Here’s a bunch of albums that have fallen in my lap. A lot of them are pretty dark; some are quiet and some are noisy. It’s a weird bunch of albums–there’s something for everyone.
Back to the Future the Ride – Health on Earth (Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp)
BTTFTR make some of my favorite sounds on the earth. He constructs pavilions and landscapes and entire planets with of machine echos and other noise. It gets to my soul and into my being in a way that few things do. Pay what you want (including free!) on Bandcamp.
Danger – 太鼓 (Drum) (Apple Music, Spotify)
I’d lost track of Danger and was excited when they popped up on my tumblr feed, of all places. It’s a mysterious French electronic music band that anticipated the whole vaporwave thing and have now fully embraced that aesthetic. Expect post-apocalyptic music that travels between looped easy-listening spa music samples, heavy glitchy drums, and that incredible 80s cop movie soundtrack synthesizer sound.
Elder – Reflections of a Floating World (Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp)
If there’s one thing you’ve learned of my music tastes by now, it’s that I like my metal to be sludge-laden, doom-heavy, and with plenty of shredding. Elder hits most of these, and has the southern charm and slow-motion chug that can only come from heat and humidity. It’s awesome.
Formation – Look at the Powerful People (Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp)
When I first listened to Formation, I nearly wrote them off as a LCD Soundsystem soundalike. While they definitely are cut from the same cloth as LCD, this is a group of young positive dudes from London, not some world-weary old school hipsters from NYC. The songcraft is light and fun, with some elements of the manual and a good amount of posi-core and late night parties. I love this album.
Fraunhofer Diffraction – Threads of Fate (Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp)
No joke one of my favorite things is when someone recommends an album to me because they think I’ll like it. That’s exactly what happened this and they recommender was right on. They’re dark, gothy electronic music that veers towards hardcore. It reminds me of a less caustic Atari Teenage Riot, or a less mopey Cold Cave. It alternates hot and heavy or cold and dark, but never lets up.
Johnny Jewel – Windswept (Apple Music, Spotify, Buy the digital copy for $1)
Johnny Jewel might be a genius. He excels on using a guitar and a synthesizer to get the exact mood that you need to wistfully sit on your hood in an empty parking lot late at night. He knows how to manipulate that mood to push you towards love or paranoia. Some of the music on this album is in the new Twin Peaks show, too, so obviously he knows how to make music for black lodges and red rooms and damn fine coffee too.
King Tarahumara – The Mystic Mixtape Trilogy (Apple Music: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Spotify: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Bandcamp)
King Tarahumara is Kevin Robinson (formerly of Viva Voce) and a friend of his making weird psychedelic dub cutups. It’s esoteric and kinda noisy, with toasting en Español dripped over the top. Robinson’s funk and pop tendencies push the music into evolving weirdo jams rather than unlistenable tape splices, and it gets deeper with subsequent listens. My favorite chapter is 2 (Turquoise), but the whole thing works quite well in sequence. Pay what you want (including free!) on Bandcamp.
King Tubby Meets Scientist In a Revival Dub (Apple Music, Spotify)
King Tubby is one of the unquestionable originators of the Jamaican Dub sound (along with Lee Scratch Perry), and Scientist was his student. This album is a soundsystem battle alternating between King Tubby and Scientist, each of them one-upping the previous track. Expect that heavy bass roll and that laid back beat in the music of the future.
Monster Rally & Rumtum (Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp (old version missing last 3 tracks))
Not unlike King Tubby and Scientist, Monster Rally and Rumtum are two producers who rely heavily on samples, and this is a collaborative album between them. Monster Rally brings his trademark exotica samples and animal sounds, and Rumtum slides in with driving hip hop beats and some beeps and boops. It’s an excellent match.
Radioactive Man – Luxury Sky Garden (Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp)
I’m mostly bad at electronic music genres. There are words and phrases that indicate to me that I’ll typically like a particular piece of electronic music, but most of the time, after I find something I like, I’m hard pressed to call it a thing that others will recognize as a specific genre. So Radioactive Man is the non-Andrew Weatherall half of Two Lone Swordsmen (his name is Keith Tenniswood), and he makes music with lots of synthesizer sounds, acid loops, and microhouse beats. It’s techno? or acid house? maybe you could call it electro? Like I said, I’m bad at electronic music genres but I know what I like.
TOPS – Sugar at the Gate (Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp)
Finding out about a previously-unheard female-fronted dream pop band is always exciting to me. TOPS gets a good dreamy feel and adds a guitar-based funky element, like the Phoenix album Alphabetical. It’s classic pop rock at its best.
Wavves – You’re Welcome (Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp)
That Wavves has sustained a bratty, snotty, DGAF attitude so long in his career without becoming a parody of himself is a feat. That fact that each album keeps that fun feel with increasing sonic depth is really impressive. It’s 100% summer jams that get good and weird and sound awesome and don’t care.
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