#s: sonic boom (tv series)

[thespacecolonyarksystem]

Kintype Katalouge: Foxes!!

Hello!!

Please add any media you can find or know of that focuses on foxes, whether it be video games, TV shows, movies, books, documentaries, or otherwise via comment, reblog, or DM!! I will add them to the list from there!!

Your account name will be credited alongside the media you submit!!

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Video Games !!

Spirit of the North (PS4, PS5, Windows, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)

Submitted by - https://www.tumblr.com/disappointedcreeper

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Sega Genesis, Android, IOS, Nintendo Switch)

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Sonic Chaos (Master System, Game Gear, PC - via Emulator)

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Sonic 3 And Knuckles (Sega Genesis, Windows)

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Tails’ Skypatrol (Game Gear, PC - via Emulator)

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Tails’ Adventure (Game Gear, PC - via Emulator)

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Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast, GameCube, Windows, Xbox 360, PS3)

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Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast, GameCube, Windows, Xbox 360, PS3)

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Sonic Heroes (GameCube, PS2, Xbox, Windows)

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Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (Nintendo DS)

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Sonic Mania <Plus> (Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Windows)

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Sonic Frontiers (Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)

Submitted by - https://www.tumblr.com/prowerhour-reeggtivated20231123

TV Shows !!

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog - YouTube^, Tubi^, Netflix*, Paramount+*

(^ = Free, * = Subscription Needed)

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Sonic Boom - Pluto TV^, Netflix*, Hulu*

(^ = Free, * = Subscription Needed)

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Sonic Prime - Netflix*

(^ = Free, * = Subscription Needed)

Submitted by - https://www.tumblr.com/prowerhour-reeggtivated20231123

Movies !!

Vuk (Internet Archive^)

(^ = Free, * = Subscription Needed)

#foxkin #fox therian #therian #therianthropy #kintype #theriotype #fictotype #fictive #theroject #otherkin #theriomythic #alterhuman #therian resources #kintype katalouge !

[blazehedgehog]

For your BTAS-inspired Sonic cartoon, would you want the freedom fighters or other non-game characters to be included (even if it was only for a one-off appearance)? If so, do you have any ideas on how you’d incorporate the freedom fighters?

As much as I like the Freedom Fighters and wish there was a way they could return to comics, I don't think they would fit the theme of "Batman: The Animated Series, but for Sonic." They are fun in a spinoff where they get to live in that spinoff, but so much of the point of those comics were that they explicitly separate from every other universe.

They were from a time where all video game cartoons, all video game movies, etc. had no source material to work off of because the source material was either on the other side of the planet in Japan or just did not exist. Or both! Sega of America explicitly threw out whatever Sega of Japan was crafting for Sonic's backstory and made up something totally new.

They were hardly alone. While capturing video for the Sonic Frontiers video, I watched this video on the Pac-Man and Donkey Kong vinyl records from the 1980's. They are FULL of characters, and concepts, and ideas that have nothing to do with what we would come to be enforced as the "canonical representations" of these characters.

That's just how it was.

But whereas those representations only existed briefly, for a couple years or so, the Freedom Fighters stuck around for over twenty years. That little spinoff burrowed into its own little niche in the franchise, built a nest, and roosted there. As Sega of Japan re-established themselves and took control back of Sonic from Sega of America, the Freedom Fighters hung on for dear life and just kept going on pure momentum. After a certain point, it almost felt defiant.

The whole point is that they weren't part of the Sega games. It would feel weird if they were. Even after Ian Flynn tried to incorporate more elements from the games, it still felt noticeably incompatible with Sega's narrative style. The fact they weren't part of the games felt almost like a point of pride, to me. It meant they were uncorruptible from the stupid garbage that gave us something like Sonic Lost World.

The problem there is if you're making a TV show, there's not much of a rogues gallery to work with. It's pretty much just Eggman. This was the problem we faced in Sonic Lost World, right, where they made a big deal about bringing back Sonic's rogues gallery.

By which it meant they brought back basically the only villains that weren't Eggman: Shadow, Chaos 0, and Zavok.

Like, at least if you do a Mega Man cartoon, you get all of the robot masters. If you do a Mario cartoon, you get all of the Koopa Kids and a ton of second-stringers like Kamek and Boom Boom. But with Sonic... it's pretty much just Eggman. You get badniks, sure; and early Archie Sonic tried to make Crabmeat (and to a lesser extent, Coconuts) into lackeys for Robotnik, for instance.

But for the most part, badniks are tools. They are less intelligent than Metal Sonic, less capable. They are cannon fodder. Meant to be easily controlled.

So, really, your only villain is Eggman. And maybe you could expand that to include the Mecha Sonics and of course Metal Sonic if you stretch.

Now, there are other ways to generate conflict. We could downgrade Knuckles as a friend back to a "friendly rival," for one. Somebody who maybe isn't always happy to see Sonic. And, of course, there's what we do with Shadow. Because, like, we can't not do Shadow.

Shadow is a weird one for me, because if we still have Classic Eggman as I suggest, putting Shadow in the mix there feels strange. Even though I kept saying "no origin stories," it's important to note that Batman TAS did actually do a few real origins, and even some original characters. It debuted Harley Quinn, for instance, and season one dedicated an entire two-part episode to showing Harvey Dent's transformation into Two-Face.

Batman TAS also evolved over time. It introduced its version of Batgirl, Dick Grayson graduated from being Robin to becoming Nightwing, Tim Drake came on as the newer, younger Robin, and so on. There is wiggle room here.

I imagine you could do at least a whole season (10-20 episodes) of exploring Sonic and Tails versus Eggman and robots, and then maybe we hit our evolutionary point where we could do a, like, Sonic Adventure adaptation, or Sonic Adventure 2. Give us leeway to change up Robotnik's appearance, maybe mellow Knuckles out, bring in Rouge and Shadow.

Like, imagine an episode where Knuckles confronts a post-SA2 Shadow like "dude, I used to be mad at Sonic all the time too, but he's not so bad once you get used to the way he does things." and Shadow's just like, "I'm not mad at Sonic. I'm mad at myself."

We could also pull an Ian Flynn and maybe start bringing in guys like Bean, Bark, Fang, and since he loves her so much, even Wendy Witchcart.

My point here before I trailed off on this tangent is that if we did dip into the Freedom Fighters, that would give us a larger pool of villains to pull from. We could bring in Snively, Ixis Naugus, and um. Uhhhh. Lazaar? Remember Lazaar?

Listen, it's fine if we don't include the Freedom Fighters. We're not trying to make "SatAM 2: This Time It's Late Archie Sonic." I wouldn't mind that, but that's not the prompt being given here.

#questions #Anonymous #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #satam #freedom fighters #batman

[ptbf2002]

here's My Top 10 Favorite Cartoons From France (Or I Should Say That Cartoons Produced Or Animated In France)

#10 Little Spirou

#9 Monster Buster Club

#8 Robotboy

#7 SamSam

#6 The Garfield Show

#5 Zig And Sharko

#4 Sonic Boom

#3 Magiki

#2 Angelo Rules

And #1 Oggy And The Cockroaches

Honorable Mentions: Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese, Nate Is Late, Molang, Sally Bollywood, Team Galaxy, A.T.O.M Alpha Teens On Machines,

Original Template: https://www.deviantart.com/el-crany-racha-da/art/Top-10-Favorite-French-Cartoons-962082542

Little Spirou (TV Series) (2013) Belongs To Jean-Richard Geurts, Philippe Tome, Virginie Jallot, Dupuis Editions & Audiovisuels, Araneo Belgium, LuxAnimation, Belvision, Dreamwall, OUFtivi, Radio-télévision belge de la Communauté française (RTBF), Télétoon+, CANAL+ S.A. Groupe CANAL+ S.A. Vivendi SE, M6 Kid, M6 (TV channel), Metropole Télévision S.A. And Groupe M6

Monster Buster Club Belongs To Vincent Chalvon-Demersay, David Michel, Designstorm Animation Studio, Marathon Animation, Marathon Media Group, Zodiak Kids Studios France, Banijay S.A. Image Entertainment Corporation, Mystery Animation, TF1, Groupe TF1 S.A. Jetix Europe N.V. Disney Branded Television, Disney–ABC Home Entertainment and Television Distribution, Disney General Entertainment Content, Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, Disney Entertainment, Disney Enterprises, Inc. And The Walt Disney Company YTV, YTV Canada, Inc. And Corus Entertainment Inc.

Robotboy Belongs To Jan Van Rijsselberge, Digital eMation, Inc. Monigotez, Carbunkle Cartoons, Gaumont Animation, Gaumont Film Company, France 3, France Télévisions S.A. LuxAnimation, Splash Entertainment, LLC. Cofinova 1, Cartoon Network, The Cartoon Network, Inc. Warner Bros. Discovery Networks, Warner Bros. Discovery Europe, Middle East & Africa, Warner Bros. Discovery International, Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution Warner Bros. Television Studios, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. WarnerMedia And Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.

SamSam Belongs To Serge Bloch, Blue Spirit Studio, Sinematik, Bayard Jeunesse Animation, Grupo SM, Araneo Belgium, France 5, France Télévisions S.A. Gulli, Canal J, TiJi, Metropole Télévision S.A. And Groupe M6

The Garfield Show Belongs To Jim Davis, Philippe Vidal, Infinite Frameworks Pte. Ltd. Tiger Bells Animation Pvt. Ltd. Paws, Inc. Nickelodeon Group, Paramount Media Networks, Inc. Paramount Global, Dargaud Media, Mediatoon Distribution, Les Éditions Dargaud, France 3, France Télévisions S.A. Cartoon Network, Boomerang (TV network), The Cartoon Network, Inc. Warner Bros. Discovery Networks, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. WarnerMedia, And Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.

Zig And Sharko Belongs To Olivier Jean-Marie, Armada TMT, DongWoo Animation Co. Ltd. Xilam Animation, TF1, Groupe TF1 S.A. CANAL+ S.A. Groupe CANAL+ S.A. Vivendi SE, Gulli, Canal J, TiJi, Metropole Télévision S.A. Groupe M6, Super RTL, RTL Deutschland GmbH And RTL Group S.A.

Sonic Boom Belongs To Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima, Hirokazu Yasuhara, Evan Baily, Donna Friedman Meir, Sandrine Nguyen, Infinite Frameworks Studios, SEGA Corporation, SEGA Sammy Holdings Inc. OuiDo! Productions, Technicolor Animation Productions, Lagardère Thématiques, Jeunesse TV, Gulli, Canal J, CANAL+ S.A. Groupe CANAL+ S.A. Vivendi SE, Metropole Télévision S.A. Groupe M6, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, The Cartoon Network, Inc. Warner Bros. Discovery Networks, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. WarnerMedia And Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.

Magiki Belongs To Eryk Casemiro, Cyril Deydier, Pegbar Animation, Animasia Studio, Rainbow S.P.A. Paramount Media Networks, Inc. Paramount Global, DeAgostini Publishing Italy S.P.A. DeAgostini Editore S.P.A. DeAKids, DeA Junior, DeAgostini S.P.A. DeAPlaneta Kids And Family, DeAPlaneta Entertainment, Télé Images Productions, Zodiak Kids Studios France, Banijay S.A. Ketchup TV, KidsMe S.R.L. Gulli, TiJi, Metropole Télévision S.A. Groupe M6, Frisbee, Switchover Media, Discovery Italia S.R.L. Discovery Networks Italia, Discovery Networks EMEA, Discovery Networks International, Discovery, Inc. And Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.

Angelo Rules Belongs To Sylvie De Mathuisieulx, Sebastien Diologent, TeamTO, CAKE Entertainment Ltd. France 3, France 4, France Télévisions S.A. Télétoon+ CANAL+ S.A. Groupe CANAL+ S.A. Vivendi SE, Expand Drama, Super RTL, RTL Deutschland GmbH, RTL Group S.A. International Rheingold Productions, Cartoon Network (Middle Eastern and African TV channel), Turner Broadcasting System Europe Limited, WarnerMedia EMEA, Turner Broadcasting System International, WarnerMedia International, WarnerMedia & Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.

Oggy and the Cockroaches Belongs To Jean-Yves Raimbaud, Big Star Enterprise, Armada TMT, Digital Emation, Inc. Neon Pumpkin, DongWoo Animation Co. Ltd. Gaumont Multimedia, The Gaumont Film Company, Xilam Animation, France 3, France Télévisions S.A. CANAL+ Family, CANAL+ S.A. Groupe CANAL+ S.A. Vivendi SE, Gulli, Canal J, Metropole Télévision S.A. And Groupe M6

[disneytva]

September 2022 Programming Highlights

Friday, Sept.2 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Mickey Mouse Funhouse “Daisy and the Muses/Keep on the Ball” (8:00-8:30 a.m. EDT on Disney Channel/12:00-12:30 p.m. EDT on Disney Junior) “Daisy and the Muses” –Daisy wants to learn how to whistle and visits the Muses in the Land of Myth for guidance. *Roz Ryan and Lillias White reprise their roles as Thalia and Calliope from Disney’s feature film “Hercules.”

“Keep on the Ball” – After sitting around the Funhouse, the friends decide to play in Sportopia. TV-Y

Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends “Bootsie’s Day Out/Trouble at Tony’s” (8:30-9:00 a.m. EDT on Disney Channel/12:30-1:00 p.m. EDT on Disney Junior) “Bootsie’s Day Out” – Team Spidey searches for Bootsie after she gets captured by Black Cat.

“Trouble at Tony’s” – The Spidey Team must protect Iron Man’s headquarters from Electro. *John Stamos (“Big Shot”) recurs as Iron Man. TV-Y

Saturday, Sept. 3 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel Hamster & Gretel “Comic Shop CopyCat/Neigh, It Ain’t So!” (9:30-10:00 a.m. EDT) “Comic Shop CopyCat” – Hamster and Gretel must defeat a comic book-inspired cat villain.

“Neigh, It Ain’t So!” – Hamster and Gretel face a half-man-half-horse villain who loves to party. TV-Y7

Friday, Sept. 9 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Mickey Mouse Funhouse “Farfus’ Family!/The Adventure Parade” (8:00-8:30 a.m. EDT on Disney Channel/12:00-12:30 p.m. EDT on Disney Junior) “Farfus’ Family!” – When Farfus takes the friends into the forest to meet his family, he discovers his family is missing. *Tony Hale (Disney+’s “The Mysterious Benedict Society”) and Megan Stalter (“Hacks“) guest star as fairies Gus and Gertie, respectively.

“The Adventure Parade” – Mickey, Minnie and friends decorate the Funhouse Forest float for the Adventure Parade. *Jaime Camil (“Jane The Virgin”) reprises his role as Rocket Mouse. TV-Y

Saturday, Sept. 10 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel Hamster & Gretel “Saturday Homecoming Fever/Dr. Eelgood” (9:30-10:00 a.m. EDT) “Saturday Homecoming Fever” – Hamster and Gretel must save the homecoming dance at the high school.

“Dr. Eelgood” – Hamster and Gretel encounter a mutant eel. TV-Y7

Friday, Sept. 16 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends “Sonic Boom Boom/Mini Golf Goof” (8:30-9:00 a.m. EDT on Disney Channel/12:30-1:00 p.m. EDT on Disney Junior) “Sonic Boom Boom” – Team Spidey heads underwater to stop Doc Ock from disrupting sea life. *Bindi Irwin (“Crikey! It’s the Irwins”) guest stars as oceanographer Isla Coralton.

“Mini Golf Goof” – Ghost-Spider teams up with Ant-Man and Wasp to stop Green Goblin from ruining the mini golf course. *Sean Giambrone (“The Goldbergs”) recurs as Ant-Man. TV-Y

Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Junior Eureka! “Dippling Rivalry/It’s Mom O’Clock” (7:30-8:00 p.m. EDT) “Dippling Rivalry” – Eureka takes care of Dipply while Pepper’s away, and Murphy finds it hard to share her attention.

