Influences

It could be argued that Colemans greatest influence was beyond the borders of jazz. Generations of rock and experimental musicians have internalized the lessons of Coleman, understanding that oftentimes some of the most beautiful music first sounds ugly and random. You can hear Ornettes jagged, screeching stabs in everyone from the Grateful Dead to Television, but more than just a style or type of playing, Coleman taught musicians a new way to approach music -- an improvisational and at times confrontational method that was akin to a primal scream. Of course, Ornette could pull that off because he had chops, and the head-first style would later generate a lot of really bad noise, but weve tried to collect some of the better examples here. Some of these artist are explicitly indebted to Ornette. Thurston Moore has sited him as an influence; Nation of Ulysses named their song after him; and both the Grateful Dead and Lou Reed played with the man.

The xx have taken their time releasing the follow up to 2012’s Coexist. There have been rumors (and even this extensive New Yorker write-up from 2014 on the making of the album), but nothing has materialized and fans have been scrambling for clues as far as what the album might sound like. Jamie XX’s solo album was a full embrace of dance culture, but it’s unclear whether this more signals a broader move for a band in this direction. This playlist, a compilation of the music they’ve been listening to in the studio, and released alongside news of a larger world tour, is probably our best signal to date. Some of their picks are not surprising. “I’ll Be Your Mirror” negotiates brittle classic pop melodies with the hedonistic grime and baggage of Velvet Underground, a juxtaposition that The xx have mined in their own work. With its tear-drops keys, and its overlapping male/female vocal harmonies, Drake collaboration with PartyNextDoor, “With You,” sounds like a reworked track from The xx’s debut. And, yes, like all of us in 2016, The xx are going to be listening to Sampha, Frank Ocean, and Solange. But there are some surprises here. The inclusion of Ace’s glam-tinted pub-rock classic “How Long” is a bit startling at first, but the bright hook and easy groove mirrors the more sanguine moments from the last xx album, and the inclusion of No Wave pioneers Liquid Liquid and proto-punkers Suicide show that they’ve been immersed in the modern experimental lands of modern music. But even if the new album ends up sounding nothing like any of this, they’ve certainly given us an enjoyable playlist. Nina Simone’s “Baltimore” is a late-period jewel that matches her singular vocal phrasing with a reggae-tinged interpretation of a great Randy Newman song, and “A Forest” remains one of the Cure’s strongest track. -- Sam Chennault

If theres anything more intimate than baring your soul with a lyric, its inviting the world into your record collection. Over the years, Thom Yorke has granted us both, giving us a peek into the psyche of one of modern rocks most celebrated and enigmatic figures. There may be entire websites dedicated to decoding his words, but when it comes to the music that makes Yorke tick, we can go directly to the source. The Radiohead frontman has never been shy about revealing his influences. Since OK Computer and especially Kid A, hes been turning alt-rock diehards into IDM geeks, jazz freaks, and underground hip-hop heads.But to truly comprehend how his musical mind is wired, theres nothing quite like seeing how he can put together a playlist or, better yet, DJ a party. Over the past decade, it seems Yorke has found just as much thrill in promoting other peoples music as his own, from assembling iTunes playlists to playing top-secret DJ shows to publishing Radioheads "Office Charts," an extensive collection of mixes featured on the bands deadairspace blog. Here, we dig up a few of his notable works as both music curator and DJ to tap into some of his creative—and physical—energy.THOM YORKE’S 2007 iTUNES PLAYLIST

Six months after the release of his stark electronic solo debut, The Eraser—and in the midst of recording Radioheads lightest, most romantic, work, In Rainbows—Yorke took to iTunes to present his favorite songs at the moment (i.e., January 2007). As a playlist maker, Yorke is admittedly a bit all over the place. But when you piece it all together now, his collection certainly works as a sort of deconstructed primer for his then-new solo effort and future works with Radiohead and Atoms For Peace. The addition of Bat For Lashes enchanted, ethereal pop points all the way to the sweeping ballads of A Moon Shaped Pool, while the ominous piano and rolling snare beats of The Dears "No Hope Before Destruction" portend In Rainbows funereal closer "Videotape" (even though, in the accompanying liner notes, Yorke admits he doesnt know much else by them).These grand, dramatic pieces get cut up by the sort of dark, glitchy grooves Yorke has increasingly embraced: Hes a sucker for Madvillains rhymes and Quasimotos loose, vintage production; he loves the "lizard bass sound" of Boxcutter; and is hypnotized by the maddening, menacing post-rave loops of UK producer Surgeon, an artist he discovered after OK Computer. And while the sleazy bass of Spank Rock is a bit of an outlier here, the inclusion of Liars—who Yorke would eventually remix—seems just right, especially when he accurately describes "Drum Gets a Glimpse" as "more terror from the subconscious."GLASTONBURY SECRET FUSELAGE DJ SET (2011)

