https://grumpfox.neocities.org The latest music reviews and updates for Everything Spins https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/sonicthehedgehog#sonic_srost https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/sonicthehedgehog#sonic_srost Fri, 25 Sep 2026 22:01:00

I have never played the Sonic Riders games - I didn't even realise the first one was on the GameCube, which was the only one of its console generation I owned, until recently and the two sequels passed me by completely. This means that as part of my desire to collect all the physical soundtracks for this series little by little, I come into the Riders soundtracks completely blind and "pure", and able to judge the music itself without any contextual or personal ties coming in the way. But this isn't really your typical Sonic score experience either. The Riders games were relatively b-tier spin off games which meant that none of the big name composers associated with the series are anywhere to be found; but it also means that the team involved could really strike their own signature sound onto them. The musical director for this spin-off series is Tomonori Sawada, whose last proper involvement in the Sonic series was all the way back in Sonic 3 when he formed part of the anonymous SEGA Sound Team responsible for some parts of the score; since then, Sawada has mainly been in the sound effects department. For the first game, for which Speedbeats Grand Prix is a soundtrack for, Sawada further recruited the more familiar names Kenichi Tokoi and Fumie Kumatani, classic Sonic music wingfolks, but the vision is thoroughly and unifiedly Sawada's - you wouldn't really think this soundtrack was split between three people based on the sound.

As for what that sound is... well, this was a PS2-era racing game. If you play games, you likely already have an idea of what kind of music is going to be playing the background. There's a very specific type of techno that seems to be inseparable with driving games from circa the late 90s to early 00s - a very sharp, clean, rhythm-focused pumping electronic sound that aims to convey the feeling of pressing your foot down on the gas pedal on a racing track, with melody relegated to one or two simple motifs which practically come across as additional rhythmic elements on their own. Sonic Riders isn't out to make any kind of unique strides nor does it at once even consider recycling anything familiar from the main games - it submits fully to the thrill of the race in the very specific manner this era calls for, the kick drums and synth stabs tirelessly pounding away in steady high BPMs. There's a couple of intermission moments (which I presume tie in with the game's cutscenes) which feel like a welcome breather as they press down the brakes and let you catch your breath, nudging stylistically elsewhere as well with their faux-orchestral lean. They're not particularly noteworthy in the grand scheme of things, but they are a nice welcome rest in-between the high-flying beats.


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_ohm https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_ohm Sat, 19 Sep 2026 13:12:00

This is an intentionally simplistic statement but in their core, Red Hot Chili Peppers are a fun band. They started out as a party band and though they have grown and evolved beyond those early days of feral feel-good chaos, a party band is what they have continued to be in their heart: the good time boys, the funky monks, et al. Even as their stylistic breadth has evolved and changed from decade to decade, I don't seek any of their albums out primarily for their artistic depth nor was that what drew me into them in the first place either, and I get the impression that for all their genuine conviction and craft, the baseline of their album creation process stems from the joy of making noise with close compatriots rather a desire to challenge themselves or explore hidden avenues per se. If we consider the notion that good music should hit you in at least one of your heart, balls or brains (a saying which I think may have even come from Flea in an interview?), the Peppers' music lands firmly in the first two categories and rarely the third for me

One Hot Minute is a different story. For one, it's about the furthest thing from having fun as you can get. John Frusciante had helped to propel the band to stardom and then left abruptly in the middle of their 1992 tour, citing dissatisfaction with fame; a short while later he disappeared into a drug hole and hung onto the edge of his life while rejecting the help of his friends. The rest of the squad now faced the gargantuan task of trying to follow Blood Sugar Sex Magik while also dealing with the fact that one of the key players in its enormous success had vanished. From that starting point the band found themselves at the bottom of a mountain staring at a constantly growing avalanche heading their way. Kiedis, who had been sober for years, relapsed and started using drugs again, missing sessions and beginning to behave in in increasingly erratic ways through dramatic mood swings. Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix, two close friends of the whole band, both met their early death aroud this period and their loss reminded everyone again about the fickle nature of mortality, and resurfaced their worries about where Kiedis was heading with his behaviour. After going through a couple of guitarists in very short succession to finish the tours, Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro had been recruited as Frusciante's fixed replacement and became another fine example of how being great friends with someone doesn't necessarily mean you make good bandmates. The recording sessions were marred with delays due to Kiedis abandoning everything in favour of ad hoc benders, the energy in the studio was tense and awkward as Navarro and the rest of the gang tried to search for chemistry and write songs in the middle of all this turmoil, and it was becoming clear to Warner that whatever was happening wasn't going to result in another "Give It Away" or "Under the Bridge". One Hot Minute is a document of a band on the verge of a breakdown, a snapshot of a group of people wanting to crawl under a hole and vanish forever but unable to do so. It is the sound of brains and hearts - and balls, too - under duress and practically burning to death.

