Prior to the release of his third album, Float, on October 6, avant-electronic mystery man Slow Magic gets us into the autumnal spirit with this mix he created for The Dowsers. "These are songs Ive been listening to lately that capture the feeling of the season changing from summer to fall," he says. "Im always intrigued how the same song can sound and feel completely different as the weather starts to adjust and catch you off guard."
In 1993, in the small southern Norwegian town of Flekkefjord, young Joakim Haugland launched the Smalltown Supersound label to release the lo-fi, home-recorded sounds being made by him and his small town friends. Inspired by the DIY ethos and aesthetic of legendary US punk/hardcore label SST, Haugland went on to release a diverse slew of sounds over the next quarter century, carving out a niche and a reputation for smart, genre-hopping blends of disco, funk, lo-fi, electronic, indie rock, and more. To celebrate 25 years, friend of the label and adept disco/house producer Prins Thomas has crafted a sprawling retrospective DJ mix of the Smalltown Supersound catalogue, titled The Movement of the Free Spirit. In addition, Haugland has created this playlist giving a peek behind the catalogue into the inspirations behind Smalltown Supersound, from Arthur Russel to Robert Wyatt, King Tubby to Chris & Cosey, and Sonic Youth to Serge Gainsbourg. Dig into the sounds behind his Smalltown Supersound here.Founder Joakim Haugland says, "As all music nerds, we like playlists. This playlist was made the dogme way, in a couple of hours in a brainstorm. But the tracks on this playlist are taken from albums that I feel are made by auteurs, albums that I feel have a soul and something unique; in short, albums I wish we had released on Smalltown Supersound."
San Franciscos experimental rockers Wooden Shjips set out to make a summer record on their latest album (the just-in-time-for-it May 25th-released "V") so its no surprise summer was the theme when we asked them to make us a playlist. Listening through their sun-soaked psychedelia on "V" tracks like the aptly titled "Staring at the Sun" and the fuzzy, jammy "Eclipse," this hand-picked playlist might just be the best accompaniment to Wooden Shjips latest effort.Says guitarist Ripley Johnson: "For this playlist I wanted to make something that could be dubbed onto an old cassette, perfect for taking in a boombox to the swimming hole, or on a sunny summer road trip. I mixed some of my old summer favs, like Meat Puppets, Van the man, Jerry, with some newer jams (Gun Outfit, Psychic Ills), paying attention more to the vibe than the source or genre." Check it out now!
Snoop Dogg is a rapper who will collaborate with anyone for the right price. But unlike, say, Gucci Mane, his tossed-off verses appear on more than miscellaneous cuts by random regional street rappers. Snoop’s musical promiscuity has led to surprisingly unlikely songs like “Lavender,” a track he made with Canadian jazz band BadBadNotGood and producer Kaytranada. Earlier this month, their video generated national headlines by depicting Snoop pointing a toy gun at a Donald Trump impersonator, resulting in an angry tweet from the president himself.
“Lavender” may be the most prominent example of how Snoop Dogg has extended his reach beyond the confines of urban pop. He’s delved into L.A.’s indie funk and electronic scenes by working with Dâm-Funk—on 2013’s underrated 7 Days of Funk—Adrian Younge, and Flying Lotus, appeared on Run the Jewels’ willfully bizarre remix project Meow the Jewels, and worked with adult soul veterans like Goapele and Kindred the Family Soul. On most of these tracks, the 40-something rapper genially plays the Uncle Snoop role, a celebrator of fine women and good smoke, while tactfully avoiding the vocal aggression that occasionally creeps up in his street-rap cameos (his “Lavender” verses against the president are a notable exception). He can come off as corny but he knows how to fit in, as memorable songs like his duet with Gorillaz, “Sumthin Like This Night,” prove.Among Snoop’s generation of late-‘80s/early-‘90s solo rap stars, there are precious few who still release commercially viable work: E-40, Too $hort, Dr. Dre, Nas, and JAY Z come to mind. Amidst that increasingly short list, Snoop’s role as West Coast ambassador for everyone, and not just the pop music industry in particular, is important. And the fact that he’s used his position to make intriguing digital funk gems like Flying Lotus’ “Dead Man’s Tetris” is a big plus.Click here to add to Spotify playlist!
Spanning the broad range of post-punk from The Smiths to Krautrock, Portland, Oregons Soft Kill capture haunting guitars alongside goth-tinged vocals, reminiscing dark wave and broadening the boundaries of post-punks legacy in 2018. Soft Kills latest full length Savior is out on Profound Lore Records now. We asked the band to put together a playlist for us, and they came together for a list of artists that influenced their latest endeavor. Listen above or go right here.Says the band: "RIP Tom Petty!"
