Scenes

Australian singer Juanita Stein has fronted the acclaimed rock-noir outfit Howling Bells since 2004. She releases her rootsy debut solo album, America, on July 28, 2017. To mark the occasion, shes produced this special playlist for The Dowsers of her favorite acts from Down Under. Here, Juanita explains what unites her selections: "Dirty and desolate: Aussie artists have a knack for beautifully capturing the dust settling, whether it be the psychedelic grit of King Gizzard or the delicate twilight of Julia Jacklin. These songs best capture my love of recent and (some) classic Australian bands."Watch the video for Juanita Steins recent single, "Dark Horse," here:

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Chicago’s underground has been on fire the past few years. Every other week seems to deliver a new batch of releases from the Hausu Mountain label, purveyors of madcap electronics and cyborg-bopping eccentricity. The shadowy Beau Wanzer, whose icy and forlorn productions disintegrate the divide between post-punk and techno, is nearly as prolific—and that’s just one dude. And then there’s Jaime Fennelly’s always progressing Mind Over Mirrors project: his latest album, the critically lauded Undying Color, wanders dense, rippling expanses of pastoral art folk and baroque électronique.Of course, “underground” means a lot of different things to a lot of different heads. For denizens of the city’s thriving avant-garde jazz and hardcore punk scenes, it conjures up a significantly different cluster of artists. So for this playlist, we focus primarily on musicians, bands, and oddball geniuses who stalk the back alleys, linking DIY electronics, industrial, droning experimentation, and mutant dance music. At first blush they may seem too far apart to link, but in Chicago, where musicians from different disciplines have always mingled freely, the overlap between them is substantial.This idea is reflected in the growing catalog of Midwich Productions, a label specializing in “electronic music from the urban wilderness of the Midwest.” Founded by longtime resident and musician Jim Magas, it’s home to both HIDE (pictured at top), who unleash mechanized nightmares that carry forward the city’s electro-industrial tradition, and Alex Barnett, a composer whose quirky, bubbling pieces ooze a cozy sense of nostalgia for ’70s synthesizer music.As you can probably guess, a lot of this music gets awfully weird—Fire-Toolz’s collision of boom-box EDM and grindcore rasp makes zero sense. Yet a good deal of it is deeply beautiful: Quicksails, an alias for multi-instrumentalist Ben Billington, crafts flickering avant-pop that bridges DIY electronics with the city’s deep reverence for jazz and free improv. It’s music that could only come from Chicago.

Los Angeles rappers have a propensity for giving themselves two letter names. YG is the city’s most well-known export, but there’s also RJ (pictured), AD, T.F, and KR. Most of these artists have collaborated with each other, and are a hit or two away from breaking through at the national level.This playlist contains songs by these two-letter rappers, as well as the rest of the city’s best young talent. “Young,” of course, might not be the best description. Some of the artists, such as RJ and G Perico, hover on either side of the 30-year mark. Many of the artists have been releasing music for several years, cultivating loyal regional fan bases. But no matter their ages, all of these rappers are poised to have lengthy, promising careers ahead of them.They were certainly born in a good place to become a rapper. Los Angeles has long been a hub of the music industry, as well as an historic hip-hop city. Still, L.A.’s scene can be as insular as any other town. Many rappers achieve local hits on Power 106, but never make it across the country to Hot 97’s airwaves. Part of the reason is the specific sound the city embraces, largely fueled by the distinctive production of DJ Mustard.Many of the rappers on this list, especially those who’ve collaborated with Mustard, hail from South Central Los Angeles. Gang affiliation, either red or blue, plays a significant role in the music of rappers like G Perico, AD, and Boogie. But, given L.A.’s massive sprawl, there is, naturally, diverse music being made in various pockets of the city. Natia and Cam & China hail from Inglewood; Warm Brew is from the beachside community of Venice. It’s easy to detect a slight difference in the tone of these artists, simply based on their being born a few miles closer to the beach.Despite the hyperlocal loyalty that pervades L.A. hip-hop, many of these rappers are putting the pieces in motion to move beyond the borders of Greater Los Angeles. Cozz has signed with J. Cole’s Dreamville Records. Hugh Augustine landed a feature alongside Jay Rock on Isaiah Rashad’s The Sun’s Tirade. Bricc Baby’s “No Smoke” features Young Thug. And though Earl Sweatshirt, Vince Staples, and YG are already popular enough that they probably don’t need to be on this list, they’re good enough (and still young enough) that they deserve to be.Although New York is the birthplace and Atlanta is the current epicenter of hip-hop, these artists prove that the west coast is continuing to push the genre in creative directions. Soon, the rest of the country should recognize the music being made in the nation’s second biggest city. And if they don’t like it, then—as YG says on his track with Sad Boy, AD, and Bricc Baby—“Don’t Come to L.A.”

