World Is Still Chaos, But I Feel Better [LP], L'Orange, Vinyl

The news talks about catastrophes that sound like science fiction: apartment towers collapsing with no warning, satellites falling from space, the ocean on fire. It's an era of extremes, where each cataclysm seems to presage an even greater one, and only the truly exceptional - the superhuman - seem cut out to survive. What the new album from L'Orange, the prolific and endlessly inventive producer from North Carolina, argues is nearly the opposite. Released on Mello Music Group, The World Is Still Chaos, But I Feel Better is a testament to the power of self knowledge and incremental progress, of the way tiny steps can give structure to life and help navigate the unknown. Over the course of his career, L'Orange has used his remarkable abilities to create a sort of delirium in his work, a haze that envelops the listener and seals him or her off in a universe of the producer's construction. With The World Is Still Chaos, But I Feel Better, he inverts this, imposing order on the world bit by bit. It's about "feeling OK," L'Orange says - "not perfect." Striving for marginal, day-over-day victories - - over the external world, over your past, over yourself - is the kind of actionable, measurable, deeply personal approach that can make a seemingly impossible era feel all the more approachable. It doesn't hurt that L'Orange delivers the argument in such an irresistibly head-nodding package.