hop with The Life of Pablo the same way he has with his previous records, he’s changing how we listen to music in profound ways. It’s just a shame they’ll be so unaffordable for many.

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Originally released independently (in small quantities) in 2015, Iron Mountain has since been picked up Prophecy Productions. The re-release features new artwork, but the songs remain the same.

Despite its short five-track length, Unum is almost fifty minutes long. It doesn’t feel as long as that: with a seemingly endless bevy of ideas, the band comes alive with each track, building them with successive layers of intensity. At moments, their sludgey riffs conjure memories of Black Sabbath or Mastodon at their gnarliest. A couple tracks are reminiscent of Metallica’s thrasher approach (particularly their instrumental work). Blitz reminded me of Iron Maiden.

Yet Iron Mountain is working entirely within their own framework. With flutes, fiddles, and pipes, there is jazz-like backing track happening here (Blitz being another great example of a jazzy bass line with some memorable solo work). The band is completely comfortable with their own identity.

Tracks like Powow begin quietly and slowly ease their way into distorted power chords, still using the higher-pitched flute and pipes and fiddles to cut through the bass-heavy tones of the guitar tracks and the drum kits. The song’s mid-point becomes a total riff-fest, but yet it never descends into simple chugging. Rather than going the route so many metal and rock musicians go now — high-speed chugging on low guitar strings to create an ominous, train-like sound — Iron Mountain forges their own trail.

It’s worth saying that these gentlemen really know how to play their instruments. The drummer keeps excellent time, and the guitar work is particularly intricate. But what really shines are the solos throughout, which are rarely played on a traditional instrument associated with the genre.

The sound Iron Mountain’s got going for them is unique. Thanks to their appropriation of many genres, Unum has more to reveal with every listen. If there was going to be one album you listened to over the next week (or month), Unum would have enough depth to make the cut. It’s also a refreshing listen for those of us who think metal has had little to offer lately; it’s a reminder that it’s still possible to do something original in what’s beginning to feel like a stale genre.

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