Depending on your perspective, indigo can be the first or the last stripe of the rainbow: either the darkness into which all color melts, or the starting point from which the entire spectrum unfolds. London-via-Merseyside producer E.M.M.A. shifts back and… Read More
First arriving on the UK scene in 2009, Al Wootton notched up a number of underground hits under his Deadboy alias on labels including Numbers and Well Rounded. His floor-focused verve and deft application of cute, catchy R&B samples sounded… Read More
Katie Dey’s best music has long fixated on the ways humans fail to connect. On the handful of records she’s released over the past half decade, the Australian singer-songwriter has meditated on fear, loss, heartbreak, and the deep loneliness of… Read More
Swedish label YEAR0001 originally made a name for itself with rap-adjacent acts like Sad Boys and Drain Gang, but as its presence has expanded, the experimental Swedish music hub has increasingly bent toward electronic music. The RIFT One compilation—the first… Read More
A folktronica artist who pivoted to mainstream pop, Ellie Goulding stumbled upon longevity in the 2010s with one fluke hit after another. Both “Lights” and “Burn” began as bonus tracks from modestly performing albums (2010’s Lights and 2012’s underrated Halcyon,… Read More
In dance music, anonymity used to be a currency as stable as gold. To be a “mysterious techno artist” was to present an alpha confidence about the only thing that mattered: the music. For some, it was an anti-commercial gesture.… Read More
Nicolás Jaar’s 2020 output so far amounts to three albums which, at first glance, have little to do with one another. First, he released a new collection under the alias Against All Logic, his Beyoncé-and-Kanye-sampling dance project, which clanged into… Read More
In the 2018 mini-documentary Let It All Burn, the Moscow duo IC3PEAK are about to play a show in the Russian city of Voronezh when health inspectors and police arrive to shut the venue down on suspicion of food poisoning.… Read More
In a pandemic, cynicism is a crutch, and optimism is a meme. It’s easier to be a skeptic than it is to imagine a path forward. The ironic internet mantra “nature is healing” pokes fun at viral glimpses of post-apocalypse… Read More
From its dramatic first synth splash, Mary Louise Buch’s debut album, Skinned, seems as uncanny as an android. Its disorienting first minutes shift between sleek sonic touchstones—sci-fi keyboards, synthesized baroque strings, echoing drum crashes, and a warped, robotic vocal—with mechanical… Read More