Scenes

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Honeyblood, whose sophomore album Babes Never Die was released on FatCat, are the archetypal Scottish indie band: exquisitely simple songs, hooks so clever it’s absurd, and quirky charm out the wazoo. Nearly every great band — and there are many — that the Scots have given us share these four qualities, while at the same time carving out their own unique niche. Where Belle & Sebastian craft hushed chamber pop perfect for sad-eyed art school dropouts, The Jesus and Mary Chain smother teenage symphonies to god in walls of seething fuzz. Mogwai weave lush, undulating hypnotics rooted in post-rock, while CHVRCHES veer into synth-pop polished enough for big time chart action. On top of all this, Scotland has churned out some of the best jangle pop, twee, and noise pop this side of New Zealand. That first Primal Scream album, the one before Bobby Gillespie and crew discovered acid house and ecstasy, is beyond dreamy. Then there’s the Fire Engines, spazzy, Edinburgh-bred art punks from the early ’80s who were pivotal in establishing Scotland’s very first DIY scene.

According to one account, disco was born on Valentines Day, 1970, in New York City. It certainly couldnt have come at a better time. Nixon had been president for a little over a year; the Vietnam War was dragging on, and the unrest of the 60s had settled in like a hangovers dull throb. Some groups had it worse than others: In New York, it was still illegal for two men to dance together, and while the Stonewall Riots of the previous year had helped kick a nascent gay-rights movement into gear, undercover cops were still busting gays, lesbians, and transsexuals in dimly lit bars.So you can understand why a young, bearded bohemian named David Mancuso wrote "Love Saves the Day" on invitations announcing a private party at his home, a loft in a former warehouse in a deserted corner of lower Manhattan. A little positive energy was needed. A safe space was sorely needed—space to dance, space to socialize, and space simply to be oneself. ("Love Saves the Day" might also have been a way of hinting at the mystery ingredient in the punchbowl, but what world-changing musical event hasnt come with its own social lubricant?)Mancusos private party eventually became a regular shindig, known simply as the Loft. Its trappings became legendary: the scores of multicolored balloons hugging the ceiling and bobbing along the floor; the sumptuous fruit spread; the Klipschorn speakers, so clear that listeners heard details in records theyd never noticed before. Two elements above all were paramount: the mixed crowd—a joyfully nonhierarchical sampling of sexualities, genders, ethnicities, and social classes—and the music, chosen and sequenced according to Mancusos own impeccable instincts.And while it wasnt a club, by any stretch of the imagination—for one thing, the Loft remained a members-only event, and strictly BYOB—in its focus on the music and the crowd, its attempt to carve out a refuge from the pressures of the outside world, the Loft established the blueprint for the discotheque and the modern nightclub. Thats not to say that many modern clubs live up to the example set by the Loft; most dont. (As Mancuso himself told Red Bull Music Academy in 2013, "For me the core [idea behind the Loft] is about social progress. How much social progress can there be when youre in a situation that is repressive? You wont get much social progress in a nightclub"; for Mancuso, the non-profit motive was crucial to preserving a venues liberatory potential.)Mancuso didnt call himself a DJ; he preferred to be known as a "musical host," and somewhere along the line, he even stopped blending his transitions, simply letting each song play out in full before starting the next one. But the open-mindedness of his selections helped establish disco, at least before it codified into an oonce-oonce beat, as a zone of possibility rather than a narrowly defined genre, and that message continues to resonate with DJs today. This Spotify playlist gathers more than 100 songs that Mancuso played at the Loft: deep, ecstatic funk (Wars "Me and Baby Brother," The J.B.s "Gimme Some More"), African funk (Manu Dibangos "Soul Makossa," a song Mancuso popularized), classic soul (Al Greens "Love and Happiness"), house music (Fingers Inc.s "Mystery of Love"), even folk-rock (Van Morrisons "Astral Weeks"). No playlist can replicate the way he played the music, though, juxtaposing songs to play up their lyrical themes, or building intensity as the party crept toward dawn.In Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979, Tim Lawrence asks various New York DJs who came in Mancusos wake if they had ever danced at the Loft. "Time and again," he writes, "they would describe Mancuso as their most important influence, a musical messiah who also happened to resemble Jesus Christ."That messiah died on November 14, 2016, after a protracted illness, at the age of 72. It seems a cruel irony that he should leave us now, precisely when safe spaces, both real and metaphorical, suddenly feel more necessary than ever, their survival even more precarious. His followers can only hope that love might save the day once more.

