Moses Sumney had a certain feeling he wanted to capture when he recorded Aromanticism, 2017’s most irresistibly sumptuous debut album. “That moment as you’re feeling asleep,” he told the New York Times in September, “or right when you wake up, when you’re still one foot in and one foot out of the dream world, and everything is really murky and you feel like you’re floating.”The L.A. breakout artist is hardly alone in his quest to capture that ineffable state. This year yielded a startling abundance of music that had the same alluring softness as Sumney’s blissed-out R&B. Fellow travelers like Sampha, Kelela, Nick Hakim, and Syd all double-downed on the combination of smudgy beats, pillowy synths, and diaphanous vocals that had once marked Frank Ocean as an outlier but now seems everywhere. More cerebral and less carnal than the R&B sound that had been dominant since the rise of Drake, it aims to evoke a more solitary variety of bedroom experience than the genre has typically prioritized.That’s not to say there aren’t great songs about love and sex, too. But there’s definitely a more introspective bent to the new R&B, as well as a more adventurous musical sensibility. Though Frank Ocean gets the most credit for charting out this dream space and building a home there, the Weeknd certainly used to know the neighbourhood. Neo-soul mavericks like D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Bilal explored it as well. In their own music and productions for FKA twigs, Kelela, Solange and more, the likes of Dev Hynes and Arca approach it from other angles. In any case, Sumney, Sampha, and other sleepy-eyed occupants of R&B’s vanguard made this space just as inviting to listeners this year.
In times of crisis, indie-pop—or twee, or whatever you want to call the sort of pop music thats exquisitely appointed while singing finely tuned chronicles of furtive glances and squirreled-away heartbreaks—is my comfort-food music. Sweater-weather vibes and hummable melodies were in large supply in 2017 both in the U.S. and abroad. Cheeky British act Peaness (pictured) collected its recent output, including the stellar love song "Seafoam Islands," on Are You Sure?; Chicago scrappers Varsity released the spaced-out yet self-protective "Settle Down"; and British trio Girl Ray put out the stunning, exploratory Earl Grey, which triangulated the songcraft of Carole King, the wooliness of mid-90s K Records, and the exacting wit of Squeeze (as well as a prog freak-out or two) into a gorgeous record.A few of the labels from my 90s college-radio heyday—when I first grew heart-eyed over indie-pop—are still at it, putting out lovingly detailed pop albums. The Spain-based label Elefant, which has been operating since 1989, released La Bien Queridas breezy Fuego, which surrounds the chilled-out alto of Ana Fernández-Villaverde in urgent synths ("Si Me Quieres a Mi") and squiggly guitars ("El Lado Bueno"). The 10-inch by the resurgent British act The Primitives, also an Elefant release, soared with "Ill Trust The Wind," which combined a singsong earworm with guitar fuzz. Matinée Recordings launched in 1997 and this year released a slew of records that included the chiming Other Towns Than Ours by Melbournes Last Leaves, which includes three-quarters of the brainy Aussie indiepoppers The Lucksmiths. The 20th-anniversary comp Matinée Idols throws back to the days of various-artists-CD-based discovery with a Last Leaves track as well as the Snapchat-era lament "Me, My Selfie and I" by Scots Strawberry Whiplash and "Postcard" from the sweetly synthy Swedish band The Electric Pop Group. (Postcards also figured into the making of Jens Lekmans gorgeously forthright Life Will See You Now.)The labels that are still kicking almost make up for the sting of losing Fortuna POP!, the UK-based label that announced its shutdown after 22 years in business and punctuated said farewell with the dreamy Flowers track "Say 123," which combines chugging guitars and vocalist Rachel Kennedys spectral soprano. Bittersweet feelings are crucial to indie-pop, though, so the beauty of that song at least made for a fitting goodbye.