Since 2010, Oaklands Luis Vasquez has been delving into the darkest depths of post-industrial synth-pop as The Soft Moon. But with his fourth album, Criminal (Sacred Bones), on the horizon, Vasquez opted to make us a playlist that reveals a different side of his musical personality. "Every time I get asked to put together a mix or playlist, my first instinct is to want to show people my collection of weird and obscure oddities. For this playlist, I wanted to do something different, something out of my comfort zone, and something unexpected when it comes to representing The Soft Moon. The majority of my favorite music stems from the 1980s pop genre and, in fact, it’s what I feel molded me into the musician I am today. Most of us wouldn’t consider these songs guilty pleasures because, in the end, they’re actually all great songs that we all know. But when I was younger playing in punk bands, these songs were secret."——Luis Vasquez, a.k.a. The Soft Moon
Solange Knowles’ album, A Seat at the Table, is a crisply executed R&B pop album that wooed fans and debuted atop the charts. The album blends elements of pop and electronic music with various threads of soul, adding afrofuturistic flourishes as well as guest appearances from Lil’ Wayne, Kelly Rowland, and Q-Tip. And while that sounds like a hodgepodge of sounds and personnel, the album is subtle and graceful, anchored by Solange’s soft, confident voice and down-to-earth musical sensibility. “Borderline (An Ode to Self Care)” and “Don’t Touch My Hair” champion ideas of black liberation and self-empowerment, and are powerful statements from one of pop’s most socially conscious singers. On this playlist, we look at some of the inspirations for Solange’s beautiful new album, from the woozy otherworldly hip-hop of Shabazz Palaces to the astral jazz of Alice Coltrane. -- Jordannah Elizabeth
My first experience with Kate Bush was listening to “Don’t Give Up,” her duet with Peter Gabriel: a top ten in the UK and a lesser one in America. My second experience was the Utah Saints’ ebullient sample in 1992, adapting the best lyric of her career (“I just knowthat something good is gonna hap-PEN!”) for lubricious ends. 1993 was not a good time for English eccentrics who peaked with concepts and Fairlights six years earlier, which is why I overrateThe Red Shoes. A finalist in my top ten that year, 2005’s Aerial suffers from muddled execution on its song side; “Pi” and “Joanni” sound like B-sides in search of a home and context (I love’em anyway). The second disk — a depiction of aesthetic and sexual actualization set like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves to the chronology of the tides — dawdles for fifteen minutes before “Nocturne” and the title track demonstrate how much Bush has learned about dynamics; her mastery of pitch and song form find their correlative in compositions that churn with a palpable sense of relief and release. “I feel I want to be up on the roof,” accompanied by rhythm guitar chugging, is as weird a hook as the one in “Cloudbusting,” ranking just below the part in “Get Out of My House” in which she mimics a donkey. Too bad 50 Words For Snow lacked songs for a concept. No matter: Kate Bush is worth the wait.Here are my favorite Kate Bush tracks. I wish I owned The Kick Inside and Lionheart. Her induction into Stylus’ Hall of fame inspired a few excellent appreciations, not least of which is Thomas Inskeep’s of “Experiment IV,” one of the best songs recorded expressly for a compilation (The Whole Story). I also recommend Single Jukebox colleague Katherine St. Asaph’s One Week One Band omnibus.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.
Bones is the LA-via-London, all-female duo of Rosie (singer) and Carmen (guitar). Their most recent single, "Limbs," combines electro-pop with industrial flourishes for a sound that is infectious and aggressive. The Dowsers recently asked them to make us a playlist. Heres what they gave us, in their own words:Music to dance to. Music to drive to. Tunes to kiss to. Songs to love to, to miss people to. Music to sing, to SCREAM along with. Tunes to make you turn your TV off and get down on your mothers new carpets. Music that has moved us and we hope will move you too. Songs picked by BONES to for you to BONE to. Xxx
This post is part of our program, The Story of Kendrick, an in-depth, 10-part look at the life and music of Kendrick Lamar. Sound cool and want to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out and share on Facebook, Twitter, or with this link. Your friends will thank you.For many, good kid, m.A.A.d. city was their entry point to Kendrick Lamar, and it was one of the greatest revelations in hip-hop this decade. Tracks such as “Money Trees” and “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” pare the vulnerability and earned spirituality of a trauma survivor with the heft of a master technician, while his intricate raps carry a conceptual framework that revealed the full weight of the post-millennial American collapse—the dead homies, the dead-end jobs, the deadened interpersonal relationships. Released one week before that album dropped, and in conjunction with this “making of” article published by Complex, this playlist—in Kendrick’s own words—captures “some of the records that inspire me to this day.” It’s predictably diverse. The first two tracks veer from the hardscrabble pathos of DMX’s “Slippin’” (“Im possessed by the darker side, livin the cruddy life”) to the haunting atmospheric grumbling of Portishead’s trip-hop trailblazer “Roads,” before eventually settling into the G-funk (DJ Quik’s “I Don’t Want to Party Wit U,” MC Eiht’s “Straight Up Menace”) that provided the soundtrack to Kendrick’s youth.This playlist comes with a minor caveat: As of 2017, it contains only nine tracks. Probably, at some point, it contained more tracks; and, at some point in the future, it will contain fewer. Spotify either lost rights to certain tracks on the playlist, or else the labels redelivered them in different versions. This Dowsers is a site dedicated to looking at playlists as artistic/critical artifacts, and this is both one of that medium’s charm and vulnerabilities: It’s ephemeral, susceptible to the vagrancies of anonymous digital-music content-operation teams. Like graffiti—which is itself vulnerable to time, weather and gentrification—this doesnt make it any less of an artform, but it’s important to understand.
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.
Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
