Staff Mixes

Suffice to say it’s not been a good year for best-laid plans. On the brighter side, 2020 has seen a welcome abundance of acts and artists who spent years (sometimes decades) underneath the radar and who have returned with new music that instantly reminds us why we loved them in the first place.Some—like Tame Impala and Grimes—really weren’t gone for long but clearly had too much going on in their lives to find the necessary time to realize their big ambitions, and we’re happy they finally did. Other cases—like Paramore’s Hayley Williams and LINKIN PARK’s Mike Shinoda—involve familiar lead singers who’ve been understandably careful about how they want to launch their post-band careers. Someday, hopefully, Zack de la Rocha will feel as if he’s ready to do the same and let some of those unheard collaborations with Trent Reznor, DJ Shadow, and Questlove outta the vault—his guest spot with Run The Jewels will do fine for now.Then there are those who are back after some truly epic-length hiatuses. There was no lack of coverage for the end of eight-year waits for new material from Bob Dylan and Fiona Apple (and Brandy and Alanis Morissette, too) or the 14-year pause for The Chicks. Yet those gaps hardly compare with the more extreme creative layovers that recently concluded, like the 29 years in between new albums by The Psychedelic Furs, the 35 in between efforts by the original lineup of X, or the 36 for Bob Geldof and his Boomtown Rats.Arriving at the tail end of 2019 was one of the weirder comebacks: the first new album in 16 years by Gang Starr, constructed under controversial circumstances by DJ Premier from unreleased raps by his former partner Guru, who wasn’t around to argue over the results since he died of cancer in 2010. Similarly surprising (and awesome) is the return of Eddie Chacon. Formerly one half of Charles & Eddie—a ’90s soul-pop duo who scored a global hit with “Would I Lie To You?” before disappearing into oblivion—Chacon left the music business decades ago to become an art and fashion photographer. Full of gorgeously eerie and deeply stoned alt-R&B made with Solange and Frank Ocean collaborator John Carroll Kirby, Chacon’s very belated solo debut, Pleasure, Joy & Happiness, is the kind of album that feels very much worth the wait even if you had no idea you were waiting for it. Here’s hoping this playlist of 2020 returnees directs you to more music that gives you that feeling.Photo by Sachyn Mital

Like everyone else in the world, Billie Eilish may be wishing that 2020 had gone a lot differently. Back in February, she entered the grand pantheon of performers enlisted to sing a theme for a James Bond movie. Her mission: to somehow wrest something mellifluous out of lyrics based on a title that would be un-singable in any other circumstances. In the case of her movie assignment and her accompanying single, that title was No Time to Die, the 25th official entry in the franchise of espionage thrillers about agent 007 that was launched by 1962’s Dr. No.As fine as it is, Eilish’s moody and grandly orchestrated song would not feel complete until it followed the tradition of its predecessors by accompanying a Bond-movie opening credit sequence (intros which, in keeping with other efforts to make the series more contemporary and less sexist, now feature far fewer shadowy female nudes than they once did). Alas, “No Time to Die” still awaits that honor, since its namesake film—one of many big Hollywood releases delayed by the coronavirus crisis—will not be seen on big screens until November.A James Bond theme without a James Bond movie might hardly count as poignant to some people. After all, it can be hard to overlook the character’s reputation as a repellently chauvinistic and possibly sociopathic symbol of badly outmoded colonialist and Cold War ideals who murders in service of the state. And don’t get us started on that thing Roger Moore used to do with his eyebrows.But just like the sight of Daniel Craig in swim trunks, there’s so often something magnificent about the music the Bond movies have produced, caused, or inspired. Whether shaken or stirred, songs like Eilish’s contribution swell with all the high drama, old-school cool, and/or cheesy grandeur that listeners could possibly desire—and perhaps crave more than ever now that the pandemic has torpedoed so many of the summer’s usual pop-cultural distractions. Here’s a playlist of Bond-related songs (both official and not) to make you feel more suave than you ought to.

