Jlin’s music is rooted in the rhythms of Chicago footwork the way an interstellar mission begins on Earth—it provides the origin point, yes, but as the mission expands ever outward, that shrinking blue dot in the rearview hardly seems relevant.… Read More
You’ll Never Get to Heaven’s lucid dream-pop rarely coalesces into recognizable shapes. “We are intuitively drawn to music that occupies a space between intimacy and distance,” says Chuck Blazevic, who shares the duo with his partner, the classically trained pianist,… Read More
When running on a treadmill, it’s advised to slow the thing down in stages before you get off. If you don’t—if, instead, you hop off and go from full tilt to a standstill—there’s a good chance the floor will still… Read More
Nils Frahm is no stranger to minimalism, but on Old Friends New Friends, the Berlin-based pianist and composer homes in on every tiny detail. Over the course of the 80-minute solo piano record, he gives each note ample space to… Read More
A sea of strings swims into view, and the crackle of vinyl reaches out of the mix like tendrils. The tone is tense, urgent, paranoid, and minor-key, interrupted by long exhalations on a major-key chord. There’s no beat, but anyone… Read More
If a certain punk band hadn’t gotten there first, then Anarchy in the UK would have made an excellent alternative title for Woke Up Right Handed, the third EP this year—and the first for UK super-indie XL—from British post-dubstep survivor… Read More
When baby-faced Swedish rappers like Yung Lean and Bladee first started racking up views in the United States, their viral success was owed as much to the beats as it was the bars. The cooing vocal samples, angelic synths, and… Read More
Until now, Flora Yin-Wong’s work fed primarily on the metropolis. Her debut mixtape, City God, was a club take on urban Chinese folk religion. In 2020, Holy Palm careened between samples of Tokyo and Crete and Paris; its companion book,… Read More
Sometimes, when a person first starts living in their true identity, a modest weight begins to lift off their shoulders. For a few years afterward, they might still experience an ineffable but persistent mental pressure. Over time, though, that burden… Read More
JJJJJerome Ellis says, “For me, the stutter is a wild animal, and it is my ongoing practice to follow it where it wants to go.” The multi-instrumentalist, writer, and composer frequently lists “stutterer” among his disciplines, referring to his glottal… Read More