You know, the best things usually happen in their own time and place. For instance, fifty years after he first tiptoed a toe’s tip onto the British experimental folk scene, the ever-elliptical and enigmatic Bill Fay is returning (at his own damn pace, thank you very much) with a new album.
More about: Bill Fay
We are celebrating the end of the decade through lists, essays, and mixes. Join us as we explore the music that helped define the decade for us. More from this series
Streaming platforms, the Culture Industry & the commodification of accessibility
Ch—. Kh—. Sh—.
Timeless: the sound of scanning airwaves, tuning the car radio on the highway, parsing through millisecond snippets of voice. Ch—. A sound in the collective memory, preserved beyond its analog lifespan. Kh—. Like the floppy disk as Save icon. Sh—. Like a white-noise TV screen, so you have to adjust the antenna. Ch—. Kh—. Sh—. Vestigial structures of the digital age.
“I’m Ryan Seacrest & you’re tuned into KRCK, the #1 Hit Music Station.”
We are celebrating the end of the decade through lists, essays, and mixes. Join us as we explore the music that helped define the decade for us. More from this series
Styles: Jesus Music
Others: Larry Norman
Last time Tiny Mix Tapes published a Kanye West review, a crack was exposed through which something new grew: an interrogation of meaning squeezed through clenched fists. Our own Adam Rothbarth didn’t convince anybody of ye’s divisiveness or its cultural import; its existence itself was a battleground, and Rothbarth’s review was a sobering reflection on not only what makes us human, but also what makes us fear and hate other humans.
More about: Kanye West
Kanye chills with his dad in the video for “Follow God.” Pretty cute!
Jesus Is King is available here.
More about: Kanye West
Styles: 4D (or more?), vibrational energy transference, non-linear sound systems
Others: Jan Jelenik, Vladislav Delay
Five minutes downed like a large glass of incredibly crisp water. That’s opener “A1.” This track, like the seven others on Vol. 2, sates cool and smooth in its neat, five-minute-long container. The eight five-minute-long songs on this album’s self-titled precursor, released via Peak Oil in 2018, were made by what’s described as “a set of software strategies… captures and edits of various nonlinear sound-systems, shifting conditions, and reactions to internal changes.” Vol.
More about: Topdown Dialetic
We couldn’t let this pass us by – Andy Stott (not to be confused with DJ Andy Scott) is back! Surely a shoo-in for one of our favourite artists of the 2010s, he’s been weaving dense club-not-club tapestries for the best part of the decade, from the inauguration of “knackered house” on 2011’s Passed Me By and We Stay Together EPs, through to the triptych of album releases that expanded, refined, and wholly redefined the sound. And that’s not even to mention his work as Andrea. Except I just did.
More about: Andy Stott
Hope you got some time off coming up for the holidays, because you’re gonna need it.
Chicago-born, internationally-infamous experimental composer/performer Jim “Everywhere You Wanna Be” O’Rourke has just announced the November release of a new, epic, four-hour work entitled To magnetize money and catch a roving eye.
More about: Jim O'Rourke
Styles: ecofiction, fatalism, free improv
Others: Spine Scavenger, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, William Cronon
It’s reductive to view nature as little more than a place of respite or human tranquility, but it can be easy to frame it that way through the lens of field recording. The pleasantries of a wilderness soundscape (namely gentle rain or the chatter of birds and insects) lend themselves easily to the ambient warmth of a drone record or the sci-fi spirituality of New Age music. What’s often lost in that sort of well-intentioned idealism, though, is the truly sublime nature of nature.
More about: Russ Waterhouse
FRANK OCEAN. ARCA. FRANK OCEAN. ARCA.
Their names drift through the collective conscience 23/7, the odd hour out for trying to stop Netflix in time before it automatically skips the Bojack Horseman closing credits song.
At least half of that hour, however, may get reclaimed. For today in Frank Ocean AND Arca news: the new Frank Ocean is the new Arca is the new Frank Ocean (featuring Skepta)!
More about: Arca, Frank Ocean, Skepta
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