Footwork is a little maddening, but its also brilliant. Its deeply experimental. The percussive elements are very tightly clipped and the songs are repetitious to the point of being disorienting-- its one of the musics key characteristics, and gives the music a polyrhythmic sway. And the songs mutate; they were created to be mixed and distorted by DJs, which means that they were more or less created to be defaced. Its also littered with random and current pop cultural references, making it a sort of barometer for social relevancy - a role that hip-hop used to fill. Its also deeply funky. There are a lot of great playlist out there that over this, and Teklife recently announced that they were going to become a record label. Wills Glasspiegel does a nice job here at introducing the genre.
Its an old story, but its still amazing both how persistent and subjective the "album" experience is at this point. Young Thug Leaks and Loosies 2015 is effectively a fan-curated playlist culled from Young Thug mixtape cuts, b-sides and singles that is published on a free, user-generated playlist site that is owned by a major urban media company (Complex). Still, it has nearly 140K plays, which is more than most albums these days, and definitely more than almost any playlist on a major streaming site. I was discussing this with a friend the other day, but the album is an artificial construct, and the common, underlying logic behind either a playlist such this one, or a proper album like The Barter 6*, is that its an extended collection of songs. By this logic, albums are merely officially curated collections of artist tracks. Still, theres a (false?) expectation of coherence when it comes to an album, an expectation for the artist to make a statement, whether that be aesthetically, politically or *The caveat is that The Barter 6 isnt itself a proper album, according to Thugger himself, but a teaser for his proper album,
Source: ComplexFor those of you not attuned to the fast-moving tastes of rap blogs, most of these names will ring unfamiliar to you. And to be frank, theres nothing wrong with that, since these up-and-comers are in their woodshedding phase. Boogies The Reach has drawn critical acclaim and a deal with Republic/Interscope, while fellow UMG signee Post Malone seems like the proverbial industry plant. Nef the Pharoahs "Big Tymin" has dominated the San Francisco Bay Area all summer; and D.R.A.M.s "Cha Cha" has inspired countless Vine memes and a thinly-veiled Drake homage. Good hunting.
Click here to add to Spotify playlist!The Bomb Squad are one of hip-hop’s greatest production teams, and on Public Enemy’s 1987 debut, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, they established sampling as an art form. As the record turns 30 this month, The Bomb Squad’s intricate approach to beat construction remains as relevant as ever, demonstrating how important reference and quotation were to the development of Public Enemy’s politics and to hip-hop in general.Starting out as an opening act for fellow New York hip-hop outfit Beastie Boys, the early incarnation of Public Enemy heard on Yo! Bum Rush The Show more closely resembles a party-starting posse in the mold of Run-DMC than the fight-the-power force they would become. Though the specters of white supremacy and drug culture loom large in songs like “Rightstarter (Message To A Black Man)” and “Megablast,” lyrically speaking, Chuck D was not yet so overtly topical, focusing instead on interpersonal conflict. However, the intertextuality in The Bomb Squad’s sampling style revealed a more subtle approach to expressing Public Enemy’s worldview.Rather than simply sampling a song’s hook, each track was a dense tapestry of source material, charting the group’s constellation of influences and situating hip-hop within a larger spectrum of styles, from funk to thrash metal—“Miuzi Weighs A Ton” even juxtaposes Tangerine Dream with a disco beat. This cultural melding extends to Chuck D’s rhymes, which quote everyone from Syl Johnson to Aretha Franklin to Kurtis Blow.The Bomb Squad further bolstered their productions with live instrumentation. Though Chuck D would eventually regret writing the song, “Sophisticated Bitch” features a noteworthy highlight: a guitar solo courtesy of then-unknown Vernon Reid, whose band Living Colour had yet to break out into the alt-rock world.The righteous indignation for which Public Enemy is now known may mostly be absent there, but it wasn’t far behind. The militant “Rebel Without A Pause” was released as a B-side to “You’re Gonna Get Yours” later in 1987, and it would alter the group’s course forever. But even if Yo! Bum Rush the Show reminds us that Public Enemy didn’t arrive fully formed, its 30th anniversary presents an opportunity to appreciate the group for their sonic innovations, and in this playlist you’ll hear how The Bomb Squad laid the roots of a revolution with the sounds of the past.
Click here to add to Spotify playlist!After a four-year silence that ended with last year’s widely acclaimed Blond(e), Frank Ocean has greeted 2017 with renewed vigor. He has dropped two singles, “Chanel” and “Slide,” the latter a pairing with Calvin Harris and Quavo from Migos. He has also released a dynamic playlist, “Blonded,” that appears far more personal and revelatory than the artist-branded content that label publicists crank out for streaming services. The first installment, revealed on February 24, included Celine Dion and Teen Suicide alongside obvious nods like Prince and Nina Simone. His March 10 update ventured further afield with jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, prog-pop enigma Todd Rundgren, and techno iconoclast Actress. “Blonded” aspires to the ideal of music consumption in the streaming era—now that we can listen to everything, we can consume anything (and switch things up when the mood strikes). It remains to be seen if Frank Ocean’s ideological generosity will eventually manifest in his music.