Its not entirely surprising that the British artist Powell once sampled Big Blacks Steve Albini; the Chicago noise-rockers volume and in-your-face attitude go to the heart of what Powell does in his own music and with his label, Diagonal Records. Co-founded with fellow Brit Jaime Williams in 2011, Diagonal pulls together an unlikely mix of sounds: the lurching rhythms of rockabilly, the clang of post-punk, and the eviscerating feedback of the contemporary noise scene, all of which get hammered into a lumpy approximation of techno. (Youll also find Hall and Oates samples, Autechre remixes, and reissues of early avant-rappers Death Comet Crew in the mix; Diagonals vectors are nothing if not far-reaching.) The overall effect is a little like gargling broken glass with a manic grin on your face.

There’s a pungent whiff of familiarity to the 20 or so headliners anchoring Lollapalooza’s four-day roster. No less than 10 also played Coachella or Bonnaroo, while at least six are scheduled to appear at San Francisco’s Outside Lands as well. Then there’s LCD Soundsystem: They’re hitting up all four. Two notable exceptions are alt-rock veterans Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction, though neither is a stranger to the Lollapalooza experience. If you attend America’s top branded festivals to catch hot-selling acts in indie, electronic music, and hip-hop, then all this curatorial regurgitation is good news. If, however, you attend them to explore unique, under-the-radar talent, then you’re best focusing on the names that appear in fine print, at the bottom of the concert poster.

It’s in the selecting of a music festival’s middle- to lower-tier acts that curators get to flex their adventurousness. This certainly is the case with Lollapalooza 2016. Even a cursory glance at the sprawling lineup churns up all manner of exotic treasures and cutting-edge hybrids. There’s gospel-fueled R&B (Sir the Baptist), cyborg folk-pop (Lewis Del Mar), darkwave-smeared post-hardcore (PVRIS), and brainy weirdo avant-rock (Autolux). Now, having said all that, this year’s installment still isn’t diverse enough. The last few years have been truly fertile ones for underground hip-hop and bedroom R&B, yet neither is sufficiently represented. Ditto for hard techno, which is thriving in adventurous clubs like New York’s The Bunker and Berlin’s Berghain. Clearly, crushing industrial beats don’t sell tickets quite like party-time EDM.

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

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.

With diplomatic relationships with Cuba thawing, theres been renewed interest in the music of the Caribbean Island. For this playlist Judy focuses her attention on the direct collaborations between Cuban and American musicians, with the subtext being that though formal diplomatic or financial ties may have been severed during the Castro years, but the cultural exchange between that two nations has continued. Books have been written on the influence of Cuban on American music, particularly on jazz and the music of New Orleans, and this cant be understated. Through much of the antebellum period, New Orleans served as the port of call for slaves ships coming from the Caribbean, and much of what we think of as foundational American music found it antecedent in places like Cuba. This playlist doesnt go back that far, of course, but theres some great stuff on here, from the pre-Castro days of Chico O’Farrill and Nat King Cole, to the modern music of Wynton Marsalis and Arturo O’Farrill.

Home to international stars like Hugh Masekela, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and, um, Die Antwoord, South Africa has always been known for its music. Even during the days of apartheid, this country of 55 million people was a hotbed for pop, jazz, choral, and dance music. While Paul Simon worked with South African musicians back in the 1980s to make his career-defining album Graceland, these days it’s artists and label heads like Kode9 who are looking to the country amid the rising global popularity of gqom, the moody, broken-beat take on South African house that was first divined with the help of cracked Fruity Loops setups in the coastal city of Durban.Piotr Orlov, a writer for NPR, the New York Times, and The Guardian among others, has done an admirable job at offering an overview to a scene that is still largely unfamiliar to American audiences. A former editorial lead for now-defunct MTV streaming service Urge, Piotr intimately understands the playlist format, mixing a DJ’s ear for flow and sequencing with a musicologist’s vast knowledge and a critic’s natural discernment. Compiled after a recent trip to the country, the resulting playlist is illuminating, enjoyable, and erudite, and offers a glimpse at some of the best music coming out today.Highlights from the 24-track, 2.5 hour playlist (titled after the Xhosa word for South Africa) include Floyd Lavine’s smooth house jam “Saint Bondon” and Big Nuz’s kwaito party banger “Tsege Tsege”—the latter of which evokes pure sex with its shaking, moving, plucking, and pumping beat. There’s also more out-of-the-box fare, like Gumz’s unbelievably funky “Yoruba Brass” as well as “B U,” a cut from Okzharp & Manthe Ribana’s well-received Tell Your Vision EP, released last year on Hyperdub.Mzansi: Now! is bracketed by two tracks from the award-winning songwriter Thandiswa Mazwai, who began her career in the late ’90s as frontwoman of the kwaito pioneers Bongo Maffin. Just as nice is “Anonymous in New York,” a Mingus-y composition by the emerging jazz combo Skyjack. Alas, not every track on the collection is a winner—Thor Rixon and Alice Phoebe Lou’s twee electro-pop number “Death Pt II” lacks the charm of Rixon’s wonderfully weird “Fuk Bread” from 2015, for example.Still, there’s enough good stuff here to keep you engaged, and send you digging for more. And, ultimately, that’s the goal of a playlist that surveys scenes still largely foreign to its target audience. Mzansi: Now! makes a great case for both modern South African music and the professional curator class.