Is this a bagpipe club track (DJ Coquelin & MC Cloarec)? Can you hear the sirens (Babyfather)? Could u imagine choking to death at Red Lobster (James Ferraro)?
Amidst a crushing political apparatus at work, a renewed meaning of club terrorism, and contentious movement around neoliberal policies, the music world in the last three months jerked about in stuttered, haphazard ways. Of course, the headliners tended to dominate and overwhelm through the theatrics of Apple Music, TIDAL, and others, but any sense of cohesion remained elusive. Even this list of Q2 favorites happily limped along without the usual nods to Radiohead, Beyoncé, or Drake (who are all shortlisted below).
Instead, our favorite picks from quarter #2 reflect miniature worlds (Foodman), entropic forces (Mitski), and graceful flourishes (Ytamo); rhythmic brutalism (Puce Mary), negative-space painting (M.E.S.H.), and exclamations of pain and joy (Jessy Lanza). They’re filled with ghosts (Xiu Xiu), shamanic cyborg chants (Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith), and mussed tears (Karl Blau) — at once futurist (Andy Stott), post-Futurist (Burberry Perry), and modern/old (William Tyler): a contemporary aesthetics-in-motion (Tim Hecker).
Before getting into the list, we’d like to once again acknowledge some of our favorites that didn’t quite make the cut. Find these below, and then check out our favorite 22 releases of the last three months.
Shortlist: Julianna Barwick’s Will, GAIKA’s SECURITY, Lee Gamble’s Chain Kinematics, Drake’s VIEWS, Kamaiyah’s A Good Night in the Ghetto, James Blake’s The Colour in Anything, Steve Gunn’s Eyes on the Lines, Mukqs’s 石の上にも三日, AceMo & Fugitive’s Gold & Silver, Lil Uzi Vert’s Lil Uzi Vert Vs. The World, The Body’s No One Deserves Happiness, Parquet Courts’ Human Performance, Beyoncé’s LEMONADE, DJ Marfox’s Chapa Quente, Prurient’s Unknown Rains, Euglossine’s Canopy Stories, Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool, ANOHI’s Hopelessness, City’s HVMIX005, ANGEL-HO’s Red Devil, Elucid’s Save Yourself, Constellation Botsu’s ちゅざけんなッズベ公！！, Fear of Men’s Fall Forever, Moonface and Siinai’s My Best Human Face, Bardo Pond’s AcidGuruPond, and Deakin’s Sleep Cycle.
Jessy Lanza
Oh No
[Hyperdub]
Oh No finds Jessy Lanza doing her R&B thing (“Vivica”), her Detroit thing (“VV Violence”), a dash of Art of Noise 80s ballad thing (“I Talk BB”), and plenty of other things. More importantly, all of Lanza’s things grow together here into a complementary, bona fide Jessy Lanza thing. Each song walks the uncanny line between earworm and deep cut, combining with playful ease a knack for catchy songwriting, a broad framework of influences, and a unique approach to digital production. So, because I’m worried Oh No might be framed as a “crossover opportunity” for Hyperdub, I’d instead like to count it with Double Cup and Black is Beautiful as one of the dubstep- and bass-focused label’s strangest and most interesting releases. With nothing but mad respect to Kode9 and Burial, UK bass music crossed over years ago; the point is to push it further outside of itself and into the unknown, as Hyperdub has earned a reputation for doing. If the label is known today for journeying beyond the purism of club musics past into the more-than-club music sphere, Oh No touches the surface of something more than electronic, more than pop, and at times, nearly more than human. When Lanza does her thing as well as she does it here, it’s a thing that dances beyond all the lonely anxiety of classification. Oh No is an exclamation of pain and joy, and my favorite pop record of the year… if you can call it that.