Genres

On February 23, Montreal electro artist Clarian (ex-Footprintz) releases his debut album, Television Days (via Balance Music), a neon-lit, synth-smeared concept album about a failed screenwriter trying to survive in Hollywood. For his Dowsers playlist, he’s put together a mix of primitive electronica, post-punk, romantic goth, and outsider pop he describes simply as "music so that when she smiles, the fear flies away in little pieces of light."

In 1989, a robotics scientist from MIT wrote an academic paper titled "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of the Solar System," predicting that the future lies in arrays of tiny robots that will function like swarms of mechanical insects. Just a few years later, dance music got its own fast, cheap, and out-of-control movement — jungle — in which bootlegged funk breaks were sped up, looped, and paired with thundering dub bass lines and unhinged MC chat until the whole riotous affair seemed ready to go completely off the rails. Probably just coincidence, but jungles careening robot funk also had its own insectoid qualities: voices pitched helium-high, hi-hats twitching like antennae, snares that rattled as though there were a centipede sitting behind the drum kit.Nineties jungle was a singles-based phenomenon, and it was largely a sub-rosa affair, too; why bother clearing a sample for a record whose natural habitat was the white-label 12"? All of this means that classic jungle hasnt necessarily fared very well in the streaming era, but Resident Advisors Classic Jungle playlist does a great job of compiling classic cuts. Theres a little something for everyone here: LTJ Bukems "Atlantis (I Need You)" pairs Detroit technos jazzy, optimistic sensibilities with breaks that roll like a mountain stream; Congo Nattys "Junglist" nods to roots reggae; and cuts from Source Direct and Photek go in hard on sci-fi affect. Origin Unknowns "Valley of the Shadows," meanwhile, samples the Apollo 11s Lunar Module landing from 1969, taking apart yesterdays high-tech dreams like so many scissor-handed nanorobots.

Its a little hard to believe, but Kanye West has been producing hip-hop tracks now for 20 years. In terms of longevity, hes been more relevant for a longer period of time than any modern pop producer. And, in that period, hes undergone several stylistic shifts that have taken him from being a champion of very meat-and-potatoes trad hip-hop -- albeit with a chipmunk twist -- to being a pop conduit to the outré electronic and old school psych. This article by Third Bridge Creative does a nice job at capturing these shifts, and uses data supplied by Whosampled to back up the analysis. The associated playlist provides a more rote but still compelling look at some of the most recognizable samples, placing Kanye classics next to the originals.

For those who get tired of hearing the same tired old versions of the same damn Christmas tunes every time the holidays roll around, this playlist offers some electrifying options to keep your seasonal soundtrack vital, and hopefully prevent you from falling asleep in your eggnog.Even those who think they know it all when it comes to the classic-rock canon might be surprised by the number of Christmas songs that have been recorded by some of rock n rolls mightiest artists over the years. The best-of collections by the Eagles and REO Speedwagon rarely, if ever, end up including tracks like "Please Come Home for Christmas" and "Ill Be Home for Christmas," respectively. And when the catalog of The Beach Boys is celebrated, how often does their "Little Saint Nick" get a mention?Even prog rockers have taken time out from their tricky time signatures and otherworldly epics to spend some time in the land of sleigh bells and roasted chestnuts. Emerson, Lake & Palmer offered up a tune that would become a holiday standard in England, "I Believe in Father Christmas," and Jethro Tull turned out a flute-tastic version of the classic carol "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."The harder end of the rock spectrum is represented not only by Twisted Sister giving a new spin to a time-honored idea with "Heavy Metal Christmas (The Twelve Days of Christmas)" but also by the kings of metal satire, Spinal Tap, with their satanically seasonal "Christmas with the Devil." Beatlemaniacs are well served at Christmastime — theres John Lennons hopeful "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," Paul McCartneys jubilant standby "Wonderful Christmastime," and Ringo getting his licks in with "Come On Christmas, Christmas Come On."While some of the most popular classic-rock Christmas tunes are originals, theres also a fair number of rockers who have tackled timeless holiday standards, coming up with their own takes on the venerated tunes. Bruce Springsteens live version of "Santa Claus Is Comin to Town" is probably one of the best-known and most beloved, but dont sleep on Stevie Nicks take on "Silent Night" either.Pioneering 50s rockers left their mark on the holiday canon as well. Chuck Berrys "Run Rudolph Run" pretty much set the template for every rock n roll Christmas tune to come, and Elvis Presleys "Blue Christmas" is just about the most mournful seasonal track ever recorded.So when it comes time to crank up the holiday soundtrack this year, dont worry about drowning in worn-out warhorses. Just turn to this collection of classic-rock cuts to keep your Christmas crackling with energy.