Get set to realign what you thought you knew about some of your favorite songs—specifically, their origins. The past several decades have been loaded with widely loved tunes that have secret pasts. From rock staples to pop anthems to soul milestones, heres a heavy batch of classic cuts you never knew were not the original versions.Some one-hit wonders even built their entire careers off a stealth cover. Toni Basil’s lone success, the 1982 No. 1 “Mickey,” was the result of gender-tweaking a 1979 tune called “Kitty” by British glam-rockers Racey.You wouldn’t have wanted to be a member of Motown group The Undisputed Truth when their minor 1972 hit “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” found a place in the R&B pantheon courtesy of The Temptations’ version later that same year. The New Wave era brought plenty more. Blondie’s 1978 single “Hanging on the Telephone” first found life as the opening cut on power-pop cult heroes The Nerves lone release, a self-titled 1976 EP. Bow Wow Wow’s ’80s smash “I Want Candy” was originally written and recorded in 1965 by The Strangeloves, a band that included future Blondie producer Richard Gottehrer. Even some artists famous for revamping classic tunes have been known to slip one by. Though Joan Jett scored a bunch of hits by rebooting other artists’ songs, most people are unaware that her biggest track, “I Love Rock ’N Roll,” was a 1975 glam-rock nugget by The Arrows.A decade later, The Lemonheads were another act known for covers whose biggest single was widely mistaken for an original. “Into Your Arms” originated not with Evan Dando but with the Australian duo Love Positions, who released it in 1989, after which band member Nic Dalton joined The Lemonheads, eventuating their version of the tune.Even ex-Beatles were part of the phenomenon. One of the biggest hits of George Harrison’s solo career was 1987’s “Got My Mind Set On You.” The song never gained much traction in its 1962 release by R&B singer James Ray, but George became familiar with it and retained it all those years later. One of the things this goes to show is that you never can tell where a great song will wind up.

If you’re mixing up a cool Brazilian cocktail to keep you from overheating this summer, here are a few essentials you’ll need to have on hand. Start with a little cachaça, some lime, and a pinch of sugar, then add a dash of samba, some bossa nova, and a touch of Tropicália if you really want to keep things on the cool side.Brazilians have never been strangers to sweltering, sun-baked days, and they’ve always known exactly how to counter all that heat—by crafting music that sounds and feels as if it’s lifting a breeze off of the ocean and sending it right in your direction. Sure, Brazilian musicians know how to work up a feverish intensity when the spirit moves them, but they’ve always been masters at maintaining a sub-zero level of chill. You can hear it in the supple, sensuous sounds of bossa nova originators Luiz Bonfá and João Gilberto. Then you can follow it through to the pioneers who gained stardom in the ’60s by putting their own slant on the style as part of the MPB (música popular brasileira) movement, like Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, and Edu Lobo.Even when forward-looking artists like Os Mutantes, Gal Costa, and Caetano Veloso started making headway in the Tropicália scene by blending Brazilian rhythms with elements of psychedelia, they still found plenty of ways to keep things breezy. In later years, the likes of Bebel Gilberto and Céu brought modern electronic touches into the mix, and singers like Luciana Souza swept in with a jazz influence, but they still served up the sort of sounds that would work just right in combination with a cool caipirinha lifted to your lips on a sultry summer afternoon.

Fancy-pants scientist types with glasses and clipboards have been telling us this for years: Dancing is good for you. Along with improving the condition of your heart, lungs, muscles, bones, and many other bodily bits, it can increase your agility, flexibility, and endurance as well. And then there are the psychological and emotional effects thanks to the release of all those delicious endorphins. Most importantly, dancing can transform you into a stone-cold fox who feels like one, too. And who the hell doesn’t need that right now?

Though we can’t be there to help move your furniture or do anything else that needs to be done to give you the room to move, we can supply this set of supremely fun and funky favorites that will get you up on your feet and ready to channel that cabin fever into a far more positive outlet. You’ve gotta dance like no one’s watching, although if you do feel like getting out on the balcony or the front porch to share with your neighbors, we’re not standing in your way.

