Electronic

Afrobeats is the sound you heard on pop radio for much of 2016. It’s not to be confused with Afrobeat, the funk-based form that Fela Kuti made famous in the 1970s. (It’s a common error that even a New York Times story recently made.) Afrobeats emerged from Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana in the mid-to-late 2000s, and serves as an African response to post-millennial hip-hop, electronic music, Jamaican reggae and dancehall, and R&B. There are tracks that rely on familiar tropes—Auto-Tuned vocals, English-language lyrics about partying and sex—as well as build upon distinctive traditions like highlife and Afrobeat, resulting in songs that could only be African. It has informed some truly sublime music, like Maleek Berry’s sensuous, hip-swaying “Kontrol,” and WizKid’s “Ojuelegba,” a mesmerizing striver’s anthem about scraping together an existence in Lagos. The latter was featured on The Fader’s best tracks of 2015 list, a sign that Western tastemakers are keen on African pop.Much of what the U.S. mainstream has heard of Afrobeats so far are watered-down, chart-topping approximations like Drake’s “One Dance,” and Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself.” However, it thrives online, gathering hundreds of millions of YouTube views, and turning artists like Yemi Alade (whose “Johnny” has accumulated 75 million views thanks to its colorfully frenetic video), Mr. Eazi, DaVido, and others into virtual cult artists. WizKid has toured with Future, and his most recent album, Sounds from the Other Side, yielded a modest hit in “Come Closer,” a collaboration with Drake. D’banj’s new album, King Don Come, includes a number with Gucci Mane, “EL CHAPO,” that gives Southern trap form a distinctly Nigerian twist. It’s anyone’s guess whether the rise of Afrobeats results in African musicians cracking the Billboard Hot 100, or turns out to be a fad that burns brightly and dissipates. Regardless, it’s a sign of how global music has returned to prominence in America—as if Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” hadn’t proved that already—opening up a new world of Afrobeats to discover.

Whats This Playlist All About?: The Radiohead icon continues to thrill die-hard fans and alienate casual ones with this woozy, wordless sound manifesto curated for Pitchfork’s Day for Night Festival in 2017. In his words: “Its not this years music, its just the music that comes out of my walls at home.”What You Get: Exotic blips, beats, and strips of sound laced, looped, and left to disintegrate (sometimes literally) into moody ambient and avant-garde pieces. The mix is bookended by Dutch artist Machinefabrieks aqueous world of rippling drones, but in between it slips through dark, entrancing dream worlds (like John Luther Adams "The Light That Fills the World") and eclectic sound sculptures molded from our most deep-seated anxieties (William Basinskis "dlp 2.1"). Think "Treefingers" translated through advanced alien technologies.Greatest Discovery: A Winged Victory for the Sullen—the name itself is perhaps more Thom Yorke than Thom Yorke could ever be. But even better is the European duos gorgeous, string-soaked, ambient-neoclassical arrangements, two of which are featured here. (By the way, their song titles are just as awesome.)Will This Playlist Bore You? Lets say theres a 50/50 chance that, yes, it will. Keep in mind: This is mood music that can move you to the core, but only at just the right, reflective moment.

Since 1989, Tim Burgess has been the frontman for Manchester rock chameleons The Charlatans UK. But in recent years, he’s enjoyed a second career as a globe-trotting DJ/label impresario/roving musicologist, recounting his adventures in twobooks. His latest album is Same Language, Different World, an electro-soul collaboration with one-time Arthur Russell associate Peter Gordon.“My playlist is made up of songs from the start of the day and the end of the night. Each morning, I post a Breakfast Banger on Twitter and some nights I can be found DJing—this playlist is the pick of those songs. But it might not be obvious which ones are from the day and which are from later. Enjoy!”—Tim Burgess

When describing his own “furniture music” -- an early 20th century, Dadist-inspired prototype of what is now called ambient music -- the avant garde classical composer Erik Satie offered what is still a pretty good working definition for ambient music, calling it, "a music...which will be part of the noises of the environment, will take them into consideration. I think of it as melodious, softening the noises of the knives and forks at dinner, not dominating them, not imposing itself.”This isn’t what Tim Hecker is doing, though the Vancouver producer is considered a leading light of the genre. Since the 2001 release of his debut collection, Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again, Hecker has created music that is unbelievably heavy and visceral. The grinding feedback and high-pitched tones of “Whitecaps of White Noise 1” -- from his landmark 2006 album, Harmony in Ultraviolet -- bludgeon the senses, while the shimmering noise and twisted choral choir of “Castrati Stack,” from 2016’s Love Streams, effectively places the listener inside of a nightmare. True, like other ambient music, it doesn’t move the way music normally moves - phrases are chopped off and movements swerve, swell and then abruptly freeze, frequently disintegrating into planes of noise -- but just because something walks like a dog, it doesn’t always mean that it’s a dog.This much was obvious the last time I saw Hecker perform live. About 500 of us stood in the mildewy remains of an abandoned movie theater deep in San Francisco’s Mission District. Just prior to Hecker taking stage, the lights cut out, and we were suddenly placed in what was a near-total darkness. An opaque rumbling sound began to emanate from the large speakers to the side of the stage, and, soon, shards of enveloping industrial sounds snaked through the crowd. Occasionally, the thick black curtain that had been erected at the back of the theater, providing a cocoon of sorts, would ripple and crease, and the lights from the street would invade the space, revealing inert bodies strewn across the floor, lost in a noisey maze. It felt like a purge -- dominating and imposing, a type of “ambient” music that was anything other than ambient.You can see Tim Hecker perform live at the San Francisco MUTEK Festival, which takes place May 3 - May 6 at various venues. Advance tickets available here.