It’s tempting to frame 2018’s explosion of dark, industrialized sounds as a reaction to the election of Donald Trump, Brexit’s passing, and the waves of nationalism currently rippling across the West, but ultimately it’s inaccurate. After all, strains of mechanized dystopianism were emerging as early as the beginning of our current decade (perhaps as a response to the global failings of authoritarian neoliberalism, of which Trump himself is but an outgrowth). The early ‘10s were when we saw the first brooding recordings from Noah Anthony’s Profligate project, as well as key technoid murk from Silent Servant and Dominick Fernow’s more rhythmic cuts under his Vatican Shadow alias. Yet there can be little doubt that what started off as isolated pockets of activity has spread across experimental noise, avant-rock and -metal, and techno and coalesced into a full-blown movement. In terms of productivity and sheer inventiveness, this boom can rightly be compared to its predecessor scene of the late ’80s, back when industrial seeped into club music, ambient, folk, rock, and beyond.Indeed, many of 2018’s most vital underground records come caked in industrial grime. First and foremost, there’s Hiro Kone’s Pure Expenditure. Released on Dais Records, arguably the label most responsible for documenting the modern scene, Kone collapses dark techno and DIY electronics in on themselves, resulting in shattered groove research that’s both intensely complex and unapologetically visceral. Back in March, Dais also dropped Castration Anxiety, the debut full-length from HIDE. Featuring howler Heather Gabel, known for her unpromising stage performances, and Seth Sher, formerly of noise-rockers Coughs, the Chicago duo specialize in a slowly hammering take on rock-oriented industrial that, according to Gabel, transforms the illnesses plaguing modern society into violent catharsis.Falling somewhere between Kone and HIDE in its balance of brute force with psychic despair is Lana Del Rabies’ Shadow World, released on Deathbomb Arc, a California label that manages to document trajectories in both weirdo noise and outsider hip-hop. It’s an apt album title as the musician’s work seems to be forged inside a shadowy, liminal space that while informed by industrial also draws in elements of electronic music and an echo-drenched angst commonly associated with older styles of alt-rock. In fact, a lot of the artists found on our playlist share this very quality to varying degrees. If their ’80s counterparts pledged allegiance to industrial as though it were a political movement, their 21st-century descendants tend to avoid labelling themselves so vociferously—an anarchist’s devotion to Individual autonomy rather party solidarity, so to speak.Another big difference between the current industrial/industrial-leaning scene and its forebears in the ’80s is the sheer number of female artists now exploring these sounds. Back then, shit could get absurdly macho. (Strands of industrial rock even devolved into straight misogyny.) This time around, however, the most thrilling music is being made by women. In addition to Kone, Gabel, and Lana Del Rabies, there’s Puce Mary, Boy Harsher’s Jae Matthews, and Anna Schmidt of Milliken Chamber.Add to them to key cuts and remixes from JK Flesh, The Soft Moon, Imperial Black Unit, Uniform and The Body, and you’re definitely in for one hellishly immersive listening experience-- yet liberatory, too. Yes, a lot of this music is despairing, but through its thick, gauzy bleakness you’ll hear fresh, new voices burning with defiance and nonconformity, and that can only be an uplifting thing in the end.
Source: John Dale, FACT Magazine21 Essential Records From Cologne’s 90s Renaissance ; Listen for free at bop.fmFACTs John Dale talks with Mouse On Mars mastermind Jan St. Werner for an excellent overview of the Cologne electronic music scene in the early to mid 90s. Music from the scene represented a confluence of kraut-rock, ambient and music concrete influences, and while their palate was eclectic, nearly every artist found freedom in the open spaces of minimalist techno. The scene would soon spawn the legendary Kompakt records. Money quote from Werner:
XX only have two albums, so picking out a best-of is a little bit ancillary at this point, but its still great to hear all of the hits. This is particularly revealing when listened to side to side with Jamie XXs latest album, In Colour . His latest marks a dramatic aesthetic leap forward, and it will be interesting to hear what happens when the group reconvenes for their third album.
Source: Vulture, Piotr OrlovPiotr, a former colleague from Rhapsody, recently surveyed various purveyors of New York cool (Tim Sweeney, Star Eyes, Rich Medina, etc) for the quintessential list of New York party starters. Note that these arent songs by New Yorkers, per se, but rather tracks that the selected tastemakers felt were the key bangers. The results arent terribly surprising -- lots of DFA, Jay-Z, and Dip Set -- but its a really fun list with a lot of very enjoyable music. The Escort track "Cocaine Blues" is a satisfying mix of electro pop and nu-disco, with appropriately vaguely ironic lyrics about everyones favorite boogie powder, and the samba/afrobeat hybrid "Revolution Poem" is taken from a cool afro-beat compilation by Rich Medina and Bobbito that I wasnt familiar with. This article originally came out in June, but has gotten a second life thanks in part due to The Rub kicking off a new night at Williamsburg club Verboten with a mix inspired by Piotrs list. You can listen to the mix here.
Stereogums weekly compilation of their favorite songs on the indie rock/pop/hip-hop spectrum.
In his intro for the "article," FACT editor-in-chief Joe Muggs makes an interesting distinction:
To an extent, "Indietronica" is a catch-all for both electronic music tracks with pop song structures, and, conversely, for indie pop tracks with electronic embellishments, both of which are made by musicians who are largely not within mainstream culture, but its a bit of a critical crutch that this list defines too broadly. Hot Chip and even Caribou definitely fit the mold, as where theres a lot more going on in tracks by clOUDDEAD or Sampha than just Indietronica. The latter belongs in the same electronic singer-songwriter tradition as James Blake (whose also included on the list), while cLOUDDEAD fall into the experimental hip-hop camp. Of course, you could also make the case that the point of bands are to resist easily classification altogether. Regardless, this is a really enjoyable and cohesive set of tracks.