Fast forward four years and Thom could be found hitting the decks alongside producer pal Nigel Godrich in a "crashed aeroplane fuselage" adjacent to the 2011 Glastonbury Festival. The story goes that the duo played a killer four-hour set, but Yorke would later only reveal 17 of the songs played on deadairspace. This was one of a handful of surprise DJ events that year, including a couple at Los Angeles Low End Theory with Brainfeeder boss Flying Lotus (a union that gave rise to perhaps the greatest GIF ever). This would all happen following the release of Radioheads somewhat divisive eighth album, The King of Limbs, which was dominated by loops, samples, and broken-up beats of Yorkes creation. It also came with the great unveiling of Thom the modern dancer. With those beats and dancing moves in place, his rising role as DJ seemed a natural move.These tracks make for a pretty pumping party, one seemingly co-signed by Diplo, who, along with his label Mad Decent, is represented here in various forms (with Blaqstarr, Major Lazer, and Boy 8-Bit). The set is also punctuated by moody British electro (Nathan Fake), a UK jungle classic ("Original Nuttah"), and Public Enemys hard-hitting politics ("Night of the Living Baseheads"). The mix pounds—aggressively and unrelentingly—more so than any Yorke creation ever has, and we certainly wouldve loved an invitation. (Note: Track 2 in Yorke’s 17-song sampler, Felix da Housecats "Madame Hollywood," is not available on Spotify.) LIVE FROM A MOON SHAPED POOL/RADIOHEAD OFFICE CHARTS (2016)

Five years on and with a brand-new album ready for show, Yorke would accompany the release of 2016s A Moon Shaped Pool with a six-hour compilation of tracks that had been featured on their blog under the innocuous title of Radiohead Office Charts. If you were looking to dissect Thom Yorkes brain, this is probably a good place to start your examination. Or if you simply want to discover some seriously awesome experimentalists—from Nigeria (BLO) to India (Charanjit Singh) to Syria (Omar Souleyman) to Germany (Christoph De Babalon)—to go alongside classical concertos (Bach), New Orleans jazz (Sidney Bechet), and Yorkes go-to faves (Modeselektor, Madvillain), this is your one-stop shop.Despite a jumble of sounds that span genres, nations, and generations, this collection feels expertly curated. The vibe is overall cerebral yet chill—exactly what youd expect from the guy who just helped spearhead one of the years most haunting records. In fact, any track from A Moon Shaped Pool would fit right in. Actually, any Radiohead or Yorke track period would make perfect sense here, as a fascinating distillation of his existence as both major music geek and major music innovator.Want more playlists and articles like this delivered directly to you? Sign up for our e-mail here, follow us on Facebook, or go directly to the source and subscribe to our Spotify account.

The productions of Montreal musician Tim Hecker move electronic music to unexpected places. His early work fused the dry, pulsating rhythms of techno with the bare minimalism of Brian Eno. Alongside other avante garde electronic artists and collaborators Ben Frost and Oneohtrix Point Never, Hecker has carved out a music vocabulary that mines the ethereal underpinnings of dark industrial spaces. Aaron from Beats has compiled a great playlist of his influences, which range from the modern classical of Philip Glass to shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine.

Since 1999, Carpark Records has been at the forefront of indie rock’s 21st-century evolution, releasing foundational early records from the likes of Beach House, Toro y Moi, Cloud Nothings, Dan Deacon, Speedy Ortiz, and many more. But this month, the label is looking back, by shining a light on two forgotten contenders in the early-’90s Chicago scene: Wendyfix and Remy (pictured above), both of whom featured Hyman himself on drums. With reissues of Wendyfix’s We Have the Cracks and Remy’s self-titled EP hitting stores this week, we asked Hyman to create a playlist that charts his transformation from aspiring 1990s indie rocker to founder of one of the most vanguard record labels of the 21st-century. I’ve been asked to chronicle my music listening habits from the early ’90s to the founding of Carpark in the late ’90s. I feel like I had three eras of music listening during this time.

1. COLLEGE

In the fall of 1991, I moved to Chicago to go to college at Northwestern University. I was super-stoked to start DJing at their college-radio station, WNUR. The first week I got there, my friend Jon Solomon (who was also in wendyfix with me) told me we should get tickets to this Nirvana show. I’d never heard of them. But our radio station was playing the first single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” a lot.

Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

It was the first show I went to at college and, to this day, is still the craziest. It was at the Metro. Good thing we bought our tickets a week or so in advance, because there was a line all the way down Clark Street to Addison of people wanting to get in. There were so many people crammed in there that, when people were jumping, my body was literally lifted off the ground with them. I had to go to the back towards the end because I felt like there was not enough air to breathe. The show was a couple weeks before Nevermind came out. Soon after, our college-radio music director pulled the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” CD single from our library because it was getting too popular.

Aphex Twin, “Pulse Width”

I was also a big Anglophile at the time and would pick up a copy of the NME or Melody Maker just about every week from our student book store. There was a pretty interesting feature about an artist called Aphex Twin that fall. I decided I wanted to hear what it sounded like. I went to Reckless and Dr. Wax but no one had it. Finally, I had to take the El all the way down to Lincoln Park to visit the Tower Records at Clark and Fullerton. They had the biggest “import” section in town then. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was mine!

Stereolab, “Peng! 33”

Towards the end of my freshman year, I remember reading a really interesting feature review in the NME about a new band called Stereolab. I still remember buying their debut full-length, Peng, at Reckless on Broadway right before I went home for the summer.

Polvo, “Can I Ride”

In my freshman year, I was keen to get involved as much as I could with independent music. I interned at Touch and Go Records most of that school year. By the time I took the El down to Sheridan and transferred to a bus that went down Irving Park past Western, it took almost an hour and a half to get there from Evanston. The office at that time was in an old industrial space, I believe. Dave Yow (The Jesus Lizard) and Britt Walford (Slint) seemed to be doing a lot of carpentry work there. I remember those dudes being really funny. One of the perks of interning was that I got free music. One day I was given an advance promo “cassette” of Polvo’s Cor-Crane Secret. It was a clear cassette with no paper art in a plastic case. Still have it somewhere….

Wendyfix, “Ridge”

In my sophomore year, I started playing drums in a band with my friends Jon Solomon and Ted Pauly from WNUR. We were named Wendyfix after a local high-school tennis star. Jon was away most of my junior year, so we brought on Brian McGrath to take his place. There weren’t too many indie bands in Chicago doing the quiet/loud moody guitar thing then. I recently decided to digitally release all the tracks we ever recorded. “Ridge” was always one of my favorites.

Remy, “Coco Pebbles”

In my junior year, I started playing drums in another band with more WNUR friends, Peter Schaefer and Matt Walters. Remy was more on the Pavement/Polvo/Archers of Loaf tip. “Coco Pebbles” was one of the few jams we recorded before I graduated and moved away.Here are some other tunes that played a big part in my collegiate life:Unrest, “Cherry Cream On”Spacemen 3, “Come Down Softly to My Soul” *Slint, “Washer”Faust, The Faust Tapes *Bedhead, “Bedside Table”The Incredible String Band, “You Get Brighter”Seefeel, “Imperial”Big Flame, “Every Conversation” *Boredoms, “Hey Bore Hey” ** = not available on Spotify

2. NEW YORK CITY/CHICAGO/GLASGOW

I graduated college in 1995 and moved to New York. One of the things I ended up doing there was working as the indie music buyer for Kim’s West, which was a record store/video rental place at Bleeker and West 10th street in the West Village.I wouldn’t have had this job had Other Music not opened that same year. I started at Kim’s West working as a video-rental person. But the music buyers at Kim’s Underground (also on Bleeker) opened Other Music and suddenly Kim’s Underground was in need of music buyers. So the music folks at Kim’s West went over to Kim’s Underground to get things organized. And I ended up filling in the indie-music buyer spot at Kim’s West.I listened to a bunch of dub, French ye-ye, drum ‘n’ bass, MPB, ’60s/’70s easy listening, and IDM during this time.I moved back to Chicago for a year from 1996 to 1997. I worked briefly at Reckless Records and spent a lot of time at Dusty Groove. After Chicago, I went to Glasgow, Scotland for a 12-month graduat- school program for Popular Music Studies.I slowly stopped listening to indie rock around this time. I thought it was a dying genre. All the new music I was consuming was slowly transitioning over to digital and electronic music. I had burnt out on indie rock.Prince Far I, “Plant Up”Autechre, “Clipper”Maurizio, “M07A”Alec Empire, “Bang Your Head”Caetano Veloso, “Tropicalia”The Congos, “Fisherman”France Gall, “Mes Premieres Varies Vacances” *Marcos Valle, “Mentira”Plug, “Drum ‘n’ Bass for Papa” *Roger Nichols and the Small Circle of Friends, “Love So Fine” *Rotary Connection, “If I sing My Song” *µ-Ziq, “Brace Yourself Jason* = not available on Spotify

