Swedish label YEAR0001 originally made a name for itself with rap-adjacent acts like Sad Boys and Drain Gang, but as its presence has expanded, the experimental Swedish music hub has increasingly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
The American woodcock—colloquially referred to as a “timberdoodle” or “hokumpoke” in some areas—is a chubby, exhibitionist shorebird with stout legs and a long beak. When it scouts for worms, it rocks its body and stomps its feet in a funky… Read More
One unforeseen side effect of the pandemic is that our collective sense of time has been thrown out of whack. The arrow of our days no longer flies true; it moves more like a crinkled paper plane—soaring briefly, plunging without… Read More
Marfa, Texas is famous for its enormous bowl of sky. Just look at it: Here it is glazed pink, here it’s filled with marshmallow clouds, and here it’s spattered like a house painter’s drop cloth. In the 1970s, the minimalist… Read More