Influences

Almost everything about Frank Ocean is shrouded in mystery and contradiction. He’s brash and outspoken, yet a virtual recluse; he’s a modern media star, yet he rarely engages with the modern media; he’s one of music’s most distinct voices, but he’s also a cypher. If you’re looking to his new album, Endless, for clues to who the man is, you’ll be disappointed. For one thing, this may not actually be his new album — maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. All we know is that the music here is baffling and beautiful. The spare, ominous acoustic balladry of “Rushes To” recalls the gothic folk of British experimentalists Current 93, while the album’s skittering narrative threads, dark gospel underpinnings, and political nods recall everything from Erykah Badu’s masterwork New Amerykah Part One to the latest Kanye West. There’s a refracted funk that channels ‘00s underground R&B group Sa-Ra Creative Partners, which makes sense considering that Om’mas Keith from Sa-Ra provides piano on the album. The moody electronic ambience of producer Arca, who has previously worked with everyone from Kanye to Bjork, is all over this album. This playlist looks at some of the albums collaborators and influences, as well as sample sources. It’s a companion piece — a helpful set of footnotes to this strange, gorgeous record.

On August 20, Frank Ocean released his first full-length work in four years (two if you count the soundtrack for the Endless visual album). As Blonde (alternately spelled as Blond) reached Apple Music, Ocean organized giveaways of a limited-edition magazine, Boys Don’t Cry, at four pop-up shops around the globe. A page in the magazine lists Blonde contributors, inspirations, and sample sources; as of this writing, it’s the only evidence of official album credits he’s given us so far.As a result, half of this playlist references Blonde guests such as Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, Andre 3000, and Tyler, the Creator, and session players like Om’mas Keith of Sa-Ra Creative Partners. However, the other half of the list attempts to deduce how Ocean created his new album’s dense computer washes and hazy, amniotic sound. Thanks to the aforementioned Boys Don’t Cry tip sheet, we know that Brian Eno’s ambient explorations, Jonny Greenwood’s moody soundtracks, and Jamie xx’s melancholy club tracks make up his sources. There are parallels to Bradford Cox of Deerhunter’s fluid sexuality and adolescent anomie, Raury’s blend of airy indie-rock and conscious rap, Julee Cruise’s ethereal “Falling” theme for Twin Peaks, and Mazzy Star’s essential ode to long California drives with nothing to think about, “Fade Into You.” In total, this collection of gospel, electronic, rap, pop and rock numbers are a varied contrast to Blonde’s washed-out haze. Think of Ocean as a good chef who reduced dozens of ingredients into a tonally consistent and thought-provoking work.

The biggest hit from Eric Church’s fifth album Mr. Misunderstood, “Record Year” continued the North Carolina native’s impressive run of singles topping the country radio charts. But it’s more than just a bittersweet breakup song, folding references to some of Church’s favorite music into a tale of getting over heartbreak with the help of a turntable. His heroes George Jones and Waylon Jennings get a namecheck, Willie Nelson’s landmark album Red Headed Stranger has a cameo, and progressive bluegrass cult heroes New Grass Revival get a shout out. Yet Church’s songs have always been rich with influences from outside of country, and James Brown and Stevie Wonder’s records get a spin as well.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Controversy magnet Ronnie Radke and his bandmates in Falling In Reverse (who seem to change every few months) have made some of the densest, most outrageous, and devastatingly clever modern rock and art pop of the last decade—yet nobody outside of kids who attend the Warped Tour year in and year out pay them any mind.Some of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Radke. On top of boasting serious pop smarts, he’s cocky, moody, confrontational—let’s not forget he was fired from Escape the Fate in 2008—and at times misogynistic. As he sings in “Just Like You”: “I am aware that I am an asshole / I really dont care about all of that though / I got nothing to prove / But honestly Im just like you.” There’s also the fact that modern post-hardcore and metalcore bands aren’t given much space in outlets like Pitchfork,Rolling Stone, and Spin; it’s a black sheep subculture forever consigned to Alternative Press and Blabbermouth.Net.Falling In Reverse believe a rock album should be nothing less than an epic sonic experience, promoting a bigger-is-better philosophy preached by heroes like Queen, My Chemical Romance, and Andrew W.K. (Though, truth be told, Radke’s just as likely to name-check Katy Perry, Gwen Stefani, or Lady Gaga.) Their latest album, Coming Home, is no exception. Where 2015’s Just like You was a manic fusion of blink-182-style snot, glam pomp, chart pop, metallic crunch, and Eminem-influenced attitude, the more carefully paced Home clears room for post-dubstep spaciness and chilly, atmospheric synthesizers. For instance, the title track sounds like a cosmic collision between Muse’s “Madness,” Daft Punk’s “Give Life Back to Music,” and the ZAYN/Taylor Swift collab “I Dont Wanna Live Forever.”Of course, Falling In Reverse aren’t the only Warped cats suffusing their jams with electronic ether. Issues and I See Stars—with whom Radke has feuded—incorporate flickering EDM programming, while The Word Alive drench their brooding anthems in ambient-like textures and acts like Pvris and Tonight Alive incorporate electro-pop touches. Yet none of them can quite match Falling In Reverse when it comes to packing songs full of hook-laden brilliance. Radke, for all his faults and failings, is a tunesmith operating on a whole ’nother level.

