Apocalypse Soon

Album review

Featuring five of the most inspired tracks to come out of Diplo's Major Lazer project, Apocalypse Soon is futuristic island hopping at its finest, incorporating a whirlwind of slick subgenres from locations both tropical (dancehall, soca, and dub) and trap (booming hip-hop and trap music itself). This compact party starter is a hook-filled monster as well, kicking off with the Pharrell feature "Aerosol Can," a track which combines graffiti culture and Ying Yang Twins-styled silliness for the EP's most poptacular moment. After that cool shoulder bopper, the kinetic "Come on to Me" with Sean Paul seems like a firework show gone haywire as trap music devours dancehall, or maybe vice-versa. Featuring Machel Montano, "Sound Bang" is the wild clash of EDM and soca with rum-fueled chants and Harlem-skanking all about; then things wind down with the weird sound of dancehall hit "Dutty Wine"-meeting-'80s legends Duran Duran ("Lose Yourself" featuring RDK and Moska) plus the sonic equivalent of Three 6 Mafia pimping across the set of any given Hostel movie ("Dale Asi," where the great Mr. Fox rhymes "Candy Crush" and "Chris Bosch"). Looking at Major Lazer's previous releases, the whole Rasta zombie-hunter concept is applied the least to this one, but it's not missed, either. Apocalypse Soon is too fast and mean to be bogged down by any comic book extras, and besides, the music is weird enough and wild enough on its own.

© David Jeffries /TiVo