These circumstances were never going to make for a fun album. Nor were they really conducive to anything positively inspirational or aspirational, either, with no space for the band to explore how to take their game to the next level based on the lessons learned the last time around. Instead, the creation process was wrought with a whole load of turbulent emotions and they had to go somewhere. They were ultimately channeled into how the band played their instruments as their jams became as twisted and loaded as the tension and trauma bubbling underneath, where every movement of the hand on the frets was guided by pure intuition and expression to brew a storm. I hate the implication that true art is angsty, but all this heavy air hanging around the bend caused them to take bolder, more fearless steps to the abyss to see what would stare back, musically speaking. One Hot Minute sounds absolutely nothing like any other Red Hot Chili Peppers album in a myriad of ways; and that is one reason why it stands out as one of their most genuinely fascinating, captivating records.


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_bssm https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_bssm Tue, 8 Sep 2026 21:07:00

This chronological run-through of the Chili Peppers' albums that I've been doing while reviewing them is now reaching the point where the band's history becomes intertwined with mine. At the time when I got into the band, ca. turn of the millennium, Blood Sugar Sex Magik was something akin to the RHCP 101 lesson to help one really understand who they were. Not only did I spend a lot of time rinsing this record out over and over again, but so did my two best friends and the bond we shared over this band's music felt particularly resonating with the sort-of brotherhood that RHCP outwardly portrayed to represent. It was through the songs of this album specifically that I learned to understand how to listen to the bass guitar as its individual instrument instead of it simply leading the rhythm invisibly in the background, as one of my friends had begun to play bass and had bought the tab book for this album; it was hearing him play the songs in basements and bedrooms without any other accompaniment that tuned me into just how vivid Flea's bass parts were, which I then began to pick up when listening to the album as well - and every album going forward, regardless of who was doing the bass duties. So, there is a lot loaded onto this record and though the basis of my positive adoration for this album lies in the songs, it's all amplified by the sentiment that I feel them all through my bones and my blood, intimately attuned to each lyric and melodic run in my mind and my heart.

In that light, it's particularly curious to me how as time has continued its stroll forward, you've really been able to observe how it has reshaped the legacy of the Chili Peppers' discography and what that's done to Blood Sugar Sex Magik. As the band has continued to gain newer generations of fans, it's the second Frusciante era albums around the 2000s that have become the fixed cornerstones and go-tos; Blood Sugar Sex Magik, once heralded as their quintessential classic record, seems to have lost some of its prestigious foothold almost completely outside the older listeners. Fair play - I, too, think RHCP have recorded better albums. But I don't think any of them have come even close to just how Blood Sugar Sex Magik captures the group's essence. It all boils down to a perfect concentrate here - the influences from punk and metal to funk and the band's role in defining what alternative rock meant in the 1990s, the energy of four minds forming a single musical brain as they jam together and how that feeds into the increasingly more elaborate songwriting which shaped those jams into musical suites that have stood the test of time, the brotherhood, the politics, the horniness (as welcome or unwelcome as it may), the ambition, the earnestness, the balls and the heart. Blood Sugar Sex Magik is the apex of the band's musical story, distilled into one record which lies as the center where everything else leads to or stems from. You don't get to those later albums without this, and here they still sound so hungry and unchained rather than the more professional expertise as they'd become veterans of their trade.