Few bands greeted the new millennium with as much pure pizzaz as The Go! Team did when they emerged out of Brighton in 2004. Fronted by mastermind Ian Parton and featuring a rotating cast of members (most notably Ninja, who delivers most of the group’s irresistibly upbeat raps), The Go! Team stood apart from many of their indie-rock peers with their eclectic, overflowing cauldron of influences and sounds, drawing on everything from English big beat to classic film scores to ‘90s college rock to left-field hip-hop. Approaching their craft with the diligence of crate-diggers, The Go! Team’s music channels all the relentless joy of an elementary-school playground, their sing-songy melodies and marching-band exuberance freely mashing together samples and styles until the resulting product feels as if it’s about to burst.Part of the magic of The Go! Team is how the band is able to stir all their scattered sources of inspiration together into something that feels effortlessly cohesive, their cheer-leading celebration rock sounding as though it were the kind of thing that just always existed in the sunny side of our imagination. But a peek into their influences unveils a wonderland of varying artists and styles, a plane where the Beastie Boys can shoot hoops with Ennio Morricone, and Deerhoof might get caught stealing Pokémon cards from The Prodigy. With their new album, Semicircle, arriving on January 19, we took the opportunity to assemble a roll call of The Go! Team’s many muses, charting the ways that the band has connected the dots between everyone from Happy Mondays to The 5th Dimension, and, in the process, forming a compendium of feel-good music for the ages. One, two, three, GO!!!!

It’s a slyly ironic title for a playlist, but Anohni is a sly woman. She got her start as a he with Antony and the Johnsons, whose signature elegiac chamber pop anchored a voice both soaring and fragile. There’s plenty that could’ve gone wrong on her debut solo album, 2016’s HOPELESSNESS; the production came courtesy of cubist synth maven Oneohtrix Point Never and trap king Hudson Mohawke, and the themes were overtly political. Lead single “Drone Bomb Me” was, in her words, “a love song from the perspective of a girl in Afghanistan...a 9-year-old girl whose family’s been killed by a drone bomb.” It worked on a visceral sonic level and in a deeper emotional and political sense. This Spotify playlist traces the inspirations for this weird, brilliant record. From the gothic folk of Buffy Sainte-Marie to the chilly high-concept hijinks of Laurie Anderson, Anohni’s eclecticism is on full display.

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. 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. Theyll thank you. We thank you.The idea of psychedelic dance rock can be traced back to the late ’80s and early ’90s. This is when three bands in particular—Primal Scream, The Stone Roses, and the wildly eccentric Happy Mondays—started combining the neo-psychedelic jangle and reverb-stained textures of indie and New Wave with the euphorically funky grooves and ecstatic hedonism of the United Kingdom’s anarchic rave scene. Crafting a sound that both guitar freaks and club rats can appreciate, this trio of bands can be credited with setting the stage for a much larger marriage between rock and dance music that would wash over pop culture by the 21st century.In addition to featuring cuts from each of these pioneers, our playlist delivers a crash course in those artists who have proven gifted in submerging alt-rock and electronic-based dance music in trippy flavors and kaleidoscopic colors. Heavy on remixes accentuating groove, our mix includes prime cuts from Jagwar Ma, Caribou, Inspiral Carpets, Animal Collective, and LCD Soundsystem. We’ve even tossed in a few far-leftfield picks from exotic dreamers Peaking Lights and Golden Teacher, an absolutely killer project out of Glasgow that specializes in a brand of psychoactive tribalism that sounds as if it were recorded on Mars. Simply pressing play is sure to get you dosed.

Jamie XX links up with Complex to give a themed favorite tracks playlist. You get a sense of the broad range of influences that goes into his own music, from the lo-fi electric blues of Love Sculptures "Blues Helping" to the skeletal proto-dubstep of Buriels "Forgive." The Walls and Steel An Skin tracks are simply sublime (Jamie samples the latter on his own "Sleep Sounds").Songs to Relax To: Love Sculpture, “Blues Helping”Songs Most Proud of Making: Radiohead, “Bloom (Jamie xx Rework Part 3)”Album that Made Him Want to Start Producing: Burial, BurialFavorite Song With Steel Drums: Steel An’ Skin “Afro Punk Reggae Dub”UK Garage Track He Cant Stop Playing: DJ Zinc “138 Trek”Album that Inspired Him While Recording In Colour: Walls, WallsTrack that Encompasses Everything He Loves About U.K. Rave Culture: Jamie XX, "All Under One Roof Raving"Favorite song from his label, XL Recordings: Roy Davis Jr. f/ Peven Everett “Gabriel”Go-to song for DJing: Bileo, “You Can Win”Song that makes Him Excited About Dance Music: C.P.I., “Proceso (Barnt Remix)”Want amazing playlist delivered to your inbox every day? Click here to subscribe to the Dowsers e-mail!

