Genres

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist right here.Dark music is often defined by an instrumentalist’s skill: guitarist Dave Mustaine’s mastery of his six-string made Megadeath legends, the controlled metallic baritone of Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor put mall-goth on the map. These particular manipulations are amplified in noise music insofar as they are changed, strained, crushed and elongated. By definition the genre is contradictory—how is noise, music?—and as a result, challenges thinking about silences. When looped vocal techniques are distorted, feedback is allowed to prosper, static is treated as an instrument—what is made? This year has been especially interesting for noise—in Puce Mary’s “Night is a Trap ll” Frederikke Hoffmeier’s twisted speakerphone vocals mimic the sounds of an industrial explosion around her; Bruxa Maria’s “Human Condition” acts in discordance with every element in its songwriting, Gill Dread’s high-pitched holler placed below the sounds of sharp saws running unmanned. Far removed from their powerelectronics are the ambient, animalistic found sounds of David Toop’s “For a Language to Come,” and the Wagnerian haunt of The Stargazer’s Assistant. In 2016, a year filled with noise politically and otherwise, a genre embraces the pandemonium.

No, Acid House isnt a reference to Timothy Learys flat. Rather, its the variant of house that originated from Chicago -- thanks to legends like Phuture, Bam Bam, and Armando -- and rapidly spread to Europe, effectively became that continents pop music for a short, beautiful stretch in the late 80s. The smiley face was the genres iconic logo, and anyone alive during that period (and actively going to raves) remembers the pounding, round basslines and those worming synth sounds (courtesy of the TB-303). In 1989 this music was fairly ubiquitous, in the UK in particular, and provided the soundtrack to the so-called "second summer of love." This playlist, from FACT, combines tracks from both America and Europe, and offers a good primer to the genre for the uninitiated (or for those us us whove simply forgotten the genre).

Im not sure if Duran Duran were a minor band disguised as a major one, or vice versa, but they did have a handful of really catchy songs, and playing a saxophone on a raft is a boss move. One thing is certain though: Metro UK is a pretty minor publication, and ranking "Ordinary World" over "Rio" is complete bullshit. Still, here are a few great tracks from this these 80s kings.

Most people don’t really know what a conductor does, and that’s understandable—much of a conductor’s work takes place out of the spotlight. Contrary to the belief held by some that the conductor is a largely dispensable figure who shows up, waves his or her arms for a few hours, and then takes home a big paycheck, the conductor is often the hardest-working member of the orchestra. A great conductor trains for decades to become great, usually mastering at least one instrument at the highest level. Along the way, he or she achieves a thorough knowledge of music history, a mastery of music theory, and an encyclopedic knowledge of how instruments work.Indeed, the conductor has to know each instrument’s part better than its own player does, and must understand how each of those parts can be best actualized. The conductor spends months learning 100-plus page scores, sometimes even memorizing them, in advance of orchestra rehearsals, which occur in the weeks before a performance. While studying the score, the conductor uses their years of experience and knowledge to interpret its contents, drawing from academic literature as well as recorded music to make executive decisions about phrasing, tempo, dynamics, rhythm, temporality, balance, and countless other aspects. In this sense, every performance of a work is a unique interpretation, even if, on the surface, many sound the same. Once the conductor shows up on stage on the night of the concert, he or she has spent many hours rehearsing that night’s piece with the orchestra, who will be playing, for better or worse, the way the conductor has instructed them to.Conductors are also responsible for selecting the music their orchestra plays, and the ones on this list—compiled by the BBC’s classical-music.com site—have surely been indispensable to the unfolding of music history over the past century. Mahler, for example, may never have become popular in the United States if Leonard Bernstein hadn’t obsessed over his music in the 1960s, producing the first complete recorded cycle of the composer’s symphonies. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and John Eliot Gardiner are both well-known for their important contributions not only to recorded music, but to the scholarship, advancing philosophies of historical performance practice and often insisting that their ensembles use historically accurate instruments. These two conductors seek to deliver interpretations that come from tireless academic study of both the source material and the conventions of its time period. Pierre Boulez was an austere conductor whose interpretations of modern and postmodern music cut to the chase, favoring transparency and clarity over large romantic gestures; some called him cold, while others said he was second-to-none in putting the emphasis on the musical material instead of catering to the emotions of the audience. Point being: Conductors are often (but not always!) rich thinkers who make important decisions about how, when, where, and why we hear music.We should take this list as authoritative, since the BBC polled 100 of the most important living conductors to create it, from Vladimir Ashkenazy to Michael Tilson Thomas. Fans of classical music have argued for years over the qualities and failures of this or that performance or recording, often descending into semantic insanity; however, few would argue that anyone on this list isn’t great. Use this playlist as a jumping-off point to venture forth and decide for yourself: Do you prefer Kleiber’s Brahms 4, or Harnoncourt’s? Furtwängler’s Bruckner 8, or Boulez’s? For Mahler: Bernstein or Abbado? Ultimately everyone has their own opinion of which conductor is the greatest, but the experts have spoken, and these are their selections.