The reason Blood Sugar Sex Magik is like this is all down to great timing as everything comes together just right for the Peppers. This was the band's fifth album but for the first time(!) they began the sessions with the exact same line-up as the last time around: the success of Mother's Milk and the label change had them motivated and energised, and the big promo tour behind that album had transformed the new four-piece into a tighter unit and grown them as musicians. This is especially true for Frusciante, who had not only been emboldened to tap into his full range of influences but who had started to develop his own playing style of equal parts hard funk riffs and new, more elaborate melodies where the space between the notes was as important as the actual sound, and he was using it to maximum effect in his increasingly more elaborate melodies. Rick Rubin takes the producer's seat for the first time and immediately strikes a one-to-one connection with the band, in equal parts giving them the uncontrolled free range to go where they please while also guiding their talent and encouraging them to take risk; this collaboration would eventually get a bit too cosy for everyone involved, but after a near-lifetime of tug-of-war producer relationships, Rubin's immediate chemistry has given the band an enviroment where they can flourish without stress. Speaking of environments, the decision was made for the entire crew to move together into the mansion that served as both their practice space and recording studio (all apart from Smith, who preferred to drive his bike to work each morning), which further contributed to the sense of comradery and relaxed freedom that fueled the sessions to come. Blood Sugar Sex Magik was given just about the most ideal set of circumstances to bloom in, and the recording sessions captured the band at the perfect interval between mastering their craft and still having that young and unwavering enthusiasm. All of that is loud and present on the record: while the starting point is largely the same as where they left with Mother's Milk, everything is now effortlessly and naturally more elaborate, more confident and more adventurous.


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/daftpunk#dp_disco https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/daftpunk#dp_disco Thu, 27 Aug 2026 17:41:00

Discovery represents something very specific for me and as it'll colour the rest of this review, I'll touch upon it immediately: to me, Discovery is about togetherness and sharing something with the people you love. That sense of communality is something that streches across Daft Punk's ouevre as a whole but if there's a central manifestation of it, it's this album. Discovery did, after all, take over the world - or at least that's how it felt like. The singles swept every airwave and reached everyone from the musos to the general public, the music videos (excerpts from Interstella 5555, a full-length anime film built around the album) jumped out and caught everyone's attention when they appeared on the TV during a period when anime was just about to hit properly mainstream as a concept of its own and so they seemed fascinatingly novel, and no matter where you went or who you talked to everyone seemed to be familiar with the songs. All that contributed to a kind of shared experience with the record, which now means that whenever anyone plays anything from Discovery you will have everyone in the room reliving all those memories and shared moments of joy as they engage in the creation of new ones, singing and dancing together. That includes people who weren't even around when the album first came out - Discovery has been rife for, well, discovery of its own across generational gaps and it (and Daft Punk in general) has established itself as a record which really unites everyone regardless of age or taste.

It is also a really great album as a piece of music, which helps.

For Daft Punk, Discovery represented change. Homework had been a huge hit and it spearheaded the French house movement, and thus in the couple of years afterwards everyone had started to sound a little like Daft Punk. So, the duo opted to go for something different for their next full-length and over the interim period they plotted a sound that was built more around sampling while paying homage to the duo's love for classic 70s disco maximalism, without ditching where they came from. The sound brings together unabashedly retro fixations with a keen eye on contemporary tricks and considerations of how the future might sound, and that potpourri of elements gives the whole affair a senseless, timeless feel as it bounces from one influence to another. The debut album's success meant they could also afford to dream a little larger: they could afford to clear the samples they wanted to include (some of them anyway - others remain uncredited), they had the funds to commission said full-scale anime film from a professional studio spearheaded by one of their favourite anime directors, and they carried enough clout to transform themselves into something more fantastical as well. The iconic robot look makes its first appearance on Discovery's liner notes, with the aim to remove any trace of two ordinary guys working hard to make music and to replace it with something more out of this world, to really sell the visiong of everything being something extraordinary. Daft Punk were to no longer be just another dance act, they wanted to be a concept - two robots trying to understand humanity and creating songs that anyone could latch and imprint themselves onto, embracing anonymity to allow for universality.


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/daftpunk#dp_hw https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/daftpunk#dp_hw Wed, 12 Aug 2026 21:06:00

My life with Daft Punk didn't really begin properly until Discovery, but Homework did the groundwork. As elaborated in the intro segment, seeing the video for "Around the World" randomly on MTV in the late 1990s is one of those formative music moments of my youth that I now wax poetic about. I may not have been a cool young adult in New York who was discovering club music in the indie discos, but I was an easily impressionable yound mind who was entranced by how "Around the World" didn't really sound like anything else I had heard of before then, and it helped develop the understanding and taste for what would come eventually. The album, though, didn't quite become the gateway you'd perhaps have thought it would be. It's quite amusing how around its release this was lauded as a shake-up, and now in the context of everything since it's the humblest beginnings you could imagine for the duo. In good of course, but also with the bit of awkwardness that sometimes comes with that.

