Artists

On January 4, famed technologist Anil Dash and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda collaborated on a Spotify tribute to New Jack Swing, that much-beloved yet transitional period between classic funky soul and contemporary R&B.“Okay! For the young people who might not be familiar with New Jack Swing (or old people who were distracted by grunge at the time), Lin-Manuel & I made you a New Jack Swing 101 playlist to learn from,” wrote Dash on Twitter. He added, “Shout out to Bruno Mars for the inspiration,” nodding to Bruno Mars and Cardi B’s New Jack era-referencing video for “Finesse (Remix).”Music nerds will point out that New Jack Swing actually peaked in popularity around 1990——nearly two years before Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten blew up on the charts and made grunge mainstream. But this playlist is ultimately less of an authoritative history lesson than a very good fan mix. It collects major hits like Bobby Brown’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” and underrated gems like Chuckii Booker’s “Games.” Feel free to quibble about whether Alexander O’Neal’s Minneapolis funk track “Fake” truly qualifies, or whether Xscape’s 1994 debut “Just Kickin’ It” and Blackstreet’s “Before I Let You Go” stretch the timeline a bit too far. And it’s unclear why Dash and Miranda tacked on a re-recorded version of Father MC’s “I’ll Do For You” at the end of their mix. Copycat and fake recordings of popular songs are the bane of streaming music.Still, if you’re looking for some old-school grooves to do the Funky Charleston to, New Jack Swing 101 ain’t half bad. As Ice Cube once said, “You can New Jack Swing on my nuts!”

Hans-Peter Lindstrøm recently released his fifth solo album, It’s Alright Between Us As It Is (Smalltown Supersound), another collection of dreamy dance-floor sounds in his signature celestial style. However, for this Dowsers playlist, the king of Norwegian space disco indulges a very different musical obsession:“I’ve recently been obsessed with songs from Italian movies made in the ’60s and early ’70s. There’s so much to discover, and it seems like I’ve only touched the surface. Lots of nice and strange orchestrated pieces, with weird and wonderful instrumentation.”—Lindstrøm

To be totally honest, I haven’t spent much time listening to Linkin Park lately, and I’m not familiar with their most recent albums. My Linkin Park phase was in high school—Hybrid Theory (2000), Reanimation (2002), Meteora (2003), and Collision Course (2004) came out during that time. At that point in my life, I was mostly a classical, jazz, and rap fan—I wasn’t into heavy rock or metal, so Linkin Park was the most intense thing I listened to in my teenage years. And as I think back on it, it seems bizarre that I liked the band so much, because they really didnt fit with anything else I was listening to. But it makes sense now, because the reach and scope of their music were powerful enough to grip people outside the typical realm of nu metal. There’s something almost transcendental about early Linkin Park. They were too anthemic to be fully nu metal (à la Korn, Limp Bizkit, or P.O.D.), too hip-hop to be rock, and too emo and mainstream to be “cool,” at least as far as what was considered cool among my peers. Theirs was a profoundly relatable music that flipped the script on what it was supposed to be. Their lyrics had a radically human core, one that embraced and tried to work through longing and alienation. These people were dealing with complex emotions like guilt and shame when the Dave Matthews Band—probably the most popular band in my community—was singing about getting high and ejaculating. And the actual music of Linkin Park was very intriguing, boasting intelligent percussion, authoritative washes of reverbed guitar, disciplined use of electronics, and methodical pacing. Listening to Meteora as an adult now, I’m still moved by its quality, its musicianship, and its acuity. Growing up before social media, in a fairly bland, conservative suburban community, I didn’t know a lot about the world of music. I don’t remember too much of what I listened to back then, but I do remember relating to the angst and hopelessness of Meteora in a powerful way. Linkin Park were basically my Smiths, and I’m fine with that. They were the therapeutic outlet that was available to me, and I’m glad they were. It’s sad that Chester Bennington is dead, because his music always pointed, more than anything, toward a desire for deliverance from pain. I don’t know whether he achieved that in the end, but I do know that his music was there for countless lost teenagers like myself.