“It’s Mom O’Clock” – Eureka creates a jam-making machine for berry season. TV-Y

Saturday, Sept. 17 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel Hamster & Gretel “The Opposite of Smart/Birthday Besties” (9:30-10:00 a.m. EDT) “The Opposite of Smart” – Churro becomes an internet sensation.

“Birthday Besties” – Gretel has her hands full at Bailey’s birthday party. TV-Y7

Wednesday, Sept. 21 Original Series – Series Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Firebuds “Car in a Tree/Dalmatian Day“ (10:30-10:55 a.m. PT on Disney Channel and Disney Junior) “Car in a Tree” – The Firebuds must save Piston after he gets stuck in a tree.

“Dalmatian Day” – The Firebuds have to round up four loose Dalmatian puppies at the fire station open house. TV-Y

Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Firebuds “Hubcap Heist/Food Truck Fiasco” (10:55-11:25 a.m. PT on Disney Channel and Disney Junior) “Hubcap Heist” – Bo and the Firebuds must stop a pair of wily art thieves. *LaChanze (Broadway’s “The Color Purple”) guest stars as Jayden’s mom, Jenna. Atticus Shaffer (“The Middle”) guest stars as art thief Wayne Riley.

“Food Truck Fiasco” – The Firebuds help Fernando the Food Truck get to his café in time for the lunch rush. *Oscar Nuñez (“The Office”) guest stars as food truck Chef Fernando. José Andrés (“We Feed People”) guest stars as Chef Fernando’s culinary pal, Chef Al. TV-Y

Thursday, Sept. 22 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Firebuds “Treehouse Trouble/The Getaway Car That Got Away” (10:30-11:00 a.m. PT on Disney Channel/7:00-7:30 p.m. EDT on Disney Junior) “Treehouse Trouble” – The Firebuds work together to build a backyard treehouse.

“The Getaway Car That Got Away” – The Firebuds track down a getaway car that they accidentally helped get away. *LaChanze (Broadway’s “The Color Purple”) recurs as Jayden’s mom, Jenna. Nat Faxon (“Loot”) guest stars as getaway car Throttle. TV-Y

Friday, Sept. 23 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Firebuds “Picnic Pile-Up/Duo Dash” (10:30-11:00 a.m. PT on Disney Channel/7:00-7:30 p.m. EDT on Disney Junior) “Picnic Pile-Up” – Violet and Axl’s picnic with their families get interrupted by a surprise emergency. *Natalie Morales (“Dead to Me”) guest stars as Violet’s mom, Val Vega-Vaughn. Allison Case (Broadway’s “Matilda the Musical”) guest stars as Violet’s mom, Viv Vega-Vaughn.

“Duo Dash” – Axl is nervous about doing well in her school’s Duo Dash Speed Race. TV-Y

Saturday, Sept. 24 Original Series – Mid-Season Premiere on Disney Channel Big City Greens “The Move” (9:00-9:30 a.m. EDT) The Greens struggle with some big changes. TV-Y7

Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel Hamster & Gretel “I’m Bored/Cutie and the Beast” (9:30-10:00 a.m. EDT) “I’m Bored” – Gretel is bored; Hamster and Gretel meet a big otter.

“Cutie and the Beast” – In Vegas, Hamster and Gretel face their biggest test. TV-Y7

Monday, Sept. 26 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Junior Mickey Mouse Funhouse “The Magic Mansion/Funny’s Road Trip!” (11:00-11:30 a.m. EDT) “The Magic Mansion” – The Great Goofini tries a new magic trick using Daisy’s favorite stuffed animal.

“Funny’s Road Trip!” – Funny wants an adventure at Zany Mulaney Land, the new amusement park. TV-Y

Tuesday, Sept. 27 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Junior Eureka! “Eurek-Or-Treat/Nomad Like Home” (11:00-11:30 a.m. EDT) “Eurek-Or-Treat” – Eureka’s life-like spikosaurus costume gets stolen by a real spikosaurus.

“Nomad Like Home” – Eureka loves spending time with her nomad grandma, so she invents something to try to get her to stay. *Loretta Devine (“Doc McStuffins”) guest stars as Eureka’s grandma, Wanda. TV-Y

Wednesday, Sept. 28 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Junior Puppy Dog Pals “The Pumpkin King/The Elf Who Halloween’d” (11:00-11:30 p.m. EDT) “The Pumpkin King” – When the Pumpkin King Crown goes missing, the pets make it their mission to find it.

“The Elf Who Halloween’d” – An elf friend is in town to experience Halloween, but the pets try too hard to show him how to have fun. TV-Y

Thursday, Sept. 29 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Junior Mickey Mouse Funhouse “Fifty-Foot Pluto!/A Big Giant Problem!” (11:00-11:30 p.m. EDT) “Fifty-Foot Pluto!” – Pluto becomes giant size when he tries to help Franken-Pete get ready for the Pumpkin Carving Contest.

“A Big Giant Problem!” – Mickey accidentally breaks Minnie’s kite. TV-Y

Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends “Li’l Hulk/Surprise Party Surprise” (8:30-9:00 a.m. EDT on Disney Channel/12:30-1:00 p.m. EDT on Disney Junior) “Li’l Hulk” – Team Spidey has its hands full when Gobby’s device turns Hulk into a baby.

“Surprise Party Surprise” – Spidey and Miles plan a birthday surprise for Ghost-Spider, but an endless stream of villains gets in the way. TV-Y

Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Junior Eureka! “Rocky Falls Picture Show/The Swamp of Lost Toys” (1:30-2:00 p.m. EDT) “Rocky Falls Picture Show” – Barry attempts to paint Kanga-Bird’s portrait for the Cave Library’s “Hall of Creatures,” but he won’t sit still. *Ellie Kemper (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt“) guest stars as the school librarian, Chee.

“The Swamp of Lost Toys” – Eureka accidentally loses her pencil in the Sticky Spiky Swamp. TV-Y

Friday, Sept. 30 Original Series – Episode Premiere on Disney Channel and Disney Junior Firebuds “The Not-So Haunted House / Halloween Heroes” (10:30-11:00 a.m. EDT on Disney Channel/11:00-11:30 a.m. EDT on Disney Junior) “The Not-So Haunted House”- The Firebuds host a not-so-haunted house for little cars, but Iggy and Rod crash the party.

“Halloween Heroes”- The Firebuds stop a Halloween candy bandit. *Lauren “Lolo” Spencer (“Give Me Liberty”) guest stars as Jayden’s sister, Jazzy. LaChanze (Broadway’s “The Color Purple”) recurs as Jayden’s mom, Jenna. TV-Y

#Big City Greens #BCG #Hamster And Gretel #Hamster & Gretel #Eureka #Eureka! #Disney's Eureka #Disney's Eureka! #Mickey Mouse Funhouse #Mickey Mouse #Spidey And His Amazing Friends #Spiderman #Puppy Dog Pals #Puppy Dog Tails #Firebuds #Disney's Firebuds #Disney Channel #Disney Junior #Disney Jr

[bartoonist]

Battletoads-Boom Knuckles style: So I drew the Battletoads 2020 iterations in the Boom Knuckles inspired character design style from the Sonic Boom tv series about two days ago, to give them their own basic Sonic style-Shoes to go with their own matching eye colors where Rash the Green Battletoad with the shades could have red eyes (which I wish I had drawn for Rash in that sketch in hindsight of course), red gloves and red shoes, Zitz the Teal Battletoad could have purple eyes and shoes and keep his usual brown gloves of course, and Pimple the Brown battletoad could have green eyes and green shoes since his whole skin is brown anyway, and I gave them five fingered hands to help their sonic style designs standout from their four fingered hand designs for fun. I don’t really own an Xbox One or Series X/S since I’m not exactly an Xbox guy anyway, Although I did used to play some BattleToads games back when Rareware used to make multiplatform Games before their Nintendo exclusivity era and later transition to the ongoing Xbox Era that Rareware lives in today, yeah I also remember that one time I won an Xbox 360 Black Elite console at Bingo Prize winning game my family and I played through 14 years as my siblings and cousins and I played some Xbox Franchises and Xbox exclusives that we actually did enjoy playing throughout our Xbox 360, but I’m still more of a PlayStation gamer through and through, and sometimes a Nintendo gamer too but I hope you folks like my BattleToads Sonic style fan art sketch I did anyway. #battletoads #sonicstyle #fanart #traditionalsketch #battletoads2020 https://www.instagram.com/p/ChNu-iMPlRx/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#battletoads #sonicstyle #fanart #traditionalsketch #battletoads2020

[redgentleengie]

◈ TAG NINE PEOPLE YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW BETTER!

Tagged by: @animatronicabundance (Ty!)

Tagging: @the-quiet-technician , @thebleuspider , @running-in-blind , @slicing-clovers , @freaxshow , @fczbecrspizzc , @littlexstarlightx , @diannabridden , and anyone else who reads this!

Favorite color(s): Green, orange, purple. All hail the secondaries, I guess. Lol

Favorite flavor(s): Sweet and savory, but spicy is a solid third.

Favorite genre(s): Science fiction, historical fiction, nonfiction.

Favorite music: I'm omnivorous. What I listen to depends on the mood I'm in (though classical is always a safe bet).

Favorite movie(s): The original Lord of the Rings trilogy was great. "The Dark Knight" is a contender as well. But if I just want something funny, Disney's "The Sword in the Stone" is king.

Favorite series: Game series - Pokemon, Mario, Animal Crossing, Pikmin (yeah, I grew up in a Nintendo household ;P), Crash Bandicoot, Spyro. TV series - Rocky and Bullwinkle for when I need something corny. Batman: The Animated Series for when I need something cool. I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of. I don't watch a lot of TV anymore.

Last song: Eiffel 65 - Blue (Da Ba Dee)

Last series: Oh geez... Probably Sonic Boom, thanks to clips on Tumblr. Much better than the games, to be sure.

Last movie: Sonic the Hedgehog 2, for the second time! Absolutely worth the rewatch.

Currently reading: Logic's End, a sci-fi book about exploring a planet besides our own that can- and does- support life.

Currently watching: Nothing, and everything. YouTube is my source of video entertainment.

Currently working on: Drafts, and re-establishing Tumblr connections after being practically dead for a couple years.

#ooc #//playtime: dash games #(ty again for the tag! it was fun to stretch my mind muscles for this one)

[atwas-meme-ing]

I've only played a little of Rise of Lyric, and barely started Fire and Ice. But I'm now convinced that the fringe fan theory about Forces is correct. I think it very likely that Forces was built off a scrapped idea for a Generations 2 that included Boom Sonic. And when Sega dropped all connections to Boom, they repurposed Boom Sonic's role into the avatar character.

If you look at the Boom Sonic era, he was everywhere. There's tons of official art with Sonic in a bandana and athletic tape. Even the Sonic 25th Anniversary theme for the Nintendo 3Ds shows all three versions of Sonic: Classic, Modern, and Boom. And that's not the only piece of official artwork I've seen that puts all three of them together. Sonic's 25th Anniversary was in 2016, Forces was released in 2017- they would have been working on Forces at the time.

As for the avatar: yes, the wire attack looks EXACTLY like the enerbeams, just without the pretty blue glow. And after you beat the game, you even get everything you need to make your avatar look like Sonic- specifially, Boom Sonic, because you even get the bandanna. And, come on, whether you like the avatar or not (a lot of people do, I feel like I'm the only weirdo that doesn't), it was a radical change-up for a Sonic game.

Boom Sonic was all over the place in the mid-2010's. The TV series was popular (still is among some fans!), it got a lot of hype, fans were creating fanart of it everywhere, and there were at least 4 Boom games that were released: Rise of Lyric, Shattered Crystal (haven't played that one), Fire and Ice, and Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom for mobile.

But the games got so much criticism for being glitchy and having a gameplay style that was too different, that Sega dropped all connections to Boom. No more art, no more games, and the TV show went off the air. In 2017.

According to Wikipedia:

And on Sonic Stadium:

And the Famitsu interview that Sonic Stadium refers to:

"Sonic Toon" must be referring to Boom, as that was the only Sonic cartoon on TV at the time.

They were specifically trying to make the avatar look and play like Sonic? Why not just include Sonic? Unless the avatar was a repurposed version of a Sonic character that was dropped, one who used a Sonic attack that looked very similar to the wire attack (namely, Boom and his enerbeam)?

There's more to the interview, but nothing I've seen that contradicts this theory. Switching back to Sonic Stadium, there's a reference to a different interview:

So Forces was actually in development, per se, for 4 years. BUT, a lot of interviews say it was only in development for 1 year. This could be a mistranslation, or a misunderstanding. It seems like that last year of development mostly went into designing the Hedgehog2 Engine. Only some of that time went into actual game development.

I've also seen other interviews where Iizuka said he's been wanting to add a character creator for the last 20 years.

So... my thinking is- and for the record, this is just a fringe theory, there's no official acknowledgement or proof of this that I've found yet- they came up with an idea for a Generations 2 in 2013. When Boom became popular, they decided, "yeah, let's put Boom in Generations 2." And they started working on concepts for this big game where Eggman would take over the world and all three Sonics- Classic, Modern, and Boom- would work together to stop him.

But then Boom flops. So they have to scrap that idea. But they still need a game, right? It's been a while since the last official Sonic game, and they're gonna miss the deadline for the 25th Anniversary release. And to complicate things, there's this upstart named Christian Whitehead who's been going all-out on remastering the first two Sonic games and Sonic CD for mobile, AND he's working on a 2D Sonic game that's probably gonna be released really soon. Well, Sonic Team can't let themselves be outdone by some fanboy, right?

So Sonic Team starts thinking, "What do the fans usually complain about in a 3D Sonic game? Oh, the game-breaking glitches! Gee, how're we gonna put together a decent, glitch-free Sonic game to have it release alongside Mania?" So they start working on the new engine. And, to be fair, that is Forces best and biggest positive point- the graphics are really good, and there aren't all that many bad glitches. In fact, I've never found any glitches myself, unless you count Classic's physics.

Then they take what little they have of Generations 2 and try to build a game out of it, repurposing Boom's character into the OC avatar idea that they've been toying with for a while. Run it through Hedgehog2 to make it playable and make it look good. Package it, and ship it out.

I've said this since the first time I played it: it feels like we only got half a game. There are hardly any cutscenes and we get almost no back story for Infinite (and what we do get all comes from the Episode Shadow DLC). There is no logical explanation for Classic's appearance, because if Eggman's shenanigans opened an alternate reality into Sonic's world, why wasn't Blaze in the story, too? And why is Silver there? I mean, logically, Silver must be there because something bad was happening in the future and he traced it back to Eggman's war... but a little backstory would have been nice. You know, maybe him just making some offhand comment about what a mess this war made of his future. And what's with all the words on screen? Like, telling us that Eggman took over the world in 6 months after Sonic's defeat- why not just show us?! One of the first rules of storytelling in any medium, whether print, visual, or interactive: SHOW, don't tell! Clearly, they must not have had time to put together proper cutscenes. And speaking of that 6 months that Sonic was missing- yeah, 6 months of torture would have had an effect on even a steady, stable, static character like Sonic. Yet he was completely unaffected, both mentally and physically. No time for proper character development, apparently.