I feel like Homework doesn't get brought up as often anymore when Daft Punk is discussed, as Discovery (the millennial classic), Human After All (the black sheep) and Random Access Memories (the next gen classic) all now occupy that conversation space with greater prevalence. That's possibly because they've all got their big contextual stories around them, and meanwhile Homework is just two guys banging out the tunes in their basement parties. It is the only Daft Punk album where the duo aren't challenged by the prospect of being Daft Punk (they even appear without the robot gear in the booklet photo) and thus there are no larger-than-life concepts, reinventions or expectations at play. Instead, what you've got is a splash of excited noise-making, the duo keeping things simple (partly because they don't yet have the means for anything more opulent) while paying homage to their inspirations, but accidentally leaving their own mark on the proceedings to such an extent that the entire vague concept of 'French house' was born here. It's about as unguarded as Daft Punk can get and that's fun to hear in the wider context, but ultimately what this boils down to is that Bangalter and de Homem-Christo are still in the phase of just throwing things together and being too thrilled about it to care what sticks. The album is by and large built around the repetition of small segments in an effort to piece together a ladder to club time euphoria, but Homework is a hefty 74-minute chunk of music and not everything within it is worth repeating as much. Would we, for example, really be missing out on anything crucial if e.g. "Rollin' and Scratchin'" or "Rock'n Roll" were half their length or maybe even completely absent from the album? Their squelchy and screetchy migraine-pounding 5-second loops get downright exhausting after a couple of minutes, let alone seven and a half, and though they are the most extreme examples of the album twitching still until its worn a groove on the ground, there are plenty of other moments where Homework starts to drain its own energy, as one economically skeletal backbeat loop after another keeps monotonously churning on without being able to lift you off your feet as intended. I don't often get exhausted by long albums but Homework can sometimes feel like its namesake.


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_oila https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_oila Sun, 02 Aug 2026 19:14:00

EMI were keen to get some extra cash in their pockets after the Peppers had suddenly blown up worldwide immediately after their exit from the label, and a couple of years after the cash-in compilation What Hits!? the label started clearing the vaults for a second round. By 1994 it was becoming commonplace for bands to build a reputation through the off-cuts they'd leave as single b-sides, so a selection of odds, sods and discards wasn't the wildest idea out there; the problem EMI faced is that RHCP only started to really release unique studio cuts as b-sides after they left the label and they weren't exactly productive outside their albums in general. To their credit EMI do seem to have put some amount of effort into pulling together a reasonable set of rarities from what they could find. But when what you're working with isn't exactly worth a shout to start with, you're bound for an underwhelming trip.

Out in L.A. is neatly grouped into sections and it starts off with the more imminently presentable material of the lot, i.e. some remixes - at least these had some weight (and production quality) under them. It's an alright start: the 12" mix of "Higher Ground" adds a very late 80s hip-hop beat to the song and extends some of the instrumental breaks, with a few brand new rap lines from Kiedis thrown in for good measure, and the extended mix of "Hollywood (Africa)" is exactly what it says on the label and simply lengthens the original song by a couple of minutes to give it a more locked-in, jam-like groove quality. Neither are versions that you'd ever reach out for specifically, but they have their own debatable positives and certainly do a better job than the other two remixes. The Pink Mustang mix of "If You Want Me to Stay" (third remix of a cover in a row!) takes way too long to get a point where something interesting happens, i.e. when the rather unexciting dance beat segues into a segment of the original song before pulling back again, and the Ben Grosse version of "Behind the Sun" is 1:1 with the original outside making the instruments sound a lot more overproduced, and it leaves an impression of simply being unnecessary. After the four remixes comes the live section of the compilation, all captured during the 1989 tour, which continues with the covers by way of a decent if slightly ropey version of Jimi Hendrix's "Castles Made of Sand" and the very brief Thelonius Monk loan "F.U." which during a live set would be a nice enough intermission, but on an album like this strikes as desperation to find anything to fill the disc. They bookend a live rendition of "Special Secret Song Inside" which is... pretty fine actually, with plenty of the band's energy coming through. Though the song itself may be somewhat dodgy from a contemporary perspective the recording here demonstrates how easy it was for this band at this time to sell it just through their sheer performance. It's no hidden gem, but it does lead you to wonder if a full-on live album would've been a better deal.


