Subscribe to the Spotify playlist right here.I like to stay active—I work out, I go on walks, I do yoga. Each activity I do comes with a different set of musical criteria, though—for example, when I do yoga each morning, I almost exclusively listen to drone or black metal. At the gym, however, when I’m on the elliptical or lifting weights, I like to get lost in modern jams. This is the special time of day in which I don’t have to listen to classical music for work, I don’t have to write, I don’t have to do any thinking at all. I can just rock ‘n roll. This year has seen a number of great additions to my workout jam repertoire, from Bowie’s incredible final album to Swans’ brilliant and aggressive The Glowing Man, both of which have seen so much gym time that I now think about bicep curls and stairmasters every time I hear them. My top exercise album of the year has unquestionably been The Life of Pablo, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than five minutes talking to me. I listened to that album so many times while going for runs that I think my heartbeat is permanently synced up to its flow. Here is a playlist of some of my favorite gym tunes of the year. I have structured it so that you could actually listen to it during a workout. It starts with a new recording of the “Allemande” from Bach’s C minor French Suite, which should aid you in some elegant stretching. Then, the blood gradually starts flowing with Aphex Twin’s “Cheetah 7b.” By the time the climax of Ashbringer’s “In Remembrance” hits, you should be completely in the zone, ready to take on the world… or at least hit a new high in your preferred routine. Some moderate songs follow, allowing you to relax as you maintain your peak, then coming down with The Field’s “The Follower” and, finally, getting back into the real world with Nick Cave’s sobering “I Need You.”

Apart from being the best album of the year, The Life of Pablo is an encyclopedia of contemporary culture. More than any other album in 2016, it is about bourgeois subjectivity. It’s about religion, sex, family, friends. It’s about medication, entrepreneurship, loneliness, and fame. But more than anything, it’s about what it means to be human today. Over the course of the album’s 20 tracks, Kanye explores the far reaches of his conscious mind, ever teetering between faith and despair, confidence and suffering. It has become popular to dismiss Kanye as crazy when taking into account his social media presence and public antics; however, an analysis of The Life of Pablo’s contents show him not only as sane, but vulnerable, in-touch, and acutely reflective.Part of its vast cultural reach is the fact that The Life of Pablo is infused with with a heavy dose of popular music history, from Nina Simone to Desiigner. Its author’s impressive use of Arthur Russell’s “Answers Me” anchors one of the greatest beats on the album (“30 Hours”), while his rhythmic and thematic interpolation of “Jumpman” by Drake and Future is the lifeblood of “Facts (Charlie Heat Version),” a song completed by Kanye’s imitation of Future’s vocables and his use of sound bytes from Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. These references aren’t merely references—they’re so thoroughly woven into the music of The Life of Pablo that they could not be extricated without compromising the totality of the album. In this sense, the album is a monumental achievement.It’s difficult to excerpt any single song or reference as exemplary from an album that nods to everything from Lexapro to Albert Einstein, so the goal of this playlist is to highlight a few great songs on the album and to intersperse them with some of its most interesting samples and musical references.

Ryan Adams’ latest record, Prisoner, contains a profoundly affecting and relatable story of personal overcoming that is beautifully filtered through a hard-hitting kaleidoscope of ‘70s and ‘80s sounds and techniques. Yet despite the ever-present ghosts of his influences, the album is an original, organic fulfillment of what he’s been aiming at for most of his career.The sonic ascent to Prisoner began with his 2014 self-titled album, a misty, midnight ride through his neon mind where echoing drums, glowing guitar riffs, and shadowy organs refract The Replacements and Tunnel of Love-era Springsteen. The following year’s 1989, a song-for-song cover of the Taylor Swift album, went even darker, gesturing toward The Smiths and Springsteen’s moodier moments—try to tell me Adams’ version of “Shake It Off” isn’t a luminous, slow-burn cousin to “I’m on Fire.”Prisoner completes the trajectory of these records. Many have called it a breakup album, which in many ways it is, but it’s also full of hope and power thanks to the strength it draws from Adams’ spiritual predecessors. The lightning-quick guitar outbursts of “Do You Still Love Me?” gesture back to Black Sabbath (Vol. 4 is an Adams favorite), Kiss, and AC/DC. The title track evokes the shiny jangle of Johnny Marr, while “Doomsday” imagines what would happen if The Cure had a harmonica player. “To Be Without You” harkens to the joyous, swaggering folk of The Grateful Dead, and “Outbound Train” is vintage Springsteen, complete with suspended chords and lyrics about cars, loneliness, and boredom.The album’s masterful closer resides at the top of the class of Adams’ grand finales, repeating its mantra of “we disappear” with production so crisp and transparent it sounds like Adams is actually disappearing. And yet, throughout the images of fading taillights and haunted houses, beyond The Smiths and Springsteen, Ryan Adams is doing his own thing. And he nails it.Click here to add to Spotify playlist!

