CD reviews

TRAVIS SCOTT Astroworld

TRAVIS Scott is a conductor rather than a rapper on Astroworld, his chart-topping third album. It’s easy to imagine him standing over a cauldron adding a pinch of this and a splash of that — and then 25 other elements — and then end, boom! A song appears when the smoke clears. While a seemingly endless list of people contributed to each of these songs, it is Scott who directs the show. Somehow it is succinct, well-rounded, exciting and well-executed. Musically

Astroworld is grandiose and boundarypushing in an A$AP Rocky type of way, where he blends sounds from outside his genre into trap music, such as fluttering flutes or harmonicas played by music legends. In his mind these organic elements sit alongside the rapid-fire high hats and the deep booming bass hits of modern rap. That legend? None other than Stevie Wonder. Scott also taps John Mayer, James Blake, Frank Ocean, Aussie genius Kevin Parker from Tame Impala, bass guru Thundercat, and a whole host of young rappers to work on this record. He got Kid Cudi to pop by the studio, hum, and then leave. Vibes. Atmosphere. That’s what Scott is about. He also seems to like to catch the listener off-guard. Never mind the fact that Drake sounds more enthusiastic and feverish on

Sicko Mode than he did on his own album. The song is also kind of three songs jammed into one. When the beat switch happens it knocks socks off. The song is a kaleidoscope. Then there is the sonically intricate RIP

Screw with its woozy synths, the psychedelic Stargazing and Skeletons, the highly personal confessions about unexpected parenthood on Coffee Bean, the grimy No Bystanders and the menacing NC-17. Over and over Astroworld delivers much more than the one-trick trap pony people may have had Scott pegged as.

HYBRID Light of the Fearless

FOR almost a decade cinematic progressive-breaks outfit Hybrid have been working in Hollywood rather than writing music for nightclubs and festivals. That includes soundtracks for 16 movies, from X-Men to the most recent Fast and

the Furious film. Now the Brits are back writing their own material again, and this album has quite a few surprises. The opening song We

Are Fearless has that early 2000s breaks sound that you would expect from the duo, and if this album was an hour of that music, that would be rad. Instead, they do a bit of everything, from pop music ( Hold Your Breath) to drum ’n’ bass ( Down to the Wire). Their music has always had a grand, orchestral feel, but on this album they have a 52-member orchestra from Prague performing on almost every song. The lavish details that this affords them sets this album apart from Hybrid’s imitators. The album closes with an unexpected and rather lovely cover of a Tom Petty song, I

Won’t Back Down. Huh.