Again, I have no proof of any of this. This is just what I think happened. Really, I just tell myself this story to console myself, because I really try hard to like Forces, I really do. But so many things about the game feel off to me. And TBH, the whole avatar thing rubs me the wrong way- everybody wants to play as Tails and Knuckles and Amy again, yet Sonic Team instead creates a nameless, faceless, voiceless player OC? And what's really weird is that this nameless, faceless, voiceless character gets all of Sonic's abilities- bonding with wisps, speed, boosting- they can keep up with Sonic, and WORST of all (IMO), they get to go with Classic and Modern into the final boss?!? HUH?!?!? Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, who have been with Sonic for 25 years of games at the time of Forces' release, are standing RIGHT FREAKING THERE, and yet this new Rookie, who doesn't even have a back story to explain where they came from, gets to go into the final battle with two other Sonics??? Nuh-uh, that don't fly with me. That's just wrong on every level.

And to my knowledge, I'm the only person (the only one I've talked to, anyway), who thought it was wrong for Rookie to be in the final boss. Most people seem to like Rookie/Buddy/Avatar, whatever you wanna call 'em. Although... a lot of people also do think the whole "power of friendship" thing felt cheesy and forced. And, uh... it does. Tails is standing right there and Sonic's going on about his new partner and how well they work together. I mean, seriously. I know Roger's version of Sonic has always been a bit of a jackass*, but that's a low blow to Tails and totally not something I would have ever expected of Sonic.

So the only way I can keep from getting mad at Sega is to imagine Rookie as Boom Sonic. And that... well, that's really the main reason I go so far on this theory, because it's the only way the game makes any sense. And really, when you put Boom Sonic into the equation, suddenly the whole game DOES make sense. It makes sense that we could have Classic Sonic and not Blaze. It makes sense that Rookie is in the final battle. It makes sense that Rookie is as fast and as powerful as Sonic. And it makes sense that Sonic gets attached to Rookie so easily.

So yeah, I'm sticking with the idea that Rookie was originally Boom.

*Yes, I know, Roger isn't responsible for the changes in Sonic's character, he's just reading what the writers wrote. But still, I don't remember Jaleel's, Ryan's, or Jason's portrayals of Sonic ever being as much of a jerk as Roger's. More than likely, the decision to replace Jason with Roger was part of a larger, overall decision to change up Sonic's character completely, including both writing and acting, as Colors was Roger's first Sonic game, and also the first time we saw Sonic being a jerk to characters who didn't really deserve it (eg, the "I'll just stick with aliens" line, about the wisps- that wasn't very nice, Sonic, i don't think they like being called aliens, and besides, on their world, you're the alien, not them). But I still tend to divide Sonic into eras according to his VA.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic forces #me to write this post #sorry i had to make an obligatory forces joke because it's the law #okay back to the real tags #my theory #fan theory #sonic boom #rise of lyric #fire and ice #shattered crystal #generations #scapped content #interviews #sonic stadium #screencaps #wisps #sonic mania #enerbeam #wire attack #classic sonic #modern sonic #tails the fox #knuckles the echidna #amy rose #eggman #oc avatar #rookie #christian whitehead

[knuxschaotix]

Ez • Mid-20s • xe/xem/xyr • Mixed Black

[Gif ID: Flying Knuckles gif from web graphics site. End ID.]

[Icon ID: Transparent Knuckles sprite from Sonic Mania. He’s in his default standing pose. End ID.]

[Header ID: Knuckles’ Chaotix title screen. The Chaotix team is standing and smiling, with the exception of Charmy, who is flying. Left to right: Vector, Knuckles, Espio, Mighty, Charmy. End ID.]

Main: entitledtofinancialcompensation

Former url: blkknuckles

Sonic sideblog to stop spamming my main. The movies drew me to the fandom, and now I’m going through the games, series, and comics. Og tag is “ez.post” and others are “ez watches let’s plays,” “ez reads comics,” and “ez watches cartoons.” Faves are Knuckles, Eggman, Shadow, Blaze, and Team Chaotix, so expect to see them a lot (Knux esp.). I use he/him for Blaze btw (noting to clear potential confusion). Blog is SFW.

Notes: I block people who sexualize any of the kids in the series or otherwise be weird about them, or ship inappropriate age gaps (e.g. S*nT*ils).

Media Tracking

There’s so much stuff that I’m writing it down to keep track. If you take a look, feel free to recommend media! I use Grabber Zone (with an ad blocker) to read comics and watch let’s plays by FCPlaythroughs. Shows I watch via streaming (e.g., Paramount+) or YT. (Here’s a playlist an awesome user sent me so I can watch things in order! Seriously wish I had this from the beginning.). Anything with a purple heart (💜) is a favorite of mine (ofc games are from a watching standpoint, largely). A controller (🎮) means I’ve played/am playing the game.

Finished:

STH SCU (1 & 2) 💜

STH: The Prequill

Sonic Boom (TV & comic series) 💜

STH 1, 2, CD, 3

Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 (Battle)

Sonic Heroes

Knuckles’ Chaotix

STH ‘06

Shadow the Hedgehog ‘05 💜

Sonic and the Secret Rings

Sonic Unleashed 💜

Sonic and the Black Knight

Sonic Colors 💜

Sonic Riders

STH OVA

Sonic Generations

Sonic Lost World

Sonic Mania Plus (& Adventures) 💜

Sonic Forces

Sonic Colors: Rise of the Wisps 💜

Sonic Advance (1 & 2)

Sonic Rush 💜

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric 💜

Sonic Prime (S1)

Sonic Twitter Takeovers 1-6 💜

Sonic Frontiers 🎮 💜

Sonic Frontiers Prologue: Divergence 💜

Team Sonic Racing Overdrive

Chao in Space

Sonic X

Sonic R

Mario & Sonic Tokyo 2020, Sochi 2014, Rio 2016, London 2012 (DS)

Archie Sonic X 💜

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (Not canon)

Sonic Advance 1-3

Sonic Rivals

STH 1 (Game Gear)

Sonic Eraser

Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car (Gotta ACAB the hedgehog now 😔)

SegaSonic the Hedgehog

Mar&Son Río ‘16 (DS)

STH 2 (Game Gear)

Sonic Chaos

SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter

Currently:

Archie Post-SGW

AOSTH (S1)

SatAM (S2)

Sonic Underground

Sonic 3 & Knuckles

Sonic Colors DS 🎮

Sonic Mania Plus 🎮

Sonic Rush Adventure 🎮

Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal 🎮

STH Spinball (I got kinda bored 😅)

Future:

Rewatch SatAM S1

IDW Sonic

Paramount Knuckles series

Sonic: Night of the Werehog

Sonic the Comic

Sonic Battle

Sonic Adventures (French comic)

Sonic Manga

Sonic the Fighters

Sonic 3D Blast

Sonic Adventure DX

Sonic Channel comics

Sonic Stay (if I can find it)

Various one off Sega comics for the games

Tails Adventure

Tails Skypatrol

#ez.post

[wpdariacutnes]

🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗

Someone: are you get fevret a cartoon Network a tv series?

Me: * bit introsting a say one* why me finks a sairol moon play a cartoon Network or DX chanel?

Someone: o jezz XD no sairol moon is a bumerang

Me: *gasp* you Stell neber

🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗

Rang S (deam so good): ben10 but wery old one/bit older ver a ben10 dys a normal one as green not a blue one/ REX / courage the scary dog because save a family so why be scary enifing/Powerpuffgril OLD VER/dexter's laboratory/samurai jack old ver / total drama camp/ teen titans old ver/ hundercats old ver/

Rang A(great): the younger verisa skubi doo as they beat the children age/hero 108 (why not)/ duck doogers/nindago/ robot boy(me get fun a kid) /green Lantern / jorge straight from the jungle (me get fun a kid)/over the gardenwall/

Rang B (good): amazing world gumball/cauder/cramp twins/Garfield show/ Ed Edd and Eddy/ a house for imaginary frends/jan wasica/ regulak show (is okey not bed)/secret somats/ clone wars from star wars/shalolin battel master old one/ superman /

Rang C (normally): Adventure Time/clan on the tree (one rezan canda bit wirts me a teddy bear seson one)/ cow and chicken (bit same cofuze why a red guy only) /jony test/camp lazlo/ mendi and bili and man deatch/ batman series but seson 1 or 3 is a lot canda 5 code/ hihi puffy maiyumi/ ok ko (yes I look and canda okey for me)/ hedgehog dragons dys trening dragon sterpatek/stevan universe normal/ sheep big city/ totally spies/ squirrel boy/ star Wars

Rang D (bed):kunfu chickens/jony brawo/mixels(to jonger more)/magicswords/ stevan universe older one a be high or sowing/ evil con garneo/ teen titans redsinging/star hoope/

Rang i dont knows or hirding but never see: captain planet/grim evil(never play me a tv)/ apple and server (never see but knows a drama)/atomic betty/the moxy show/mad (how?)/ozzy and drix/moomoo/ 2 stanpy dog/ samuraj jack a new ver a here gril/robotomy/total drama but kid ver/unikitty/spake ghost/ villainous ( never see but knows a animation a youtube)/ we a bare bears but childhood/ tig no seek/ annoying orange/ sonic boom!/infanity train ( hiding but never see )/

Rang what the hell is going on?: flapjack/ clarence/ buddy is a monkey/ mucha lucha (to fast a dont neber dys but play)/ uncle grandpa ( what going On. . .)/ we bare bears/ titan sinbonik ( how neber?)/ animal a underwear ( . . . What me look a animal is not fluffy)/

🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗

Offical epic note: 08.08.2023.r

🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗🍞💗

#mereal #wpexpleing #parents take rule #youtube #art 2023

[godsofhumanity]

Loki: Have fun on your trip, kids!

Sigyn: Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

Narfi:

Narfi: So which is it?

#oops #loki #sigyn #narfi #norse gods #norse mythology #incorrect norse gods #incorrect norse mythology #s: sonic boom (tv series) #queuetzalcoatl

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

Where to Watch: Sonic Media

Updated - 05/22/2022

With Sonic getting a resurgence of popularity after the 2020 film, and speculation that the ‘22 tv show might include multiple canons (this is not confirmed!!), I’ve seen several people asking where they can watch certain adaptations, so here’s a handy-dandy list!

Quick rundown of the links: YouTube links will be provided only if they’re full unedited uploads. I recommend WCOStream over the others but I’m including a variety in case some sites are blocked where you are. fmovies specifically has a LOT of popup ads, but if you have a good enough adblocker (I use ublock origin) it shouldn’t bother you.

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993)

Also called AoSTH, this is a slapstick comedy show. It focuses much more on humor than “plot” or “internal consistency,” which I think is just neat. It was aired very early on in Sonic history, predating such characters as Amy, Metal Sonic, and Knuckles.

Streaming Services: Paramount+ (episodes out of order)

Links: YouTube (+Christmas Special) | WCOStream | tubi (+Christmas Special) | kimcartoon | fmovies

Sonic the Hedgehog (1993-1994)

Commonly known as SatAM, this is an action-adventure show, focusing on Sonic and a mobian resistance trying to defeat Robotnik, who has caused a robot apocalypse. It has a more serious tone than AoSTH, which aired at the same time, and is incredibly story-based.

Streaming Services: PlutoTV, Paramount+ (episodes out of order)

Links: YouTube | WCOStream | kimcartoon | fmovies

Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie (1996)

Commonly known as the Sonic OVA, this was a pilot for a potential anime series that never really got off the ground (no pun intended). While still unconnected to Sonic canon, this included Knuckles and Metal Sonic, the latter of whom is animated so cool you guys,,

Was on YouTube but was recently deleted for copyright.

Japanese Links: archive.org {two parter, not subtitled}

English Links: archive.org

Sonic Underground (1999)

Released as a “more marketable” replacement for SatAM, this show features Sonic and his triplet siblings, Sonia and Manic, searching for their lost mother and fighting overlord Robotnik and his cronies with rock-and-roll instruments that shoot lasers. It’s... it didn’t age great, let’s be real, but it’s a nostalgic favorite for a lot of the fanbase.

Streaming Services: Paramount+

Links: YouTube | WCOStream | tubi | kimcartoon | fmovies

Sonic X (2003-2005)

The anime series; the first season is kickstarted by an accidental burst of Chaos Control transporting Sonic and his Gang to another dimension– Earth. Robotnik still wants to conquer this new planet, so Sonic and his friends have adventures trying to stop him. Season Two adapts Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, marking the first animated appearance of Shaodw, and Season Three features new adventures in space that get. Very interesting.

IMPORTANT NOTE-- I am including links for both the subtitled version and dubbed version. Note that the dubbed version is a censored version of the show and cuts several important plot/emotional beats because 4kids wanted it to be more “child-friendly.” I recommend the subtitled version, but if you don’t like watching subtitled shows (fair!) I at least recommend watching Episode 68 dubbed, as that was the one that was most screwed over by said censorship. I also recommend ep39 [a lot of jokes got cut] and ep78 [the finale, had the pacing butchered] but 68′s honestly the most censored one lol.

Streaming Services: Hulu [has both japanese and english]

Japanese Links: kissanime | gogoanime

English Links: YouTube | WCOStream | tubi | kimcartoon | fmovies

Sonic Boom (2014-2017)

A sort-of “workplace comedy” and the first CGI Sonic television show. Based  on the spinoff universe of the Sonic Boom games, Team Sonic live on a small island village while fighting Eggman and the occasional other supervillain as part of their job as Designated Heroes. Extremely comedy-focused.

Streaming Services: Hulu

Links: WCOStream | kimcartoon season one and two | fmovies

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

An “origin story” for Sonic, as the blue blur grows up alone and eventually finds himself on an Earth road trip with the “Donut Lord” Tom Wachowski while being pursued by Dr Robotnik, who wants to capture the hedgehog due to a strange power he seems to control. Very cute and fun!

Streaming Services: Epix, Hulu, Paramount+

Links: kimcartoon | fmovies

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Sonic is trying to settle into life on Earth as his own desire for freedom conflicts with his newfound safety. But when Robotnik returns with a dangerous new ally and the goal of retrieving a superpowered emerald, it’s up to Sonic to save the day, before the whole world is doomed.

Streaming Services: Paramount+

Links: fmovies

#sonic the hedgehog #sth #sonicedit #sonic prime #aosth #adventures of sonic the hedgehog #sonic satam #sonic ova #sonic underground #sonic x #sonic boom #sonic 2020 #mine #links

[hayley566]

I'm sure someone's already done this but I couldn't resist. The roles for this are: Movieverse!Sonic = MCU Spider-man. The kid of the group. Boom!Sonic = TASM Spider-man. A great sonic but unfortunately ended up is some very bad games. Modern!Sonic - Raimiverse Spider-man. This redesign came out around the same time as the first spider-man movie, he's also the older and more experienced of them. If you're wondering where I'd place classic sonic, I have two picks. the Japanese classic sonic = Takuya Yamashiro aka Supaidaman. the american classic sonic = Nicholas Hammond aka spider-man from the 70's TV series.

#spider man no way home #spider man nwh #sonic the hedgehog #sonic prime

[darkqueenofshadows85]

My Sonic TV Show Ranking From Worst to Best

Greetings, mortals! Today, I'll be ranking the five Sonic TV shows from worst to best.

Note: I'll eventually need to make an updated version of this list that includes Sonic Prime when it comes out later this year, as well as giving my updated stance on Sonic SatAM when I get around to rewatching it in its entirety, but for now, this is my current ranking.

Please keep in mind, this is MY OPINION! You don't need to agree with it, but please don't complain in the comments section if you disagree with this list.

Anyway, let us begin! ^^

5. Sonic Boom (2014-2017)

I hate this show. I've only watched a few episodes, and from what I've seen, they're all dumpster fires. The jokes are annoying, the action sequences are dull, and the less said about the characterization, the better. Granted, I haven't watched every episode, but I don't think I need to because they're all unfunny and annoying in my opinion.

4. Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993)

This show is just pure insanity from beginning to end. It's basically a wacky, nonsensical, Looney Tunes-inspired show for little kids. Like Sonic Boom, I only watched a few sporadic episodes of it, including its Christmas special, Sonic Christmas Blast, but I think I've seen enough of it to know exactly what kind of show it is. I don't outright hate it, but I don't particularly care for it either. If you like it, that's fine. More power to you. I'm just not the right audience for it.

