Ian Ureta

A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.

Daydreaming by Michael Lazar isn’t trying to impress you; it’s trying to reach you

Let’s say you’ve had a long day. Not the catastrophic kind, just the standard existential dread with a side of self-doubt. You want something to listen to that won’t lie to you about how everything’s fine, but also won’t actively make you feel worse. Congratulations. You’re exactly the kind of person Michael Lazar made Daydreaming […]

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Ain’t Nobody by Johnny Batchelor isn’t chasing anything; it’s waiting

Let’s be honest: the music world isn’t short on reinventions. Every month some former background character from the ‘90s pops up in an NPR article about their “new sound,” usually involving synthesizers, a leather jacket, and an existential crisis. But Johnny Batchelor is doing something different with Ain’t Nobody. He’s not reinventing anything. He’s simply

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Love Is The Revolution by M4TR is an album for the beautifully wrecked

You know that feeling when you’re watching the end of the world? Like, the skies are orange, democracy is on fire, your group chat is radio silent… and someone hands you a disco ball and says, “Try to look hot while it burns”? That’s the emotional thesis of Love Is The Revolution, the third studio

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Darling I Dreamt’s ‘Wake Up’ Understands What It Means to Be Too Tired to Fall Apart

There’s a very specific kind of insomnia that doesn’t feel like panic; it feels like paperwork. That’s where Wake Up lives. The debut EP from Darling I Dreamt isn’t so much an emotional breakdown as it is a carefully-filed stack of late-night thoughts, catalogued during the long, grey hours where your brain refuses to shut

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Andrea Pizzo and The Purple Mice’s We Are All Bots Is a Loud, Shiny Existential Crisis

We Are All Bots is what happens when a rock band stares too long into the glowing eyes of a Boston Dynamics dog and asks, “What if this was operatic?” In just under ten minutes, Andrea Pizzo and The Purple Mice manage to craft a concept EP that sounds like Queen crash-landing into 2001: A

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Gravity Sessions by Rosetta West is bluesy, hazy and occasionally haunted until you’re ready to really listen

There’s a certain kind of silence that follows an old tape hiss. It’s the kind that feels like the room itself is holding its breath. I heard it once in a half-abandoned church where someone had left an old cassette recorder running after choir practice. The reverb, the warmth, the eerie calm; it all stuck

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What makes GAMETIME by Brandon Mitchell land so hard is that it doesn’t try to transcend struggle; it sits with it

Brandon Mitchell’s GAMETIME is what happens when someone decides that instead of making another playlist-friendly rap project, they’ll drop a motivational playbook wrapped in boom-bap soul and unflinching honesty. It’s not just a collection of songs. It’s a PowerPoint presentation with 808s and scripture references, delivered by a guy who’s clearly done the reading and

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Disaster on Neptune by Mang is not just a debut; it’s an unfiltered signal broadcast directly from someone’s inner collapse

Disaster on Neptune is what happens when someone locks themselves in a room with a synthesizer, a few unresolved emotions, and absolutely no intention of making “party music.” This is Mang’s solo debut, and it’s not here to hold your hand. Rather, it’s here to hold a mirror up to your face, dim the lights,

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John D. Contradiction is versatile, self-assured, and cut from a different cloth

There’s something refreshing about hearing an album that doesn’t sound like it was built in a playlist lab. No chasing trends. No streamlined-for-Spotify formula. Just bars, beats, and a vision that doesn’t care if you’re ready for it. 37, the latest project from John D. Contradiction, isn’t trying to go viral; it’s trying to outlive

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