Declaring that you are your own “business” — as Jay-Z famously did on the “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” remix — cuts both ways. On the one hand, it’s the ultimate hip-hop/hyper capitalism boast. You’ve transcended the station of mere worker, and are your own private cottage industry. But, on the other hand, you’re a business: cold, calculating, and corrupt. Not to be trusted, basically. And since Jay-Z uttered that now infamous line (full quote: “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man”), he’s gone out of his way to transition from a lowly humanoid to a fully functioning multi-national corporation. He bought a basketball team, started a talent management agency, and captained a digital streaming service. So it’s no wonder that the playlist that he created in conjunction with his inclusion into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame feels awfully transactional. There’s a smattering of old school hip-hop (Grandmaster Flash, Eric B & Rakim, Public Enemy), a few tracks from his friends/collaborators/labelmates (Kanye, Eminem, Nas), and some tasteful socio-conscious tracks (Mos Def, OutKast, 2Pac). He’s developed his own canon, and that canon is a lot like almost every other fair-minded hip-hop canon. It’d be hard to argue that “Stan,” “Ms. Jackson,” or “Fight the Power” aren’t Mt. Rushmore rap, but this playlist feels like a missed opportunity. In interviews and in song, Jay-Z has displayed a more idiosyncratic taste in rap, championing everyone from Big L to Jay Electronica. There is none of this on this seemingly raked-over, corporatized playlist. Sure, if you want to hear all the hits one more time, and delivered to you by one of the genre’s most talented and transitional figures, this is great, but it’s also not particularly interesting. And, hey, where’s the Memphis Bleek?

Around the 2007 release of Wilco’s sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, Jeff Tweedy talked a lot about classic rock. Sky Blue Sky eschewed much of the experimentation that had characterized the album’s immediate predecessors (2001’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and 2004’s A Ghost Is Born), favoring a more straightforward musical and lyrical style. In several interviews, Tweedy insisted that he preferred not to give too much credence to the “alternative country” and “experimental” labels that had followed him since his earliest days as a founding member of Uncle Tupelo. Instead, Tweedy insisted, Wilco should be known as a rock ‘n’ roll band.For a piece in the Wall Street Journal, Tweedy acknowledged the influence that 1970s rock had on Sky Blue Sky, listing his five favorite albums from that era. The first five songs on this playlist are sourced from that article, wherein Tweedy confesses he “often tries to emulate” Nick Drake’s picking style and claims The Clash’s “Train In Vain” “was huge” for him growing up. Considering Wilco’s sound, those choices—as well as the inclusion of Dylan and Wings—make sense. The outlier in his list is Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” which Tweedy calls “a great pop record.” However, despite all the talk of experimentation surrounding Wilco, Tweedy has always known how to make catchy music.The remaining tracks on the playlist were added based on covers Tweedy has done, both live and on record, with Wilco and Uncle Tupelo. A version of Doug Sahm’s “Give Back the Key to My Heart” appears on Uncle Tupelo’s swan song Anodyne*, and a cover of Waylon Jennings’ “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” appears on the 2003 reissue of that album. Wilco has frequently covered Bill Fay** and Big Star, including the latter’s “In The Street” (a.k.a. The theme song to That ‘70s Show). During an all-covers set at 2013’s Solid Sound Festival, Wilco played the classic songs by The Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground, and Television that are featured here.Sticklers may note that The Band’s “The Weight” was technically released in 1968. However, this version with The Staples Singers was recorded at the group’s 1976 farewell concert and released two years later as part of the Scorsese documentary The Last Waltz. Tweedy, who has collaborated with Mavis Staples throughout the years, joined an ensemble of musical greats—including Nick Lowe, whose “Peace, Love, and Understanding” Wilco covered for Spotify’s Singles Series—to perform a rendition of “The Weight” in 2014 in honor of Staples’ 75th birthday.Tweedy is gearing up for the June 2017 release of Together at Last, which features acoustic versions of songs by various bands throughout his illustrious career. By playing in a stripped down form, devoid of any attempts at musical experimentation, Tweedy will likely reinforce just how influential this decade of classic rock was on the formation of his own, unique sound.*This song isn’t on Spotify, and was replaced with Sahm’s “Don’t Turn Around,” from his 1973 album Doug Sahm and His Band.**Tweedy typically covers Bill Fay’s “Be Not So Fearful,” which isn’t on Spotify, so I’ve replaced it with Fay’s cover of Wilco’s “Jesus, etc.,” which, of course, was not released in the ‘70s.