Styles: electronic, abstract, breath, texture, voice, concrete
Others: Arca, Organ Tapes, Laurel Halo, Amnesia Scanner, Slauson Malone
Beats that whisper, pumping. Fluid structures, never landing. Milky and thick like cement. Slipping through spaces, breathing. ODAE presents tangible motifs out of less suggestive sonic fodder — static, clicks, hums. These motifs never clear the way, emerging just to the top, surface tension molding, revealing their form under a thin viscous layer of that which preceded them. There’s a formal sense of breath here; evenly distributed and regular, it never fully subsides.
More about: ODAE
For each year's first three quarters, we celebrate by sharing a list of our favorite music releases. Unlike our year-end lists, these quarter features are casually compiled, with an aim to spotlight the underdogs and the lesser-heard among the more popular picks. More from this series
28 incredible releases from the last three months
A projection onto curved space. Hyper-pluralism. Machine-gun chatter chants. Punchline-worthy sound effects. Body-free. A memoir of purgatory. A burnt-sugar-embrace. The half-smirking, half-sneering view from the top. The slick velocity of the Shanghai underground. The overdetermining ethnophilosophical suppositions of “spontaneous unanimity.” The Artist Statement. Absence. Decay. Sacrifice. ⛽
We’re almost there. The end of 2019. The end of the decade. The end of music? We’ve warned you about it before, and it’s already in motion. We’re not kidding.
More about: (Sandy) Alex G, Barker, Bill Callahan, Bon Iver, Caleb Giles, Charli XCX, Dean Blunt, DJ Haram, Dorian Electra, Félicia Atkinson, Fire-Toolz, Florist, Freddie Gibbs, Jahbar & Friends, Jenny Hval, Kali Malone, Kelela, Klein, LEO PaLAYENG, Lingua Ignota, Madlib, Maral, Moodymann, Nedarb Nagrom, Oren Ambarchi, Pharmakon, Slikback, Slug Christ, Yatta, Young Thug
For each year's first three quarters, we celebrate by sharing a list of our favorite music releases. Unlike our year-end lists, these quarter features are casually compiled, with an aim to spotlight the underdogs and the lesser-heard among the more popular picks. More from this series
Styles: longing songs, sad songs, love songs, lost anthems
Others: Lower Dens, Amen Dunes, Julia Holter, Meg Baird, Chelsea Wolfe, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Merchandise, Neko Case, Roy Orbison, Lana Del Rey, Big Thief
As much as 2016’s My Woman successfully broke out from a folk formula that Angel Olsen had so perfected, it seemed to almost shed something essential about the singer-songwriter. The sorrowful rigors of her previous work hadn’t gone away, but an adherence to a jangly 90s indie rock aesthetic somehow dulled them. While single “Shut Up and Kiss Me” is unimpeachably great, a lot of the rote alt-rock accoutrement of the surrounding material had a somewhat flattening effect on those otherwise piercing pleas.
More about: Angel Olsen
From trap gospel to poet-gang mode to an industrial collision of farty bass hits and cartoon sound effects
With a cascade of releases spewing from the likes of DatPiff, LiveMixtapes, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud, it can be difficult to keep up with the overbearing yet increasingly vital mixtape game. In this column, we aim to immerse ourselves in this hyper-prolific world and share our favorite releases each month. The focus will primarily be on rap mixtapes — loosely defined here as free (or sometimes free-to-stream) digital releases — but we’ll keep things loose enough to branch out if/when we feel it necessary.
More about: ChaseTheMoney, Gawd Status, Geng, K$upreme, K.A.A.N., Luh Soldier, Ruby Yacht, ShrapKnel, Shy Glizzy, Ski Beatz, Xanman
I received an email yesterday with a simple subject line: “You’ve awakened the famous butterflies in my stomach.” I’m not sure who sent it but I’m always happy to receive new info from what must be a group dedicated to invertebrates and arthropods. Yeah, that’s gotta be it.
More about: Daniel Schmidt, Sean McCann
Styles: future, future
Others: Hannah Diamond, Eartheater, Frank Ocean
You are so important to pop music, angel. You’re the one. You ask its questions in your heart; it tells you it’s OK. You believe that it understands you well, and it writes you into itself. You listen for the feeling of belonging, every voice in one room singing every other word, and it points the mic in your direction. You turn it up and obliterate yourself from the inside out, reestablishing somewhere the good in there: it’s Charli. And she’s not you.
More about: Charli XCX
Seven years after Kill For Love, Chromatics finally return with a new album, Closer to Grey. You may be reading the title and wondering why Dear Tommy is spelled wrong, but Closer to Grey — dubbed “a film for your ears.” — is actually a new, different full-length than the fabled “white whale” of ice-cold synth rock, and it is out NOW on Italians Do It Better.
More about: Chromatics
Styles: breakbeat, noise
Others: renter’s rights
Hell is a state or place, but space is still hard to come by. Seattle in particular faces a raging homelessness problem, triggered and exacerbated by numerous factors, among them an obvious dearth of affordable housing. And City Hall, incredulously, suggests tent cities. This willfully ignores the fact that the tent cities already exist.
More about: The Nolo Contendere Boys
Styles: religious studies
Others: Zammuto, Organ Tapes, James Blake, anti-Kanye West
It makes a lot of sense when you learn that both Noah Lennox and Justin Vernon have degrees in religious studies; Panda Bear’s seminal Person Pitch and Bon Iver’s last few albums are underlined with a kind of appreciation for religiosity that challenges limp “liberal” skepticism à la Bill Maher while also inspiring much more interesting reactions than “I’m spiritual, but not religious.”
More about: Bon Iver
Styles: acoustic, electronic, lo-fi
Others: big T-shirt, Strumming Music
This missive begins in medias res. Phrases coalesce barely, portamenti suspended overhead like jealous gnats. A few isolated chords appear, and then a meandering tide of conflicting rhythms. For AGGRESSOR, BoxTar’s latest, it’s an uneven outset, an imprecise science compounded by a seemingly fractured creativity.
More about: BoxTar
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