Electronic

Dummy Magazine has an interesting artist-curated playlist series that focuses on very specific themes or motifs and engages some truly knowledgable figures, thus avoiding the cliched, self-serving, PR-crafted "artist-curated" playlists that plague mainstream music services. This one looks at the 10 best "proto grime" tracks. Theyve tapped DJ Logan Sama, who has been connected to the grime and underground hip-hop and electronic scenes in the UK for the past decade.

By its very nature, a “best of” list presupposes and celebrates the immanent meaning and importance of a genre or time period without really questioning the conditions for the possibility of the music being examined. What does ambient music mean? What purpose does it serve? What aspects of social life drive listeners toward it? Only when these questions are answered can a work be determined as great, a failure, or somewhere inbetween. Pitchfork’s “The 50 Best Ambient Albums” list is thoughtful and well-researched when it comes to giving a sense of the style employed by these artists, on occasion dipping into what influenced a particular album, or what that album, in turn, influenced. The blurbs accompanying each album accurately describe what the music feels and sounds like, offering flowery accounts of the instruments used. And yet something feels safe about this kind of list. It doesn’t really pierce the veil when it comes to technique and musical theory, nor does it discuss the music in relation to bourgeois society. The reader is simply left to assume that ambient music is important, has always been important, and will always be important. However, if we want music (and music criticism) to be truly meaningful, to actually get at the essence of society and potentially transform it, we will have to change the way we think about it. That said, there is a lot to digest with this list, a lot of music to learn about, and a great deal of fine writing. Regardless of the ranking of each work, Pitchfork has consolidated 50 important ambient works in one place, which is an achievement in itself. It is the task of the reader to determine their meaning.

Photograph: Misha Vladimirskiy/FilterlessBrainfeeder got its start in 2008 as an imprint for the landmark LA producer/DJ Flying Lotus. And while it took a few years to find it’s footing, it’s now home to some of music’s most progressive artists. From the hazy lo-fi beat experiments of Teebs and Lapalux to the rich jazz fusion of Kamasi Washington, the label’s sound is constantly expanding and changing, but there are some clear through-lines: a tendency towards jerky rhythms overlaid by ambient textures, an abiding belief in the idea (if not always the sound) of free jazz, and a relentless pursuit of turning over the next musical stone.

There is something special about Kranky Records. Amidst a sea of labels that release a consistent bill of fare, Kranky puts out everything from avant-garde electronic and ambient to noisy dream pop, going out of their way to shed light on original and imaginative voices. Since its founding in Chicago in 1993, Kranky has released albums for such visionary artists as Deerhunter, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tim Hecker, and more. In her time on the label, Liz Harris (Grouper, Mirrorring) has developed a wholly unique and prismatic aesthetic, while Bradfox Cox (Deerhunter, Atlas Sound) took his bedroom pop project to its post-punk and shoegaze fruition. With hazy synths, towering guitars, impressionistic vocals, and a decidedly experimental sensibility, Kranky Records really does do it all.

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.People went out to nightclubs to dance and party before disco. They’d do it after disco, too. Nevertheless, there was a point in the 1970s when disco dominated popular culture like no musical craze has done ever since. It was a phenomenon that impacted nearly everything about people’s lives, from the movies they watched, to the clothes they wore, to the ways they interacted with each other. It was a social and sexual revolution set to a four-on-the-floor rhythm and sweetened with the sound of strings and the sultriest of divas.Disco was so liberating, so exhilarating, that a lot of people inevitably felt embarrassed about what happened at the party once somebody turned the lights on. To many, disco was a discomfiting reminder of an era of foolish, even dangerous hedonism that was cruelly superseded by the rise of Reagan-era conservatism and—most tragically for the LBGTQ community that had fostered it—the devastation wrought by AIDS. For later generations, disco just became a joke whose punchline was the orange Afro wig you wore at a Halloween party. But that’s a huge disservice to a body of music that’s astonishingly varied and complex, one that not only absorbed innovations from across the era’s musical spectrum, but foregrounded the artistry of musicians and DJs far outside America’s cis white mainstream.Like organisms in some primordial jungle, disco needed steamy environments to evolve. Some could be found in the queer vacation zone of Fire Island, where DJs in the early ‘70s developed the process of taking revelers up from a simmer to a boil and back again. They’d export these tactics to bathhouses and clubs back in Manhattan, as well as DIY spaces like David Mancuso’s Loft. Meanwhile, the era’s most vanguard African-American soul, funk, and R&B acts were creating a boogie wonderland. The lush Philly soul of Gamble and Huff, the cinematic sensibility of Blaxploitation soundtracks, and the symphonic seductions of Barry White would all become key elements of disco, as would more rhythm-forward dance-floor sensations like Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa.” Across the Atlantic, the Europeans were refashioning American-style R&B and soul with a sleek, machine-made throb in revolutionary productions like Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby.”The fact that this Giorgio Moroder-assisted orgasmic masterstroke arrived in 1975 illustrates the difficulty in precisely pinpointing a beginning point for the sound. But as our proto-disco playlist illustrates, the foreplay was just as pleasurable as everything that ensued.