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_wh https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_wh Tue, 28 Jul 2026 19:36:00

Mother's Milk had been the Chili Peppers' breakthrough album and had become a genuine hit, but after the tour and promotional duties had wound down, the band and their team all shared the same thought: it could have been an even bigger hit. The relationship between EMI and the band had never been particularly great and though EMI had put some effort into Mother's Milk that helped it become successful, they had only bothered promoting it in the US - when the Peppers toured Europe they were practically unknown and the contrast felt even starker now than it had before. At the same time other labels were starting to get interested in signing the group, especially as the word got out that they weren't particularly happy about continuing under EMI, and eventually Warner Bros attracted their attention. The problem is that they still had three albums left in their contract with EMI so they couldn't just exit. But Warner put their money where their mouth is and settled a deal with EMI to allow the band to exit early in exchange for cold hard cash and a couple of other conditions. One of these was that EMI negotiated the right to choose one song from the band's first album with Warner to include in a future compilation.

And that, my friends, is the answer to the frequently asked question of why on earth is "Under the Bridge" on this compilation.

As for the rest of this compilation that EMI released fairly soon after Blood Sugar Sex Magik had become a global mega smash, the self-snarking title is very accurate given under EMI's wing the band only ever had two real hits ("Higher Ground" and "Knock Me Down"). The rest of What Hit!?, then, is made up of what an average person would consider the easy picks for the créme de la créme of RHCP's first four albums of manic funk rock. All the singles are accounted for, as are all the songs that weren't explicitly singles but had videos made for promotional purposes - so everything that someone could have feasily heard in the radio or seen on MTV at some point. The rest of the tracklist is rounded up by a bunch of album tracks that you can easily agree with: "Me & My Friends" is arguably survived as the most iconic song of the band's 80s in their personal canon (and still gets played live today), "Behind the Sun" was everyone's highlight of The Uplift Mofo Party Plan and was finally released as a promotional single for this compilation after being denied such treatment by EMI back in 1987, "Fire" was played live all the time during the band's early shows and it opened the UK-only The Abbey Road EP so reasonably could have been familiar to some, "The Brothers Cup" has its place in the band's mythos by referencing the injoke antics that Kiedis and Flea tried to make into a thing in the early days, etc. There's a couple of more intriguing picks like choosing "Johnny, Kick a Hole in the Sky" out of all the remaining tracks on Mother's Milk after the singles (I'm not complaining, I love the song, but it's a weird pick), and the cover of "If You Want Me to Stay" is presumably only here because it's a cover of a song you likely recognise rather than because it's in any way an essential part of the band's history. For all intents and purposes it's a good selection and the songs are split decently equally across the albums, even if the debut gets the short straw with just two songs - if you only ever wanted to own one album to represent the band's 1980s period in your shelf, it'd be difficult to argue that this doesn't act as a strong summary of the early years.


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_mm https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_mm Sat, 25 Jul 2026 14:00:00

Hillel Slovak's death to an overdose in June 1988 is the keystone event in the Chili Peppers' story that changed the course of their history forever. The tragic loss of Slovak - a slip-up after a period of attempted but ultimately failed sobriety - caused Irons to suffer a severe mental health breakdown which meant he left the band as well. On the flipside, for Kiedis the death of his heterosexual soulmate might have indirectly saved his own life, as at the time he was a lot more reckless with drugs than Hillel had been and whose survivor's guilt scared him straight - he'd swear off drugs from hereon in, bar one unfortunate temporary relapse. While Slovak's death would cause a hole in both Kiedis and Flea's hearts that would never heal, the effects of which would be felt for the rest of the band's life, after a period of grief both men realised they wanted to continue playing music (and in some ways, had to continue given EMI's insistence on them not breaking their contract). The most fateful impact of this whole tragedy would be how this forced period of change opened the way for messiers John Frusciante and Chad Smith to join the band.