3. Sonic SatAM (1993-1994)

I haven't actually watched this show in a long time, so my opinion might change on it when I eventually get around to rewatching the series in its entirety, but from what I remember, I thought it was okay. It certainly executed its premise of Eggman taking over the world with Sonic leading a resistance better than Sonic Forces ever did. Plus, it gave us the Archie comics, which from what I've read are really good for the most part (excluding the early Ken Penders-written comics), and it has an awesome theme song.

2. Sonic Underground (1999)

Easily the best of the three DiC cartoons in my opinion. Sonic Underground is it's own thing and I love it. Sonic, Sonia and Manic share a sibling bond that is very wholesome to watch, and Manic in particular gets a lot of great character development. I'm aware that Sonic Underground has a very dedicated fanbase, and I am proud to be part of that dedicated fanbase for Underground. In fact, I would dare even say that I enjoyed Underground more than SatAM.

1. Sonic X (2003-2006)

This is my favorite Sonic TV series, and my favorite Sonic media outside of the games, along with the comics and the Paramount Sonic movie. The storylines are amazing, with some of my favorites being the scene-for-scene adaptations of SA1&2 and the Metarex Saga. This is 2000's Sonic through and through. Sure, it does have some issues, like 4Kids making unnecessary changes and Chris Thorndyke being in every single episode even though he isn't needed most of the time, but overall, I really enjoy this series.

Let's hope that the upcoming Sonic Prime series will be just as good as Sonic X. From what I've seen of it so far, it definitely looks promising :)

Thanks for reading! I hope you guys enjoyed this list and I'll see you next time!! ^^

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic tv shows #ranking #worst to best #blog post #opinion post

[crusherthedoctor]

Can you list anything you unironically like in the games (and cartoons and comics) that you don't like?

I won't bother mentioning music, since that goes without saying and is to be expected for a Sonic game... unless you're Chronicles.

Sonic Adventure 2 (mixed gameplay-wise, annoying story-wise) - While I prefer Sonic's SA1 levels for a number of reasons, I still think his and Shadow's gameplay in SA2 is fun on its own merit. I also don't mind the treasure hunting gameplay returning or how big the levels are this time around, since Knuckles and Rouge are still fast and not '06 levels of slow. It's mainly the gimped radar that creates the unfortunate domino effect of making them a problem.

- Introduced Rouge, one of my favourite characters for how playful she is and how she's a lot more nuanced and intelligent than you'd expect.

- Some genuinely good scenes, like Eggman's trap on the A.R.K and Sonic escaping from the G.U.N. helicopter.

- Had some good ideas going for it, like the Pyramid Base and the Biolizard as a scientific monster instead of an ancient one.

- Despite my thoughts on the backstory itself (or rather, its execution), Shadow has enough depth and subtle qualities and occasional unintended hilarity to stand out from the typical dark rival characters you see in media.

- The Last Scene's music in particular is one of my favourite cutscene tracks in the series.

Sonic Heroes (mixed gameplay-wise, loathed story-wise) - The gameplay is fun when you're not being screwed over by repetitive combat, overly long levels and/or ice physics.

- Boasts some of the most consistently Genesis-worthy environments in the 3D games, up there with SA1's and Colours'.

- The in-game dialogue that isn't the same tutorial drivel repeated ad nauseam can be interesting, funny, etc.

- Reintroduced the Chaotix, which provided me with another character I quite like in the form of Vector.

- Bringing Metal Sonic back in full force and front and center in the plot after a long absence (not counting cameos and the like) is a perfectly fine idea. Just... not like this.

Sonic Battle (decent yet repetitive gameplay, mixed story-wise) - Emerl's arc is compelling, and it earns the emotional weight of having to put him down at the end.

- While some characters are iffy (read: Amy), other characters are extremely well-handled. Shadow is probably the prime example.

- Gamma's belly dance healing animation is fucking hilarious.

- When I was young, and the game was first announced, I was really excited about being able to play as Chaos. This proved to be my downfall when it turned out he was arguably one of the worst characters in the game due to being slower than me during the writing process, but I still recall that excitement fondly.

Shadow the Hedgehog (comedy classic) - The sheer amount of legendary stupidity this game has going for it makes it practically impossible to actually hate. It helps that it's not quite as white-knighted on the same level as '06... usually. You know you're in for a unique experience when you hear a gunshot every time you click something in the menu.

- By extension, Black Doom never gained an unironic fanbase like Mephiles/Scourge/Eggman Nega did, which means I'm a lot more willing to take Doom's dumbass brand of villainy in stride. He even has a unique design... a terrible one that rips off Wizeman granted, but alas, even that is a step-up from Fridge Shadow and Bumblebee Eggman.

- Despite being... well, Shadow the Hedgehog, some of the environments would fit right in with any other Sonic game, like with Circus Park, Lava Shelter, and Digital Circuit. Even the Black Comet levels look pretty cool.

- This game understands amnesia better than IDW does.

Sonic '06 (what do you think?) - The obvious one: Shadow's character was handled pretty well, even if it came at the cost of everyone else being a dummy and being forced to interact with Mephiles.

- Like SA2, there are some good moments, like the Last Story ending sequence with Sonic and Elise.

- In the greatest form of irony ever, I like Solaris as a concept and design(s), and its backstory has potential to serve as a parallel with Chaos without being a complete ripoff. Iblis sucks, Mephiles sucks, but I'm fine with Solaris.

- Introduced legendary characters like Sonic Man, Pele the Beloved Dog, Hatsun the Pigeon, and Pacha from The Emperor's New Groove.

The Rivals duology (apathetic outside of Nega-related grumbling) - There were some cool zone ideas in both games that were sadly let down by the restrictive and limiting gameplay. I particularly like Colosseum Highway for thus far being the only full-on Roman level in the series instead of merely having a couple minor hints of Roman, and Meteor Base for the unique scenario of the space station being built into an asteroid. These level concepts and others deserve a second chance IMO. (At least Frontier Canyon got a second chance in the form of Mirage Saloon, amirite?)

- Ifrit has a better design than Iblis. Not saying it's amazing, but the Firebird motif it has going on is a lot more interesting for a fire monster than the Not-Chaos schtick they had with Iblis.

Sonic and the Secret Rings (a very frustrating gaming experience) - Erazor Djinn, A.K.A. Qui-Gon Djinn, A.K.A. Dr. N. Djinn, A.K.A. I'll Take It On The Djinn, A.K.A. Not From The Hairs On My Djinny Djinn Djinn, is one of the best villains not associated with Eggman in the series. He's a Mephiles-type character done right, and there's actual weight and reason to his actions, however sinister or petty.

- I don't have strong opinions either way on Shahra as a character, but the Sonic/Shahra friendship is sweet and well-handled.

- The ending is one of Sonic's greatest moments. The sheer contrast between how ruthlessly he deals with Erazor and how comforting he is towards Shahra speaks volumes... Still gonna make fun of the mountain of handkerchiefs though. (Before anyone lectures me, I understand the significance of it and can even appreciate it from that angle... doesn't mean I'm not allowed to poke fun at it. :P)

- Another game with some redeeming environments. I love the aesthetic of Night Palace, and Sand Oasis looks gorgeous too.

Sonic Chronicles (my personal least favourite game in the series) - Uh...

- Um...

- Er...

- I like Shade's design?

Sonic Unleashed (overrated game and story IMO) - The obvious two: the opening sequence and the Egg Dragoon fight deserve all the praise they get.

- Seeing Eggmanland come to life was an impressive moment to be sure. While part of me does feel it didn't quite measure up to what I had in mind (ironically, the Interstellar Amusement Park ended up being closer to what I had in mind), it still looks badass and works well for what it is. I also don't mind the idea of it being a one-level gauntlet... key word being idea.

- Obviously, the game looks great. Not a fan of the real world focus (real world inspiration is fine, but copy-pasting the real world and shoving loops in it is just unimaginative), but it can't be denied that the environments look good.

- This game pulled off dialogue options a lot better than Chronicles did, since they didn't rely on making Sonic OoC.

Sonic and the Black Knight (just kind of boring all around) - Despite my gripes with the story (Merlina wasn't nearly as fleshed out as her unique anti-villain status deserved, which ends up severely undermining the ambition of the plot in more ways than one, and the other characters go from being useless yes men for King Arthur to being useless yes men for Sonic), I will admit it provides interesting insight into Sonic's character.

- Like '06 and Secret Rings, the ending is very nice... well, aside from Amy being an unreasonable bitch ala Sonic X at the very end.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (apathetic) - The admittedly few new concepts sprinkled within had promise. They may not have been as fleshed out as they could have been, but level concepts like Sylvania Castle and White Park, bosses like Egg Serpentleaf and the Egg Heart, and story beats like the Death Egg mk.II being powered by Little Planet, all could have been brilliant had they been better executed.

SatAM (apathetic outside of SatAM Robotnik-related grumbling) - I'm not a fan of the environments on the whole due to them looking too bland or samey, but there are some exceptions that look pleasant or interesting, like the Void.

Sonic Underground (apathetic) - The character designs make me feel better about myself.

- Does "large quantities of unintentional meme material" count as a positive?

Sonic X (mostly apathetic outside of Eggman's handling) - Helen was a better human character and audience surrogate in her one focus episode than Chris was throughout his entire runtime.

- Actually, most of the human characters not named Chris were legitimately likable. Including everyone in Chris' own family not named Chris. Hilarious.

- Despite arguably having the most Chris in it, I actually don't mind the first season that much, partly due to slight nostalgia from seeing it on TV when it was new, but mostly because Eggman actually acted like a villain for the most part, and certain other characters weren't quite as flanderized yet. It's season 2 and onwards where things started going off the rails IMO. (Incidentally, Helen's episode was part of season 1...)

The Boom franchise (apathetic) - Along with Chronicles, the games provide yet more proof that just because someone isn't SEGA/Sonic Team, that doesn't mean they're automatically more qualified to handle the series.

- The show had some good episodes here and there, and Tails' characterization was probably the most consistently on-point out of the cast.

- Despite not exactly being favourite portrayals for either character, even I'll admit that many of Knuckles and Eggman's lines in the show on their own were genuinely funny.

Archie Sonic (pre-reboot is mostly terrible, post-reboot is mostly... bland) - Whenever I doubt myself as a writer, I think back to Ken Penders, and suddenly I'm filled with a lot more confidence.

Sonic the Comic (apathetic) - Fleetway isn't a comic I tend to recall much of aside from how much of a loathesome cunt Sonic is, but IIRC, Robotnik's portrayal is pretty good. Different, but good.

IDW Sonic (stop pissing me off, comic) - Putting their handling aside (and being too obviously "inspired" by MGS in the latter's case), Tangle and Whisper are good characters IMO.

- Same goes for Starline, before he was killed off-screen and replaced with Toothpaste Snively.

- Execution aside (noticing a pattern?), the zombot virus was a fine concept on its own and an interesting new scheme for Eggman.

- I get to remind myself that I've never drawn scat edits and posted them publicly on Twitter.

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic Adventure 2 #Sonic Battle #Shadow the Hedgehog #Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 #Sonic Rivals #Sonic and the Secret Rings #Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood #Sonic Unleashed #Sonic and the Black Knight #Sonic the Hedgehog 4 #Sonic SatAM #Sonic Underground #Sonic X #Sonic Boom #Archie Sonic #Sonic the Comic #IDW Sonic

[yetanothersonic]

A'ight, time for Sonic Multiverse 101!

Here's every important Sonic media/continuity/universe/dimension, summarized so you can educate you're non-Sonic-crazy friends.

Wrote this for my Discord friends last night and thought Tumblr might be interested.

Games:

Modern Sonic--Sonic Sonic/Normal Sonic/This is main one, used in almost every game, the OG, the truest canon, this is Sonic. He runs around, beats Eggman, destroys robots, and saves everything from the little animals to the whole planet when it rips itself apart.

Classic Sonic--Just Sonic from the past, until time travel in that one game set him on an alternate timeline.

Boom Sonic--Different universe altogether, where everything is less serious. This world got three mostly-terrible games and two good, hilarious seasons of TV.

TV:

90's:

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (AoStH)--Humor, Robotnik and his henchbots are ridiculous, Tails is a 4-year-old, and Sonic Sez smoking, stealing, and accepting candy from strangers are No Good. Aimed at kiddos, explosions and goofiness.

Sonic the Hedgehog (Saturday Morning) (SatAM)--Darker and more serious, introduces the Freedom Fighters, trying to retake the Kingdom of Acorn back from Robotnik, while praying every day that their forest hideout isn't discovered, for fear of being roboticized into a mindless slave.

Sonic Underground--Sonic is a prince, has siblings, and they're in a band. They use music to fight Robotnik while trying to reunite with their mother so they can fulfill the prophecy that will free their kingdom from Robotnik's rule.

00's-20's:

Sonic X--Anime! The first one to actually come out of Japan, and the first that really took stories from the games, Sonic, friends, and Eggman get teleported from their world to Earth, and they (not Eggman) live with humans until they can get back home. Humor, but some parts could make grown men cry.

Sonic Boom--First in 3D, same world as the Boom games, stupid-funny, and Eggman secretly wants to be friends with Sonic.

Sonic Prime--??? Coming 2022!

Comics:

There are so many little manga and whatnot that I'm not going to mention them all. Here's the big ones:

Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog--American, originally based off SatAM, continuing the story of the Freedom Fighters. ~24 years of comics is too much to summarize, but there was romance drama, tons of world-building and lore, epic battles, angst, amazing characterization, a multiverse, and a reboot that took almost all of that away just a few years before the series finally caved. This has a few important alt universes, pre-reboot:

Sonic Prime--Savior of the multiverse, OG Sonic, yada yada. Likely no relation to the TV show of the same name.

Scourge--Anti-Sonic/Evil Sonic from the reverse dimension where everyone good is bad and vice versa. Green, wears a leather jacket and shades.

Zonic--Zone Cop from the No-Zone, 90 degrees from everywhere, in charge of keeping an eye on all the Sonics and making sure no one(Sonic or otherwise) goes into another universe unless it's necessary for plot without authorization.

Fleetway's Sonic the Comic--British, so I'm less familiar with it. Again starting with Robotnik having taken over the world, and Sonic and a different group of Freedom Fighters do their best to take him down. Unfortunately, this series never made it past the 90's. Also has a couple different Sonics that are important to distinguish:

Sonic--A bit of a jerk, though he really does care about his friends.

Super Sonic--Invincible psycho murderer who is activated when Sonic is too stressed or too exposed to chaos energy. Until Super gets his own body and looses his powers and memory, then he's an adorable baby who wouldn't hurt a fly.

IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog--American, the current series, three years old! Much more based on the games. Sonic and friends have to deal with whatever Evil Scheme Eggman has planned This Time, as well as dealing with a bunch of new baddies. Adventure!

Misc: OVA--The original movie/anime! Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles fight Robotnik and Metal Sonic, to rescue Princess Sara.

Movie--Sonic barely escapes his home planet with his life, then spends ten years stalking this human couple on Earth before getting caught and going on a Friendship Adventure. In the fandom, Sonic has adopted the couple's last name, Wachowski.

And I believe that's it!

