Scenes

It is commonly stated among music lovers that Radiohead are the best band in the world. Since forming in 1985, they have won countless awards and released numerous songs and albums to universal acclaim, advancing new avenues in sound and musical technique with each passing year. With its immaculately complex song structures and lyrical focus on the increasing integration of technology into social life, their 1997 masterwork OK Computer revitalized rock n’ roll in the ‘90s. Its follow-up, the cold, prismatic Kid A, with its otherworldly tones and its portentous, opaque text, frequently tops lists of the best albums of recent memory. Their live performances have gained an almost mythological status, mystifying audiences with the gargantuan sounds these five mortal beings can produce, from Jonny Greenwood’s pristine guitar solos and imaginative use of synthesizers to Phil Selway’s machinelike focus and intensity at the drums.

Once you get past all the decadent, gaudy squalor of Hollywood, perhaps the most defining characteristic of Los Angeles is the myriad of gentle, swaying palm trees lining the streets, standing tall and surreal against the smog-stricken sky. L.A. is an urban tropicalia muddied by human ambition and confusion, and this sensibility has seeped into some of the most prominent and experimental artists working in the city today. Whether it’s in the chime-ridden new age of Leaving Records, the sandy jam sessions of Not Not Fun, or any of the sundry attitudes that coalesce under the local community radio standard-bearer Dublab, you can hear the palm trees coming through in the forward-thinking sounds of the L.A. underground, becoming churned from an object of paradise into something caught between imagination and reality. This mix gathers some of the most exciting voices making music in Los Angeles today, and attempts to find some common ground in their scattered, psychedelic visions.

This post is part of our Disco 101 program, an in-depth series that looks at the far-reaching, decades-long impact of disco. Curious about disco and want to learn more? Go here to sign up. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. They’ll thank you. We thank you.Arguably, Scandinavia has been ground zero for the nu-disco explosion of the past decade or so. This is in large part due to producer, DJ and Feedelity label head Lindstrøm, who was one of the first to pair the clean lines of minimal techno with the bubbling beats and juicy baselines of disco. This, of course, is to take nothing away from his peers, who include Lindstrøm collaborator Prins Thomas and dancefloor uber-crush Todd Terje. Of course, Resident Advisor does an amazing job at capturing this in a playlists takes a minute to build some momentum, but begins to crest with Terjes classic "Eurodance." The playlist is woefully brief, and this listener was left wanting a few more recent tracks, but it offers a great snapshot at one of our favorite scenes.

Back in the ’80s, uptight white people fretted over the decline of western civilization. For Tipper Gore and the PMRC, suburban youth were being morally debased by the down and dirty sounds of gangsta rappers, Satanic headbangers, and provocative pop divas. The most obscene of all was 2 Live Crew and the Miami bass sound they helped transform into something that was equal parts pop fad and national epidemic. Seemingly overnight, white teenage girls were shaking what their mamas gave them, while their brothers cruised strip mall parking lots in cars with the boom. School dances were cancelled, musicians arrested, and record stores shuttered. To celebrate this gloriously obscene time in America, here is a bass-thumping blast of genre cornerstones, radio hits, and lost nuggets.

Drake OvO Sound may effectively be a vanity imprint for its biggest star, but there’s something to admire in their stylistic consistency and aesthetic continuity. It speaks to Drake’s overall impact on culture, and also the partnership that Drake has formed with his core set of producers (40 and Boi-1da). There’s a clear through-line from the sound those developed on solo Drake releases and the sonic nooks that PARTYNEXTDOOR or dvsn are currently exploring. This playlist, curated by Drake, features some of the labels best tracks. Though the music is at times vibrant and it’s well worth a listen, this at times feels like a boilerplate marketing/PR playlist, and the inclusion of Drake on at least 2/3rds of the tracks feels slightly distasteful.