Because we here at The Dowsers are masochists, we turned NME.com’s recent 20 Greatest Indie Anthems Ever poll into a playlist. The results are as depressingly predictable as Amazon’s “customers who bought this item also bought” algorithm. Just over 50 percent of the playlist is given over to multiple tracks from a quartet of chart-topping derivatives: Arctic Monkeys (four), The Strokes (three), Oasis (two), and The Killers (two). Meanwhile, older and far more pioneering acts Joy Division, The Smiths, and The Stone Roses tally a paltry four between them. This data can be read one of two ways: either readers of NME don’t consider music before the ’90s indie or their Arctic Monkeys/Joy Division preference ratio really is four to one. The mere contemplation of the latter is a major bummer.

Full disclosure: I contributed to this list, and while I have my quibbles with it -- "NBA Rap"? Nah -- I think its a fairly good primer on early West Coast rap. That scene is all the rage thanks to the overhyped Straight Outta Compton movie, and viewers who enjoyed that biopic will find more avenues to explore here. At the very least, its a good excuse to revisit Rodney O & DJ Joe Cooleys "Everlasting Bass." -- Mosi Reeves

Source: ComplexFor those of you not attuned to the fast-moving tastes of rap blogs, most of these names will ring unfamiliar to you. And to be frank, theres nothing wrong with that, since these up-and-comers are in their woodshedding phase. Boogies The Reach has drawn critical acclaim and a deal with Republic/Interscope, while fellow UMG signee Post Malone seems like the proverbial industry plant. Nef the Pharoahs "Big Tymin" has dominated the San Francisco Bay Area all summer; and D.R.A.M.s "Cha Cha" has inspired countless Vine memes and a thinly-veiled Drake homage. Good hunting.

We may have reached a sort of peak America on August 20, 2016. After a fit of false starts and head fakes, Ocean revealed his masterpiece, Blonde, an album that, in many ways, embodied a greater idea of what America could be: inclusive and diverse, both culturally and aesthetically; adventurous and transparent, embracing experimentations in search of an emotional honesty; and, not least importantly, fun, and filled with an overarching optimism.Things may have gone downhill since then, but we still have Frank, and he’s been particularly productive in 2017, releasing a slew of more pop-oriented singles, and, maybe just as importantly, curating his own radio show, blonded, on Apple Music. Ocean has never been particularly forthcoming in interviews—on the few occasions he’s done them—but his taste in music offers a rare and deep glimpse into his creative processes and inspirations.For many, Ocean’s music is singular, and his talent and sound seem to have emerged from a vacuum, but there are specific antecedents to each component of his music. Like many music masterminds—from Prince to Radiohead—he’s interested in genre pastiche, extracting and recontextualizing broad and seemingly disparate forms of music. Listening to these broadcasts is like watching a master chef at work in their kitchen.We’ve combined and organized selections that Frank picked for blonded, as well as previous lists he’s provided over the years and the music that he’s sampled, dividing the playlists largely along genre lines in order to provide a key for how Frank thinks about music. The main playlist here represents a megamix of all the tracks featured in the segmented playlists below. (You can access the original blonded podcast by visiting Apple Music, or subscribing to our Spotify channel, where we’re collected them as Spotify playlists.)FRANK’S AMBIENT/ELECTRONIC/GLITCH ITCH