#long post #sonic #sonic multiverse #melancholic if you see this this is what you're missing on the Discord #all the sonics

[theeverlastingshade]

Favorite Albums of the 10s

25. Shaking the Habitual- The Knife

The Knife made a name for themselves with their third and most celebrated LP, Silent Shout, but it’s their fourth LP, StH, that pushed their idiosyncratic blend of electroacoustic synth-pop to the furthest, most far-flung places that they’ve gone yet. The record deals with a diverse range of topics from the surveillance state, to fracking, pollution, gender discrimination, and unchecked greed with colorful, ketamine-fused candy cotton synth work and ritualistic percussion. There are long passages of ambience like the menacing build of “A Cherry on Top” dispersed between roaring apocalyptic dance numbers like the astonishing industrial eruption “Full of Fire” and the electro-acoustic freak out “Without You My Life Would Be Boring”. With the exception of the mid-album ambient epic “Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized” every song on StH justifies its length with consistently engrossing arrangements that sustain their momentum without compromising an ounce of their potency. Everything about the record lives up to its title, from its thematic ambitions, to the breadth of the sonics, pacing, and performances themselves. StH if the full manifestation of the darkness that was lurking beneath the surface of their music from as early as their breakout single “Heartbeats”, but thankfully the music never collapses under the weight of their thematic concerns. Their resilience remains inspiring all these years later, and if Karin and Olof never reunite for a fifth LP we couldn’t have asked for a better send off.

Essentials: “Full of Fire”, “A Tooth for an Eye”, “A Cherry on Top”

24. XXX- Danny Brown

Hip-hop grew to remarkable heights throughout the 10s, and yet there were few rappers that displayed the level of growth and consistency from record to record throughout this past decade quite like Danny Brown. The Detroit native spent the aughts hustling the mixtape circuit, finally catching a spark with 2010’s The Hybrid, his strong debut LP. But a year later Brown returned with his sophomore LP and magnum opus XXX, a twisted rap odyssey that ignited the blogs, and signaled that a new era of hip hop was beginning to emerge. XXX found Brown rapping over an assortment of wonky boom-bap instrumentals courtesy of Bruiser Brigade producer Skywalker that fused classic hip-hop, trap, baroque pop, and techno into shapes far more disorienting than the beats that the vast majority of his contemporaries were rapping over. While it was evident beforehand, XXX really cemented the notion that Brown could rap over anything. The beats here are generally extremely impressive, and there are plenty of singular stylistic touches like the slurring violin stabs of “Lie 4”, the menacing synth lurch of “Monopoly”, or the distorted brass loops of closer “30”, that really stand out, but the appeal is first and foremost Brown’s rapping. His voice alone is one of the most versatile and unpredictable instruments in hip-hop, but aside from his masterful vocal alteration, always perfectly synched to the tone of any given moment on any given song of his, he’s a naturally gifted writer, as thoughtful as he is straight up hilarious. Whether bragging about his destructive lifestyle (“Die Like a Rockstar”), describing how much he loves cunnilingus “I Will”, mourning the desolation around him “Party All the Time”, or reveling in his come-up “30”, Brown is a thoroughly engaging presence throughout the entire album. On XXX profanity and profundity march gleefully hand in hand with one another, casting Brown as one of the last decade’s most singular voices.

Essentials: “Die Like a Rockstar”, “Monopoly”, “30”

23. House of Sugar- Alex G

On Alex G’s latest LP, House of Sugar, his concoction of warm guitar pop and warped electronic production reached a new peak. The songs on HoS detail the misdeeds of various characters succumbing to their greed, and the vignettes that he paints are growing increasingly well-realized thanks to a continuously sharpening songwriting voice and a plethora of tasteful pitch-shifted vocals that help imbue his characters with color and personality. HoS opener “Walk Away” provides a reasonably sonic barometer for what’s to come before dropping us into a series of the most immediate pop songs that he’s ever penned. “Hope” and “Southern Sky” are nimble acoustic guitar pop songs that are almost disarming in their immediacy, and framed around references to the real life death of a friend of his due to opioids and a dream he had, respectively. By the time we reach acoustic guitar and sitar-drone of “Taking” the pitch-shifted vocals are at the forefront of the music and HoS shifts gears into its abstract middle section which owes a lot to the new-age beat deconstruction of avant-garde electronic producers, specifically Oneohtrix Point Never. On the instrumental “Sugar”, a sublime concoction of pitch-warped whispers, dissonant strings arpeggios, and creeping acoustic guitar plucks, HoS reaches the depths of its depravity. The next song, “In My Arms”, leads us to the suite of sublime acoustic reveries that close HoS, arguably peaking with the gorgeous acoustic love ballad “Cow”. The dramatic sonic left-turn that HoS takes midway through may leave some new listeners a little cold, but for most Alex G fans nothing about the eclecticism of HoS should come as a surprise. Nor should the overwhelming quality of the songs here. From Alex G’s debut, Race, in 2010 up through HoS, he released a remarkable catalog of some of the most eclectic, and vital indie rock of the century, and I have no reason to believe he won’t top HoS at some point.

Essentials: “Gretel”, “Sugar”, “Walk Away”

22. Sea When Absent- A Sunny Day in Glasgow

A Sunny Day in Glasgow may be one of the 21st century’s most underrated bands, but not even Pitchfork could resist the coveted BNM tag when it came time to review their fourth and strongest LP, Sea When Absent. Building off of their first three idiosyncratic LPs that superbly fused electronic pop with shoegaze and dream pop, A Sunny Day in Glasgow moved into decidedly more psychedelic territory with their fourth LP while still retaining the sharp melodic sensibility of those first three. Much of the shift is easy to credit to vocalist Jen Goma who joined the group on their third LP, Autumn Again, and here her soaring vocals deliver rich melodies that are more fleshed out and focused than anything on their past releases. SWA sidesteps the kaleidoscopic sprawl of their 22 song sophomore LP, Ashes Grammar, and instead delivers 11 tight, stargazing pop songs. Whereas on the prior records it more often than not felt like the band were throwing ideas at the wall to see what stuck (with primarily successful results) on SWA the band commit more thoroughly to their ideas, writing songs that are well within their wheelhouse but have never been so well-realized. “Byebye, Big Ocean (The End)” and “Boys Turn Into Girls (Initiation Rites)” erupt with a wall of dazzling distorted guitars that slowly build into engrossing melodic payoffs while “Never Nothing (It’s Alright (It’s Ok))” and “The Body, It Bends” are sublime, soft spoken breathers that put a premium on texture and melody, and are among A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s most impressive songs yet. Even seemingly inconsequential moments like the “Double Dutch” interlude positively radiant with melodic warmth and joyous energy. Their strain of sun-kissed, jubilant dream pop tonally stands in stark contrast to much of the pop that’s dominated the airwaves this past decade, but their temperament doesn’t sound naïve so much as defiant. They have yet to follow up SWA with another LP, and I can’t blame them if they feel like they’ve said everything that they have to say with SWA.

Essentials: “The Body, It Bends”, “Never Nothing (It’s Alright (It’s Ok))”, “Boys Turn Into Girls (Initiation Rites)”

21. Strange Mercy- St. Vincent

Annie Clark has spent the past decade releasing music under her St. Vincent moniker, collaborating with the likes of David Byrne, producing for Sleater-Kinney, and appearing on the sketch comedy Portlandia. Although she began her solo career in earnest with her strong 2008 debut, Marry Me, in 2011 Clark released Strange Mercy, her third, and strongest record to date. Produced by John Congleton, SM is a compelling fusion of art rock/and chamber pop that often lands with a jarring, visceral impact, but is still imbued with a sense of grace that heightens the sentiments of her bewitching songwriting. Her first two records showcased her singular voice and tastefully, ornate baroque arrangements, but on SM Clark begins to let loose and lean into her virtuosic guitar playing. Songs like “Cruel” and “Northern Light” are propelled by her nimble riffs caked in distortion while strings rise and fall in a satisfying sweep all around her triumphant vocals. “Surgeon” brings the pace down to a crawl and gets a tone of mileage out of sensuous synth arrangements as Clark sings softly of depression and carnal desire “Stay in just to get along/Turn off the TV, wade in bed/A blue and a red/A little something to get along” before the song erupts into a furious storm of guitar distortion. The balance between fury and serenity animate the record from start to finish, and Clark seamlessly toggles these impulses from start to finish. On the title track, over a lumbering tom/kick drum rhythm, the incessant ping of a synth, and bluesy guitar licks Clark brilliantly sums up the record’s theme with a scene of police brutality “If I ever meet that dirty policeman that roughed you up/No, I, I don’t know what” that depicts the contraction inherent in the way justice is carried out by police in the west, and the way those contradictions bleed through to our understanding of morality on the whole. SM is a record full of these sorts of messy contradictions, and the music constantly reflected that perpetual sense of disarray with songs as colorful and chaotic as they were controlled.

Essentials: “Northern Lights”, “Surgeon”, “Strange Mercy”

20. A Moon Shaped Pool- Radiohead

Radiohead’s eighth LP, 2011’s solid but unremarkable King of Limbs seemed to cement the notion that while Radiohead may not have another game changer left in them, they were probably weren’t ever going to make a bad record. And with all of their various solo pursuits it seemed plausible that we may never get another Radiohead record, as underwhelming as capping off a career as thrilling as theirs with KoL would have been. Thankfully things didn’t pan out that way, and in 2016 Radiohead released their ninth LP, A Moon Shaped Pool; the platonic ideal of a master stroke from a legacy act. The album is partially composed of older songs re-worked into new forms, such as the tense string onslaught of opener “Burn the Witch” while a few of the newer songs like the gorgeous, ambient “Daydreaming” are string-laden compositions that are as eerie as they are radiant. For a band that’s been prophesizing the increasingly dismal state of the world that we now find ourselves in for the past several decades, they sound increasingly comfortable with their position in the world, and there’s no question that they’re in full command of their craft here. The production is sublime throughout the entire record, with a sense of encroaching doom bubbling just beneath the surface juxtaposed against rich baroque instrumentation. AMSP is the Radiohead album most informed by Johnny Greenwood’s work scoring films like There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread, and as a result there’s a remarkable sense of immersion at work even for a Radiohead album.

So while there are some recognizable forms from records past, such as the brass-lead krautrock strut of “Ful Stop”, or the twitchy IDM drum work of “Identikit”, the spectral production heightens the potency of everything here. The compositions on AMSP are the most elegant, and nuanced of Radiohead’s to date, and Yorke’s voice continues to age superbly. Yorke’s lyrics touch on familiar topics, more relevant now than ever, such as climate change on “The Numbers” “The numbers don’t decide/The system is a lie/A river running dry/The wings of butterflies” the dangers of unchecked authority on “Burn the Witch” “Abandon all reason/Avoid all contact/Do not react/Shoot the messengers/This is a low-flying panic attack” and the broader, horrific realities of the world that we live in on “Ful Stop” “Why should I be good if you’re not?/This is a foul tasting medicine/A foul tasting medicine/To be trapped in your ful-stop”. What’s more unexpected are songs like the graceful string-led “Glass Eyes” and the devastating ambient closer “True Love Waits”, two songs that are poignant tributes to Yorke’s ex-wife, Rachel Owen, who passed away from cancer in late 2016. AMSP isn’t just a spectacular late-career gem that would make a superb swan song; it’s also the most human record that Radiohead have made yet.

Essentials: “True Love Waits”, “Daydreaming”, “Ful Stop”

19. Eye Contact- Gang Gang Dance

Few bands set the tone for the kind of cross-culture hybridization that would become the sonic norm for music throughout this decade quite like Gang Gang Dance. Throughout the early aughts they cut their teeth in the Brooklyn noise scene alongside bands like Animal Collective, Black Dice, and Exceptor blending noise, experimental rock, and worldbeat into blistering, unconventional shapes. As the years progressed Gang Gang Dance gradually began to open up their sound, folding elements of hip-hop, dance music, and psychedelic pop into a colorful concoction of rhythmically robust, delightfully manic pop music that was just as forward-thinking as it was infectious. The shift really began on their criminally underrated 2005 LP, God’s Money, but began notably on their terrific 2008 LP, Saint Dymphna. On the follow-up to SD, their remarkable fifth LP, Eye Contact, the sound of Gang Gang Dance crystallized into something more immediate and far-ranging than anything that they had done prior (or since so far). On EC, everything that the band had attempted throughout the course of their career (tribal rhythms, eastern melodies, shards of refracted noise) was gloriously combined into a hyper-saturated tapestry of progressive future pop. EC is the peak of Gang Gang Dance’s prior decade of sonic exploration, and nearly a decade later there’s still nothing that sounds anything like it.

Beginning with the astonishing slow-burn intro of “Glass Jar” that finds the band patiently building up what begins as a pent up ambient composition toward something more volatile that eventually rips open midway through, spilling into a calamitous, euphoric release into the song’s second half, EC is bursting with joyous energy and possibility. The melodies are some of the sharpest, and most direct that vocalist Lizzi Bougatsos has ever penned, providing a warm immediacy that cuts through even the most outre arrangements here, and they continually expand into shapes as the songs continue to progress. “Adult Goth” and “MindKilla” are bolstered considerably by Lizzi’s dynamic vocal performances, and the off-kilter, spellbinding synth arrangements of the band’s keyboardist Brian DeGraw, while “Romance Layers” provides an ideal mid-album psychedelic breather.. And on the album’s closer, “Thru and Thru”, the band deliver a send-off that succinctly sums up a prior decade’s worth of experimentation into a nearly six-minute song overflowing with eastern melodies, mesmerizing chants, and infectious tribal rhythms that congeal into a sound that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anyone else. Although they’ve only graced us with the somewhat underwhelming 2018 record Kazuashita since, when Gang Gang Dance are firing on all cylinders, as they are on all of EC, there’s simply nothing like it.

Essentials: “Glass Jar”, “Adult Goth”, “Thru and Thru”

18. Shields- Grizzly Bear

Although the zeitgeist was already beginning to dramatically shift by the time that Grizzly Bear released their fourth LP, Shields, guaranteeing that it wouldn’t have the same immediate impact that they enjoyed with its predecessor, their 2009 breakout LP, Veckatimest, they still ended up releasing their magnum opus. Compared to Veckatimest’s approachable folk-pop leanings there are moments on Shields that sound downright prog, but the band never let these intricate baroque pop/psychedelic folk arrangements get away from themselves or compromise the remarkable melodic instincts that were undeniable on their terrific sophomore LP, Yellow House. The ten songs throughout Shields are perfectly paced, and there isn’t a single moment that overstays its welcome, but they each develop just as much as they need to. The band’s primary songwriters, Edward Droste and Daniel Rossen, were each peaking as singular songwriters in their own respective rights on Shields, and they both deliver a handful of the band’s strongest songs to date. Droste’s songs tend to creep in ethereal waltzes with delicate baroque instrumentation (“gun-shy”, “A Simple Answer”) unfolding patiently while sustaining a remarkable sense of tension while Rossen’s are jaunty folk rippers that unfurl in unpredictable, and thrilling cacophonies that still retain the grace that the ornate instrumentation demands (“Yet Again”, “Speak in Rounds”) but unfurl in far more complex structures than those on Veckatimest.

Grizzly Bear’s progression from Droste’s cozy lo-fi folk bedroom project to a knotty baroque folk juggernaut was one of the most quietly satisfying of any band from the past decade, and on Shields they hit a gorgeous peak. While Droste and Rossen had peaked as songwriters here, their contributions never overshadowed those of Chris Taylor or Chris Bear, and the chemistry on Shields is sharper than most bands ever come close to achieving. It’s easy to get lost admiring the sheer craft of their meticulous arrangements, crisp production, provoking but elusive songwriting, and the sharp interplay between Droste and Rossen each on their own individual merit, but on Shields everything that previously stood out about their artistry is amplified, and congealed in a way that’s approachable yet inimitable. On Shields Grizzly Bear umped the ante from Veckatimest on both fronts, and proved that they could grow more immediate and melodic while still dazzling with rich compositional complexity. Grizzly Bear followed it up with Painted Ruins in 2017, that while a perfectly good record in its own right is nowhere as cohesive, and most unfortunately, patient. And to be honest, I haven’t heard a baroque folk record released since Shields that’s as consistently engrossing, or one performed with such remarkable execution. Shields isn’t their most immediate, but it best distills their singular essence, and its generosity knows no bounds.

