Indie

As music scholar Tim Lawrence brilliantly makes the case in his recent book, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983, disco couldn’t die no matter how hard the haters tried. Instead, as the new decade began, disco mutated into a variety of exciting and scintillating new strains. Though Lawrence’s book is primarily concerned with the influence of hip-hop and post-punk experimentalism on what dance music was becoming—as well as the wizardry of DJs like Larry Levan and the socioeconomic conditions in New York itself—there were also developments of a more technological nature.It’s easy to hear how the plush strings of Philly soul were giving way to layers of synthesizers and sequencers: This was funk and R&B for a new space age, the latest sonic innovations creating a dramatic spike in the bounce-per-ounce ratio. Sadly, Roger Troutman never provided a firm indication of the winning ratio, not even on the opening track of Zapp’s epochal 1980 debut album, but he did help provide a synth-funk blueprint that continues to yield some of the plushest and most pleasurable music known.Nite Jewel—the Los Angeles singer and musician otherwise known as Ramona Gonzalez—has been one of synth-funk’s foremost purveyors in contemporary times, since her music began showing up on MySpace in 2008. With such fellow Angelenos as her husband and producer Cole M.G.N. and the ever-industrious Dâm-Funk, she’s fostered a sparking new golden age for synth-funk fantasias like the kind that used to flow freely from the likes of Zapp, Mandré, and the SOLAR Records stable. As Nite Jewel drops her fourth album, Real High, it’s high time to head deep into the neon-lit nights this music evokes.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Following the US election on Nov 8, 2016, we asked Dowsers contributors to discuss the moods and music the results inspired. We collected their responses in a series, After the Election.It’s the wee small hours of November 9: I wake up around 3:30 and can’t get back to sleep. Just one of those nights, it seemed. Since I hadn’t watched any of the election night coverage because television news sucks, I have no idea who won. I reluctantly grab my phone, click on HuffPo (more lamestream journalism, folks), and see the ghastly headline: “Nightmare: President Trump.” What the fuck just happened? A thick and heavy feeling of anxiety and disgust rips through my gut as though I’m trying to crap out an Ex-Lax-dusted anvil. I pace; I weep. My heart races; my head turns feverish. Pure evil is here.I’ve since been able to gather myself — for the most part. Along with 2,000 other equally alarmed Americans (good people from all walks of life), I’ve marched here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a battleground state, and called a long list of representatives. As for my soundtrack during these days (record nerds would fret over what jams to spin for an asteroid bashing into the planet), I’ve been listening to a lot of classic American music (folk, gospel, blues, soul), and that helps me stay motivated and anchored. Still, I experience stretches of nihilistic dejection when reality feels like a cosmic scam. It’s during these phases that my belief in love, peace, and understanding is chucked out the window; all I want to do is curse American mainstream society to hell. Screw Trump’s army of pasty white racists, and screw the smug neo-libs who enjoy undermining good Americans who try to forge progressive reforms. Hell, screw this entire empty, meaningless universe.The soundtrack to these admittedly unhealthy states of mind is seething, eardrum-damaging noise-rock, industrial, electronic-tinged propulsion, and bummer metal: Sightings singer Mark Morgan’s choked screams, Scissor Girls’ manic and fidgety spazz-tantrums, Pissgrave’s stuttering blasts of pure decrepitude and down ‘n’ out vibes, God Bullies’ swirling eviscerations of small-minded yokels. What’s interesting to note about noise-rock (as well as its related movements) is its non-affiliation in terms of politics. I mean, sure, most of these bands save their most intense viciousness for Repugs and deranged Bible bangers (when they’re that explicit, of course), yet it has to be noted that the Clinton years witnessed an explosion of virulent badasses, including Six Finger Satellite and KARP. Some musicians are pissed off no matter who is in office. Mainstream normalcy in and of itself is to be rejected.The irony is that all this cacophony, like therapy, actually sets me straight (though this wasn’t always the case in my self-loathing, pre-dad years, when hard booze and other substances weren’t infrequent). These bands are so committed to loud, writhing, horrid music that they wind up creating beautifully ugly artwork, and that’s 1000% life affirming. Think about it: beauty from ugliness. Maybe that’s something those fighting the good fight in modern AmeriKKKa can achieve in the coming years?

