The Heliocentrics - Out There
Organic trip-hop, jazz fusion, Post rock, Hip-hop, pseudo-Dixieland jazz? Uh...yeah.
Out There is quite a difficult album to pigeon hole into a genre, aside from the catchall tag that post-rock lends itself to be sometimes. Perhaps a better description of The Heliocentric's brilliance is to note that they served as DJ Shadow's back up band for a few of his tours, and you can definitely hear his influence as well on the album. Whatever you wanna' call it, I'm diggin' it pretty hard.
Thievery Corporation - The Outernational Sound
OK, it's not really a Thievery Corporation album in the sense that it's original music created by the duo themselves.
The Outernational Sound is actually more of a mix-tape, a 'DJ session' as the CD cover suggests, compiled by Garza and Hilton. Having said that, It's an amazing album regardless. Ironically it retains the duo's signature vibe. I've seen 'party mixes' released as albums under the clout of the name of famous electronic artists before. The more notable example I can think of is Nightmares on Wax's
Coming Home, which is also quite good. If you can get past the fact that it's a Thievery Corporation album in name only, I think any TC fan would be more than pleased with it.