Todd Rundgren certainly deserves an album guide. After peaking in the early 70s with his pop-rock classic Something/Anything?, he embarked on a journey that involved dozens of albums, side projects, and little of the AM gold clarity that marked his best-known work. Hes had a career similar to Prince -- using increasingly accessible technology and distribution methods to flood the market with product -- but without the Purple Ones killer catalog to sustain popular interest. So thank UK magazine Dummy for creating a sympathetic primer to Rundgrens boundless creativity. Its made in honor of Rundgrens Runddans, a collaboration with Sereena-Maneeshs Emil Nikolaisen and Ibiza disco revivalist Lindstrøm that was released last May.

Superstar producer Hudson Mohawke started out playing a British variation of the beat music that Flying Lotus and his camp started up in the L.A. scene in the middle of last decade (the first time I saw him was at a Brainfeeder party), but he quickly grew out of that. He helped bring the electronic genre know as trap to the mainstream and has also been a guest producer for Kanye West. Laurent does a nice job highlighting some of the high points of his career, though its a more idiosyncratic list. The blurping, steel drum electro of "Allhot" is a beautiful thing.

It’s hard to describe exactly what it is that composer Daniel Lopatin pulls off under the ever-shifting guise of Oneohtrix Point Never. From his early days of programming minimal, evocative vistas of synthesizer dystopia to his newer interests in the gnarly, Kornier sides of our culture, Lopatin has managed to reinterpret his own vision time and time again without losing the essential, prickly feeling one gets from listening to his music. At the heart of all the uncanny manipulation of sound is a concept of the individual — disenchanted yet wide-eyed, obsessed with the psychedelic while hopelessly plugged into the minutiae of the day-to-day, the kind of mind that is restless even when surrounded by the dewiest, most calming of new-age tones. It’s ambient music made for headbanging, both frustrated and perverted and drenched in a nostalgia that always manages to keep its gaze toward the future. For all of the formalist structure that Lopatin imposes over his own chopped-up aesthetic, what he taps into in his work reaches beyond the realm of critique; it is a spiritual music of the self, relentlessly undergoing transformation, and attempting to discern exactly what it is.

Psychedelic music emerged in the mid-60s as a mutant offspring of the British Invasion and American garage rock, but has since morphed into so many different forms that it is more accurate to describe it as a feeling than a sound. Be it the the brain-melting feedback of Jimi Hendrix or Ty Segall, the dreamy reveries of Spiritualized and Tame Impala, or the heady, head-nodding beats of Flying Lotus and J Dilla, psychedelica is hard to pin down—but you’ll know you’re hearing it when you feel your mind altering. Heres our curated guide to the best head music to help you chase the rush, including our genre-spanning psych playlist (at right) and links to past Dowsers mixes for even deeper trips.

PSYCH ROCKWhen rock first got psychedelic in the 60s, the most obvious proponents were self-professed freaks like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. But nearly everywhere you looked, you could find someone trying to access their inner mind via some radical noise, from cult acts like Love and The Fugs to icons like The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Since then, every generation since has found their own way to look inside, from the Dream Syndicate in the ’80s, to Slowdive in the ’90s, to My Morning Jacket in the 21st century.Recommended Listening:Bad Trips: The Dark Side of the ‘60sSpace Rock: A Cosmic JourneyHow Psychedelia Reclaimed Modern Rock

PSYCH FOLKIn the beginning, psychedelic music was associated with guitar gods like Jimi Hendrix and waves of feedback. But that big bang was soon followed by generations of artists—from 60s Greenwich Village folkie Karen Dalton to Bert Jansch and his 70s British folk group Pentangle to modern dreamweavers like Devendra Banhart— who used acoustic guitars, pared-down arrangements, and dexterously plucked melodies to pull the listener into their headspace without the need for amplification.Recommended Listening:Way Past Pleasant: A Guide to Psychedelic FolkReligion, Rock, and LSD: A Brief History of Jesus Freaks