Although they’re often disregarded as a legitimate art form, video games have reached an astounding level of sophistication over the past few decades. We’ve come a long way since the days of simple arcade shooting simulators and digital table tennis. Video games have become one of the defining mediums of our time, offering deep interactive experiences and aesthetic invention not found in other formats.Music has always played a central role in video games, serving as both the sonic architecture upon which worlds are built and the emotional anchor players can connect to, as they explore new environments full of pixelated, inhuman shapes. Video game music is a unique art, beholden to the practical requirement of creating an endlessly looping soundtrack, while also tasked with building themes that slip into the mind subconsciously, returning and restating themselves with all the cohesiveness of a Sondheim musical. It’s background music created for a world completely unlike our own, and that’s why much of it sounds so out of place when heard outside of the game.Some truly remarkable music has emerged from the pantheon of video game producers, peculiar and moving pieces from the likes of Nobuo Uematsu, David Wise, Koji Kondo, Yasunori Mitsuda, Grant Kirkhope, Gustavo Santaolalla, and Disasterpeace to name but a few. This playlist highlights some of the finest moments in the genre, where the composer reaches past the lens of nostalgia and into territory that connects emotionally—even if you’ve never picked up a controller.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Punk may be eternal, but one of its earliest, most explosive subgenres has been largely ignored for decades. The Oi! movement emerged in England at the tail end of the ’70s, just as the initial surge of British punk was receding, and was founded by bands who wanted punks to walk like they talked. For all its proletarian ethos, the first wave of UK punk was largely fomented by middle-class, art-school kids, but the Oi! scene was populated by working-class youth who longed for something that spoke more genuinely to their own experience as council-flat kids in a country with a crumbling infrastructure.The first phase of Oi! was led by the likes of Cockney Rejects, Sham 69, and The Angelic Upstarts, who took the basic, three-chord roar and stomp of punk and added messages of working-class pride and youth-culture unity, with choruses often delivered en masse, football-chant style. The Oi! kids copped their image from the previous generation’s ska-loving skinheads: Doc Martens (hence the appellation “bootboys”), button-down shirts, suspenders, and buzz cuts.The initial Oi! movement flourished into the early ’80s, but before long, the violence that had always been lurking on the outskirts of the scene began to overwhelm live shows, and things began to unravel. National Front forces tried to infiltrate the movement and spread their nationalist, racist agenda, an ideology that had nothing to do with what Oi! was really about. The conflict contributed to the scene’s destruction.But even though the first wave of Oi! petered out after just a few years and has seldom been celebrated in any widespread way since, its spirit refuses to die. Each subsequent generation has had its own Oi! revival bands, keeping the sound alive on an international level, from Swedish bands like Perkele and City Saints to New York Hasidic punks Moshiach Oi!

Click here to subscribe to the Spotify playlist.Rapper/producer/super-villain MF DOOM is a paradox. He is a legend, revered by a generation of indie music fans, but he’s also all-but-unknown to casual music fans. He is at once mercurial and unmistakable -- he wears a mask to disguise his face, changes monikers like Hillary changes pantsuits, and has appeared, disappeared and reappeared again (without warning) over the course of his 20 + year career. Yet, there is also no mistaking DOOM on the mic -- the slightly nasally flow, the jumble of alliteration and internal rhymes, the expansive surrealist imagery. It’s easy to over-intellectualize MF DOOM, but he is also genuinely funny -- such as on Rhinestone Cowboy, when he declared that he “got more soul than a sock with a hole” -- and playful (his take on lesser rappers: “Out of work jerks since they shut down Chippendales/ They chippin nails, DOOM, tippin scales”).It’s a really fun but, I suspect, largely thankless task to come up with a list of his best tracks. For this one, we’ve used three criteria: we wanted to represent as wide a span of his career as possible (it’s tempting to just cull from the span between Doomsday and Madvillian); and we want the list to have a certain flow and work as a playlist that you can put on and listen to all the way through; and we want to throw in a few left-field and obscure tracks for those who are already familiar with him. -- Sam Chennault

Straight from the decrepit basements of Memphis comes one of the most distinctive, experimental, and otherworldly communities in all of hip-hop, where hissy cassettes, mutilated R&B samples, punishing 808s, and MCs firing off at breakneck speeds are only the beginning. Obsessed with satanic possession, graphic depictions of murder, and turning rap music into a kind of sonic and atmospheric purging, the movement first gained prominence in the ‘90s with Three 6 Mafia, and grew to comprise a vast network of interconnected crews and producers. These beats may be dusty, but beyond their low fidelity lies a surprisingly prophetic vision of rap music to come: stuttering hi-hats, pounding bass, and rhythms that are so aggressive and upbeat that one can’t help but hear the delirious sounds of modern trap laced within the sludge. This is by no means a “Memphis Rap Greatest Hits” — the genre is endless, and many of its most crucial gems are buried within the hallowed corridors of YouTube. But if you’ve never known “horrorcore” to apply to anything outside of ICP, hit that play button and let Satan be your guide.