Essentials: “gun-shy”, “Yet Again”, “The Hunt”

17. The Money Store- Death Grips

Anyone from future generations looking to hear a band that’s most emblematic of the 10s as a full decade probably couldn’t do better than Death Grips. The trio consisting of vocalist MC Ride, keyboardist/producer Flatlander, and drummer Zach Hill released their abrasive Ex-military tape in 2011, and right out of the gates the trio had a fully-formed sound that plucked unapologetically from west coast hip-hop, industrial, hardcore, and noise. Although far from the first band to draw equally upon genres like these, Death Grips stood out immediately thanks in no small part to MC Ride, who has since proved to be one of the last decade’s most compelling frontmen. His lyrics are cryptic, and intelligent yet visceral, with a deceptively wry edge. Although there’s quite a bit of variety to his delivery, it’s always propelled forth with an overwhelming intensity that can take some time to become accustomed to. Ex-military was received rapturously by critics and bloggers, but as exciting as group like them may have seemed at the time it would have been hard to predict any kind of real longevity for them. And their unrelentingly antagonistic streak (leaking No Love Deep Web, putting a picture of Zach Hill’s dick on the cover of said album, skipping performances or just playing recorded music instead of performing, trolling fans, faking a breakup) would have decimated the momentum of almost any other band, but Death Grips feed on this sort of chaos like a troupe of anarchist vampires. Their arc from Ex-military to 2018’s Year of the Snitch is one of the most rewarding streaks of any act throughout the 10s, and while most of these records are great, there isn’t one that better distills their essence than their 2012 debut LP, The Money Store.

While Ex-military presented them as an admittedly idiosyncratic, yet undeniable product of their environment, TMS blew their sound wide open proving that they had range far beyond sounds of their native state. Right from the bass arpeggios that jolt opener “Get Got” to life, it’s clear the fidelity has improved considerably, but they haven’t compromised an ounce of their fury. This still scans as music custom-tailored for little other than violently thrashing your limbs, and little else from the past decade as been anywhere near as effective at distilling that aesthetic so neatly across the run of a single record. But on TMS Death Grips were still writing actual songs, with memorable hooks, sticky melodies, and conventional structures that served to heighten the potency of their tantrums. Songs like “I’ve Seen Footage” and “Hacker” are shocking for how immediate and unthreatening the band sound despite MC Ride’s sour bark, while songs like “The Fever (Aye Aye)” and “The Cage” showcase early peaks for Flatlander’s immaculate, and underrated synth work. MC Ride is at his best here, whether talking shit and espousing authenticity (“Hustle Bones”), calling out doubters (“Bitch Please”), or just railing against general conformity, he delivers 13 career defining performances in neat succession. Death Grips have continued to relentlessly experiment on all their subsequent records, and while some have come close to matching the excellence of TMS, they’ve all fallen short. Thankfully, the immense exhilaration and urgency of TMS sound more potent with each successive year that we inhibit this desolate hellscape.

Essentials: “I’ve Seen Footage”, “The Fever (Aye Aye)”, “Hacker”

16. Twin Fantasy (Face to Face)- Car Seat Headrest

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that a re-recording of a devastatingly personal LP that Will Toledo recorded at 19, with better production, stronger arrangements, and cleaner vocals, would end up being his best record to date. What was surprising was that he decided to return to the record of his that’s most important to him, and give it the sort of justice that it deserves after having developed into a far more adept talent in the years following its release. And although I’m sure some of those songs (if not all of them) were painful to revisit, the discipline and audacity paid off enormously. Twin Fantasy centers entirely around falling in love with another man at 19, and the arc of their relationship from mourning the distance between them on the opening song “My Boy (Twin Fantasy)” to the newfound acceptance of their relationship’s dissolution on closer “Twin Fantasy (Those Boys)”, detailing the highs and lows with unabashed sincerity. While the original still holds up fairly well, there’s no question that the re-arranging, cleaner vocals, and stronger fidelity overall just heightened the potency of what was already there without diminishing any aspect of the original record. Will’s cleverness, sense of humor, and dynamism as a bandleader elevate TF beyond a melancholic teen drama into a searing document of formative growth, demonstrating craft, ingenuity, and wisdom far beyond his years. More so than any other record released throughout the last decade, TF exemplifies just how potent indie rock still is.

This new version of TF is more of a “re-imagining” of the original record than anything else, and as such the thematic scope as it initially existed, along with the exact same track listing, is held perfectly intact. The record’s two epics, those being “Beach Life-In-Death” and “Famous Prophets (Stars)” are both even longer, and benefit more so than anything else here from their new arrangements. The fidelity has been cleaned up notably, but TF is still far from overproduced, and without any fuzz obscuring a lot of the detail you can hear just how crisp, and superbly layered these arrangements are. The new-wave outlier “Nervous Young Human” practically radiates with a newfound sheen, and is handedly the most radio-ready song the band have ever written, but it still folds seamlessly into the record’s mid-section between the anthemic, distortion-fueled peaks of “Sober to Death” and the record’s mid-album power-pop stunner, “Bodys”. Toledo’s drawing from a great deal here of different sub-genres here, and he manages to land on a remarkably uniform sound that belies the myriad of intricacies at work that prevent these compositions from being crushed underneath the weight of their own ambition. The album’s greatest achievement is how deftly Will manages to tell a story about the most profound event of his life coupled with music that’s as multi-faceted as the human experience being conveyed. TF may be proudly out of step with the current cultural zeitgeist from a sonic perspective, but the sentiments conveyed throughout are sublime missives from a distinctly millennial outlook. As far as concept albums about a single relationship are concerned, Toledo has set the bar this century with TF.

Essentials: “Famous Prophets (Stars)”, “Beach Life-In-Death”, “Bodys”

15. Modern Vampires of the City- Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend have come a long way from the indie afro-pop roots of their debut to their pastoral, jam band informed fourth LP, Father of the Bride, but on their third LP, Modern Vampires of the City the band refined their sound to a sublime strain of chamber music and art pop filled with Ezra Koenig’s strongest writing to date. Whereas their first two records were entirely produced by the band’s multi-instrumentalist and not-so-secret weapon Rostam Batmanliij, on MVotC Ariel Reitscheid, a producer known for working with acts like Charli XCX, Haim, Solange, etc joined the proceedings, and there’s a lighter feel to a lot of the arrangements, but everything has more dimension overall, and the low-end really pops on a lot of these in a way that it hadn’t really before. There are plenty of welcome production choices throughout, like the sprinkling of auto-tune on “Step”, or the blistering saxophone solo on “Worship You” that do a great deal to expand the parameters of the band’s sound without ever finding them really going out of their depth. Compared to their prior records there’s a fairly vast tonal gap on MVotC, with a heightened sense of existential dread and fixations on mortality, nostalgia, and faith. It’s weighty stuff without question, and the exceptional pacing goes a long towards helping evenly pack in the melancholic, languid compositions like “Everlasting Arms” and “Don’t Lie” with infectious up-tempo numbers like “Diane Young”, “Unbelievers”, and “Finger Back” that, while far from the best of what’s here are still as immediate as anything they’ve ever released and benefit from the same immaculate arrangement, production, and writing as everything else here even if they don’t break as much new ground. But the best of what’s here are without question among the best pop songs released so this far century.

Both opener “Obvious Bycycle” and “Step” are devastating looks at nostalgia that frame Ezra’s thoughtful character sketches in rich compositions that in the case of the former consist of soft wisps of grand piano, percussion that sounds like a stamp being punched, and surprisingly visceral bass, while in the case of the latter the band opt for gorgeous harpsichord arrangements, and a swaggering bassline. But “Hannah Hunt”, which is for the record the best VW song to date, is on another level entirely. It opens like the sun after the storm with field recording of a crowd of people clearing away for delicate grand piano and the gentle rumble of bass. Ezra sings of a relationship slowly starting to break apart as a couple travels the country together “A gardener told me some plants move/But I could not believe it/’Til me and Hannah Hunt/Saw crawling vines and weeping willows”. The song slowly builds into a rousing baroque pop crescendo over roaring keys as Ezra delivers one of his most devastating lines to date “If I can’t trust you then damn it Hannah/There’s no future, there’s no answer/Though we live on the US dollar/You and me we got our own sense of time”. Rostam left VW in 2016, and although their first record without him, the aforementioned 2019 comeback LP, FotB, his absence was sorely felt. On “Hudson” it almost sounds like Rostam is singing to Ezra, under that lens especially, it’s functions as a poignant, but fitting cap to VW’s first era. As great as FotB, Rostam’s 2017 debut Half-Light, and I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, his 2016 collaboration with Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen, I hope that MVotC isn’t the last time the two of them work on a full LP together.

Essentials: “Hannah Hunt”, “Step”, “Ya Hey”

14. Channel Orange- Frank Ocean

Few albums released throughout the last decade have brought about the sort of sweeping sea change that Frank Ocean’s sublime debut LP, Channel Orange, did. Ocean’s kaleidoscopic, self-released 2011 mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra established his artistry as something far beyond that of the go-to hook ghostwriter identity he cut his teeth establishing for himself. A year and a half later, amidst signing to Def Jam, collaborating extensively with Tyler, the Creator, Kanye West, and Jay-Z, and writing a now legendary tumblr post stating that his first love was for another man a few days before releasing his immensely anticipated debut LP, Frank Ocean released that album, and decided to call it Channel Orange. Like Ocean’s music itself, the narrative surrounding his ascension feels both timeless (moving to LA after Hurricane Katrina struck his hometown of New Orleans, ghostwriting and joining Tyler, the Creator’s hip-hop collective Odd Future before releasing his own music, which drew primarily from soul, classic r&b, and funk more than anything that was on the radio at the time) and modern (sampling extensively on N,U, having a few key co-signs that seemed to unlock all the right connections, leveraging the power of the internet along with the rest of Odd Future to build and sustain a fanbase) but none of it would matter if the music didn’t live up to the hype. But all of this is particularly interesting to consider when talking about CO, especially considering that it’s the best debut LP of the 10s, and an absolute master class in songwriting.

CO is a remarkably fully-formed debut LP that finds Ocean in complete control of his craft on all fronts. The instrumentation is a lush palette of analog keys, bass, and strings, and with the exception of a few fairly stripped down ballads, shows a keen command for maximalism that never sounds overwrought. Even a song like the colossal, mid-album change-up “Pyramids”, is saved from complete indulgence after the beat seamlessly shifts into a woozy down-tempo trap instrumental with plenty of space for Ocean’s falsetto to linger in. Ocean would shift gears dramatically with the 2016 visual album, Endless, and his second studio LP, Blonde, trading in the rich, dense analog soul and r&b for a minimal psychedelic soul sound. While the production on Blonde and Endless is more impressive than that of CO, neither record was quite able to match the lush immediacy that seemed to come to Ocean so naturally here. Ocean produced the record alongside the musicians Jonathon Ikpeazu, Malay, and Om’Mas Keith who all provided additional keys, drum programming, and/or guitars. Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler, the Creator, and Andre 3000 are the only guests that provide verses, and while each completely delivers, CO is Ocean’s record through and through. Regardless of whether Ocean is singing about the emptiness of privilege (“Super Rich Kids”), or depicting a tale of someone’s life falling apart due to crack addiction (“Crack Rock”) or delivering the closest thing he’ll likely ever come to a straight forward love song (“Thinkin’ Bout You”) his eye for detail, wit, intelligence, and empathy render the characters as rich, and multi-faceted regardless of what angle he’s coming at them from. The warmth and immediacy of the instrumentation and Ocean’s voice draws you in, but it’s the sheer strength of his songwriting that elevates CO from simply being another immensely promising debut to the classic that it is.

Essentials: “Crack Rock”, “Bad Religion”, “End / Golden Girl” ft. Tyler, the Creator

13. Sunbather- Deafheaven

Deafheaven were far from the first band to blend black metal, shoegaze, and post-rock, but on their stellar 2013 record Sunbather they distilled elements of these genres into a punishing, and breathtaking sound that’s unmistakably theirs. Their solid 2010 debut Roads to Judha showed tremendous promise, but their songwriting wasn’t on par with their ambitions yet. But on Sunbather, Deafheaven lived up to that early promise. Sunbather is primarily a blistering fusion of black metal drumming and shrieks engulfed in walls of shoegaze guitar that often give way to instrumental outros that shine with the radiance of Sigur Ros or Explosions in the Sky. George Clarke delivers the lyrics in an indecipherable shriek that either amplifies the intensity of the surrounding arrangements, or is used as a sublime juxtaposition to their fleeting moments of transcendent beauty. Sunbather is seven songs long, and superbly paced so that the band’s lengthier compositions are evenly split between songs that include a dreamy minimalist guitar/piano composition (“Irresistible”), a menacing baroque-noise march that congeals midway through into a jangly guitar conclusion (“Please Remember”), and an eerie collage of vocal samples and droning strings (“Windows”). This odd assortment of songs may seem random, but they do a nice job of breaking up the surrounding onslaught, and demonstrating the band’s range, while still adhering to the record’s searing aesthetic. It’s remarkably accessible music as far as metal is concerned, and if you can make it past the tone of Clarke’s voice there’s a lot to love about this album.

For all of Sunbather’s seemingly impenetrable harshness, there’s a great deal of beauty glistening just beneath the surface. On Sunbather, Deafheaven managed to strike a near perfect balance between beauty and chaos that, while greater heights were achieved later on, they never quite improved upon. The longer numbers here transition into moments of transcendent, cathartic beauty, and back into frenetic fury so subtly, and masterfully, that the juxtapositions quickly begin to seem less like extreme exercises in contrasting dynamics and tones so much as the fluid spectrum of Deafheaven’s multi-faceted artistry. And while the lyrics throughout Sunbather match the brutality of the corresponding arrangements, they also match their life-affirming, triumphant sense of urgency. Whether Clarke is reflecting on habitual patterns and habits that he just can’t shake “Lost in the patterns of youth/And the ghost of your aches comes back to haunt you/And the forging of change makes no difference” on “Vertigo” or ruing the alcoholism that he inherited from his father “In the hallways lit up brightly but couldn’t find myself/I laid drunk on the concrete on the day of your birth in celebration of all you were worth” on closer “The Pecan Tree”, his lyrics throughout Sunbather imbue his tortured yelps with a devastating poignancy rendered all the more morose by the band’s unflinching, formidable poise. It’s not hard to hear why Sunbather was the best reviewed album of 2013, and a game changer for black metal. Few records, metal or otherwise, have managed to convey such overwhelming emotional intensity through such ambitious composition. Its crushing beauty hasn’t lost an ounce of its potency in the years since.

Essentials: “Dream House”, “The Pecan Tree”, “Sunbather”

12. To Pimp a Butterfly- Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar caught the attention of the zeitgeist with his generation defining sophomore LP, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, but that record’s follow-up, To Pimp a Butterfly, cemented his status as one of the definitive musical auteurs of his generation. Whereas the former record was a gripping street epic that seamlessly tucked a coming of age story into the larger fabric of a blockbuster west coast hip-hop record, the latter record blew open the history of black music and wove together a tapestry of disparate styles that congealed to express a more multi-faceted look at the black experience. The beats are composed of live instrumentation courtesy of Terrance Martin, Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, and a plethora of the west coast jazz elite, and they span the likes of jazz, r&b, soul, and funk alongside instrumental hip-hop without showing the seams. The music runs the gamut from uplifting anthems (“Alright”) to bouts of unbridled fury (“The Blacker the Berry”), and everywhere in-between, but thanks to Kendrick’s deft pacing and execution nothing sounds out of place, and there’s no mistaking these songs for the work of anyone else through sheer scope alone. Kendrick’s writing and rapping had increased considerably since GKMC, but throughout TPaB he spends less time trying to prove what a capable rapper he is, and far more time using his ability to explore the nuances of systemic racial issues through the lens of a plethora of different characters. TPaB couldn’t have possibly sounded more out of step with the zeitgeist upon its release, but in venturing beyond what hip-hop in the mid 10s sounded like, and exploring perspectives beyond those of himself, he was able to tap into something far more universally human.