If ever there were a year that you could feel a seismic shift taking place in electronic music, it was 2019. Almost literally, as a rumbling under your feet. The truth is, the past few years in the genre had been slow: Despite the commercial explosion of EDM at the top of the decade, and the wave of opprobrium it generated from various corners of the underground and middleground, broad swaths of the dance-music scene didn’t offer much in the way of a counterargument—they just kept on doing what they’d been doing for years. And in many cases, that meant familiar, frequently retro-oriented house and techno, much of it indistinguishable from its inspirations from 20 years prior.
But in 2019, the status quo began to crumble, not just in terms of sound but also the people behind it. Much of the most exciting music came from relative newcomers, and many of them were women, trans, nonbinary, or queer, or artists of color, or some combination of the above—a far cry from the hegemony of straight, white dudes that had set dance music’s terms for far too long. The geographical center of power seemed to be shifting, too: London, New York, and Berlin remained key hubs, but some of the most unexpected sounds came via Kenya (Slikback), Uganda (MC Yallah), China (33EMYBW), or the Afro-Lusophone diaspora (DJ Nigga Fox), or from America-based musicians who incorporated their roots into their music (DJ Haram, 8ULENTINA, Debit).
In place of a dominant style, the sound of 2019 mirrored this radical openness. Four-to-the-floor rhythms gave way to the breakbeats and shifting syncopations of AMAZONDOTCOM, AceMoMa, and CCL x Flora FM. Peak-time requisites yielded to ambient instincts in the work of Barker, Leif, and Topdown Dialectic. Tempos swung wildly, from Dj Python’s dembow cadences to the breakneck rhythms of Jay Mitta’s singeli. And even in all this flux, dancers still clustered around a few enormous anthems, like Joy Overmono’s “Bromley” and Schacke’s “Kisloty People.”
These aren’t necessarily the 40 best songs of 2019—to make a list like that would be a fool’s errand. But they all represent chinks in the armor of dance music’s status quo; each one might be its own rabbit hole.
Photo Credit: Jase Cooper
Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Rap fans over 30 no longer ditch the genre for grown and sexy R&B — throwback rap as a radio format exploded in 2016 nationwide. So its time to start seriously considering rappers in their 40s to be the Greatest Generation in rap. Guys like Fat Joe, Snoop, Nas, Tribe, Mobb Deep, etc came up in the 90s, when budgets and deals and label options were abundant. Their albums were considered failures if they ONLY sold 300K units. You could write 25 verses a year to fulfill one album and be done — no constant mixtapes, features, Soundcloud exclusives, radio freestyles, etc. You had a lot of mystique — people only knew something about you if you said it in a magazine, put it on wax, on a video, or in your CD booklet Thank Yous. To start your career under those circumstances and still want to keep going in a world of $0.06 royalty checks from Spotify really speaks to the character of men who now have kids to put through college.Guys like Snoop, Kool Keith, and E-40 have maximized their personas to attract various revenue streams through TV shows, toys, movies, etc. Indie artists like Aesop Rock and Run the Jewels have adapted to the new economy with extensive merch options, tours, and licensing to movie soundtracks and television. RTJ even tapped into the Marvel Comics audience with multiple comic book covers dedicated to their iconic logo. Fat Joe eschewed an album altogether by aiming for the top with "All the Way Up,” a staple in pro sports arenas, ESPN commercials, and daytime radio. De La Soul crowdsourced a No. 1 album while A Tribe Called Quest recorded their comeback record in secret and performed on SNL with Dave Chappelle the week of its release. Nas, an investor in the razor company Bevel, promoted the crap out of his product on his revitalized smash "Nas Album Done" with DJ Khaled. Ka, who didnt break out until he was 38 years old, caught hell from New York tabloids for his firefighting day job and "objectionable" lyrics about cops shooting black people, all the while self-financing another great album gobbled up by his diehard fanbase. Havoc of Mobb Deep released a surprisingly outstanding solo LP The Silent Partner with Alchemist thats just as dark and nihilistic as any Mobb release in the late 90s. Geechi Suede of Camp Los latest solo single "Phone Check" would fit perfectly next to the groups smash single "Lucchini" in 1997. A Tribe Called Quest made their best album since 1993s classic Midnight Marauders. And Snoop cemented himself as the official rapper for all barbecues with his latest LP Coolaid almost 25 years after the release of Doggystyle.None of this would matter if The Greatest Generation in Rap wasnt as sharp as they were when Arsenio Hall was the apex of hip. This group will most likely be doing it well into their 50s — E-40 is 49 years old, Jay-Z just turned 47. Kool Keith’s age can only be quantified by the color of whatever wig he wears this week. This was a great year for rap fans who now stream their music in minivans.
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.
Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
