Genres

On April 10 of this year, Ben McOsker announced that Load Records—after nearly a quarter-century of contorting brains—is closing up shop. To describe the underground rock and noise label’s run as stellar is a gross understatement. Few imprints that document the fringes of sound have released even half the amount of genre-defining albums that McOsker and his partner in crime Laura Mullen have: Lightning Bolt’s Ride the Skies, Sightings’ Absolutes, The USA IS A Monster’s Tasheyana Compost, Yellow Swans’ At All Ends—the list goes on. These aren’t just amazing records, they’re seeds that filtered out into the world and helped spawn a global noise movement that came to a screeching climax in the ’00s. To put Load’s legacy in its proper context, you’d have to reach back to the glory years of Touch and Go or Amphetamine Reptile for an apt comparison—though, truth be told, neither label ever ventured as far out sonically as Load.Founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1993, Load served as the primary outlet for the unique mix of local greaser punks and art-school transplants inhabiting the city’s sprawling underground. Lightning Bolt are the most popular of the Providence outfits, but Load also released critical titles from Olneyville Sound System, Thee Hydrogen Terrors, Pleasurehorse, Kites, Prurient, and The Human Beast. McOsker and Mullen also looked far beyond the city’s limits: By the mid-’00s, they were unleashing music from artists as far flung as New York City (Sightings, Excepter, The USA IS A Monster), Ohio (Sword Heaven, Homostupids), San Francisco (Total Shutdown, The Hospitals), and Norway (Noxagt, Ultralyd).Beyond its consistently excellent output, Load pushed the limits of what an independent record label could get away with while continuing to remain commercially viable. Most imprints—however freaky, cacophonous, and anarchic—that get a taste of success tend to begin playing it safe, opting to release records that rarely venture beyond what’s already proven to be popular. But, possessing a deep love for trickster spirit-like unpredictability, Load actually got stranger the more units it sold. How else do you explain the existence of the Hawd Gankstuh Rappuhs MCs (Wid Ghatz)’s Wake Up and Smell the Piss, a descent into perverted, excrement-obsessed, lo-fi noise-hop that probably sold no more than a dozen copies? This record even confused Load’s most hardcore fans.But by unleashing such wildly uncommercial music alongside proven sellers like Lightning Bolt, Load helped give a much larger platform to genius musicians who are way too left field and individualistic for even the indie rock marketplace. For that, Load deserves some kind of cultural service award. Thank you, Ben and Laura!Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

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

A new crop of rising stars from Long Beach, California, including Vince Staples and O.T. Genasis, have brought renewed attention to the second largest city in Los Angeles County. But Snoop Dogg’s rise to superstardom in the early ‘90s made LBC a hotbed for the West Coast rap explosion, making Snoop associates like Warren G and Daz Dillinger famous as well. And over the last 25 years, Long Beach’s contribution to hip hop has been diverse, from vocalists who combine rapping with singing like Nate Dogg and RBX to the producer BattleCat, Rage Against The Machine’s rap/rock trailblazer Zach de la Rocha, hitmakers like Domino, and respected lyricsts like Crooked I. And modern Long Beach rappers like Joey Fatts and TayF3rd continue to expand the city’s musical identify beyond its storied gangsta rap history. -- Al Shipley

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.

Ultimately, sadcore is more about a feeling than a specific sound, and, as you probably guessed from the name, that feeling is not exactly a bright, uplifting one. Some trace its origins back to the gloomy glower of British bands like The Smiths or even The Cure, but sadcore didn’t really cohere as a genre (movement would imply too much action on the part of its melancholia-afflicted practitioners) until U.S. indie bands like Galaxie 500 came along in the late ‘80s. Though virtually none of the artists to whom the tag has been applied would ever actually own up to coming under the sadcore banner, over the years the description has been applied to everything from the lacerating self-effacement of alt-rock heroes American Music Club to the muted musings of Cat Power. But whichever way you slice it, sadcore is the sound indie obsessives turn to when the sunny side of things doesn’t strike you quite right.

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Don’t be misled by the megawatt smile of Algerian singer-songwriter Khaled. Known as the king of raï, his songs are as provocative as they are joyful. Raï (which means “opinion” or “point of view” in Arabic) first blossomed in the 1970s and ’80s in the rowdy cabarets of Oran, a port city on the coast of the Mediterranean. As the music gained in popularity, a pioneering record producer named Rachid Baba-Ahmed started bringing local stars to his studio in the northwestern city of Tlemcen to record pop-oriented tracks featuring synthesizers, guitars, and drum machines. This “pop raï” sound was documented on the iconic 1988 compilation Rai Rebels, which put raï on the map and helped lay a foundation for international superstars like Khaled — then known as Cheb Khaled, an honorary title meaning “Young Man.” As he gained in popularity, Khaled dropped the “Cheb” from his name and toured the globe. In 1999, the genre’s renown was fully cemented as singer Cheb Mami teamed up with Sting to record the hit “Desert Rose” — which made it into the Top 20 on the U.S. Billboard charts — while Khaled paired with fellow raï stars Rachid Taha and Faudel for the much-celebrated live album 1, 2, 3 Soleils. By now raï hits were fully globalized affairs featuring Western-style song structures, universal themes, and some of the most sentimental pop hooks known to man. But the genre remained controversial back home, where a civil war was consuming Algeria whole. The singer Cheb Hasni and the producer Baba-Ahmed were both assassinated by Islamist militants in 1994 and 1995, and many artists had to flee, no longer able to safely sing music that dealt with controversial matters like drinking and forbidden love. The war in Algeria ended in 2002 and today raï continues to evolve, with younger artists fusing it together with genres like R&B. And of course, Khaled scored another hit in 2012 with his club banger “C’est la vie.” It just goes to show how powerful the genre is, encapsulating the drastic extremes of life itself.

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

Former Fools Gold singer/ current solo artist Luke Top may appear to explore indie pop pleasantries in his sonic output (check latest single "Ive Been Working" for reference), but when it came to making us a playlist, he showed his many moods.Says Luke: "[Its] a small sampling of some of the mood altering songs that I carry deep inside me everywhere I go. The way they influence my behavior and thinking is immeasurable but immense. They color me in to create a creature of feeling rather than a caveman adrift."Listen above or go right here, and watch out for The Dumb-Show EP coming in October.

For all his antics, gags, and occasional pantslessness, Mac DeMarco has always been a sensitive soul. Of course, this isn’t news to anyone who’s ventured past his wild-goofball stage persona and dived into the dreamily intimate and playfully askew pop songs that fill all of the Canuck’s releases. DeMarco’s first full-length album in three years, This Old Dog, may be his richest and smoothest to date, showcasing his growing love for vintage synths and his increasing skill in using them to enhance the shine and shimmer of his deceptively casual melodies.The candor he displays in many new songs—in which he reflects on a fraught relationship with his father—is one element that evokes his ‘70s singer/songwriter heroes, a pantheon that includes James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Harry Nilsson. Yet the music’s effervescence and spirit of playfulness demonstrate his deep devotion to mavericks like Jonathan Richman and Yellow Magic Orchestra just as clearly. All the while, he inches closer to his long-stated ambition to make an album as strong as his favorites, with Neil Young’s Harvest and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band as a couple he often cites.Any way you slice it, This Old Dog is a shockingly mature effort for a guy who remains famous for interrupting a gig to stick a drumstick up his butt. Several key Mac tracks show how he got here, along with songs by the icons who inspired him and some from friends and collaborators like Ariel Pink and Walter TV.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.