My playlist consist of the various music that makes me Hyro the Hero. It’s the soundtrack that represents the culture of Houston I come from with songs like Still Tippin from Mike Jones, to the punk rock swag I possess with songs from Artist like Rancid. The music I chose is the best representation of the Rock N Roll Gangsta I’ve grown up to become.​May 25, 2018 - (Los Angeles, CA) Houston-raised, LA-based rock/rapper HYRO THE HERO has resurrected his uniquely innovative fusion of rap and rock with the highly-awaited follow-up to his 2011 debut album "Birth, School, Work, Death" (produced by Ross Robinson (Slipknot, Korn, Glassjaw)) with his new release, "Flagged Channel".Scheduled for release on June 29, 2018 via RED Music / SONY, "Flagged Channel" puts forth HYRO THE HEROs true lyrical credibility and hip-hop urgency on top of aggressive, uplifting and powerfully driven punkn roll. His lyrical missives target the vacuous materialism of the rap worlds biggest pretenders with precision wordplay and heady flows, cutting through the tired narcissism of many hit makers with a celebration of the brash confidence that makes hip-hop so vibrant. HYRO conjures the blood, sweat, and tears of classic punk together with the ambition of arena rock.Recorded with producer Mitch Marlow (Papa Roach, Butcher Babies, Filter), "Flagged Channel" smashes the windows of the mainstream with a Molotov cocktail of passion and inspiration over its 12 tracks which consict of a combustible concoction of one part The Clash, one part Bad Brains, and several doses of reverence for hip-hop relevance. Featuring guest appearances from Munky (Korn) and Ash Costello (New Years Day), the album is poised to inspire a new generation of heavy music enthusiasts and hip-hop heads in equal measure.HYRO has unveiled the debut single "Bullet" with an empowering music video which premiered yesterday on Billboard. Its your brain that HYRO has his sights set on as he implores you to say mentally sharp, keep that in mind as you check out the music video for "Bullet" now here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACEKhljj5bk

New York’s Liza Colby Sound recently released their Draw EP, four tracks of raunchy rock ‘n’ soul. For her Dowsers playlist, the band’s namesake frontwoman gives it up for the classic girl groups and pioneering pop singers who blazed the trail for her to strut her stuff.“I just got back from the Dirty Sweet Sound Tour part deux, where I was on the road with eight dudes. Fun fact: this run was backed by Wendigo Productions, a female-owned business with bad-ass babes operating it, too. I love being on the road with the men, but none of it would have been possible without WOMEN! Years ago my drummer’s wife, Robin Carrigan, passed this playlist along to me and its the shit! I come back to it again and again. Its a chilly day in NYC and I dont know about you, but I needed a fun, upbeat, get-you-warm-and-keep-you-cozy, female-fronted playlist. Enjoy this dose of pussy power!”—Liza Colby

U.K. electronic producer Matt Cutler, a.k.a. Lone, is releasing his first-ever mix collection this week through the venerable DJ Kicks series. Here, Cutler gives us a glimpse into his touring life with a special Dowsers playlist featuring the music he listens to on the road.

"I decided to put together a playlist based on my own private playlist that I use for travelling to shows. Basically, for me, this covers pretty much every angle of what Im into musically. This is perfect for long journeys—I go through so many different moods and mind states when travelling, so I need the most extreme mixed bag of treats. Stick on shuffle and see where it takes you..."—Matt Cutler, a.k.a. Lone

With anticipation for her upcoming sophomore effort, Melodrama, at a fever pitch, Lorde has retreated back to her favorite place of solace—as an acute observer of everyone else. Even the title of her new Spotify playlist, Homemade Dynamite, feels a bit like a cheeky inside joke pulled from some faded memory. While the 20-year old artist is best known for layering her timeless, soulful voice over a nu-goth aesthetic, Lordes other essential quality is that shes unwaveringly sympathetic towards her listeners. While most of the songs on Homemade Dynamite could soundtrack a night at the club, Lorde takes the entire evening into consideration with the same meticulous attention to detail heard on her 2013 debut album, Pure Heroine. Similar to the compassionate but authoritative friend everyone should have, Lorde has already anticipated that you’ll need something to perk you up (Amine and Kehlani), something to help soothe your feelings at 3 a.m. (Bon Iver and Weyes Blood), and something to tell you that you are a million bucks the morning after (Santigold). Under Lorde’s curation, Future’s “Mask Off” and your dad’s favorite Paul Simon song, “Graceland,” feel cut from the same cloth; they are two tales of escapism designed to reach all corners of her audience. These selections are indicative not only of Lordes desire to address the extraordinary moments of relatively mundane affairs, but also affirm the experiences of her listeners in the process. Depending on which side of middle age you’re on, ordinary experiences are either aspirational or nostalgic. Lorde’s universal appeal derives from the fact that she consistently accounts for both.

In the spring of 2017, Tijuana avant-electronic duo Los Macuanos released their third album, Epilogo, an equally impressionistic and visceral work that reverberates with the unrest felt all over the world this year. Their Dowsers playlist of key influences also doubles as a history of politically provocative electronic music.