Photo Credit: Matthew LeJune on Unsplash

Amid the anxieties of recent times as well as potential concerns about the well-being of musical heroes of a certain vintage, it’s been reassuring to the international community of Sparks fanatics to know that Ron and Russell Mael are weathering things in their customary manner. Along with rave reviews for the Los Angeles-based duo’s new album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, the web has been filling up with the brothers’ stream of quarantine-inspired home videos, including one of Ron showing off his collection of international hand sanitizers.Clearly, this is not how Sparks should have been celebrating their 50th anniversary of crafting irrepressibly witty and wondrous music, but it will have to do. Current circumstances also demonstrate a quality that has long been one of the band’s greatest virtues: an ability to engage with the now—or perhaps 15 minutes beyond it—without ever sacrificing their idiosyncrasies. That’s as true now as it was when the Maels left L.A. to become glam-pop heroes in early-’70s Britain, where their impact was clear on the likes of Queen, who dropped their Zeppelin shtick for a more flamboyant mode not long after they opened for Sparks. It was equally clear when they transformed again, with Giorgio Moroder’s help, to create some of the most effervescent electronic dance pop ever recorded, devising a template for New Order, Duran Duran, The Human League, and many more acolytes.Not that the Maels are much for resting on laurels. Instead, they’ve continually engaged with younger admirers (as they did in FFS, their 2015 team-up with Franz Ferdinand) while releasing new albums that maintain their standards of excellence, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip being another case in point. Their cult may soon see an expansion of their ranks with the pending release of two new movies: Annette, an L.A.-set musical by French director Leos Carax featuring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard singing original Sparks songs, and a documentary about the band by super-fan Edgar Wright.To celebrate the past 50 years of Sparks, we present this set of essential songs by the Maels themselves and many others whose music bears their influence, all to be savored along with the sanitizer of your choice.

Fifty years ago, in a true-life science-fiction story wilder than anything concocted by an Area 51 conspiracy nut, a neon-colored interplanetary vessel lifted off of a top-secret launchpad somewhere in Michigan. Of course, the P-Funk Mothership only existed as an LSD-induced pipe dream back in 1970—it took a few years before audiences got to see George Clinton’s Afrofuturist UFO in all its cosmic glory at halls, stadiums, and arenas around the world. (Visitors to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture can still check out a 1990s-vintage rebuilt version.)But Clinton’s almighty vision of psychedelically charged funk and soul was already soaring sky-high, judging by the first three long-players—Funkadelic and Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow by Funkadelic; Osmium by its twin enterprise Parliament—to emerge from his ever-more-sprawling P-Funk collective at the beginning of the ’70s. The surreal and exhilarating contents of those albums and the many that followed would ultimately comprise one of the most inspiring and influential bodies of American music ever made.They’d also prove to be a seemingly limitless resource for several generations of musicians, producers, DJs, and anyone else who ever saw fit to sample the grooves, riffs, beats, and assorted whatnot concocted by Clinton and such pivotal P-Funk collaborators as bassists Bootsy Collins and Cordell “Boogie” Mosson, guitarists Eddie Hazel and Garry Shider, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, drummer Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey, and the Horny Horns. Indeed, P-Funk’s importance in the history and development of hip-hop is incalculable, the Mothership Connection being the force that binds iconic jams by Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy, and EPMD to the best of Dr. Dre’s G-funk era to modern-day journeys into parts unknown by Kendrick Lamar. Here’s a set of essential tracks by rocket-powered travelers in the universe that Clinton created.

Thirty years ago, Chile returned to democracy after being shackled by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet for 17 years. Under his oppressive regime, Pinochet put a deadly hault on numerous forms of artistic expression — one of its most famous (atrocious) examples was the kidnapping and murder of protest folk singer Victor Jara who helped lead the New Chilean Song Movement of the late Sixties, early Seventies. You see, Chilean music wasn’t allowed to be political, or much less, criticise its government. Enter Los Prisioneros, a Chilean pop rock band with a knack for glossy anthemic hooks became one of the most defiant groups of their generation. Formed in the late Seventies, the San Miguel band’s early songs proved to be controversial in a time of extreme censorship, so their music gained popularity through labeless cassette distribution. Eighties songs like “El Baile De Los Que Sobran” and “De La Cultura De La Basura testified them as working class heroes with a rebellious spirit who know how to expertly navigate their way around insatiable synth melodies and catchy drum machines made for the dance floor. This era was also the height of the rock en español explosion in Latin America, so their rosy-hued disco pop wasn’t as welcoming in the mainstream — who demanded more rock guitars and, seemingly, pretentious frontmen — a vast departure from the scrappy, socially discontent group Los Prisioneros were known as. So when their fourth studio album dropped, 1990’s Corazones, it wasn’t an instant hit for the reasons aforementioned, yet it slowly became a South American legacy. It also marked a critical time in Chilean history when it was at a crossroads. Part autobiographical, part social-commentary, the record poignantly reflects the stigmas of Chile’s disenfranchised population, and it emotionally evoked the turmoil of an overwhelming transition in politics, all over sleek electronic pulses and intoxicating synth riffs. Songs like “Tren Al Sur” and “Estrechez de Corazón” pack one hell of a rhythm too that lends itself to high-gloss dance rock with a socially political edge. It’s a style that decades later would inspire hordes of Chilean pop groups like Javiera Mena, Alex Anwandter, and Dënver — bands that too fight battles of classism while demanding LGBTQ+ rights over disco-inflected dance pop. The early 2010s saw the first latest explosion of Chilean pop, and it traveled around the globe, a sort of electropop manifesto pioneered by Los Prisioneros.

