Noise-Beat America is an introduction to the U.S. noise underground’s anarchic, rowdy, and cacophonous forays into mechanized groove research. Techno convention isn’t challenged—it’s obliterated: Hi-hats surrender to blasts of static; synthesizers bleed distortion; and kicks stutter like malfunctioning jackhammers. Ren Schofield (a.k.a. Container) is often cited as one of the first noise-beat freaks. And while the Rhode Island native’s success certainly has helped give the movement an international profile, a handful of noise-based musicians (Forcefield, VIKI, Unicorn Hard-On, and Pleasurehorse among them) started exploring technoid-sputter as far back as the early ’00s. Be forewarned, intrepid clubbers: This playlist cares nothing for rhythmic flow nor energy management. It’s all about blasting you in the face as haphazardly as possible. Soak it up!
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.
Although they’re often disregarded as a legitimate art form, video games have reached an astounding level of sophistication over the past few decades. We’ve come a long way since the days of simple arcade shooting simulators and digital table tennis. Video games have become one of the defining mediums of our time, offering deep interactive experiences and aesthetic invention not found in other formats.Music has always played a central role in video games, serving as both the sonic architecture upon which worlds are built and the emotional anchor players can connect to, as they explore new environments full of pixelated, inhuman shapes. Video game music is a unique art, beholden to the practical requirement of creating an endlessly looping soundtrack, while also tasked with building themes that slip into the mind subconsciously, returning and restating themselves with all the cohesiveness of a Sondheim musical. It’s background music created for a world completely unlike our own, and that’s why much of it sounds so out of place when heard outside of the game.Some truly remarkable music has emerged from the pantheon of video game producers, peculiar and moving pieces from the likes of Nobuo Uematsu, David Wise, Koji Kondo, Yasunori Mitsuda, Grant Kirkhope, Gustavo Santaolalla, and Disasterpeace to name but a few. This playlist highlights some of the finest moments in the genre, where the composer reaches past the lens of nostalgia and into territory that connects emotionally—even if you’ve never picked up a controller.
Seattle electronic duo ODESZA release their third album, A Moment Apart, on September 8, 2017. To celebrate its arrival, Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight put together this playlist for The Dowsers of tracks that are currently in their personal heavy rotation, some of which feature on their latest Soundcloud mix, NO.SLEEP.
With his third album, The House, coming out January 19 on Domino Records, electronic-indie-pop alchemist Aaron Maine—a.k.a. Porches—has compiled a playlist for The Dowsers that indulges his love of unpleasant sounds. "I’m drawn to this collection of songs for a certain darkness that they emanate. Sometimes, it’s the dissonance in the harmonies that I’m really drawn to, sometimes it’s the dissonance in the content that I find attractive. A lot of strange and beautiful decisions.“In [Aphex Twin’s] ‘180_db[130],’ the ugliness of the sounds are dug into a way that’s almost playful—like I can imagine making something like that with a little shit grin on my face. [DJ Richard’s] ‘Stygian Freeze’ is so effortlessly menacing that it’s unsettling, while the quality of the sounds and reverb are really soft and welcoming. One thing I don’t like in a song is when it feels like an artist makes a challenging decision only for the sake of having it sound challenging—it can come off as masturbatory. In all of these songs, the dissonance feels like a complete necessity to the song’s existence. I don’t know why exactly I’m drawn to this, maybe that it feels like a more honest reflection of the human experience, and there’s something exciting about finding beauty in the seemingly ugly.”—Aaron Maine, Porches
Techno doesn’t look back—it never has. Infused with the sci-fi progressivism and Afrofuturist theology of its Motor City founders, Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson, the genre is committed to perpetual forward propulsion. It’s for this very reason that Resident Advisor’s Proto-Techno playlist is so indispensable. Shifting the time machine into reverse, it sends intrepid listeners back to mid-’80s Detroit, where Atkins, May, Saunderson and the rest of the city’s African-Americans groove to a diverse amalgam of funk, electro, disco, new wave, and cosmic jazz. Perhaps the only style underrepresented is synth-pop. Kraftwerk and Yello are featured, while The Human League and Depeche Mode, both of which Atkins has cited as key inspirations, are not. But those are mere quibbles. Resident Advisor has crafted a delightfully thumping and educational playlist that sheds some welcomed light on the mythical years leading up to techno’s birth.
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-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
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 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 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 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
Once upon a time, Americana musicians dismissed synthesizers, drum machines, vocal processing, and programming as soulless products of our modern technological state. Where archaic, time-tested instruments like banjo, guitar, and drum kits express authentic human experience, these newfangled gizmos, with their myriad robotic zaps and pulsating repetitions, are cold and artificial. This was some deeply ingrained thinking, and let’s not forget: It was just over 50 years ago that, according to legend, hardline folk revivalist Pete Seeger attempted to take an axe to the cables amplifying Bob Dylan’s infamous electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. And that was over nothing more than some electricity!Times sure have changed. You can’t throw a rock these days without hitting an Americana, blues, or other roots-flavored artist who isn’t plucking a banjo over bubbling drum machines or weaving acoustic fingerpicking around club grooves. Currently, one of the biggest bands in the U.S. is Judah & the Lion, whose omnipresent mega-hit “Take It All Back” is high-energy bluegrass filtered through the digital production qualities of hip-hop. The same goes for The Avett Brothers’ “Ain’t No Man” off of True Sadness, which is laced with flickering synthesizers.Sonically speaking, some of this stuff ventures pretty far out. Where Judah & the Lion and The Avetts are fairly subtle in their digital flirtations, singer/songwriter Justin Vernon—a.k.a. Bon Iver—sounds like an Auto-Tune-drenched cyborg on his critically acclaimed 22, A Million, a full-length album that’s a million light years removed from the rustic indie folk that launched his career. Then there’s the Gazzo remix of American Authors’ “Best Day of My Life,” which turns the bouncing, folk-pop ditty into a bass-thumping banger perfect for sets at the Electric Daisy Carnival. Can you imagine what Pete Seeger would think of roots music mixed with EDM? We shudder to think.
Whats This Playlist All About? The U.K. house producer (not the 90s sitcom character) and Brianfeeder artist puts together an eclectic list of influential and favorite sounds.
What Do You Get? First, a glimpse into hisAphelion EP, with chilled-out groove "John Cage,” followed by a riveting live version of Lindsey Buckinghams emotionally charged "Go Insane." He then digs into eccentric Japanese avant-pop (Tujiko Noriko), glistening ambient-pop (Ametsub), brassy African soul (Yta Jourias), and a few of his biggest hip-hop inspirations—Madlib and Madvillain. Together, it serves as a good introduction to Ross From Friends own sonic palette.
Greatest Discovery: The dark, menacing fusion of post-punk, ambient, and noise from London-based artist Midas the Cloud.
Would This Mix Impress Rachel From Friends? Actually, it just might. We do recall one episode in which she shuts down a U2 song, so theres hope.