Smith, picked from a group of blind auditions, was a powerhouse drummer who wielded all of the groove of funk, the primal strength of hard rock and the technical mastery to spar and weave with the rest of the band's instrumentalists to encourage everyone to step up to a new level. With him Peppers inherited a fiercely tight and powerful backbone the kind of which their previous (while still talented) drummers didn't have. Michael Beinhorn returned as the producer for the album and once again arrived with some strong convictions of what the album should achieve, one of them being an obsession with making things heavier - which was a challenge Smith proved to be more than capable to handle (is that a double kick drum I hear on the almost metal-esque "Nobody Weird Like Me"?) and he bears a lot of responsibility for Mother's Milk to sound as dyinamic as does. But the greatest transformation came with the wunderkind John Frusciante, barely over 18 at the time he was recruited to the band. He not only had mad technical chops way beyond his age that could not only perfectly replicate Slovak's style but also go beyond, but he also brought in something that the band's previous guitarists had lacked - an ear for an earnest melody. Great as his guitar playing is, Frusciante's most important contribution to the Peppers was his already considerable talent as a writer and an arranger, which almost overnight expanded the band's musical approach way beyond what they had ever tried before. Everyone in the band credits Frusciante for opening new doors for the group through the Mother's Milk sessions and the album bears that change proudly.

Mother's Milk is a vibrant burst of absolutely everything that was inspiring the band and coursing through their musical veins during that blessed honeymoon period of four new blood brothers finding each other. It covers a massive amount of ground from the band's usual funk rock antics to punk rock and vibrantly melodic moments of genuine prettiness, and the topics in them run through both skin-shedding emotion as Kiedis begins to explore new areas lyrically as well as some dubious horniness. Copious amounts of backing vocals coat most songs, Flea brings out his trumpet for the first time, there's an instrumental, they cover other people with Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" and Jimi Hendrix's "Fire" both receiving the Peppers treatment, and the latter is actually a live recording from a few years earlier when Slovak and Irons were still in the band, their frequent setlist cover of choice included as a direct tribute to those who aren't here anymore. In just 13 tracks Mother's Milk goes everywhere and all at once, barely pausing for breath - but it's obvious the messiness stems from it simply being impossible for the band to stop trying new things. Some credit to Beinhorn as well - while he did start to get on the band's nerves so much that they wouldn't work together again, his insistence of playing the songs as many times as possible until the absolutely best take possible was captured does mean that even the songs clearly destined for most people's filler folders turn into something that can excite: the basketball chant "Magic Johnson" (the fleeting moment where each member gets to shout a line is one of the most memorable couple of seconds on the record) and the snotty MTV-snarking minute-long sneer "Punk Rock Classic" really punch way more engagingly than they ought to. Heck, the designated intermission "Pretty Little Ditty" - a 1:36 instrumental - has become one of the album's definining moments given its unexpected moment of serenity does the utmost to highlight Frusciante's style as a guitarist (and I suppose we do have to blame Crazy Town for some of its retrospective fame...).

Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/tigerbombs https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/tigerbombs Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:50:00

If you were paying attention to the Finnish independent music scene around the mid-2000s (you're saying you weren't?), you might have come across a cute cartoony music video that was doing minor laps in the pre-social media facing internet. In the Flash-animated clip a plucky fox with a bright blue hoodie travels across the world from the polar caps to the plains of a slightly stereotypical Japan (more ninjas and sumos than anything dubious), teaching everyone he encounters a simple little dance until everyone across the world is dancing in unison - including the viewer, if you follow the on-screen choreography instructions. It's a simple but an incredibly charming video that stood out particularly in comparison to most other Finnish indie videos which usually were either backyard productions, art films or both. The song playing on top of the video was a spunky and bright power pop anthem with a precision-aimed earworm chorus hook and a delightfully enthusiastic vocal performance radiating energy through the Nordic-twanged accent - to be more precise, it was "1000 Sparks" by Tigerbombs who never had any real mainstream success, but who in my mind were a real hitmaker with the song.

Tigerbombs were the project of multi-instrumentalists Tommi Salminen and Jarkko Heiniö - AKA Pepe Trouble and Kido Retro as they're credited in the liner notes - who had been playing in the same bands and then decided to strike out on their own. As is clear from their chosen monikers the duo weren't in the game for serious art, though they were taking their art seriously of course. Their relentlessly upbeat disposition and sparkling energy has a sense of exciting naïveté to it, singing silly songs about infatuation punctuated by corny puns and cheesy punchlines. Even their album title is a little smile-raiser - "Tigerbombs Loves You", aww. It's a project of simple pleasures, perfectly equipped for the times when all you need and want is a bunch of cheery, charming choruses and a sunny disposition. The guitars are equal parts tight and ramshackle, the fuzzy vocal filter makes it sound like you're listening to a broadcast of an old hit playing from an all-bangers radio station, and the campily bright organs and other keyboard sounds give it that particularly mid-2000s iPod commercial sheen. Plus there's a whole lot of passion all over the place: you can absolutely hear that the duo are having the time of their lives putting these silly noisy pop songs on tape.