The Black Experimental Music Mixtape is a monthly mixtape curated by music journalist and critic, Jordannah Elizabeth. Each month, Jordannah will bring the best of the most far out music from Black musicians in America and across the world.Black experimental music has no unifying characteristic beyond breaking the rules of contemporary Black music across genres. This month, SassyBlack’s intoxicating voice sits alongside Tomeka Reid’s otherworldly cello playing and The Veldt’s esoteric shoegaze. Meanwhile, Vagabon breaks the mold of what alternative rock should look and sound like; Valerie Joon explores out-of-body experiences on “Astral Plane”; 2Chainz refines trap on “Realize” in a way that encourages the maturity of the genre; and Zeal & Ardor meld American slave spirituals with heavy metal.

All my conversations with electronic-music heads have had a common theme recently: Everyone agrees that there was little consensus in dance music this year. It’s been that way for a while, really. Every year, there are more scenes running in parallel, fewer standout anthems that everybody can agree on. But this year, even dance music’s broad, diffuse overground felt scattered. Plenty of reliable figures kept doing what they do best—Four Tet and the Caribou side project Daphni turned out well-regarded albums, for instance—but aside, perhaps, from Bicep, there were few emergent artists with wide crossover appeal.The good news, though, is that there were plenty of pockets of brilliance across the underground, both in terms of micro-scenes and individual artists boldly blazing their own paths. In terms of the former, the most exciting was a nameless corner of the UK bass spectrum, largely headquartered in Bristol, encompassing labels like Hemlock, Hessle Audio, Timedance, Livity Sound, and Whities. Even here, there’s no single rhythmic signature or sonic feature that unites them all, the way there is with dubstep or techno. Instead, it’s a shared predilection for highly abstracted sound design, deliriously drawn-out patterns, and twisted arrangements that turn on a dime. Minor Science’s shuddering, jewel-toned “Volumes,” Mosca’s wild, whip-cracking Latin-dub raver “Peyote Stitch,” and Batu’s feverishly repetitive “Murmur” were all standouts here, alongside stellar tracks from Lanark Artefax, Airhead, Ploy, Hodge, Parris, and the artist known simply as Joe.If that’s the “scenius” end of things, the genius end was just as fruitful. Confidently sailing far beyond the known limits of Chicago footwork, Jlin continued to melt minds with her own brand of dazzlingly polyrhythmic, ultra-vivid, triplet-riddled club tracks. Laurel Halo, never one to repeat herself two records in a row, hit upon the strangest, squishiest sounds she’s conjured yet—an enveloping amalgam of funk, affectless electro-pop, and musique concrete. Errorsmith, designer of Native Instruments’ popular software synth Razor, put his creation through its paces on a head-spinningly intricate album of synthesized percussion and needling sound design that, despite its wanton experimentalism, is also one of the most giddily enjoyable records of the year. And as far as singularity of vision goes, few could touch Fever Ray, who returned from a eight-year absence with the brilliant, challenging, sometimes sexy and sometimes confounding Plunge. “IDK About You,” highlighted here, was one of its wiliest curveballs: a 160-BPM co-production with the young Portuguese batida producer Nídia Minaj (also included here with her own “Underground”) that put an unprecedentedly breathless spin on Karin Dreijer’s creepy, out-of-body pop.The link between electronic music and pop is practically as old as electronic music itself, but this year there were still artists who made the relationship feel fresh. The Korean-American singer/producer yaeji turned out a heady, low-lit fusion of house, ambient, and trap music. Sophia Kennedy, an American living in Hamburg, brought her experience writing music for the theater to an odd and deeply infectious album for DJ Koze’s Pampa label. And even TORRES, best known as an indie rocker, broke new ground on “To Be Given a Body,” the absorbing final track from her album Three Futures: It’s a captivating fusion of storytelling and wispy-yet-weighty ambient production, and I couldn’t stop listening to it this year, often cueing it up multiple times in a row. It’s an outlier on this list, but it also feels like a jumping-off point. Hopefully, 2018 will bring more songs like it—fresh energy and fresh ideas from artists way out on the margins of a deeply decentered genre.