Deep down in the shadowy, cobwebby corners of many musical legends, you’re bound to come across a stray track that goes way against the grain, differing so drastically from the artist’s signature sound that you might think it was recorded by someone else entirely. These tracks are the outliers, and while a handful of them have become renowned over time, many are still lurking in the darkness waiting for some hardy historian to shine a light on them.One of the most famous outliers is The Beatles’ “Revolution 9,” in which John Lennon left conventional song format far behind in favor of an utterly avant-garde musique concrète composition. Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music—essentially an album full of feedback and electronic whirring and buzzing—is almost as iconic. But there are plenty of other equally anomalous tunes to discover from the catalogs of major artists.Creedence Clearwater Revival might seem like the band least likely to go for their own “Revolution 9,” but that’s pretty much what they did with “Rude Awakening #2”; Folk rock trailblazers The Byrds found time to mix synths and Indian influences on the out-there instrumental “Moog Raga”; and everybody from Chubby Checker to Sonny Bono to The Four Seasons managed to turn out a mind-bendingly trippy tune or two in the psychedelic era.Those who associate Foghat with leaden blues rock boogie will be astonished at the shockingly Squeeze-like power pop nugget “Wide Boy,” and who expected hard rock hero Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy to cough up a Eurodisco-tinged synth-pop tune co-written with Ultravox’s Midge Ure? Tony McPhee, frontman for UK blues rockers The Groundhogs, is a cult hero, but his 20-minute electronic freakout “The Hunt” is such a quintessential example of the outlier phenomenon that it’s the ideal way to close out this carnival of the unlikely.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Classic rock possesses all the stubborn resilience of a cockroach . It’s the 21st century, and the technological singularity is upon us: Humans are banging in VR, autonomous cars are causing fender benders up and down the West Coast, 3-D printers are capable of creating hideous yet entirely livable homes, and indie folkie Bon Iver has gone full-blown weepy cyborg. But despite wave upon wave of civilization-disrupting futurism, young musicians totally worship the musty vinyl albums on which their grandparents rolled joints back in the ‘60s and ’70s. The Temperance Movement’s bluesy chops earned them an opening slot for The Rolling Stones in 2014; Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats have zipped up the charts thanks to the kind of high-octane rhythm ‘n’ blues that made the J. Geils Band a workhouse live act in the mid-’70s; and Deap Vally, the take-no-shit female duo from Los Angeles, lay down grooves as big and growling as anything from Cactus.Clearly inspired by The White Stripes and The Black Keys—who basically are the patron saints of what we’ll call nü classic rock—a good number of these young guns temper their nostalgia with modern touches and twists inspired by alt-rock. On Sound & Color, Alabama Shakes dress up their Southern-fried garage rock with a gauzy, shoegaze-like drift and hulking bass drops. Royal Blood, who’ve memorized the stripped down, pulverizing caterwaul of Led Zeppelin I and II, have in Ben Thatcher a drummer whose beats frequently slip into the battering-ram stutter of robotic hip-hop funk.But not every artist on this playlist is a descendent of the Jack White/Dan Auerbach lineage. Both Crobot and Sweden’s Blues Pills follow the lead of retro-everything forerunners Wolfmother and The Sword, bashing out hybridizations of bell-bottomed riff rock and vintage metal heavily informed by Deep Purple, early Rush, The Jeff Beck Group, and other eardrum-drubbing longhairs from the FM rock days. If you think Western civilization peaked with James Gang’s “Funk #49,” then this definitely is the playlist for you. Best of all, no VR goggles needed.