All four of the founding, permanent members of Pearl Jam will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in April 2017, but of the four drummers who played on the band’s albums over the course of their 25-year run, only two will be inducted with them: Dave Krusen and Matt Cameron. A third, Jack Irons, is already in the Hall of Fame for his work with Red Hot Chili Peppers, so that leaves just one odd man out: Dave Abbruzzese.The exclusion of Abbruzzese from the Hall of Fame induction is notable because, while he only played with the band from 1991 to 1994, that era represents the peak of Pearl Jam’s fame. He played on two of the band’s three top-selling albums, Vs. and Vitalogy, and toured heavily in support of the other, Ten. Fourteen tracks with Abbruzzese, nearly half of his studio work with the band, got enough radio airplay to appear on Billboard’s rock charts.Abbruzzese played on some of Pearl Jam’s most recognizable songs, including “Better Man” and “Daughter,” and songs that remain setlist staples to this day like “Rearviewmirror” and “Corduroy.” He also played on the band’s memorable contributions to the multi-platinum soundtrack for Cameron Crowe’s Singles, the hit cover of Victoria Williams’ “Crazy Mary,” and several B-sides.A steady and versatile drummer, Dave Abbruzzese handled expansive midtempo grooves like “Immortality” as well as the scorching punk of “Spin the Black Circle.” Though he only received a handful of songwriting credits, his drum fills and splashy flourishes left a distinctive signature on many songs. Still, Abbruzzese reportedly never clicked with the rest of the band on a personal or political level; rumor has it that the lyrics of “Glorified G” were Eddie Vedder taking a potshot at the drummer, a proud gun owner. And while Pearl Jam’s black sheep drummer won’t be inducted into the Rock Hall with the band next month, it’s hard to imagine they won’t be playing any songs he helped originate.

Whenever I try describing Phantogram’s music to a friend I find myself stringing together an absurd number of genre tags: Indie pop, electro-pop, dream pop, shoegaze, dance pop, electronica, and even that dusty, old relic known as alt-dance have all been uttered at one time or another. Phantogram aren’t alone in their ability to mix and match genres with what seems like algorithmic complexity. A new generation of post-everything artists have emerged in recent years, and they’re laying waste to music categories that for decades seemed fixed in place. Of course, some of these musicians are more indie-based (Glass Animals and Young the Giant come to mind), while others, Frank Ocean and The Weeknd included, are more rooted in R&B, yet the result ultimately is the same. Are we witnessing the death of genre? Probably not. But the map certainly is getting redrawn in some very fundamental ways.

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.

Only Prince could release a double album and have it be considered a back-to-basics move. His 1987 masterpiece, Sign O’ The Times, works in spite of itself, bubbling over with ideas and sounds that form an encyclopedic study of funk music and reconnect Prince to himself and to his roots. On its 30th anniversary, it sounds just as timeless, complex, and vital.But in the wake of its triumph, it’s easy to forget Prince had a difficult 1986. His label, Warner Brothers, did very little to promote “Kiss,” a song from his then-latest album, Parade. The record doubled as the quasi-soundtrack to Prince’s directorial debut, Under The Cherry Moon, in which he also starred, however, widespread critical pans prevented it from becoming his next Purple Rain. Additionally, members of his band, The Revolution, wanted more credit for their involvement in the songwriting process, particularly Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, resulting in Prince dissolving the band and scrapping his next record, a project called Dream Factory. At the same time, his relationship with Susannah Melvoin (Wendy’s twin sister) was on shaky ground.He eventually poured his work into Crystal Ball, a triple album that combined new songs, reworked songs from Dream Factory, and songs he’d written for Camille, a failed offshoot in the vein of his female-fronted acts Vanity 6 and Apollonia. Warner had doubts about the album and the feasibility of releasing a triple album after having such a rocky year. Embattled, Prince was on his own for the first time in years.Obliging Warner, he cut Crystal Ball down to a double LP, renaming it Sign O’ The Times. Rather than sounding like a record with its wings clipped, Sign has absolutely no filler despite its still-sprawling size and the fact that it had been cobbled together from other projects—as soon became clear, Prince would stockpile songs and save them for later throughout his entire career.If anything, the record revels in natural contradictions. The minimal drum beat of “It” and the lean, undeniable funk of “Housequake” are set against the maximum pop of “Strange Relationship” and the live full-band exhibitionism of “It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night.” Styles and time periods are juxtaposed as well, with references to Grandmaster Flash (the title track), Joni Mitchell (“The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker”), Sly Stone (“Forever In My Life”), and Prince himself (“Adore”) grounded in songs that sound modern yet often recall the paisley-eyed heyday of peace and love. This was undeniably a return to form and a conversation between styles and even genders, all held together by Prince’s ample charisma—which can be seen as well as heard in the concert film that followed.This slamming playlist serves to contextualize this overwhelming record, sussing out reference points and digging up discarded songs to highlight the brilliance of the record as well as the process that created it.