Frank Ocean’s video performance piece Endless was a teaser “album” of sorts, released just one day before Blonde. With the visuals’ stark, high-contrast lighting, and the tracks’ broken soundscapes and fractured melodies, it was an immersive and frequently confounding experience. There were certainly songs there—the Isley Brothers/Aaliyah cover “(At Your Best) You Are Love” remains one of the most haunting tracks Ocean has released—but for the most part, the piece was focused on generating a skeletal, unsettling, and haunting atmosphere. This vibe was carried over to the creeping sounds of Blonde tracks “Seigfried” and “Futura Free.”This focus on textures over tunes is the common denominator for most of the tracks on this playlist. A beautiful, gentle piano melody emerges from the skittering beats of Aphex Twin’s “Flim.” Todd Rundgren’s 1970 proto-ambient work “There Are No Words,” meanwhile, moves like fog—eerie, otherworldly, and all-encompassing. Rundgren’s other contribution to this playlist, his 1973 track “Flamingo”—sampled on Ocean’s track “Solo”—is comparatively less whispy, with chirping birth noises fluttering around a circular synth figure. It’s no surprise to see Arca here; the Venezuelan queer performance artist and Kanye/Björk producer has been mining the same space between operatic melodrama and jarring ambient noise as Ocean did on Endless and the last half of Blonde. The tracks here do occasionally gain momentum —with French maverick Sébastien Tellier’s reflective 3 a.m. anthem “La ritournelle” in particular—but, for the most part, the music here serves as a pensive, ambient mood board.Further Listening:Decoding Endless: Frank’s Wild YearsThe Best Ambient TechnoThe 50 Best Ambient Albums of All TimeAphex Twin’s Field DaySUNDAY-MORNING HEARTBREAK AND SOFT R&B JAMS

There’s a warmth and intimacy to many of Frank Ocean’s best tracks—think of the delicate dance of “Pink + White” from Blonde, or Channel Orange tracks like “Bad Religion,” the bouncy “Monks,” or the titantic “Thinkin’ About You.” The Rhodes-driven tracks reference, of course, the classic R&B of Stevie Wonder, but they also point towards another, more modern and gentle strand of R&B that descended from neo-soul forebearers such as Erykah Badu and D’Angelo. Esperanza Spalding (who Frank included on inaugural edition of blonded radio) is a great example of this, skirting the borders of jazz, funk, and soul and paying homage to each, but carving out a singular aesthetic that’s both modern and timeless.The best tracks here are those that negotiate traditional genre boundaries with a gentle grace. Yussef Kamaal’s “Yo Chavez” interweaves vibe-laced ‘70s jazz fusion with a shuffling broken beat over airy textures that points towards the looser, groovier parts of Channel Orange. The classic boom-bap funk fuzz of the OutKast/Erykah Badu collaboration “Humble Mumble,” or the loose, euphoric glow of Kehlani’s “Undercover,” also reflects the warmth of Ocean’s “Pink + White,” while Darando’s raggedy falsetto on the forgotten ‘70s classic “Didn’t I” (originally included on installment five of blonded radio) is endlessly fragile and haunting. These are deeply intimate love songs, but most of these capture a love interrupted, deferred, or forgotten—a confessional focus that Ocean has returned to time and time again throughout his career.This is perfect Sunday morning listening, but it’s pretty damn good for any day (or time) you want to push play.Further Listening:Raphael Saadiq Behind the ScenesWhy SZA’s CTRL Is the R&B Album of the SummerUnpacked: Solange’s A Seat at the TableFRANK’S RAP TRAX

