Category: REVIEWS

Above any album or single releases, CONCERTS had to be the best thing about music in 2017. It wasn’t necessarily the dissidence in the air but rather the acts that chose to play in Los Angeles, that made the year so good. Bands like James Chance and The Contortions made their fateful returns to our city after over twenty years of hiding on the East Coast. Audioslave reunited for the first time in ages and tragically ended up simultaneously playing their final show at the Teragram Ballroom. Every band in the Big 4 of Thrash was on tour in 2017. Lets also not forget that Iggy fucking Pop played four festivals and during every set he raged like it was 1987. The concerts were great and somehow the festivals only got better, FYF expanded this year to three days and got Frank Ocean to serenade us like only he can; Desert Daze had King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Sleep absolutely kill it; and Sound and Fury raged with Trapped Under Ice and Turnstile headlining. I think 2018 will have an impossible time trying to beat 2017 but who knows, Yanni’s on tour. Janky Smooth has listed our best

Low expectations for politics in 2017 made for high expectations in music and though this year saw revolution and protest turned into memes with albums like Eminen’s Revival, if you look closely, almost every genre had standout artists and a raising of the bar. Even hip hop, which was was dominated by trap artists like Post Malone hitting number 1 on Billboard, had more lyrical artists like Big K.R.I.T., Brockhampton, and Tyler, The Creator come out with career defining work. Metal saw old school bands like Obituary come out with incredible songs while newer ones like Power Trip, released their first true thrash anthem. Punk saw a similar phenomenon happen with Cocksparrer’s new joint and then Career Suicide’s. Even though Trump is our president and the Dodgers lost the World Series in game 7, music in Los Angeles, California in the year 2017 was exceptional, better than 2016. In 2017, the world of music realized it can weaponize quality just because it’s so damn good rather than try to convince us that musical weapons must be quality. This is not about albums or politics though, this is about SONGS. Five minutes of sound that capture the year, two minutes if you’re

Year end album reviews remind us at Janky Smooth why we’re so lucky to be covering the underground music scene in Los Angeles. Maybe, if there was no underground and all you could listen to was the chart toppers, then you wouldn’t even think there was anything special about 2017. What we have on our hands is actually a phenomenal year of music. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard released five albums in 2017… FIVE. King Krule transformed his career with The OOZ. And the direction of entire genres became more clear with releases by future heavyweights, like High-Functioning Flesh to industrial or Ho99o9 to hardcore punk… or is it the hard trap songs by the 999 we should be focusing on? Lets also not forget that Lil B, the Based God, finally blessed us with his much anticipated Black Ken. You can see music veering into more electronic and experimental directions both in the mainstream and underground spheres. Still though, the bands that use traditional instrumentation and vocals only seem to stay truer to their roots. Janky Smooth attempted to whittle down the best of 2017 down to ten albums and here are our expert opinions: TOP 10 ALBUMS OF

We take a fanboy/girl approach to music journalism in that most of us will gush over the artists we love and speak with a jaded cynicism about everyone else.  That isn’t what this list of Top 25 Bands & Artists to Check Out in 2017 is about, though. (see disclaimer below) Luckily, there are more bands and little pockets of diverse music, art collectives and scenes all throughout the city right now than there ever has been.  That’s not the weird part.  The weird part is that, love ’em or hate them; SO MANY of these bands, DJ’s, sound designers and MC’s are in it for authentic and genuine artistic motives.  Once, for all intents and purposes the music industry died, all the head shot, MI, blow dried Ken and Barbies that occupied a significant percentage of the “forever chasing the corporate art dollar” population in Los Angeles re-evaluated their lives, they scattered into television, movies and production and then… … the kids in the garages and practice spaces began their rule. Without the old worldwide distribution network and formulaic spreadsheets in place, the amount of time it takes for good bands to go from touring the west coast to touring

We don’t care what people say about you, 2016; Janky Smooth loves you.  Sure, you skull fucked the country with a culturally divisive presidential election that scrambled our brains, pitted us against each other and made propaganda the norm. Yes, we were able to normalize the images of police gunning down unarmed civilians in the street and forced us to redefine the word “justified”.   Granted, almost half of our country believes that global warming is either a hoax or overstated as the polar ice caps and ancient sea shelf melts and breaks off into the ocean at a rate more rapid than anyone could’ve dreamed or climate scientists had calculated.  Sure, you took a massive amount of musicians, actors, artists, leaders and athletes that basically everyone on the planet loves the most. But you know what?  At least you gave us some of the best independent hip hop, metal, electronic, punk and straight forward rock songs than any of your younger brother and sister centuries have sounded in quite some time.  So we forgive you but now, We The People of Janky Smooth have to make some decisions on our favorites from the best songs of 2016.  We’re up for

What the fuck is up with publications that post their best of, year end lists of favorite records, songs and shows at the beginning of December?  What’s more important- getting it out first or getting it “right”?   RTJ3 dropped on Xmas Day, hardly enough time to absorb an entire album, much less rank it toward the top for top records of the year.  But I would be pulling my own hair out if I missed acknowledging El-P as one of the best producers of this era, (sans the ghost writers that have become customary at his level).  El-P is one of the most underrated rappers in hip hop, maybe because of the un-equaled political and social rhyme and flow of Killer Mike, who probably SHOULD crush Kanye in the 2020 Democratic Primary for president, not to mention the vocal booth but would bet most pure hip hop publications would favor Life of Pablo over the 3rd album by two middle aged guys who were probably pretty close to looking for a day job before their self titled debut album dropped in 2013.   Day For Night Fest: Futurists of Audio & Visual Converge in Houston In my research to