Topic: 3:33 and Parallel Thought

[Quemaqua]

Recently introduced to these dudes through one of my writer buddies. Fucking good stuff. Hip hop and experimental music with strains of ambient/dark ambient/drone here and there. 3:33 has done a bunch of remixes of hip hop tunes, also their own instrumental albums, and Parallel Thought's Art of Sound is mostly instrumental with a few lyric tracks. Reminds me of everything from some of the hip hop I used to dig, to some of Akira Yamaoka's experimental stuff, to some darker trip-hop.

http://parallelthought.bandcamp.com/album/art-of-sound - "Swamper" I could keep on loop for days.
http://parallelthought.bandcamp.com/album/live-from-the-grove - Hard to pull standouts, love a lot of these. 2 and 5 are unique, and 4 makes me think of a ballsy Yamaoka.
http://parallelthought.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-middle-of-infinity - 3 makes me think of a couple darker/snappier tracks from the Silent Hill 4 OST. The cover art is also fucking awesome. I love the description by one of the supporters: "Best instrumental LP of 2012. Beats for bad people who feel bad about themselves."

3:33 also has several free albums:
http://parallelthought.bandcamp.com/album/the-first-thousand-days - Really good instrumental experimental/beat/ambient stuff.
http://parallelthought.bandcamp.com/album/the-bicameral-vein - Uses lyrics from Cannibal Ox's "The Cold Vein", which I'm not familiar with. Still a number of instrumental tracks, but this is surprisingly cool stuff. I liked it more than I expected to. Released I guess in anticipation of their own new album set to release at the end of the month, "Bicameral Brain".
http://parallelthought.bandcamp.com/album/7-sets-of-7 - More straight-up hip hop remix stuff, some of it of higher quality than others, but some of the tracks are solid, and there are instrumental versions of all the lyric tracks if you're more into that end of things.

I guess Del the Funky Homosapien has done stuff with some of these guys. There's a mess of stuff over at the Parallel Thought homepage: http://pthought.com/

[TheOtherBelmont]

The few tracks I've listened to so far have me interested.  I will have to listen to more of it.

[Quemaqua]

http://parallelthought.bandcamp.com/album/bicameral-brain-double-disc - Bicameral Brain has been released! Bit early, I guess, as it was supposed to be the 29th (some places still offering preorders for a 29th release) but got an email saying it's out, so I snagged it.

Trailer

Double disc, a loose conceptual sequel in the series of 3 (Live from the Grove, In the Middle of Infinity) based on the idea of a double brain, one side that commands via "auditory hallucinations" and the other half that listens and obeys. Haven't had a chance to dig into it as a whole yet, but seems to be more of the same—which in this case is a very good thing—plus some extra. First disc seems to successfully convey the domineering/commanding sound they were going for: darker, more sparse (or at least somewhat more 2-dimensional by comparison) with a lot of heavy beats at the outset of most tracks. The second is a lot heavier on the ambient elements, has beats on a good portion of the tunes but with increased backing, more nuance, and more variety in the beat catalog. Some of the others are straight ambient/drone/noise.

Really loving these guys, and this one is a great deal. 25 songs, 106 minutes of music, download for $8 or get the 2-CD mini LP cardboard gatefold for $10—and I have those from the two aforementioned albums, both of which are nice quality with really awesome artwork. Totally worth it if you like a hard copy.

[Quemaqua]

http://parallelthought.bandcamp.com/album/333ep-1 - I also somehow missed this one, another free EP from 3:33.