Classic rock, cook-outs, and flag-waving patriotism aren’t only for right-wing yahoos who keep a copy of Cat Scratch Fever tucked next to their Beanfield Sniper Remington Sendero SF II. I know it feels that way in an age when the Nuge and Kid Rock are snapping selfies in the Oval Office. But trust me: There’s plenty of us on the left who jump at the chance to blast big, shaggy riffs and slather grub in barbecue sauce (even if the grub being slathered is veggie burgers). And it’s for you, my fellow classic-rock lefties—like the proud American down my street with the “End the War on the Middle Class” sign in his window and a pickup truck covered in union stickers—that I’ve put together what, in my humble opinion, is one hell of a Fourth of July playlist stuffed with songs fighting the good fight.A lot of the tunes you know and love, like Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (though maybe not everybody has cracked open the howling, wall-of-guitars rendition from 1975’s Rolling Thunder Revue) and Jefferson Airplane’s muddy-ass, piano-banging, Woodstock anthem “Volunteers.” (“Hey, I’m dancing down the streets! Got a revolution!!!”). And as should be expected of any patriotic playlist worth its salt, you’re bound to find some Springsteen (whose original, acoustic version of “Born in the U.S.A.” is a bloody, brooding anti-war cry that sounds more like the dread-stained “State Trooper” than the high-gloss “Dancing in the Dark”) and Seger. (If you know only the Night Moves era—which isn’t bad, mind you—then his 1969 anti-Vietnam War psych-raver “2 +2 =?” will have you burning flags by its second verse.)But listeners will also run into a bunch of obscure nuggets. Detroit’s megaton demolition of The Velvet Underground’s “Rock ’n’ Roll,” from 1971, should’ve been a massive hit for lead singer and perpetual underdog Mitch Ryder, who around the time of its recording had joined the fight to release White Panther revolutionary and all-around awesome guy John Sinclair from prison. Ditto for Relatively Clean Rivers’ “Easy Ride,” a smoothly rolling evocation of rural hippie ethos that will totally appeal to those pro-legalization types in love with Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.There’s also a ton of soul and funk to be heard, and that’s because all true lefty rock fans don’t see any difference between rock ’n’ roll and R&B. It’s all righteous people making righteous groove music to battle the forces of oppression and tyranny that now, more than ever, are bearing down on our beloved United States. On the deliriously punchy, horn-stabbing “You Haven’t Done Nothin’,” Stevie Wonder rails against Tricky Dick, but it may as well be 45. Aretha Franklin’s “Spirit in the Dark” isn’t overtly political but rather serves as a gorgeous and uplifting example of the sublimely redemptive vibrations emanating from African-American spiritual music. Another powerhouse is the proto-disco “I Want to Take You Higher” recorded at Woodstock. For just shy of seven minutes, Sly & the Family Stone make good on the American dream: full equality and integration riding some of the most ecstatic funk ever laid down.So, this Fourth of July, crank these jams, eat a ton of great food, maybe even set of some explosives. But come Wednesday morning, let these songs inspire you to crawl into the trenches to fight all the anti-union, anti-universal healthcare, anti-Black Lives Matter, anti-LGBTQ, anti-climate change, anti-public education, anti-abortion, pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-Koch forces hijacking our country.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. This is not “neo soul.” At least it’s not what’s been commonly described that way ever since R&B acts started channeling ‘70s influences in the ‘90s. “Neo classic” is a more apt term, when we’re talking about the likes of Sharon Jones, Eli “Paperboy” Reed, Raphael Saadiq, and James Hunter, who may toss in some ‘70s shadings here and there but keep their musical template firmly rooted in the ‘60s. You can hear the influence of everything from the sweet Chicago soul of The Impressions to the emotion-wracked moan of James Carr. While Brooklyn’s Daptone label leads the pack, with artists like Jones, Charles Bradley, and Naomi Shelton, neo-classic soul can pop anyplace where there’s a band with a sense of history and a singer willing to lay it all on the line.

Classixx released their sophomore LP Faraway Reach in 2016, and signaled a more straightforward pop aesthetic for the band that was in part responsible for popularizing the tropical house sound. There’s no contextual information that accompanies this playlist, and the user is left to guess at the theme, if there is any. There’s a lilting quality to tracks like Bobby Briggs’ reggae jam “Love Come Dow” that tilts its hand to Classixx’s own beachfront fireside vibe, and the emphasis on yachty electro-pop signals that perhaps this can be seen as a key to Classixx’s sonic formula.

Fun fact: Adults spend at least one third of their waking hours daydreaming. Okay, like most stuff on the internet, that is not an actual fact, but it’s cool if it’s true (though it’s probably not). Anyway, to help you with your daydreaming, we’ve come up with a playlist full of progressive ambient, cloud-folk, blur-house, and other genres that we’re making up as we type this sentence. The playlist is also awesome for other activities, like sleeping, studying, getting high, and… uh… sorry, we lost our train of thought there for a second. But subscribe to the playlist here and check back for regular updates.