The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

aphrodisiac

[#] In Free Fall (2019)

Moldy basement cleanup.

Reviewed April 1, 2025

Imagine you took a 16-year-old with no music training, but a bit of an idea how you play a major scale on piano. Say he listens to too much Big Black, and his one musical trick is to make a drum machine sound like a brick in a washing machine. He makes an EP and then, slightly more grown, decides to pay tribute to the years of dicking around as a teenager by packaging up his best old material into one full-length alongside his true debut of all-new songs. Then those new songs get lost. It's a tragic tale that would derail any music career, and it seems it did aphrodisiac's, but hey—at least In Free Fall came out kinda cool.

"I know the whole Apricot Bay thing is your stupid coping method," goes the fruity incel voicemail on the closer "Kaden" shortly before the whole thing gets buried in a grindy avalanche of ghostly plinks and razor-buzz bass. There's still not much catchy about aphrodisiac's shtick, and "This Nadir" and "Chimerical" are still underwritten missed opportunities, but the extra layers and more direct mixes help these songs to play as well as they possibly could. Better yet is when there is something catchy or atmospheric to it—"Disco Jellyfish" is one of the catchiest thumps aphrodisiac has come up with to date, and you can't argue with that breezy-yet-airless coda on "Ghostgrove Point". Least I can't.

Essential:	"Apologies to the Disco Jellyfish", "At Ghostgrove Point", "Kaden"
Quintessential:	"A Crush of Bodies"
Non-Essential:	"Chimerical"
Rating:
Further listening:	Download from aphrodisiac's Bandcamp