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Profound Lore was founded in 2004 by Chris Bruni as a casual venture, but within a few years it grew to be a serious metal label. Based in Kitchener, Ontario—about an hour’s drive west of Toronto—Profound Lore has produced some of the most vital voices in contemporary black, experimental, and heavy metal.Providing a deep history of Profound Lore Records is a challenging pursuit, as the only thing listed on their website’s “About” page is an H. P. Lovecraft quote from “The Outsider”: “I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.” Maybe that really does sum it all up, and maybe Profound Lore only needs to be known by what they’ve done.Many of their releases challenge common perceptions of metal: Prurient’s Frozen Niagara Falls could only be called metal in its attitude, which is cold, penetrating, and unforgettably bleak. In the track “Greenpoint,” industrial rips and existential explosions of white noise attack across an unforgiving pulse, giving way to bone-chilling lyrics about the namesake Brooklyn neighborhood where an uncommon number of people have committed suicide.By contrast, Ash Borer’s 2016 record The Irrepassable Gate is a more straightforward black metal album, flush with wailing guitars, punishing blast beats, and of course, howling vocals. It’s a dark and masterful album, showcasing the incredible growth they’ve made over the course of only three full LPs, the last two of which have been released through Profound Lore.There truly isn’t enough space here to pay tribute to the label that brought us Krallice’s self-titled masterpiece (as well as Dimensional Bleedthrough and Diotima), a few albums from drone/noise metal legends Nadja, all three LPs from doom band Pallbearer, and many more. It’s clear that what Profound Lore do on a day-to-day basis remains in the shadows, but for metal, perhaps that’s necessary.

Arca’s profile is strange and eclectic: Although featured on albums by Kanye West and Björk, the Venezuelan producer’s solo work lives mostly in the shadows, existing as cult favorites of electronic musicians and intellectuals. His expressionist, synth-based tracks stream into the headphones of people in cafés and living rooms, studied like Johnny Marr studied Marc Bolan; a frequent thought of listeners might be: “How does he do it?”“Vanity,” from 2015’s Mutant, opens with the sounds of profoundly distorted mallet percussions echoing into magnetic eternity, which are quickly usurped by a bassline so smooth and boundless it spills beautifully into the rest of the mix. “Anoche,” which will appear on his self-titled record due April 7, brilliantly doubles detuned synth notes on top of one another as meticulous percussion enters and exists with free will. The lyrics are pure romantic splendor and despair.Of course, Kanye West’s Yeezus, from 2013, must be mentioned here, as the record benefits from not one but four tracks produced by Arca. “Hold My Liquor” and “Blood on the Leaves” are arguably the two most reflective and emotionally explosive tracks on the album: The former centers around a pristine, slow-burning synth pulse, while the latter features spectacularly placed samples and monolithic bass. Arca’s work on “Meditation” by Babyfather (a.k.a. Dean Blunt) feels more vintage and laidback, like a modern Ghostface Killah beat, while FKA twigs’ “Lights On” is a dissonant, palpitating seduction.If the trajectory of his previous works are any indication, Arca’s self-titled record could go down as his masterpiece. Brace yourself for it with this playlist of tracks spanning his luminous career.

“I go on describing this place / And the way it feels to live and die.” — Mount Eerie, “Through The Trees, Pt. 2”I once heard a professor say that Robert Schumann’s music only makes sense if you’re in a certain part of Germany. I tend to disagree with those kinds of claims, but I’d also be lying if I said that Phil Elverum’s music doesn’t strongly evoke the magic, mystery, and feeling of the Pacific Northwest. And it’s not just me, it’s a common point made about his songs: it’s in the imagery of the music, between the trees and the ocean roars, through the black metal interludes, behind the Twin Peaks synths and references; his music is about space and feeling, and the spaces are particular.His early work as The Microphones was bombastic, experimental, and seriously affecting, capturing through music and lyrics exactly how it feels to be a young person and to embody a wild existence. If you’re like me and this music has been with you for a while, you probably straighten up in your seat and unfocus your eyes a bit when I mention The Glow, Pt. 2. It’s real.As Elverum transitioned from The Microphones to Mount Eerie, his songs became a little clearer, a little more adult, and a little more enveloping. His 2012 releases form a perfect snapshot of his tremendous ability to evoke all things at once: The intimate, almost trembling Clear Moon fuses airy guitars and shuffling percussion to create distinctly breezy-yet-serious tableaus, while Ocean Roar is an explosive, electronic-infused synthesis of post-rock and black metal. Taken together, these albums represent the complex essence of Mount Eerie.The initiated and uninitiated alike can prepare themselves for Elverum’s newest work, the haunting and raw A Crow Looked At Me, which deals with the tragic loss of his wife, musician/artist Geneviève Castrée, from pancreatic cancer in July 2016. In this intensely personal album, he pursues brave, new paths of truth and sound, while still sounding like classic Elverum. Get brought up to speed with this playlist of his work as Mount Eerie and The Microphones.