Los Macuanos are very much a product of our time. Reared along the US-Mexico border, on the eve of a very bloody cartel war, weve inherited a trauma and an ultra-political awareness.Upon migrating to Mexico City in 2012, the atmosphere became even more charged. Amidst that year’s tense, fraudulent presidential elections—which many perceived as make-or-break for the country’s democracy—restless youth were eager for socio-political change. All this, while the rest of the world endured seismic events like massive government data leaks, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement, to name a few.Though protest or politically keen music has been sparse in the current generation, a dissentient spirit has risen in an array of electronic sounds across the globe, from Fatima Al Qadiri and Vatican Shadow’s war simulacrums, to James Ferraro’s evocation of barren capitalist wastelands, to more existential explorations in the works of artists like Lotic and Elysia Crampton.With Los Macuanos, we sought to echo this spirit via Epílogo (Nacional, 2017), our third formal effort, which has served as a kind of registry of Mexico’s volatile political milieu, as well as a summary of the sounds we consumed during those tumultuous times.There are common threads, however, in all the works featured on this list: a global-mindedness that still references regional politics; an exploration of the body and identity as affected by larger systems of oppression; and a decolonial and hyper-aware approach to cultural referencing. It is, in broad strokes, the sound of living in the perpetual, perceived end of history.THE PLAYLIST1. “Endzone” is something of an anomaly in Fatima Al Qadiri’s seemingly homologous catalog. You won’t hear the typical Middle Eastern flourishes or swelling sawtooth pads. It is, in fact, a work of great restraint, using a lone pulse to foreground field recordings of the Ferguson protests to truly chilling effect. One writer described Brute, the album in which it’s featured, as “apocalyptic political theater,” which could be an apt description of this playlist.2. Elysia Crampton is an artist whose entire character is inherently political. In the past, the US-Bolivian producer has made mention of their peripatetic lifestyle as something that has inspired their work, as well as a wide array of influences that span traditional Latin American music, avant-garde, jazz, and queer theory, among many others. Their approach to music making, however ineffable, largely functions as a kind of deconstruction and rethinking of identity and the body. It is the sound of liberation.3. Much like Crampton, Lotic can also rightly be characterized as a highly conscientious artist, albeit elusively so. Like his own persona, his music is more often implicitly politicized, through explorations of the body in sound. It delves into a gamma of emotions that derive from his own experiences as a gay black man living in a white heteronormative world: from anger and angst to ecstasy and feelings of confliction, which can themselves conflict.4. Tzusing stands out among other contemporary techno producers, in part, because of the deft manner in which he references his Eastern roots, both instrumentally and thematically. In past interviews, he’s described this practice as appropriating his own culture, a problematic concept. This, nevertheless, speaks to the state of globalization and the increasingly overbearing influence of Western politics on the rest of the world.5. Very little is known of late British producer Bryn Jones—better known by his Muslimgauze handle—other than the fact that he left a prolific body of work, and had an almost pathological obsession with the Muslim world. Nevertheless, the imprint he left on electronic music can be heard in a vast array of artists (many of which are on this list). Though it is said he never visited the Middle East, his works were directly inspired by the region’s ongoing unrest, and serve as a prime example of instrumental electronic music’s early excursions into subtextual politics.6. Vatican Shadow is the work of Dominick Fernow, who also operates under the Prurient moniker. More so than many current electronic music artists, Fernow has achieved such a level of rigor and aesthetic focus that he has managed to create an entire imaginary universe through his discography: shadowy military operations, cryptic historical snippets by way of titles, and portraits (both physical and sonic) of the various characters that comprise the sisyphean War on Terror. It’s all tension, no release.7. In NYC, Hell, 3:00AM, James Ferraro’s more impish sonic excursions are replaced with gaunt production and a pitch-grey landscape of late-capitalist gloom. “City Smells” is as good a summation of that full-length’s aesthetic aims, kicking off with the same disembodied text-to-speech vocals that appear on the album’s opener. The sparse R&B tinges are bookended by audio clips of what are presumably news reports from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It haunts and resonates as the implicit underlying motif of the album, which offsets the glitz of hyper-gentrified New York City in the early 21st century with the specters of disaster capitalism.8. Shackleton is one of those artists that we were listening to during the group’s inception, and rightly, a lot of that project’s sonic and conceptual cues parallel our own. The pathos-laden “Blood on my Hands” is one of the rarer musical works to reference the 9/11 attacks, with its sparse lyrics and a driving ethno-beat that embodies the UK-producer’s tracks. It echoes a lot of the artists featured here: It’s less about a message and more about the mood.9. Terrestre is 100 per cent on point on Secondary Inspection, and “Ejido del Terror” is its flagship production. One of the more venerable acts to come out of the early-‘00s wave of electronic music from the Tijuana-US border, Baja-bred Fernando Corona was diligent enough to break off early from the increasingly kitschy indulgences of Nortec Collective. On “Ejido,” he mastered the formula of micro-tech-house with a smidge of norteño bombast, albeit with a quietly foreboding undercurrent. The album was released in 2004, just a few years after the 9/11 attacks, and already Corona was predicting what would become of the increasingly draconian standard: an ultra-vigilant, militarized border. The wall, or so it would seem, was being built right before our eyes all along.10. “Verdad” (meaning “Truth”) is about as political as overly-abstract producer Siete Catorce can get. Parallel to the song’s melancholic melody is a sample of Mexico’s most infamous TV station’s logotone. Televisa, the channel in question, was blamed for the purportedly fraudulent 2012 presidential elections, during which an angry throng accused the media powerhouse of imposing president Enrique Peña Nieto through its propaganda, thus sparking the #YoSoy132 movement. The logotone evokes a sort of eternal recurrence, as much a prison as an assurance of familial warmth. The work itself is highly intertextual, and only makes sense when heard alongside his earlier song “Mariana,” whose melody it reprises. The whole number could, among many other things, serve as a commentary on the proverbial big lie, as told by the media: of true love (to echo cheesy Telenovelas) or, in the case of Mexico, of real democracy.11. In Amat Escalante’s elegiac, surreal short film about the Mexican revolution, El Cura San Nicolás Colgado, the titular priest and his two young companions trek across a desolate rural landscape, scarred by the remnants of carnage, only to conclude their journey inside a fast-food restaurant. It’s a seemingly anachronous moment that pulls the viewer out of the fantastical celluloid experience and into the hyperreal. The scene haunts with a rare, gelid beauty not unlike that of Burial’s 2007 track, “In McDonalds.” The track, like the film’s closing scene, appears to long for something that has been lost: a lover, a culture, or merely the evocation of something that may never have existed.