Khyam Allami, Ola Saad, and 47Soul are just some of the names associated with a rising generation of rockers, singer-songwriters, and electronic producers creating alternative music in the Middle East and North Africa. While Western news headlines tend to focus on the struggles of Syrian refugees and the protracted fight against ISIS, the past decade in the region has seen a paradigm shift in the fields of art and music. From Cairo to Tehran, artists have looked beyond borders and mass-market media sources, adopting wifi, social media and home production programs like Pro Tools to establish new networks of collaboration and distribution.Among the talents are the band 47Soul, who capture the spirit of Arab youth culture and speak to their Palestinian roots with their analog synthesizers, political lyrics, and Levantine dabke rhythms. There’s Khyam Allami, an artist of Iraqi descent who runs the influential label Nawa Recordings, who made avant-garde punk on the soundtrack for the 2015 Tunisian indie film As I Open My Eyes/À peine jouvre les yeux and explores the boundaries of Arabic oud with the avant-garde group Alif (which features members from Egypt and Lebanon). And there’s producers like Ola Saad, who engages with her surroundings through provocative ambient electronic music and sound art.There’s a long tradition of cross-cultural collaboration and avant-garde exploration in the Middle East and North Africa, but this music today is fundamentally unique — reflecting a time of conflict and global division but also of trans-national enrichment and creative possibility.

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Don’t be misled by the megawatt smile of Algerian singer-songwriter Khaled. Known as the king of raï, his songs are as provocative as they are joyful. Raï (which means “opinion” or “point of view” in Arabic) first blossomed in the 1970s and ’80s in the rowdy cabarets of Oran, a port city on the coast of the Mediterranean. As the music gained in popularity, a pioneering record producer named Rachid Baba-Ahmed started bringing local stars to his studio in the northwestern city of Tlemcen to record pop-oriented tracks featuring synthesizers, guitars, and drum machines. This “pop raï” sound was documented on the iconic 1988 compilation Rai Rebels, which put raï on the map and helped lay a foundation for international superstars like Khaled — then known as Cheb Khaled, an honorary title meaning “Young Man.” As he gained in popularity, Khaled dropped the “Cheb” from his name and toured the globe. In 1999, the genre’s renown was fully cemented as singer Cheb Mami teamed up with Sting to record the hit “Desert Rose” — which made it into the Top 20 on the U.S. Billboard charts — while Khaled paired with fellow raï stars Rachid Taha and Faudel for the much-celebrated live album 1, 2, 3 Soleils. By now raï hits were fully globalized affairs featuring Western-style song structures, universal themes, and some of the most sentimental pop hooks known to man. But the genre remained controversial back home, where a civil war was consuming Algeria whole. The singer Cheb Hasni and the producer Baba-Ahmed were both assassinated by Islamist militants in 1994 and 1995, and many artists had to flee, no longer able to safely sing music that dealt with controversial matters like drinking and forbidden love. The war in Algeria ended in 2002 and today raï continues to evolve, with younger artists fusing it together with genres like R&B. And of course, Khaled scored another hit in 2012 with his club banger “C’est la vie.” It just goes to show how powerful the genre is, encapsulating the drastic extremes of life itself.

Founded in the late ’00s, Glasgow’s Optimo Music is the quintessential Scottish label, and that’s exactly the way JD Twitch wants it. The producer, DJ, promoter, remixer, and proud Scot has amassed a catalog that directly mirrors the freely flowing exchange between DIY, anything-goes rock and cutting-edge dance music that has long defined the country’s underground. After all, Scottish artists were some of the very first on the planet to (1) blend punk and discoid propulsion (see Fire Engines’ 1980 landmark “Get Up and Use Me”), (2) fold alt-rock into house/techno (Primal Scream, of course), and (3) pioneer ’00s dance rock (the crazy prescient Yummy Fur did it a decade ahead of schedule).Among the slew of vinyl Twitch released in 2016 (including those sides on the Optimo Trax and Optimo Music Disco Plate sub-labels), it’s on The Pussy Mothers’ The Number 1 EP, MR TC’s Surf and Destroy, and Junto Club’s Warm Me Up that these deliciously anarchic qualities are most in your face. Surf and Destroy is especially telling: the title track is a throbbing orgy of acid squelch, post-punk atmosphere, and psychedelic guitar wash.In contrast, these qualities become more subtle on those records that (at first blush, at least) tilt more toward orthodox dancefloor groove. A track like “In Turbine,” from Underspreche’s Invito Alla Danza Part 1, is minimal, electroacoustic drone rock (complete with warm organ hum) from a duo who are no strangers to pounding club jams. Noo is another revealing example: Their Optimo Music Disco Plate Five is all about 21st-century Italo awesomeness filtered through a scrappy, slacker basement vibe. Noo, it has to be noted, was founded by Christophe “Daze” Dasen and Sami Liuski, who hail from Switzerland and Finland respectively. You see, that’s a part of Twitch’s curatorial genius; he possesses a knack for teaming up with artists who, while they may not hail from the Scottish underground, create music that totally reflects its unique sensibility.Note: while my playlist is stacked with tracks from Optimo Music’s 2016 releases, listeners will also discover a handful of older gems. Truth be told, the label’s full catalog is never far from my turntable. For example, I probably jam Golden Teacher’s Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night — a boisterous collision of future punk, acid, and all manner of tribal funkery released in 2013 — at least once a month. Like most underground music from Scotland, this stuff simply doesn’t age.