Straight from the decrepit basements of Memphis comes one of the most distinctive, experimental, and otherworldly communities in all of hip-hop, where hissy cassettes, mutilated R&B samples, punishing 808s, and MCs firing off at breakneck speeds are only the beginning. Obsessed with satanic possession, graphic depictions of murder, and turning rap music into a kind of sonic and atmospheric purging, the movement first gained prominence in the ‘90s with Three 6 Mafia, and grew to comprise a vast network of interconnected crews and producers. These beats may be dusty, but beyond their low fidelity lies a surprisingly prophetic vision of rap music to come: stuttering hi-hats, pounding bass, and rhythms that are so aggressive and upbeat that one can’t help but hear the delirious sounds of modern trap laced within the sludge. This is by no means a “Memphis Rap Greatest Hits” — the genre is endless, and many of its most crucial gems are buried within the hallowed corridors of YouTube. But if you’ve never known “horrorcore” to apply to anything outside of ICP, hit that play button and let Satan be your guide.

Subscribe to our "Best of Pharoah Sanders" playlist here, and follow us on Spotify here.Pharoah Sanders music is a place you can get lost in. It’s noisy and transcendent, carving out universes in tinkling vibes and jumpy blues grooves that are upturned by Sander’s trademark squawking, primal tenor saxophone. The music feels timeless. They frequently last for more than 20 minutes. But even beyond that, they seem to exist beyond our more pedestrian concepts of temporal matters. But there’s also a cultural context for all this ecstasy and upheaval, one rooted in a very specific cultural and political milieu. The New York-by-way-of-Arkansas free jazz icon had a coming out party of sorts on John Coltrane’s 1965 album Ascension. That album consists of one, 40-minute track (Spotify breaks up the track into two parts, for some reason) and marks Coltrane’s complete abandonment of post-bop for free jazz. The cascading, squealing interplay between Coltrane and Sanders sounds bracing even today, but the key to understand it is that it’s a product of a particular time and place. The Vietnam War was dramatically escalating, the social norms of post-war America were quickly being overturned, and, perhaps more importantly, the civil rights movement was splintering and turning increasingly militant: Malcolm X had been assassinated four months prior; the Black Panthers would form a year afterwards.But this isn’t nihilistic music. It’s the sound of confusion and propulsion, of being angry in a dark room, of taking a dive into a deep, unknowable abyss. In two years, Coltrane was dead, and Sanders would strike out on his own, becoming a band leader while employing the sonic template that Coltrane had forged. The 11 albums that he would release on Impulse Records over the course of the next either years -- starting with 1966’s Tauhid and ending with 1974’s Love in Us All -- serve as a high water mark or sorts for free jazz.Free Jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman once said that Sanders was "probably the best tenor player in the world,” while Albert Ayler famously quipped, "Trane was the Father, Pharoah was the Son, I am the Holy Ghost.” It’s easy to understand why when listening to tracks such as “Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah” or “The Creator Has A Master Plan.” The tracks capture the uncertainty and chaos of creation, they sound like either the big bang or the apocalypse. You have to destroy to build, and Sanders did plenty of both.

Barry Walters delivers this great overview of the 70s soul scene in Philadelphia. With its funk intonations and more polished arrangements, Philly Soul is sometimes overlooked by R&B neophytes, but, as Barry proves here, the scene produced some of the sweetest and most memorable music from that decade. Much of the credit belongs to Gamble and Huff and their Philadelphia International Records, but the scene was bursting with talent. Check out this great retrospective of one of our favorite scenes.

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the historic British town of Canterbury became the breeding ground for an idiosyncratic music scene that could have been called a movement if its avatars weren’t quite so unassuming in their demeanor. The Canterbury scene grew up around Soft Machine, which started out blending post-psychedelic weirdness with jazz influences before shifting into straight-up jazz-rock fusion in the ‘70s. Early Soft Machine and the bands that became part of their family tree (Caravan, Hatfield & The North, Egg, etc.) shared a quirky, very British sense of humor and a knack for blending jazzy jams into an offbeat but breezy brand of prog rock that boasted a much lighter touch than that of King Crimson, ELP, et al.

Bayside’s Vacancy is an album steeped in the tradition of a very specific iteration of New York-bred punk rock. With a name nicked from a train station in the nether reaches of Queens, the group shares far more in common with other bands that have emerged from the city’s outer boroughs, family-oriented neighborhoods, and even the suburban sprawl of Long Island than they do the hipster transplants infesting Williamsburg and Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The number of top-tier musicians who call these, the uncool parts of the greater New York metropolis, home is really rather bonkers. After all, where would New York punk and hardcore be without the likes of the Ramones, Sick of It All, Murphy’s Law, and Brand New?