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/sonicthehedgehog#sonic_sc https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/sonicthehedgehog#sonic_sc Fri, 26 Jun 2026 23:02:00

Like a true band back catalogue, the Sonic series' ebbs and flows are also often determined by the reaction and self-reflection on what came immediately before. The reception of Sonic Unleashed ranged from one end to another but what pretty much everyone agreed upon was that the daytime stages where Sonic zoomed through tricky environments in boost speed were exciting and really reflected the character's core characteristic of high-speed action. It would've been silly of Sonic Team not to start from there when they started sketching out Sonic Colors. The final game is a borderline exaggeration of that core thesis: not only is Sonic once again dashing in mad speed through wild environments, but entire game is also set in a galactic theme park full of bright neon colours, the tone and plot are kept casual and light, and by utilising the transformative powers of the Wisps that act as the game's power-ups, the breaks taken from all the running around were just as vivid and cartoon-like as Sonic shifts into drills, rockets and giant spike balls to mess around with the environment in different ways. The soundtrack was built from the ground-up to follow suite: bright, bursting with energy and whimsy, never getting too slow or atmospheric even during its intended lulls. Sonic Colors is all about good vibes, and its soundtrack - mostly scored by Ohtani but with a bit of help from stalwarts like Mariko Nanba and Kenichi Tokoi - is a battering ram of relentless positivity.

One thing of note about the Colors soundtrack, before we get into the actual music, is that despite this Tomoya Ohtani's third game as the series' musical director, it's only now that we finally get our first glimpse of what the signature Ohtani sound is like. Admittedly, you can make a very good argument that there is no such thing as a signature sound for Ohtani: over the years the man has proven himself to master all kinds of stylistic ranges and genres and he's shown a keen, open desire to experiment with entirely new ideas for different games which has lead to some significant changes in sound even between adjacent titles. But Ohtani loves high-BPM programmed beats, vividly masterful bass lines that bounce around with mystifying finesse and attention-seizing synth lines that punch in the melodies with gusto. The exact set dressings might change - sometimes he's discovered a love for mallcore guitars, other times he's busy throwing ideas at an orchestra or lives a period of time as a dance pop producer - but the heart and soul of Ohtani's era as the series' sound director is the thrill and excitement of fast-paced rhythms combining with upbeat centerpiece melodies. Vivid Sounds x Hybrid Colors is that taken to one extreme, but it lays out a blueprint for future Sonic games to follow and in practice establishes the series' next musical identity that's running to this very day (as I'm writing this in 2026).


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_tumpp https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_tumpp Thu, 18 June 2026 20:31:00

It's the third album for the Peppers, and it's also their third line-up shuffle. This time things were a little more mutual though. While Martinez enjoyed playing with the rest of the gang he was starting to feel a little burned out and thinking about doing something different; the other three, however, had noticed the reducing motivation and before Martinez had the chance to dismiss himself the rest of the band asked him to leave (they're cool though - Martinez would later on fully agree it was the right call). But Kiedis, Flea and Slovak had other motives for the change in the drummer's seat as well - Jack Irons had recently found himself at the end of his tenure with What Is This and itched to return to play with his friends, and so space had to be cleared. This means that the Chili Peppers' third album finally features the actual, original Chili Peppers as they had formed back in the early 1980s, earning the quartet yet another chance at a new start in a tragicomical manner.