It’s not very cool to like Spoon today, which is strange because they are an incredible band. Whenever I bring them up to friends, other music writers, or even members of my band, my comments are usually met with: “They’re OK,” “I don’t like them,” or something far more pejorative. The thing is, Spoon are one of the most strange and creative bands working in popular indie rock today and they consistently reinvent themselves.Their tracks meld rock ‘n’ roll and electronic elements and are tempered by production that occasionally borders on noise. Their studio work is remarkably meticulous, using ambience and timbre cleverly and makes brilliant use of the depth between foreground and background. Their song structures are clever and vigorous with many tracks violently shifting speed, tone, or texture on a dime. For these reasons, I’ve been telling people for years that Transference is one of the best rock albums of this generation. But I have yet to convert anyone.Songs like “The Ghost of You Lingers” and “I Saw The Light” engage musical space in an innovative way, using static motifs to explore the use of noise in songs and soloing. “WhisperI’lllistentohearit,” from 2017’s Hot Thoughts, features ethereal pulses overlayed with fastidiously situated guitar until the song blasts into a different tempo, fleshing itself out with distortion, synths, and critically placed tambourines and shakers. This is extremely cool music.Do a lot of people like Spoon? Sure. Do they appear on TV and at big festivals? Yeah. Can their music be heard in films and trailers? Yep. That’s because they are a great band. As you’re warming up to Hot Thoughts, enjoy this playlist of their outliers. Songs about death, sex, and loneliness shouldn’t be this fun to listen to.

Over the past 20 years, we’ve lived under four different U.S. presidents, seen the mapping of the human genome, witnessed the confirmation of the Higgs boson particle, and experienced the beginnings of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Throughout all the turmoil, Canadian rockers The New Pornographers have kept on truckin’, churning out electric power pop that consistently refuses to capitulate to larger trends in music or politics. They are a staple of indie rock, one of the most dependable and unwavering bands working today. It’s amazing that they’ve managed this, since their lineup is a massive registry of accomplished pop musicians, all with unique styles and musical approaches of their own.A.C. Newman has been one of the backbones of the band since their inception in 1997, when they were birthed out of his other projects: power pop outfit Zumpano and prog monsters Superconductor, in which traces of the trademark Pornographers vibe could already be sensed. Country-tinged troubadour Neko Case has been another integral part of the ensemble since their beginning, importing her compelling vocal style from her successful solo career. The third is, of course, Dan Bejar, whose solo project Destroyer has amassed an eclectic, enigmatic discography, from the sensuous, Dylan-esque jams of This Night to the disco-infused rock of Kaputt, and everything in between. The Pornographers’ later music showcases the contributions of newer member Kathryn Calder, whose aggressively cool pop group Immaculate Machine produced numerous great tracks before their final record in 2009.This playlist explores the music of these members and more, including bassist John Collins’ The Evaporators (with the legendary Nardwuar), first drummer Kurt Dahle’s The Age of Electric and Limblifter, lead guitarist Todd Fancey’s eponymous solo project, current drummer Joe Seiders’ Beat Club, and touring member Simi Stone’s Suffrajett. The New Pornographers’ recent album Whiteout Conditions—which, sadly, is their first without Bejar—continues their awesome melting pot of all of their individual styles and voices.

M83 is fixated on the sky, on big sound, on feeling alive. Their name is taken from Messier 83, a spiral galaxy; their music, however, comes from primary member Anthony Gonzalez’s long engagement with pop history. Some of his influences, such as the Cocteau Twins, Vangelis, and My Bloody Valentine, are apparent from listening to his music, and yet, his love of the weirder sides of Pink Floyd and The Beatles is equally important. His synthesizer tones are in touch with the ethereal sounds of Jean-Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream, while the pacing and drama of his more epic works unquestionably gesture toward Slowdive and Sigur Rós. M83 transforms the greatest qualities of these musicians into sonic collages that feel simultaneously familiar and fresh.

Anthony Gonzalez is a singular force in French electronic music. Since 2001, operating primarily as M83, he has created everything from nostalgic shoegaze rock and pulsing electronic dream pop to film soundtracks, asserting his meticulousness both as a composer and performer. 2003’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts explored the intersection of sampled sound, electronic synths, and post-rock, evoking both Mogwai and My Bloody Valentine, while the melancholy and ecstatic Saturdays = Youth stands strong as 2008’s best ‘80s album. Employing battalions of excellent vocalists, mixers, engineers, and more, Gonzalez always manages to push his perfect rhythms into crystalline atmospheres of sound. His expansive music is equally perfect for midnight cruises with friends and packed music festival fields, insisting that feeling sad can feel good, as long as you are dancing through it.