This week, Kanye West's The Life Of Pablo is obviously the album sucking up all the oxygen in the room, and deservedly so. Even beyond that, though, this is a very good week for people toying around with their given genres and pushing past perceived limits. I'm a big fan of Prins Thomas' Principe Del Norte, a spaced-out and expansive mood-music fusion of ambient house and krautrock, and of Lushlife's beautifully discordant shoegaze-rap opus Ritualize. But for me, the most exciting non-Kanye album of the week isn't an album at all. It's an EP: Euphoria, the five-song debut from AMTHST, the unlikely duo of Droop-E, the Bay Area rapper and producer, and Nite Jewel, the Los Angeles haze-pop auteur.