Lancaster, U.K. psych-punk pranksters The Lovely Eggs return on Feb. 23 with their most ambitous album yet, the Dave Fridmann-produced This Is Eggland. Here, they make us a playlist of escapist, space-bound anthems that reinforce the album’s underlying theme——that Britain is rotting to the yolk. “For the last couple of years, it seems like the world has gone fucking mad. On one side of the planet, weve got a bigoted, racist misogynist as president of the most powerful country in the world, and on the other side weve got a little island tearing itself away from Europe to ‘make Britain great again.’ Its division, its separatism, its xenophobia on a global scale. We are eating each other alive, drowning in a sea of capitalism where families who dont have two half-pennies to rub together have got a fucking black Range Rover parked outside their two-up/two-down house on HP. Everyone is competing to live like millionaires. Range Rovers on terraced streets. Council estate girls with Gucci handbags. Pan-fucking-Dora. The middle class are choking on Prosecco. The constant need for more. We are the dog chewing on its bloody arse stump. It is absolutely insane. We feel like we are aliens living on a strange ridiculous planet. So weve made a playlist themed around outer space. These days, this is where feel most at home. Away from it all. On our own Planet Oeuf."——Holly Ross and David Blackwell, a.k.a. The Lovely Eggs

For doom metal trio Lucifer, the term heavy is for sure a contemplative affair. As they drive their stake further into the ground of a genre that few words describe better, one that harkens back to a time when "heavy" was first-ever used to describe music in the late 60s/ early 70s, theyre simultaneously making a statement that not everything heavy is extreme, and not everything thats extreme is heavy. Sonically paying homage to what we now know as the arena rock and proto-metal of then with their brew of blues-influenced fuzzy guitars and deep, (yes, heavy!) tones today, the band -- led by captivating front woman Johanna Sadonis and Hellacopters/ Entombed mastermind Nicke Andersson -- isnt just a carbon copy of their forefathers; they offer versatility to that vintage sound. With their second offering Lucifer IIout this summer, the band sat down to discuss what heavy means to music and how its not actually exclusively attributed to the obvious. Check out their playlist of what could also easily be conceived as their influences above and/or right here. Says the band: "Heavy is quite a loose term, especially when it comes to music. Here are some heavy songs by artists you may or may not think of as particularly heavy. Most people probably don’t think of Journey as a heavy band. When Johanna told Nicke that they were, his reaction was a stubborn No way! But he was schooled. Hammer Horror by Kate Bush doesn’t exactly sound like Sleep but it gets pretty heavy at times. It’s hard not to surrender to Badfingers’ eerie super fuzzed chorus of Give It Up. Wilson Pickett screaming Heavy Metal Thunder! is just plain heavy. Get hit by some unexpectedly heavy shit and enjoy!"