PSYCH FUNKPsychedelic music has traditionally been used as a way to explore the inner workings of your mind. But if you take off the headphones, its also a great way to explore your body on the dance floor. Soul, funk and R&B have a long tradition of making music that rocks the hips and the third eye at the same time, from Eddie Hazels righteous riffing on Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop to Dâm-Funks alien synth-funk bangers.Recommended Listening:A Deeper Shade of Psych SoulThe Afrofuturist Impulse in MusicInto the Nite: Synth-Funk Fantasias

PSYCH JAZZAt its mid-’60s moment of origin, psychedelia immediately found a natural host in jazz. After all, both are concerned with evoking a feeling and a mood, and following inspiration wherever it leads—from the spiritually searching compositions of Alice Coltrane to Mulatu Astatke’ slippery Latin-flavored explorations to Flying Lotus dedication to feeding brains with jazz-damaged trance whispers.Recommended Listening:The Black Experimental Music MixtapeChampions of Ethiopian GrooveThe Best of Brainfeeder

PSYCH PUNKThe common myth about punk is that it formed in opposition to bloated 70s rock, and rejected Pink Floyd and anything associated with psychedelia. But the truth is that plenty of punks, such as restless hardcore purveyors Black Flag and volatile noiseniks the Butthole Surfers, not to mention punk-adjacent acts like the Jesus & Mary Chain and Dinosaur Jr., looked back to the ‘60s when deciding how to expand their sound and beguile their fans.Recommended Listening:When Punk Got WeirdPsychedelia in the ‘80sThe 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time

PSYCH RAPPsychedelic music has drifted into every form of music, and since any worthwhile hip-hop producer keeps their ears open, its only natural that it’s became part of the mix. Revered producers J Dilla and Madlib have made hip-hop tracks that oozed with so much mood and shimmer that they didnt even need MCs to rewire the listeners brain, while the genre’s heady offshoot, trip-hop, has been obliterating genre lines and listeners’ minds for more than two decades.Recommended Listening:Great (Post-Donuts) Instrumental Hip-Hop TracksBehind the Beats: Madlib and DillaBest Trip-Hop Tracks

PSYCH-TRONICAWhy settle for rocking minds and rocking bodies when you can do both at once? From the Chemical Brothers to Neon Indian to Boards of Canada, many of the most cutting-edge electronic-music producers spend equal amounts of time focussing on booming beats as well as keyboard lines, sine moans, and digital gurgles designed to tickle the mind. And if you need to rest after a night out, theres plenty of trippy ambient chillout tracks for that as well.Recommended Listening:Essential Acid House TraxThe Art of Psychedelic Disco-RockThe Best Electronic Shoegaze

INDIE PSYCHPsychedelia never dies, it just keeps getting weirder. Animal Collective threw down the gauntlet with 2004’s Sung Tongs, their childlike, free-spirited update of psych rock, and a generation of indie artists have taken up the challenge. From Deerhunters fearsome ambient punk to Zombys scrambled dubstep to Ariel Pinks wounded daydreams, the youngest generation continues to push music inward.Recommended Listening:Animal Collective’s Outer LimitsDreamy Noise Sounds: The Best of Kranky RecordsNew Tropics: The Modern Los Angeles Underground

While self-seriousness tends to rule both mainstream EDM and underground dance music alike, Stockholms Studio Barnhus label follows more lighthearted impulses, with a playful streak of gentle absurdism informs twinkling deep house tunes sourced from sentimental disco, R&B, and easy listening. Founded in 2010 by Axel Boman, Kornél Kovács, and Petter Nordkvist, Barnhus taps a similar vibe as DJ Kozes Pampa label (which might not be surprising, since Boman has recorded some of his best work for Pampa). Bright colors, squirrelly melodies, and unusual textures are the order of the day, and although an undercurrent of melancholy runs beneath even its most whimsical releases, theres no one style or sound to sum up all the labels output; the catalog runs from swirly sampledelia to convoluted synth jams, and from lo-fi tone poems to double-time footwork jams.More than 16 hours long, this frequently updated playlist gathers the labels entire catalog, from a debut EP (Good Children Make Bad Grown Ups) drenched in soul and big-band jazz to Kornél Kovács debut album, The Bells, one of 2016s finest house long-players. For best results, select shuffle mode, and spend the rest of your day flipping between day-dream reveries and delirious rug-cutting—all of it with a giddy smile pasted from ear to ear.