In many ways, Frank Ocean is less invested in rap music than his R&B peers. When he listed out his favorite tracks for the Blonde magazine last year, hip-hop was absent save for an OutKast and, um, DRAM track. And while Ocean has provided guest turns on a number of tracks—and he actually raps on Earl Sweatshirt’s lazy, SoCal anthem “Sunday”—he’s not nearly as promiscuous as other singers, and, as frequently as not, he tilts the gravity of the track so that they become Frank Ocean songs. (Kanye, wisely realizing this, stripped his contribution from the end of The Life of Pablo’s “Wolves” and made it its own track, the appropriately entitled “Frank’s Track.”)Still, Frank is deeply invested in the genre, both through his Odd Future lineage and in rap’s culture, sound, and attitude. The hip-hop tracks that he’s included on blonded radio (episodes #4 and #6 focus on the genre) and beyond tend to be chart-driven singles, and remind us that Ocean is ultimately a pop artist. The hypnotic “Tunnel Vision” from Kodak Black has this year’s best use of the flute (and, really, that’s saying a lot) and matches the loopy, hall-of-mirrors vibe of many Ocean tracks. And while Frank famously called out the Grammys for giving Album of the Year to Taylor Swift over Kendrick—"hands down one of the most 'faulty’ TV moments I've seen"—that’s not the only thing linking Lamar and Ocean. Both endlessly distort and manipulate their voices: Kendrick changes registers, effects, and pitch with nearly every verse, while Ocean—on tracks like “Nikes”—uses vocal mutations to add both texture and narrative drama to his tracks. It wasn’t surprising that he included “LUST.” on installment #4 of blonded.But, more than any aesthetic linkage, these guys are his friends (A$AP Rocky), his collaborators (Future), and his idols (OutKast), and this playlist acknowledges those influences and associations.Further Listening:Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN., UnpackedFrank Ocean’s Best Guest SpotsSongs That Prove the Flute Was Always Hip-Hop’s Secret WeaponFRANK’S INDIE ROCK FIXATION

“Indie rock” is a bit of a misnomer. It always has been. It’s more of a philosophical approach or psychographic than it is an aesthetic designation, but, however you look at it, Frank Ocean has long been a rabid fan of this spectrum of music. The surf-rock guitar line that anchors “Ivy” wouldn’t have felt out of place on any number of ‘60s-revivalist rock records from the past decade, while the clamour and noise of “Pretty Sweet” sound a lot like the psych/lo-fi groups that populated the ’90s rock landscape (though, granted, the two-step/garage drum line at the end turns it into a Frank Ocean track), while the bouncy melodies and sullen vocal counterpoints owe more than a little to The Smiths.There’s been a long-standing tradition of indie-rock critics trying to project their own music onto R&B and hip-hop musicians, and that’s not what we’re trying to do here—but it’s also undeniable that Frank has focused a lot on this type of music (particularly on the fifth edition of blonded radio). Some of the selections here are exactly the songs you’d expect from someone who spends his summers headlining festivals—MGMT’s “Electric Feel,” The Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”—but others convey a deeper investment. Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop” reflects Ocean’s own penchant for creating long-form, mise-en-scene narratives over noisy, clattering backdrops, even if Alan Vega’s tale of a down-and-out factory worker killing his family is a little more macabre than anything on Frank’s albums. The shimmering, ephemeral “Wild Thing Runs Free” from Baltimore noise-punk group Teen Suicide resembles the rambling interludes that dot Frank’s own albums. And it’s not surprising to see (Sandy) Alex G show up on the second edition of blonded—after all, he did contribute guitar work to both Endless and Blonde—and his track “Mis” is imbued with a certain shambolic majesty.We don’t want Frank to abandon custom luxury cars and glitter for stick-and-poke tattoos and dive bars, but this is a great, revealing, and fairly unexpected playlist.Further Listening:Ambient Dream Folk & Beyond Dreamy Noise Sounds: The Best of Kranky RecordsFierce and Fuzzy: The Lo-Fi Revolution

