The Songs We Can't Escape

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More About

• Ariel Pink
• Ariel Rosenberg
• Fela Kuti
• Crime and Law
• Crime

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Infinite Body
"A Fool Persists"

Amid screaming, pixilated fields of sonic scrub, here's a magic-of-Disney escalator-to-nowhere your inner child can believe in, if only for two fleeting minutes.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
"Round and Round"

These days, Ariel Rosenberg's bent, misanthropic freak show is less solo bedroom-recording project and more full-band enterprise, and the outfit's first new single in eons reflects this shift; pop's plastic building blocks are still being melted down and reconstituted as retro-aesthetic monuments, but said monuments no longer sound like they're liable to collapse under threat of a stiff breeze. Which is to say: no more mouth-drums!

Billy Bao
"Untitled track 2, from May 08"

This mysterious crew's expertise lies in making crusty, smash-and-trash machinist punk; on this track they stash primo Fela Kuti samples in the pig-fuck melee. Epic fail, but makes for an intriguing contrast-qua-synthesis.

Child Abuse
"Hold This"

The full-bore violence of Child Abuse's music—noisome, growly synth-metal that gives no quarter—is roughly equivalent to the group's unsavory namesake, even if it's nowhere near as psychically scarring as Whitehouse. Still, seriously, what do you do if, while jamming out to Cut and Run, someone overhears the sounds leaking from your iPod earbuds and wants to know what's playing? "This is Child Abuse, it's totally dope" just doesn't feel like an intuitively proper response.

T.I.
"I'm Back"

So he is, so he is. But what of it? "I'm Back" doesn't offer a single reason why anybody who isn't a member of his entourage should care. Tap me on the shoulder when Playboy Tre drops a new mixtape.