Spurred on by a chance meeting the band hooked up with the young Michael Beinhorn as the producer for the album, who had a clear objective for The Uplift Mofo Party Plan. He had been convinced by the band through watching them perform live but found that neither of their previous two albums had captured the energy and strength the band showcased while on stage. So, he set out to do so - and he succeeds. The Uplift Mofo Party Plan signals right from the start that it's meant to be played just as loud as the band themselves are. It's a lot more rock-oriented and dynamic than the first couple of albums too, emphasising the sheer muscle of the band as Irons' more hard-hitting style finds a good spot next to Flea's basswork and Slovak is given the musical environment to play his riffs harder and rowdier than the slim funk scratches of Freaky Styley. For the first time in studio the Peppers sound like the kind of natural rock and roll force that made them such a presence on live stages, even with some of the inescapable 80s-isms creeping into the production. But Beinhorn and his direction is just one part of that formula for a beefier sound; just as important is the simple fact that we have the original four members reunited at last. Peppers began as equal parts funk and punk after all but the latter had only been allowed to sneakily creep into the first couple of albums, but now that the original four friends are back together and they're calling the shots means that the original vision is allowed to come through completely uncompromised. The Uplift Mofo Party Plan rocks hard and it's because the songs are built that way: how the punkier songs like "Skinny Sweaty Man", "No Chump Love Sucker", and canon-iconic BFF anthem "Me & My Friends" have real sweat on their brow and fire in their belly, the earnestly anthemic choruses to "Fight Like a Brave" and "Organic Anti-Beat Box Band" pack a resonantly powerful kick to them, and when "Love Trilogy" accelerates towards its untethered all-out finale the gang sounds more dangerous than they've ever managed to present themselves as. This is, arguably, what the Peppers should have sounded like from the beginning, had circumstances not gotten in the way.


Read the full review through the link!
]]> https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_fs https://grumpfox.neocities.org/artists/rhcp#rhcp_fs Sat, 6 June 2026 15:57:00

Jack Sherman's days in the Red Hot Chili Peppers were numbered to begin with but his fate was sealed the very moment that Hillel Slovak was expressing doubts about his future in What Is This and started to reconsider joining his friends over in the Peppers gang. But, before Kiedis and Flea had the chance to unceremoniously kick him out in a manner which makes you feel even more sorry for the guy, Sherman ended up altering the course of the entire good ship RHCP by introducing his bandmates to Parliament Funkadelic. Early Peppers had been equal parts funk and punk but somehow George Clinton's genre-defining project had completely missed them, and discovering them was a damn near religious revelation for Kiedis and Flea. So much so that after Sherman had gotten the boot, Slovak had reunited with his besties and it was time to start recording album #2, the band suggested Clinton should produce it. To everyone's surprise Clinton actually agreed, and not just that but he invited the entire band to live with him for a good month before the sessions began in order to build some chemistry and work on the material. The Chili Peppers' second album was already off to a much better start than their debut.

Freaky Styley acts as a soft reboot for the still-young band - a second chance at a debut, if you will. Everything is simply clicking together much better this time around. The band was back in good spirits now that Slovak was back and Clinton not only proved to be a much more supportive producer who saw the band's vision, but he took on a guiding father figure presence throughout his time together with the gang and nudged them towards decisions he felt the band would benefit from without sacrificing creative control. Clinton's production touch captures the Peppers in a lot more natural environment, jamming together in the same room and emphasising their natural talent in locking into grooves and finding a funky foot-tapping rhythm, and he encourages and emphasises that side of the band to the point that this is probably the Peppers' funkiest album. This is also where Martinez really shows what he's made out of, as his natural style slots so perfectly into these slippier grooves that this album makes a strong case of him having been the funkiest Pepper to have ever drummed on one of their albums. The naughty punk boys side of the band is allowed to co-exist as well and a number of songs that were axed from the debut due to creative disagreements with Andy Gill (e.g. "Nevermind") have been given a thumbs up from Clinton, and you can tell which ones they are because of all the high-speed thrashing around and unchained chaos some of the songs exude (sometimes to their benefit and other times not). The arrangements overall regardless of the nature of the songs are richer courtesy of Clinton's court of session musicians eager to lend backing vocals, percussion and most prominently horn sections behind the band, but the Peppers' own identity is retained, for most parts. The main exceptions there are the two covers of The Meters' "Africa" (now rebranded as "Hollywood" to suit the Peppers better as they sing about their brotherland) and Sly & the Family Stone's "If You Want Me to Stay"; both are extremely slick, smooth and all-around pretty good performances, but perhaps a bit too reverent to the originals in a way that leaves them sounding a little sterile - I can only imagine it's because of the pressure of recording these in the company of Clinton who gave them the idea to begin with. They sound like an like an extended thank you to Clinton rather than something the band would have thought to put on the album by themselves - but given they're decent covers, it's a small price to pay for the Peppers otherwise getting to let loose in their own way across the record.


Read the full review through the link!
]]>