The productions of Montreal musician Tim Hecker move electronic music to unexpected places. His early work fused the dry, pulsating rhythms of techno with the bare minimalism of Brian Eno. Alongside other avante garde electronic artists and collaborators Ben Frost and Oneohtrix Point Never, Hecker has carved out a music vocabulary that mines the ethereal underpinnings of dark industrial spaces. Aaron from Beats has compiled a great playlist of his influences, which range from the modern classical of Philip Glass to shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine.

As the title goes, this playlist consists of the Chicago house basics. Its compiled by LA writer, researcher and music supervisor Jonny Coleman. Marshall Jeffersons "The House Music Anthem," Phutures "Acid Tracks," and Jamie Principles "Baby Wants to Ride" have been anthologized endlessly. That doesnt make them any less essential, and should come as revelatory to those whose understanding of house begins with Daft Punk and Disclosure.

Ill admit to not having a great critical perspective on EDM as well as being a bit late to the party. Rarely has popular music pushed the aesthetic boundaries of any particular genre, but this seems particularly true with EDM. Most of the pop crossover hits are riddled with cliches, and lack nuance, and most producers dont handle vocals very well, especially with female singers. With all that said, there are still some very amazing tracks on Spins generally awesome top 100 EDM list. The Chainsmokers, Audien, Gesaffelstein, Duck Sauce, Disclosure, and TNGHT tracks are all in my personal cannon (though Id argue that most of those arent what I think are EDM). I was a bit surprised by the lack of recent tracks on this list. I believe theres only one post-2013 track in the top 20. Maybe Spin thinks that EDMs glory days are behind it?

Tremor have just issued the Ave Reina Mora EP, which finds the veteran trio continuing to fuse Argentian folk traditons and modern electronic production in fascinating new ways. For this playlist they created specially for The Dowsers, they salute the artists who’ve been at the frontlines of Latin American musical revolutions dating back to the 1940s up to today.“LatAm Gamechangers is a playlist of Latin American musicians that are of defining influence in our band’s opinion. Their approach to LatAm folklore music was daring for their time. They took risks and, in some particular cases, they experimented with elements, sounds, and arrangements that sometimes took decades for the audience and even other musicians to catch up with.“Take, for example, the song by Waldo De Los Rios that explores a ‘chacarera’ groove, but with synths and orchestral sounds. Keep in mind this is from Argentina, 1967! It took years for others to try anything similar."One of our favorite tracks of all time is "Juana Azurduy,” sung by Mercedes Sosa and backed by a band of true Argentinian folklore music legends. The mix of a European clavichord and timps playing next to charangos and bombos legueros is a powerful combination. (Check out Tremor’s ‘Huacal,’ which was definitely inspired by this track.) Then we have Los Jaivas and Arco Iris, mixing folklore sounds with rock influences for the first time in the southern part of the continent.“The oldest track on the playlist is from 1940s, by Alberto Ginastera, one of the pioneers in taking an orchestral approach to folkloric rhythms. From there, the playlist moves forward to the ’80s, ’90s, and even the beginning of the 2000s, and it includes different regions like Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, and Chile too!”—Tremor

As part of his excellent System Focus monthly column, Adam Harper looks at how global dance culture is using the tresillo rhythm, the fundamental triplet rhythm where two beats fit in the place of two. It becomes easy to spot once you look for it, and you can hear in much of Cuban and Latin music. Harper looks at how many underground producers have been using this in more non-traditional ways. He looks at its applications in grime, UK funky, experimental/collage, and reggaeton. The entire post is worth a read, and the playlist is really great, but the money quote:

A simple rhythm bounces back and forth over the once vast Atlantic ocean, ever faster. It begins in Sub-Saharan Africa, but Europeans brutally pull it up by the roots—slaves bring it with them on a long journey to the Caribbean. By the nineteenth century it has become the defining element in the Afro-Cuban dance habanera, which finds its way to New Orleans where it helps form ragtime, then to South America, where it contributes to tango, and to Europe, where it becomes the most famous section of one of the eras most popular operas, Carmen. It also spreads across the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa and back again, and its descendents meet and collaborate, now using recordings and drum machines. Soon it doesnt even need to touch the water. Ricocheting off satellites and barreling down cables, it permeates the information sphere, with space and place just an interesting footnote on a Soundcloud profile.

Tropical House isnt the type of music youd normally find here, but its the middle of summer and its hot, even in San Francisco. This is definitely an adjective micro-genre, meaning that the terms tropical suggests steel drums, relaxed beats and liberal horns, and the genres best producers (including the Norwegian Matoma) are all to happy to accommodate. And it works, for the most part. This was culled from EDM Charts, a service-agnostic microsite that serves as a home to the content farmers at @lastrecords, who are owned by Beatframe, a tech-focused campaign/career management company. I think I got that right. Anyway, its a cool model.