3. BACK TO NEW YORK CITY

I moved back to NYC at the end of 1998 and ended up working at my friend Rich’s record store Etherea in the East Village. All us record clerks there were pretty tight. Dance-music culture was our thing. Indie rock seemed passé. We had a weekly DJ/electronic music night and spent a lot of time listening to 12 inches at dance-music shop Temple Records a block away on Avenue B.Here’s some tunes I spun a lot during this era:Dopplereffekt, “Speak ‘n’ Spell” *Aril Brikha, “Groove la Chord”Giorgio Moroder, “From Here to Eternity”Eddy Grant, “Time Warp” *Frankie Knuckles, “Baby Wants to Ride”GAS, “Eins” *Jorge Ben, “Hermes Trimegisto Escreveu”Isan, “Clipper”Casino Versus Japan, “It’s Very Sunny”Lime, ”Angel Eyes”Moodymann, “Misled”Pepe Bradock, “The Charter” *Sparks, “Beat the Clock”Thomas Bangalter, “Turbo” *Throbbing Gristle, “Hot on the Heels of Love”Tones on Tail, “Lions”Tuxedomoon, “No Tears”Closer Musik, “One Two Three (No Gravity)”I was mostly buying techno, house, and electro 12 inches at this time. I was DJing a lot. Our night, Invisible Cities, put me in touch with a lot of the electronic artists that initially released music with us. Carpark was born! That means the end of this playlist. How Carpark moved away from exclusively electronic is a playlist for another time.* = not available on Spotify

Columbus, Ohio’s genre-bending Twenty One Pilots pack their high-powered tunes with myriad influences, filtering dynamic pop through head-nodding reggae grooves, breakneck hip-hop beats, and even skyscraping synth blasts. While this kitchen sink approach can create the sort of mess even a smash hit hook couldn’t clean up, the duo have managed to master combos that not only result in irresistible bangers, but also positions them as an original voice in pop music.They learned from the best. Their tendency toward catchy, key-heavy hip-hop recalls Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ team-up with Chance The Rapper, “Need To Know”; The Killers’ lit-up, synth-dipped chorus on “Spaceman” matches their rousing sing-along aesthetic; and they share the same penchant for sonic theatrics as groups like Panic! at the Disco and Fall Out Boy. By some magic, they all sound just right next to each other.

Released on September 24, 1996, Illadelph Halflife marked a turning point in the Roots’ career from free-spirited jazz-hop players to soothsayers of doom. Much of rap music was obsessed with the Y2K apocalypse, the New World Order, and the presumptive demise of hip-hop – see De La Soul’s pivotal single “Stakes is High” – and the Philly ensemble was no exception. More than just Black Thought and Malik B launching cipher battles on “Uni-Verse at War,” and waging jeremiads against rapper “Clones,” the album sounds cloudy and introverted. The beats seem to mostly consist of organic bass, keyboards and drums, resulting in blue beats as sparse as a Wes Montgomery jam session, and moodily ominous vibes similar to contemporaneous works like A Tribe Called Quest’s Beats, Rhymes & Life, the Pharcyde’s Labcabincalifornia, and Slum Village’s Fan-Tas-Tic. When neo-soul and jazz guests like Raphael Saadiq (on “What They Do”), D’Angelo (on “The Hypnotic”), and Cassandra Wilson (on “One Shine”) appeared, they contributed pained vocals that contributed to the overall sense of melancholy.As a clear product of 1996’s pre-millennium tensions, Illadelph Halflife may have not aged as well as the band’s next album, the more successful Things Fall Apart. Its deeply rooted entropy is more suited for late-night listening, or perhaps the kind of contemplative smoke-out sessions the Black Thought, Malik and Bahamadia rhyme about on “Push Up Ya Lighter.” However, it established a theme. Led by drummer and group mastermind Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the Roots have continued to assess cultural and political trends with skepticism and occasional hope ever since.