Throughout the course of TPaB Kendrick tackles a wide plethora of topics with music that’s matches the breadth and scope of his thematic ambitions. The g-funk strut “King Kunta” is one of the most immediate songs in his career, and he juxtaposes the song’s infectious backdrop against verses that evoke the resilience of Kunta Kinte in the novel Roots as a through line for the jarring shift he experienced throughout his come-up after growing up in poverty. “u?” brilliantly distills the sort of tragic survivor’s guilt that Kendrick experienced in the wake of his success watching so many of his friends continue to succumb to the perils of systemic racism through harsh free-jazz arrangements, while “i” gains power within the context of the record as an uplifting neo-soul anthem of self-love after the preceding storm has subsided. The uplifting anthem “Alright” has become a canonical protest song in the wake of civil unrest as a result of excessive police brutality while the finale, “Mortal Man”, begins with some of his strongest verses to date before transitioning into a fabricated interview with 2Pac. There’s an absurd amount to unpack within the songs on TPaB, but the album never buckles under the weight of its ambition, and delivers performances that are striking at every turn. Kendrick never shies away from depicting the devastating realities throughout the history of the black American experience, but he finds reasons to persist through these tribulations in the power of community, god, and love.

Essentials: “The Blacker the Berry”, “u”, “Wesley’s Theory” ft. George Clinton

11. Lonerism- Tame Impala

On Tame Impala’s debut, Innerspeaker, the band proved adept at piecing together the finest moments from their record collections into strange, idiosyncratic new shapes, but on their sublime sophomore LP, Lonerism, they began to push their sound into the present moment. The flanged guitars, shuffling drum rhythms, and frontman Kevin Parker’s Lennon-esque falsetto are a hallmarks of classic psychedelic rock, but the spellbinding synth textures, evocative samples, and cavernous production showcase a definitively 21st century sensibility. There was no mistaking them for a pure homage act on Lonerism. With the exception of piano on a few tracks courtesy of Jay Watson, and a spoken word interlude courtesy of Melody Prochet, Lonerism was written, recorded, and produced entirely by Kevin Parker, and it helped signal a major shift from bands being the dominant artistic vehicle in indie music to the solo artist taking up that mantle. Lonerism is a perfectly paced album, and aside from a few breathers, and a few epics, it almost plays like a greatest hits set. There were signs of the disco-prog synth act that Tame Imapa developed into on a few of Lonerism’s more immediate moments, but this is still thoroughly steeped in the lineage of psychedelic rock, acid rock, and blues rock. With Lonerism, Parker began to show signs of the poptimist that he was all along, but he hadn’t yet compromised the instrumental ingenuity that he’s capable of for a strong melody, and so here you get the best of both worlds; the band’s sharpest hooks and most adventurous production. Lonerism is where Tame Impala evolved from a promising project with immense potential into one of the defining musical acts of Parker’s generation.

Lonerism is a record that completely lives up to its title as a concept record about isolation. Every song here finds Parker grappling with some aspect of self-imposed isolation set against hazy, psychedelic pop/rock instrumentation. Some songs like, the disarmingly immediate “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” spells out his anguish explicitly, with a love interest that he keeps falling for against his best judgement, while “Endors Toi” finds Parker rejecting the hardships of reality for the bliss that’s only possible when you’re literally dreaming. The lyrics rarely go deep, but on a record like this they’re entirely beside the point. Thankfully Parker’s writing works superbly within the context of the concept without detracting from the instrumentation and production. Parker wrote a few strong hooks on IS, but they were the exception, not the norm. On Lonerism, Parker’s melodic intuition had fully blossomed, and the hooks on songs like “Elephant”, “Why Won’t She Talk to Me”, and “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” were more immediate, and more memorable than anything on the top 40 at the time. The songs on Lonerism are bursting with sonic personality; whether we’re talking about the euphoric streaks of synth that send “Apocalypse Dreams” into the stratosphere, the phaser-smeared guitars and immersive samples that bring “Sun’s Coming Down” to its triumphant finale, or the propulsive drum fllls that propel “Endors Toi”, Lonerism is the most sonically rich record that Parker has ever released. Parker would achieve more audacious and unexpected heights on his superb 2015 follow-up, Currents, but he has yet to top Lonerism’s consistency, and near perfect balance between studio experimentation and pure pop craftsmanship.

Essentials: “Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control”, “Sun’s Coming Up”, “Apocalypse Dreams”

10. Flower Boy- Tyler, the Creator

Flower Boy may not have come as a surprise to those who closely followed Tyler Okonoma’s progression from the lo-fi hardcore hip-hop days of Bastard and early Odd Future through his chaotic, candy-coated third LP, Cherry Bomb, but for the casual listener it may have seemed like an unthinkable evolution. And no one could have predicted its consistency. The signs of Tyler progressing into melodic, psych-leaning neo-soul were on the wall as early as his terrific 2013 record, Wolf, but on FB his melodic sensibilities, compositional chops, and an increasingly empathetic outward writing perspective all coalesced into an idiosyncratic tapestry of vibrant sound and color unlike any hip hop record ever recorded. It’s the first time that Tyler’s chops had fully caught up with his ambition, allowing him to completely deliver on the promise of a truly genre-adverse opus that Cherry Bomb merely hinted at. The lyrics are somber, and reflective, demonstrating Tyler’s newfound sense of maturity that would have been unthinkable throughout the early OF days. The sincerity and vulnerability of the lyrics go a long way towards heightening the potency of his vibrant, melodically rich compositions. FB capitalizes on all the strange contradictions that have always been inherent in his music, while removing the adolescent excess that have bogged down each prior release. The result is a highwater mark for what hip-hop and neo-soul can sound like unbridled with concern for what music should sound like. That attention to detail and unrelenting creative spirit are what helped propel FB into being the classic record that it ended up being.

Eschewing the lo-fi Neptunes meets MF DOOM beats of his past records, Tyler landed on a perfect blend of neo-soul synths, jazz strings/horns, and drums that split the difference between classic boom-bap and mid-10s trap for FB. The music is bright and vibrant, with a wealth of detail tucked within each mix that rewards multiple listens. There are songs that are completely in Tyler’s wheelhouse, like the frantic, mid-album trap cut “I Ain’t Got Time!”, and a few like the show-stopping psychedelic soul ballad, “Garden Shed”, that dramatically expand the parameters of his sound, but they all cohere together superbly into a fully-realized kaleidoscope of sound. Even the songs like “Pothole” and “November” that seem like more run of the mill Tyler cuts showcase a renewed sense of focus and tight production that belie their simple construction. FB is a record that’s focused on unrequited love, and while themes of abandonment, disillusionment with fame, growing pains, and insecurity emerge as on past records, the bulk of the action is focused on Tyler coming to terms with both his bisexuality and the anguish of a missed connection. Rarely does heartbreak sound so unflinchingly, thrillingly alive. True to form, the music is never mopey or saccharine, but it’s always brimming with the intensity of young love. FB is the record that Tyler has always set out to make, and while I’m sure he’ll top it at some point, it currently stands at the definitive realization of his singular vision.

Essentials: “911 / Mr. Lonely” ft. Frank Ocean & Stevey Lacy, “Garden Shed” ft. Estelle, “See You Again” ft. Kali Uchis

9. Until the Quiet Comes- Flying Lotus

After Steve Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, dropped his masterful third LP, Cosmogramma, it seemed like he could take his sound anywhere, but doubling down and improving on the maximalist excess of Cosmogramma would have proved a near impossible task. Thankfully, on his stellar follow-up LP, Until the Quiet Comes, FlyLo swung all the way in the opposite direction, and despite it being the flavor of the decade minimalism rarely ended up sounding better on any other artist. UtQC is a minimalist electronic jazz/instrumental hip hop record with dreamy meditative arrangements that belie their complexity at every turn. The album is a concept record that finds FlyLo exploring the realms of human consciousness coupled with ambitious arrangements and immersive production that complements his thematic ambitions perfectly. FlyLo is still making beats in a traditional sense, but the compositions on this LP are more rich and varied than the entire discography of most producers, and the music he draws from spans the likes of ambient, psychedelia, r&b, post-rock, progressive rock, and meditative astral jazz as much as his usual instrumental hip hop, IDM, and free jazz touchstones. And so while UtQC is more insular, less immediate, and more likely to necessitate multiple listens than any other record of his, it’s the best showcase of FlyLo’s versatility, melodic intuition, and use of texture.

The compositions are short and sweet, and barely last longer than it takes for FlyLo to introduce an idea, tweak it, thwart expectations, and move on. Like on Cosmogramma, UtQC incorporates live instrumentation weaved throughout various compositions (Thundercat’s bass playing was cemented as a staple element of FlyLo’s sound here) as well as vocal features from the likes of Thundercat, Thom Yorke, Laura Darlington, and Niki Randa. The features are all utilized tastefully, and heighten the potency of the existing arrangements without detracting too much. There are songs like “All In” and “Yesterday/Corded” that just feature FlyLo alone constructing remarkable, lived-in soundscapes from his usual toolkit of drum machines, samplers, sequencers, and keys, while others like the title track and “DMT Song” that commit thoroughly to their minimalism, and coast effortlessly around strong melodies or guest vocal performances. Many of these songs retain the visceral low-end and celestial sweep of his best work, but they don’t serve to overwhelm and disorient as much as they sedate and mesmerize. “Getting There” hits the sweet spot, with and infectious, heavy-hitting low-end juxtaposed against Niki Randa’s sweeping falsetto. UtQC may not go for the jugular as FlyLo’s prior two records, but it’s just as captivating in its own quietly confident way.

And a few of the songs on the back half of the record are some of the most gorgeous that FlyLo has ever composed. The loose and dreamy “Only if You Wanna” provides a simple but sublime bridge from the drum and bass rush of “The Nightcrawler” into the droning r&b mirage with Yorke’s vocals wafting eerily through the crevices in the mix. From there the record moves into “Hunger” and “Phantasm”, two songs that skew the closest that FlyLo has ever veered toward straight up ambience, and they slowly unfurl into gorgeous, unpredictable string progressions as Niki Randa and Laura Darlington deliver understated, ethereal vocals, respectively. From there we’re led into “me Yesterday//Corded”, one of the strongest songs that FlyLo has released to date. It begins in the same somber, minor-key tone of the preceding songs before erupting into a cosmic drum and bass coda with a euphoric melody and pitch-shifted vocals. The final song, “Dream to Me” is a whirring synth and woodwind lullaby that brings everything full circle, leading us right back into the intro, “All In”. UtQC breezes by in nearly 47 minutes, but there’s another singular, self-contained universe of detail packed into this record’s spellbinding grooves.

Essentials: “yesterday//Corded”, “Electric Candyman ft. Thom Yorke”, “All In”

8. Carrie & Lowell- Sufjan Stevens

By the time that Sufjan Stevens released Carrie & Lowell he had already released several classic records and had undergone several stylistic change-ups, but nothing in his discography established the precedent for a masterwork quite like C&L. On C&L Sufjan returned to the sparse chamber folk sound of his superb fourth record, Seven Swans, but he replaced the short vignettes and character studies that peppered that record with an engrossing scope that centers around his tumultuous relationship with his late mother who suffered from substance addiction and schizophrenia. The music is hushed, and minimal, consisting of little more than finger plucked guitar, banjo, ukulele, and an assortment of strings underneath Sufjan’s tender delivery. His music has always radiated a sense of overwhelming empathy, and so when plumbing the depths of his psyche for memories of his mother the tone is often devastating and cathartic in equal measure, but never overly morose or self-pitying. With C&L Sufjan succeeded in honoring his mother’s memory as honestly and as faithfully as he could while his songwriting hit a new peak.

C&L sustains an almost overwhelming poignancy throughout its duration, but it’s never a slog. The heaviness of the sentiments never really subsides, but these songs are each filled with strong hooks, sweeping melodies, and a disarming directness that he’s never quite managed on prior records. Songs like the opening cut “Death with Dignity”, “Should Have Known Better”, and ��The Only Thing” soar with warm, infectious hooks and nimble guitar arrangements alongside a few electronic and orchestral embellishments, while songs like “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” and “Fourth of July” bring the tempo to a crawl and bask in Sufjan’s falsetto and minor-key acoustic guitar arrangements. It all comes to a head on the devastating centerpiece “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”, as Sufjan depicts the self-destructive behavior he engaged in right after his mother’s death “There’s blood on that blade/Fuck me, I’m falling apart/My assassin/Like Casper the ghost/There’s no shade in the shadow of the cross” just so that he could feel closer to her.

Essentials: “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”, “Death with Dignity”, “The Only Thing”

7. Some Rap Songs- Earl Sweatshirt

Earl Sweatshirt was arguably the greatest living rapper before dropping his magnum opus, Some Rap Songs, but since its release it’s become much harder to dispute. On SRS Earl runs through 15 songs in 22 minutes, delivering sometimes little more than a hook and a verse per song before transitioning into the next one. The songs operate according to their own logic, and forgo traditional song structure for a loop-based compositional approach. Earl produced the bulk of the record himself, and heavily opted for dusty, de-tuned pianos, shuffling, lo-fi percussion, and a plethora of discordant texture. Earl’s precision is remarkable, and what may initially scan as awkward or clumsy flows slowly reveal themselves to be masterfully sidestepping the rhythms entirely. But for all its challenging aspects, SRS is hardly a precious, posturing sort of record. It demands your full attention, but will reward it several times over.

The songs throughout SRS are bleak missives from a remarkable talent unpacking years of trauma. The record tackles many of the same themes of abandonment, drug abuse, and depression as his past records, but he’s cut out any lingering excess in his prose, distilling only what’s absolutely necessary into each bar. The rapping is lean, and virtuosic, but never showy, and the brevity of the songs themselves is indicative of how succinct and substantial the music there is. Songs like “Red Water” have just a single couplet that he repeats a few times as the ebb and flow of the instrumental sustains the onset momentum, while other songs like “The Mint” are closer to convention, but still unfold along unpredictable loops, and verses that zig zag in and out of the mix at irregular intervals. There are songs like “Cold Summers” and “The Bends” that are the closest that Earl comes to rapping accessibly, and there are those like “Playing Possums” and Peanuts" that owe more to tape loops, ambient, and noise music than anything resembling hip hop. SRS and it’s follow-up EP, Feet of Clay, are easily the most challenging, experimental, and divisive records that Earl has released to date, but they’re also singular masterworks that push hip hop into stranger, and more human realms.

Essentials: “Peanut”, “The Mint” ft. Navy Blue, “December 24”

6. New Bermuda- Deafheaven

After releasing their superb second LP, Sunbather, Deafheaven had become one of the most acclaimed metal bands of the century, and had achieved a level of popularity unprecedented for metal bands. Never mistaken by anyone as purists, Deafheaven began their career flirting with through lines between shoegaze, black metal, and post-rock before tastefully combining them on Sunbather. While they easily could have churned out another LP of post-rock/blackgaze of the same stripe, the band went deeper and darker, and re-emerged with their third LP, New Bermuda, the heaviest, and arguably most melodic, record of their career to date. Across five songs that collectively clock in around 46 minutes Deafheaven continue to expand their parameters of their sound, incorporating heavier tremelo guitars, incendiary blast beats, and sweeping post-rock passages that are more adventurous, expansive, and gorgeous, than what any other bands are doing today. NB may lean the furthest towards the brutality of classic black metal, but the band’s 2015 onslaught still amplifies an immense feeling of transcendence alongside the terror.

