Scenes

This playlist from Beatport imagines the perfect 10 tracks for a sunrise set at Berlins legendary Panorama bar. As you can imagine, these tracks are bright, anthematic excursions into deep house, nu-disco and funky house, and include Omar S, Pépé Bradock and Todd Terje.

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

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.

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:

“I was just high from this interconnected weird archive. It was like a living archive. There were so many weird, interconnecting, absurd combinations, but they were lovely. It was this very, very special time.”

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.

Source: Mel of the Outfit, NoiseyA Guide to Dallas Rap ; Listen for free at bop.fmMel, from Dallas rap group, The Outfit, curates his list of the top 24 Dallas rap groups that matter right now. There are some great finds here -- Topic, Crit Morris, and Johnny Cage are from great to good -- and there are also some artists that I never want to hear again -- Dustin Cavazes, namely, but whats most interesting is how the scene is a microcosm for the larger rap world -- a dash of hipster rap, a pinch of street, a bit of frat rap bullshit, and then a dabble of crossover. Anyway, if nothing else, it was enjoyable to read the story behind "My Dougie":

Around 2007, a number of Dallas artists began to soundtrack a sort of inner-city war dance—residents of various Dallas neighborhoods would hit their respective variations of the dance before or after brawling—that became the Dallas Boogie...Thousands of kids in the region uploaded videos of themselves hitting the boogie to the new hot Dallas tracks, and some of these reached millions of views in a couple of months’ time.Then, in 2009, right as this two-year-old movement seemed on the cusp of going national, the LA rap group Cali Swag District made an homage to the movement, influenced in particular by North Dallas rapper Lil Wil’s “My Dougie.” Their song, “Teach Me How to Dougie,” became a global phenomenon, and Dallas’s distinctive style and music—everything from the crazy, dyed haircuts to secondary dances to songs like “Ricky Bobby” and “Cat Daddy” to usage of the long-time Dallas-area familial term “bro”—became rebranded as a California thing, a setback for Dallas that still smarts.

You could pretty easily make the case that Chicago is the musical center of the United States. Blues, juke and house all originated (at least in part) from the city. Two-Step (or just Steppin) never achieved the national name recognition as house music, but it was a pretty potent strain of R&B that peaked in the middle half of the last decade. Like a lot of music to emerge in the past thirty years, it was a dance first. The music was bright, romantic and highly syncopated. Its great, summery R&B music. It was popularized nationally by R. Kelly in his "Step in the Name of Love" single, but that was really just the tip of the iceberg, as this excellent playlist demonstrates. Rizoh over at Beats did a great job capturing some of the highlights from the scene. Listening now, it definitely feels of a certain time and place, and it seems very out-of-step with the more dour and minimal sounds the genre would adopt in subsequent years, which makes two step even more powerful.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!The party line among rock historians is that 70s progressive rock was a uniquely British phenomenon, with minor prog annexes popping up in America and elsewhere. While its true that prog found its footing in England, the idea that it was the musics only—or even main—stronghold is a patent falsehood.While there were active prog scenes all across Europe in Germany, Sweden, France, and other regions, Italy became as much of a hotbed for it as England, if not more so. As in the UK, Italian prog grew out of psychedelia, with fuzzy guitars and organ solos giving way to swooping synths and complex suites. But Italian prog had a distinct sonic fingerprint that set it apart from its British cousin.Aside from the obvious fact that most of the lyrics were in Italian, the countrys prog bands—with some important exceptions—tended toward a lush, symphonic sound that embraced classical influences and eschewed the blues modalities that popped up in the music of their British counterparts. The influence of Italian folk was also crucial, making for a more pastoral feel than commonly found in British prog.The big stars of Italian prog—the handful of bands who ever performed or had records released outside of their homeland—included Premiata Forneria Marconi (PFM for short), Banco, and Le Orme (pictured at top). But at various strata beneath that tiny top tier were countless other bands who were as equally inventive. Though the likes of Biglietto Per LInferno, Metamorfosi, and Celeste didnt gain much attention in other countries, theyre a vital part of Italys proud prog legacy. The presence of contemporary bands like La Maschera Di Cera and Nuova Era, who are overtly influenced by their forebears, attests to the staying power of this singular sound.

Khyam Allami, Ola Saad, and 47Soul are just some of the names associated with a rising generation of rockers, singer-songwriters, and electronic producers creating alternative music in the Middle East and North Africa. While Western news headlines tend to focus on the struggles of Syrian refugees and the protracted fight against ISIS, the past decade in the region has seen a paradigm shift in the fields of art and music. From Cairo to Tehran, artists have looked beyond borders and mass-market media sources, adopting wifi, social media and home production programs like Pro Tools to establish new networks of collaboration and distribution.Among the talents are the band 47Soul, who capture the spirit of Arab youth culture and speak to their Palestinian roots with their analog synthesizers, political lyrics, and Levantine dabke rhythms. There’s Khyam Allami, an artist of Iraqi descent who runs the influential label Nawa Recordings, who made avant-garde punk on the soundtrack for the 2015 Tunisian indie film As I Open My Eyes/À peine jouvre les yeux and explores the boundaries of Arabic oud with the avant-garde group Alif (which features members from Egypt and Lebanon). And there’s producers like Ola Saad, who engages with her surroundings through provocative ambient electronic music and sound art.There’s a long tradition of cross-cultural collaboration and avant-garde exploration in the Middle East and North Africa, but this music today is fundamentally unique — reflecting a time of conflict and global division but also of trans-national enrichment and creative possibility.

Id strongly suggest reading Nat Thomsons brief but interesting oral history of Baltimore club music. It has some interesting tidbits on that citys great scene. As a note, this playlist does contain both tracks from Baltimore, as well as some of the music that inspired the scene, according to Thomson.