The vast swathes of the Sahel and Sahara regions in West Africa may not look like much from a map, but for centuries they’ve been criss-crossed by trading caravans and pilgrims, creating unique migration patterns and allowing for the exchange of food, language, and ideas. So it’s no surprise that today this sandy and arid region is home to multiple generations of musicians who’ve embraced the key instrument of American and European rock ’n’ roll.From Timbuktu to Agadez, singers and songwriters have embraced the guitar as a mode of expression and musical reinvention. The instrument is believed to have distant roots in the Sahara region, as West Africans taken to North America during the transatlantic slave trade brought with them songs and dances that went onto inform the music of future bluesmen like Robert Johnson. The blues were reinvented again by Ali Farka Touré, the Malian singer and songwriter famed for his mesmerizing guitar style. But there’s also Tuareg bands like Tinariwen, who first picked up guitars in the 1980s as a way to articulate the struggles and sadness of their generation, as the Tuareg people were beset by displacement, drought and later took up arms in rebellions against the governments of Niger and Mali.Today, the recording industry and international festival circuit is packed with now-familiar names from the Sahara region, including younger generations of artists like the Sahrawi singer/songwriter Aziza Brahim and the electric guitar virtuoso Mdou “Bombino” Moctar from the frontier city of Agadez in Niger. This playlist reflects the many talents who come from this rich modern tradition.