Opener “Brought to the Water” rustles to life with the ominous sway of church bells before its lead guitar riff kicks into gear, foreshadowing the premium they place on atmosphere with foreboding timbres. Throughout the next several minutes the band continue to build a scorched earth black metal composition bristling with distortion and rapid fire drumming that eventually slyly segues into a sugary breakdown reminiscent of “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer. It’s disarming, and unprecedented, but a perfectly logical evolution of their sound that reaffirms their status as the most versatile band at the vanguard of contemporary black metal. “Luna” and “Come Back” are two of the heaviest songs that Deafheaven have ever released, and get a ton of mileage out of their seismic guitar riffs and pummeling percussion, while “Luna” boasts one of the loveliest melodies they’ve ever penned, gliding alone a star-dusted, stratosphere-bound guitar riff. Closer “Gifts for the Earth” is a succinct culmination of the preceding 38 minutes, capped off with their most cathartic coda to date with jangly guitar and minor key piano softly swirling around Clarke’s feral shrieks. The warmth exuded beneath Clarke’s shrapnel-laced delivery posits Deafheaven as a band executing well-beyond the scope and limitations of metal.

Essentials: “Gifts for the Earth”, “Brought to the Water”, “Luna”

5. Halcyon Digest- Deerhunter

By the time that Deerhunter geared up to record their fifth LP, Halycon Digest, they already had a rich body of work behind them, but very little of their music set the kind of precedent for where they would go on HD. Here, Deerhunter tapered down their most avant-garde impulses in favor of cleaner guitar arrangements and big, bright melodies, unearthing the pop band they’ve always been at their core with poise and aplomb. The walls of guitar noise, ambient interludes, and studio effects that had defined their previous releases became relegated to marginal aspects of their song craft, and they began opening up their songs like never before. Thankfully, they didn’t dilute their sound, they just cleaned it up, and the 11 songs that make up HD are the most immediate, and richly produced (thanks to Ben Allen, who produced this record after nailing Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion a year prior) of Deerhunter’s career to date. Deerhunter’s shift towards accessibility only seemed to accentuate their inherent strangeness, and HD remains one of the most engaging and endlessly replayable indie pop records of the 21st century.

From the droning low-end thump that ignites opener “Earthquake” it’s clear something substantial has shifted. Allen’s biggest contribution was a heightened low-end that caused Josh Fauver’s bass to really pop without distracting too much from the rest of the arrangements. This extra oomph propels songs like “Don’t Cry” and “Coronado” well into infectious, anthemic territory while it helps ground more ambitious cuts like “Helicopter” and “Desire Lanes”. Frontman Bradford Cox had completely grown into his role as a charismatic, provocative frontman with the pipes and poetic disposition to back up the antics, and propel his band towards a stadium sized sound even if they would never end up touring them. Bradford’s vocal melodies on closer “…He Would Have Laughed” and centerpiece “Helicopter” are the strongest that the band ever penned, while he delivers two of his most impressive vocal performances on the lulling “Sailing” and the pensive “Earthquake”. The closer, a tribute to the late Jay Reatard, is perhaps Deerhunter’s finest moment to date, with Bradford spinning surreal couplets “I live on a farm, yeah/I never lived on a farm” around the band’s steady harpsichord pulse until the composition bursts with euphoria, and then slowly begins to fade out before cutting out abruptly. Deerhunter have never made a bad record, but HD was the last time they showed how simultaneously adventurous and immediate pop music can be.

Essentials: “He Would Have Laughed”, “Helicopter”, “Desire Lanes”

4. Black Messiah- D’Angelo & The Vanguard

In the years following D'Angelo’s spectacular second LP, Voodoo, it seemed increasingly likely that he would never release another record. But then in the twilight days of 2014 D'Angelo surprise dropped his 3rd and best LP to date, Black Messiah, with a new band supporting him called The Vanguard (which consisted of Questlove on drums, Pina Palladino on bass, Isaiah Sharkey on guitar, Roy Hargrove on horns, and a handful of other musicians). BM eschews the warm r&b/neo-soul solo singer-songwriter sound of the first two D'Angelo LPs in favor of a fiery cocktail of avant-garde soul, jazz funk, and psychedelic r&b that’s simultaneously more abrasive and experimental than anything he had done prior. D'Angelo still has a remarkably agile falsetto, but it’s been notably weathered by the years away, and it now has a grainier disposition that happens to be a much better fit for the songs throughout the record. The band’s chemistry is just remarkable, and it’s hard to believe that they weren’t all cutting records with each other for decades prior. Unlike most artists that come back with new work after a notable dry spell, D'Angelo has never sounded more human than he does on this latest LP of his. Thankfully, despite the years apart D’Angelo hasn’t lost an ounce of his remarkable talent, and brings a magnetic charisma, sublime range, and a much sharper point of view to songs that reflect the turmoil of the preceding years of unrelenting police violence, yet respond in a multitude of ways. The Vanguard prove to be an ideal backdrop for D’Angelo’s songwriting, and together they achieve a new standard for neo-soul.

Although it had been 14 years, D'Angelo’s return felt right on time in the immediate wake of the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and plenty of others at the hands of the police. While D'Angelo’s music has never shied away from political statements, BM is by far the most explicitly political record of his career. “1000 Deaths” opens to a sample of a Khalid Abdul Muhammed speech about Jesus being black and quickly gives way to a visceral, funk rock rhythm and red-lining guitars with D'Angelo dissecting the difference between courage and cowardice “Because a coward dies a thousand times/But a soldier just dies once”. On the following track, “The Charade”, D'Angelo opts for searing soul that builds into his most anthemic melody to date while he delivers devastating imagery of the cruelty still inflicted on black people all over the world “All we wanted was a chance to talk/‘Stead we only got outlined in chalk” while “'Til It’s Done” contains D'Angelo’s finest melody to date and finds him questioning the nature of our existence and whether we’re really reckoning with the way that capitalists are destroying our planet “Perilous dissidence evening up the score/Do we even know what we’re fighting for?”. He also delivers some of his best love songs to date, including the funky mid-tempo shuffle of “Sugah Daddy”, the tender soul ballad “Betray My Heart”, and the spellbinding centerpiece “Really Love”. These songs fold neatly within the larger fabric of the record as a whole, and complement the politically charged songs without breaking the greater aesthetic. D'Angelo’s conviction is palpable throughout it all, and the newfound wisdom that he accrued in the years since Voodoo enrich the perspective that he brings to the songs in such a generous, humble way. Even if D’Angelo never releases another record we couldn’t have asked for a better swan song from him.

Essentials: “’Til It’s Done”, “The Charade”, “Really Love”

3. MBV- My Bloody Valentine

Like D'Angelo, it didn’t seem likely that My Bloody Valentine would ever follow-up their masterful second LP, but 22 years after the release of Loveless, in the dead of February 2013, MBV, the third My Bloody Valentine, finally emerged. There are 9 songs here, and they can neatly divided into three sections that find the band progressing from an extension of what they were doing in the 90s to styles never associated with them. MBV picks up right where Loveless left off, beginning with expansive suite of shoegaze songs rendered with the kind of sublime texture and tone as we’ve come to expect from the group, and slowly but surely they branch out into psychedelic pop, ambient, and pure noise, realms they’ve teased in the past but have never quite committed to prior. You can hear the band straining against their limitations, and although seeking out perfection is a fools errand, they nearly achieve it.

There’s no mistaking MBV as the work of any other band, but here they’re painting in darker, bolder hues than they’ve used in the past. Beginning with the opening song, “She Found Now”, their sound is much richer, and more forlorn, than it’s ever sounded, with thick plumes of guitar washing over wispy androgynous vocals and faint, skeletal percussion. Even as the tempos increase and the melodies begin to peak out beneath the fuzz, that wistful, melancholic tone remains. “Only Tomorrow” amps up the tempo with a driving rhythm and scorching guitars perpetually firing into the red

while “In Another Way” is a bludgeoning slice of driving noise pop with a strong melody from guitarist Belinda Butcher. “Nothing Is” coasts off the hypnotic repetition of its bludgeoning guitars for 3.5 minutes, and perfectly segues into the glorious noise piece, “Wonder 2”, which closes the record on a note of whirring guitars that approximate the overwhelming euphoria of first wave shoegaze, but takes the listener to much stranger places.

The nine songs throughout MBV strike a perfect balance between updating the shoegaze style that they perfected on loveless while wading into new territory, but it all hangs together beautifully. Kevin Shields and Belinda Butcher still harmonize on the bulk of these songs, and they’re ethereal delivery is still the perfect counterbalance for the aggression of the guitars. The searing slow-burn of “Who Sees You” is the peak of their vocal interplay, while on the midsection pop numbers like “New You” and “In Another Way” Butcher takes the reins and delivers two of the band’s strongest melodies to date over driving percussion and sleigh bells. The relative immediacy of “New You” is new sound for the band, and they completely deliver on its hypnotic pop premise. “Is This and Yes” and “Nothing Is” are the two instrumentals at the polar ends of the band’s sound that perfectly balance out the more dynamic songs, and the aforementioned noise piece “Wonder 2” complements the opening song “She Found Now” perfectly in that it’s an exploration of what My Bloody Valentine might explore more of if they ever release a fourth LP. It’s a miracle that MBV even exists in the first place, so the fact that it’s this good is just icing.

Essentials: “Only Tomorrow”, “New You”, “In Another Way”

2. Blonde- Frank Ocean

After releasing his generation defining 2012 debut Channel Orange, it was hard to say where he was going to take his music next. A cryptic series of videos in mid-August 2016 featuring Frank building a ladder led to few clues, but at the end of this week we received an audio-visual album titled Endless. Before anyone could really acclimate themselves to sleek, genre-agnostic minimalism of Endless, the proper follow-up to CO, titled Blonde, released a day later. Whereas CO was the sound of a singular talent discovering what he can do, Blonde is the sound of that talent capitalizing on those gifts with unparalleled precision. On Blonde Frank opts for a striking minimalist palette of psychedelic pop, avant-garde soul, ambient, and jazz, that are off-kilter and adventurous without sacrificing the warmth of his past work. Like CO, Blonde primarily explores themes of nostalgia, heartbreak, identify, and the nature of human perception, and here his eye for detail and attention to detail remains unmatched by any songwriter of the last decade.

From the opening song “Nikes”, Blonde presents itself as a drastic stylist departure from what Frank was doing prior. The first half is a distorted r&b dreamscape with Frank crooning in a pitch-shifted higher register, and actually has him rapping a few verses, before returning to his normal register. Blonde is filled with strange, yet tasteful stylistic touches like this, from the distorted shrieks at the end of “Ivy”, to the collapsing, pitch-shifted orchestra that gives way to an eerie children’s choir’s on “Pretty Sweet”, the album rarely shifts into anything that scans as conventional. “Pink and White” is the most straight forward moment on the album, but the verses rarely stay grounded, and soon give way to a soaring chorus that slyly tucks Beyonce’s voice into the fold before the instruments dissolve from the mix entirely. “Skyline To” and “Godspeed” flirt with ambience and put a great deal of emphasis on exploring texture and negative space, while “Close to You” is a brief, glitchy cover of Stevie Wonder’s classic that provides a terrific segue from the “Facebook Story” interlude into the record’s devastating centerpiece, White Ferrari. The record covers a remarkable amount of ground sonically, but it coheres in a way that completely belies this scope.

“Nikes” sets the tone for the record on the whole as Frank watches his friends lose themselves to the spoils of his fame and begins to recognize himself as a placeholder for a partner’s lost love. “Self-Control” depicts the story of one of Frank’s relationship’s imploding “I’ll be the boyfriend in your set dreams tonight/Noses on a rail, little virgin wears the white” set to a mesmerizing neo-soul slow-burn that unfurls a gorgeous, understated melody while “Nights” juxtaposes the highs of the come-up “Oooh nani nani/This feel like a Quaalude” with a guitar pop/boom-bap instrumental and the perils of fame with a woozy, cloud-rap adjacent second half “Shut the fuck up I don’t want to hear your conversation/Rollin” marijuana that’s a cheap vacation". The record hits its peak with the spectacular ballad, “White Ferrari”, the strongest song of his career to date. Over warm acoustic guitar provided by Alex G Frank details the permanence of the love that he’ll have for someone that he’s no longer in a relationship with “I care for you still and I will forever/That was my part of the deal, honest/We got so familiar”. The humility and humanity of the moment is heartbreaking, and speaks volumes about the depths of Frank’s artistry. Blonde set a new benchmark for avant-garde pop, and is arguably the most influential album of the past decade.

Essentials: “White Ferrari”, “Nights”, “Self-Control”

1. Cosmogramma- Flying Lotus

After breaking through with his superb sophomore LP, Los Angeles (a singular blend of IDM, trip-hip, and woozy Dilla & Madlib-esque instrumental hip-hop) it would have been easy for Flying Lotus to continue mining the same sounds for successive records that were just slight variations on that singular template. But for FlyLo’s third LP, Cosmogramma, he blew his sound wide open, eschewing the quantized beat grid for a lusher, more sprawling sound that couldn’t be confined to standard rhythms. Cosmogramma is steeped in the lineage of instrumental hip hop and IDM like its predecessor, but it manages to juggle a wider palette of disparate styles such as four on the floor, drum and bass, jungle, free-jazz, and experimental bass while incorporating a wide variety of guest musicians that do a superb job of fleshing out his expansive compositions. Cosmogramma is a record that can barely contain its ambition, and despite having been released over a decade ago it still shines like a beacon illuminating the boundless possibilities of where music can go.

The sublime fusion of the live instrumentation, supplied by Thundercat on bass, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson contributing string arrangements, and Ravi Coltrane providing tenor saxophone, among many others coupled with FlyLo’s mind-warping production is what gives the album it’s compelling thrust. The first half primarily splits the difference between frantic drum and bass/synth-pop heaters and atmospheric cosmic-jazz interludes, and the pacing is just remarkable, with no moment overstaying it’s welcome and plenty of space to give each idea the space it needs to develop. Thom Yorke drops by for a wispy vocal performance on the agile IDM strut “And the World Laughs With You” while Thundercat delivers a formal career introduction on the tender ballad “MmmHmm” before the record shifts into the infectious four on the floor centerpiece, “Do the Astral Plane”. From here the record deploys the astral jazz and eastern influences in a more pronounced fashion on songs like “German Haircut” and “Dance of the Pseudo Nymph” respectively. The celestial ambience of “Table Tennis” featuring Laura Darlington is a welcome breather for the life-affirming synth surge of closer “Galaxy in Janaki”, ending the album on a somber, but ultimately uplifting note with Flylo sampling the ventilators that his mom was hooked up to on her death bed for a euphoric, synth-streaked send-off.

The enduring appeal lies in its function as ambition existing for the sake of ambition. The songs throughout Cosmogramma all vary in texture, tempo, and tone, and they all around great on their own, but it’s the journey from start to finish that Cosmogramma exemplifies as a spiritual experience. Cosmogamma was intended to function as a loose concept album of sorts about lucid-dreaming and out of body experiences influenced by the study of the universe, heaven, and hell, and it’s remarkable to hear just how much of that vision that he’s able to convey without the prevalence of vocals. Although electronic music has changed dramatically in the decade since Cosmogramma was released, the execution of FlyLo’s masterpiece hasn’t been in matched, in electronic music or anywhere where else. Cosmogramma is both the pinnacle of where music has been, and a glimpse at the possibilities of where it could go moving forward.

Essentials: “Galaxy in Janaki”, “Do the Astral Plane”, “MmmHmm” ft. Thundercat

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