This playlist collects new music that The Dowsers’ Maura Johnston has fallen for in her workaday life as a music writer and her semi-professional life as a DJ for WZBC, Boston Colleges independent radio station.One of the most pleasant surprises of 2017 has been my personal rediscovery of a few labels that began putting out high-octane indie pop decades ago, and continue to release sweetly catchy records today. Elefant Records out of Madrid has been plying its wares since 1989, and La Bien Querida, the project of Bilbao-born Ana Fernández-Villaverde, hits all the high spots of the genre on "El Lado Bueno"—warm opening chords, hooks that split the difference between agitated guitar pop and hopping synth pop, Fernández-Villaverdes assured vocal serving as a guide. Matinée Recordings, which launched in 1997, is still at it as well; their high-quality roster of artists includes The Last Leaves, whose lineup includes three-fourths of the beloved Australian outfit The Lucksmiths and whose debut single is made for long walks in autumns fading daylight. This months slate of songs is full of delights from new artists (Chicagos Varsity, Los Angeles Blushh) as well as super-confident statements from veterans like Julie Doiron (of Erics Trip) and Beck.
Fortify your pulse with Philip Sherburnes regularly updated playlist of electronic tracks ranging from club bubblers to horizontal home listening.We kick off our latest roundup of the best electronic music with one of the fiercest club cuts to come around in a while: Jlin and Zora Jones’ “Dark Matter,” a bass-heavy beast of a track—part footwork, part d’n’b, all evil—anchoring Jones’ essential new Visceral Minds 2 compilation. It’s a good indicator of how outre things are going to get this month: James Holden (pictured) and The Animal Spirits’ “Pass Through the Fire” is a psychedelic-synth excursion from the experimental electronic mainstay’s new band project that has more in common with Terry Riley than with techno. And Peder Mannerfelt’s “Obey” finds the ROll the Dice member (and Knife/Fever Ray collabortor) revving his engines for a terrifying trip into hair-raising sound design.It’s not all such a white-knuckled ride, though. Four Tet’s “SW9 9SL” is as sleek and resonant a house track as he’s delivered in ages; Moritz von Oswald and Juan Atkins’ “Concave 1” is as enveloping as dub techno gets. And Destroyer’s sax man Joseph Shabason takes us out with “Aytche,” a gorgeous array of drifting synths, processed sax, and honest-to-goodness muted trumpet solo—just the thing to keep you warm as we begin our inevitable slide into fall.
In this recurring playlist, The Dowsers Mosi Reeves gathers new sounds and styles from across the hip-hop diaspora. Some are familiar, and others are personal favorites, but all reflect the state of rap as it is lived now.Every year brings a new culture war, and the dog days of 2017 have found us arguing over the alleged criminality of rappers like Xxxtentacion and Kodak Black, and whether listening to them amounts to tacit support. On their new projects, both men acknowledge their controversial reputation—and perhaps even ask for forgiveness. Elsewhere, Action Bronson rehashes his old Blue Chips mixtape formula, and makes a decent retail project in the process. And if you can’t be bothered with the drama surrounding the "lamestream," then there are vital indie voices like Milo and his densely literate art-rap.
Get warped with the latest tracks and trends in metalcore, post-hardcore, emo, pop-punk, and everything in between, as selected by The Dowsers Justin Farrar.
The triumphant return of Brand New—whose new single "Cant Get It Out" pushes deep into the modern-rock zone—is upon us. But dont sleep on Converges "Under Duress," a chilling slab of metalcore, or Blindwishs "Single Word"—post-hardcore blending soaring melodieswith pummeling heft.
There was a time when emo and indie were forced to sit at separate tables in the lunchroom. But volcanic new songs from the battle-hardened Brand New and Rainer Maria prove that genre tags are often too restrictive and willy nilly, and that its never too late for a band to express themselves via insightful lyricism and volcanic outbursts. And while we praise the emocore veterans for their standard-setting returns, take some time to breathe in the potent resurrection of shoegazing hardcore/proto-emo deities Quicksand, while also appreciating the stunning artistic growth Turnover has already shown.Elsewhere: Seven years after This Is Happening, LCD Soundsystem has returned with some of their more searching, epic songs, while R.E.M. guitar god Peter Buck and Sleater-Kinneys Corin Tucker have made sweet music together with Filthy Friends. And though his band cant seem to stick to a name, Oh Sees leader John Dwyer continues to prove himself one of the undergrounds leading lights.
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.