One of the ugliest figures in rap is obsessed with some of the prettiest music. But we should expect nothing less from Tyler, the Creator, a self-described “walking paradox” whose music has been obscured by his public persona ever since he disrupted rap with his Odd Future crew in 2008. You could be forgiven for writing him off entirely after reading his notoriously homophobic Tweets. He’s since walked back most of that language, and has perhaps even come out as gay—or at least inhabits a gay character on his 2017 album Scum Fuck Flower Boy.As a rapper and producer, he’s been open about his influences since day one, and theyre all over the place: Pharrell’s sweet falsettos and uneasy chord progressions; the alien pop and library music of Broadcast; late ‘80s R&B (not a lot of that on Spotify, sadly); the harsh provocation and technical wizardry of Eminem; the stagey, orchestral hip-hop of Jon Brion-era Kanye West. He’s particularly into deep album cuts and soulful music with cinematic aspects.There is still nobody quite like him, even outside music, with his brightly colored fashion line and Neverland-esque penchant for throwing carnivals. And while his music has developed a capacity for gentleness over the years, he’s still a man who will shout vulgarities, if only to drive people away so he can sit at the piano alone with his jazz chords.At any rate, the most interesting paradox of Tyler, the Creator is that while he always seemed bent on fame for himself and Odd Future, he never “dumbed down for dollars” a la JAY-Z—or seemed to ever consider watering down his art in any way.

Deep in the heart of Nicolas Jaars latest album, theres an extended domestic vignette: Jaar, a small boy, at home with his father, the Chilean visual artist Alfredo Jaar. Their talk, in Spanish, is playful and perhaps inconsequential; its actual content matters less than the way their voices charge the music with a special aura. Here is a tape, the snippet seems to say, rescued from a box long forgotten in the back of a closet; here is a memory brought to the light of day.It signals the extent to which Sirens—depending on how you count, either his second or third or fourth proper album—is the young electronic musicians most personal recording yet. As he explained to Pitchfork, with his previous records, he had taken aspects of his own identity for granted. "But in the months leading up to Sirens," he says, "there was a lot of change in my life—when you come back from a long tour, you really have to pick up the pieces in a way."And the album really does feel like a process of unpacking. It takes stock of the elements that have long characterized his work—the slow tempos, freeform arrangements, and shadowy atmospheres—while confidently pushing into a number of new directions at once. The pensive piano and effects of the opening "Killing Times" give way to a fairly rocking vocal number that sounds for all the world like a cover of the Bauhaus side-project Tones on Tail. "Leaves" incorporates a plucked string instrument—koto, perhaps—with ambient textures in a way that suggests an ambient musician like Biosphere. "No," the song that features his childhood home tape, taps into a spongy reggaeton beat faintly reminiscent of the Berlin producer Poles scratchy ambient dub—though the songs examination of his multi-national identity (Jaar, whose Chilean parents fled their home country after Pinochets coup in 1973, grew up between Chile, Paris, and the United States) also recalls the Ecuadorian-American musician Helado Negros own multi-lingual self-portraits.There are further surprises along the way: "Three Sides of Nazareth" hints at New York proto-punks Suicide as well as the contemporary UK musician Powell—which is pretty funny, because in most respects youd never think to mention Jaar and Powell in the same sentence. And it ends with a gorgeous, airy doo-wop song that cant help but bring to mind the Beach Boys weightless harmonies. Whatever else Nicolas Jaar may intend with his choice of title, theres no denying the seductive power of the final songs ethereal web of harmonies. Like everything on the album, it draws you in.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!There may be no other contemporary player who’s logged as many miles, taken as many left turns, or made as many friends on his musical journey than Thundercat. The artist more prosaically known as Stephen Bruner began playing bass at age 15, absorbing the lessons of jazz fusion greats like Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, and Jaco Pastorius. He soon joined his older brother Ronald Jr. as a member of Suicidal Tendencies, serving the L.A. thrash-funk-metal institution for the better part of a decade, while still making time to tour with Snoop Dogg and build a rep as a session musician for the likes of Erykah Badu and Bilal. Even after Thundercat established his own flair for spaced-out, vanguard R&B with his debut solo album The Golden Age of Apocalypse in 2011, he continued collaborations with Flying Lotus on the Brainfeeder label and forged a new one with Kendrick Lamar. He and brother Ron were also a part of Kamasi Washington’s formidable group for The Epic.The influence of these past hookups are easy to hear in the astonishingly diverse sounds of Thundercat’s new album, Drunk. Yet the album contains fresh surprises, too. Appearances by Lamar and newbies Wiz Khalifa and Pharrell may not be so shocking, but who could’ve known that Thundercat’s allegiance to yacht rock was so fervent that he’d enlist Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins for cameos on the ultra-smooth “Show You The Way”? The album’s crackpot humor and abundance of short, weird tracks are equally suggestive of his devotion to Frank Zappa, and at some shows he’s performed a cover of “For Love (I Come Your Friend)” by George Duke, the R&B maverick who was one of Zappa’s best musical foils.Drunk could only be a product of Thundercat’s vast and vivid musical universe, one that we explore here via songs he’s either created or helped craft, plus equally vibrant tracks by other artists he’s covered, sampled, and loved.