When David Bowie died of liver cancer eight days into the New Year (and two days after the release of his astonishing Blackstar), it was an awfully prescient indication of 2016’s relentlessly downward direction. When news came of Prince’s passing in April — a sudden and surprising event given that the Purple One had seemed his usual vital self the same week as his death, tooling around Minneapolis on his bicycle and shopping on Record Store Day — it felt like a kick in the teeth. How bad could this year get? As it turned out, it could get a lot worse…By December, the list of the departed would range from boomer rock titans (Eagles’ Glenn Frey; Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner; Leon Russell; both Keith Emerson and Greg Lake) to soul and R&B greats (Sharon Jones, Billy Paul, Natalie Cole, Maurice White) to heroes of the underground (Suicide’s Alan Vega, French electronic-music godfather Jean-Jacques Perrey, house-music pioneer Colonel Abrams) to many more gone way too soon (Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest, hardcore-era Beastie Boys guitarist John Berry). While Merle Haggard passed away peacefully in his tour bus, tragic car crashes would claim both Atlanta rapper Shawty Lo and the rising British band Viola Beach. Hell, we even lost Blowfly, dammit, though if it’s any consolation, the hereafter just got a whole lot filthier with the addition of the NC-17-rated R&B showman.Perhaps he’ll find a new friend in Leonard Cohen, another songwriter who prided himself on having a certain expertise on carnal matters. Though his loss was keenly felt in November (especially since the news hit two days after the election), Cohen was just as considerate as Bowie in ensuring he left us with one final masterwork. Sublime tracks from Blackstar and You Want It Darker are part of this collection of songs by singers, songwriters and musicians who’ve been sadly silenced by the fate that’s waiting for the rest of us, too.

Founded in the late ’00s, Glasgow’s Optimo Music is the quintessential Scottish label, and that’s exactly the way JD Twitch wants it. The producer, DJ, promoter, remixer, and proud Scot has amassed a catalog that directly mirrors the freely flowing exchange between DIY, anything-goes rock and cutting-edge dance music that has long defined the country’s underground. After all, Scottish artists were some of the very first on the planet to (1) blend punk and discoid propulsion (see Fire Engines’ 1980 landmark “Get Up and Use Me”), (2) fold alt-rock into house/techno (Primal Scream, of course), and (3) pioneer ’00s dance rock (the crazy prescient Yummy Fur did it a decade ahead of schedule).Among the slew of vinyl Twitch released in 2016 (including those sides on the Optimo Trax and Optimo Music Disco Plate sub-labels), it’s on The Pussy Mothers’ The Number 1 EP, MR TC’s Surf and Destroy, and Junto Club’s Warm Me Up that these deliciously anarchic qualities are most in your face. Surf and Destroy is especially telling: the title track is a throbbing orgy of acid squelch, post-punk atmosphere, and psychedelic guitar wash.In contrast, these qualities become more subtle on those records that (at first blush, at least) tilt more toward orthodox dancefloor groove. A track like “In Turbine,” from Underspreche’s Invito Alla Danza Part 1, is minimal, electroacoustic drone rock (complete with warm organ hum) from a duo who are no strangers to pounding club jams. Noo is another revealing example: Their Optimo Music Disco Plate Five is all about 21st-century Italo awesomeness filtered through a scrappy, slacker basement vibe. Noo, it has to be noted, was founded by Christophe “Daze” Dasen and Sami Liuski, who hail from Switzerland and Finland respectively. You see, that’s a part of Twitch’s curatorial genius; he possesses a knack for teaming up with artists who, while they may not hail from the Scottish underground, create music that totally reflects its unique sensibility.Note: while my playlist is stacked with tracks from Optimo Music’s 2016 releases, listeners will also discover a handful of older gems. Truth be told, the label’s full catalog is never far from my turntable. For example, I probably jam Golden Teacher’s Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night — a boisterous collision of future punk, acid, and all manner of tribal funkery released in 2013 — at least once a month. Like most underground music from Scotland, this stuff simply doesn’t age.