The emergence of a viable rap scene in Seattle didn’t happen overnight. Even as Macklemore & Ryan Lewis briefly took over the pop airwaves with “Thrift Shop” in 2012, less-celebrated artists were determining the future of the Northwest city’s sound. In fact, much of the Seattle rap underground resembles other U.S. homegrown scenes that formed in the wake of indie rap icons like Lil B and Odd Future: The music is amorphous and electronic, the lyrics tend toward chemically enhanced streams-of-consciousness, and there are enough sonic quirks to make you want to crawl down a SoundCloud wormhole.Shabazz Palaces’ surreal, Afrocentric-inspired treatises are a touchstone, as are Blue Sky Black Death’s cloud rap symphonies. The latter worked with Nacho Picasso, who then formed the Moor Gang collective with Jarv Dee and Gifted Gab. Shabazz Palaces’ Black Constellation crew attracted THEESatisfaction and Chimurenga Renaissance—who coined the popular event and meme “Black Weirdo” before disbanding in 2016—and influenced avant-rap artists like Porter Ray and Tay Sean. Then there’s Thraxxhouse, a crew formed by Mackned and Key Nyata who take inspiration from internet oddities like Florida’s Raider Klan.Unfairly or not, there’s some lingering resentment in the city toward Macklemore, whose huge successes have overshadowed the city much as Sir Mix-A-Lot did with “Baby Got Back” in the ‘90s. (We declined to include all the diss songs aimed at the rapper on this playlist.) No one seems capable of ascending to the same commercial heights, although Eighty4 Fly has earned over 1 million streams on SoundCloud with his 2012 trippy smoker tune “Kush High.” But maybe that’s the status quo the Emerald City prefers: a micro-scene dictated by industrious talents instead of pop novelty.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!The party line among rock historians is that 70s progressive rock was a uniquely British phenomenon, with minor prog annexes popping up in America and elsewhere. While its true that prog found its footing in England, the idea that it was the musics only—or even main—stronghold is a patent falsehood.While there were active prog scenes all across Europe in Germany, Sweden, France, and other regions, Italy became as much of a hotbed for it as England, if not more so. As in the UK, Italian prog grew out of psychedelia, with fuzzy guitars and organ solos giving way to swooping synths and complex suites. But Italian prog had a distinct sonic fingerprint that set it apart from its British cousin.Aside from the obvious fact that most of the lyrics were in Italian, the countrys prog bands—with some important exceptions—tended toward a lush, symphonic sound that embraced classical influences and eschewed the blues modalities that popped up in the music of their British counterparts. The influence of Italian folk was also crucial, making for a more pastoral feel than commonly found in British prog.The big stars of Italian prog—the handful of bands who ever performed or had records released outside of their homeland—included Premiata Forneria Marconi (PFM for short), Banco, and Le Orme (pictured at top). But at various strata beneath that tiny top tier were countless other bands who were as equally inventive. Though the likes of Biglietto Per LInferno, Metamorfosi, and Celeste didnt gain much attention in other countries, theyre a vital part of Italys proud prog legacy. The presence of contemporary bands like La Maschera Di Cera and Nuova Era, who are overtly influenced by their forebears, attests to the staying power of this singular sound.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Chicago’s underground has been on fire the past few years. Every other week seems to deliver a new batch of releases from the Hausu Mountain label, purveyors of madcap electronics and cyborg-bopping eccentricity. The shadowy Beau Wanzer, whose icy and forlorn productions disintegrate the divide between post-punk and techno, is nearly as prolific—and that’s just one dude. And then there’s Jaime Fennelly’s always progressing Mind Over Mirrors project: his latest album, the critically lauded Undying Color, wanders dense, rippling expanses of pastoral art folk and baroque électronique.Of course, “underground” means a lot of different things to a lot of different heads. For denizens of the city’s thriving avant-garde jazz and hardcore punk scenes, it conjures up a significantly different cluster of artists. So for this playlist, we focus primarily on musicians, bands, and oddball geniuses who stalk the back alleys, linking DIY electronics, industrial, droning experimentation, and mutant dance music. At first blush they may seem too far apart to link, but in Chicago, where musicians from different disciplines have always mingled freely, the overlap between them is substantial.This idea is reflected in the growing catalog of Midwich Productions, a label specializing in “electronic music from the urban wilderness of the Midwest.” Founded by longtime resident and musician Jim Magas, it’s home to both HIDE (pictured at top), who unleash mechanized nightmares that carry forward the city’s electro-industrial tradition, and Alex Barnett, a composer whose quirky, bubbling pieces ooze a cozy sense of nostalgia for ’70s synthesizer music.As you can probably guess, a lot of this music gets awfully weird—Fire-Toolz’s collision of boom-box EDM and grindcore rasp makes zero sense. Yet a good deal of it is deeply beautiful: Quicksails, an alias for multi-instrumentalist Ben Billington, crafts flickering avant-pop that bridges DIY electronics with the city’s deep reverence for jazz and free improv. It’s music that could only come from Chicago.

Maybe it’s the cheap rent that’s essential for sustaining the vitality and vibrancy of artists and culture in a modern metropolis, or maybe it’s the proximity to beloved landmarks and bit players from The Wire and the movies of John Waters; either way, Baltimore continues to thrive as a musical hotbed, one that retains a fierce loyalty among the many great acts born and bred there. Future Islands count as one, even if they started two states south in North Carolina.After moving to Baltimore in 2008, they became part of a remarkably welcoming DIY community, one that resulted from the efforts of Dan Deacon and other members of the Wham City arts collective to transform the city from yet another study in American urban decline into a haven for millennials with a taste for maverick sounds. Some of those sounds were dreamy and some raucous, but all were more than a little weird.Of course, longtime local institutions like Dischord post-hardcore types Lungfish had already done much to foster that spirit, and before its members headed off to NYC and Europe, the teenaged Marylanders of Animal Collective paved the way for freak-flag-fliers like Ponytail and Ecstatic Sunshine. Future Islands weren’t the only imports; Matmos relocated there from San Francisco after Drew Daniel got a job teaching at Johns Hopkins. Wherever their origins, the fertility of the ground occupied was soon recognized worldwide thanks to the success of Future Islands and other Baltimoreans like Deacon, Wye Oak, Beach House, and Lower Dens.With this week’s release of Future Islands’ fifth album, The Far Field, it’s a fine time to celebrate the city’s indie scene with a playlist of Baltimore acts you may already know and love, and others who deserve more than hometown-hero status, like Ed Schrader’s Music Beat and relative newbies Sun Club. The music by Future Islands’ many side projects—such as Peals, William Cashion’s duo with former Double Dagger bassist Bruce Willen—is further proof that local politicians made a dumb move when they changed the city’s old slogan, “The Greatest City in America.” Keep it weird, Baltimore.