There’s a distinctly pastoral tinge to Leif Knowles’ music: an air of dewy grass, verdant clearings, mist burning off of rolling hills. Though mostly created with synthesizers, Leif’s records are imbued with the sounds of rainfall, birdsong, and wind chimes.… Read More
Xeno & Oaklander—the duo of Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride—came up through Pieter Schoolwerth’s Wierd Nights, an endearingly gloomy fixture of late ’00s New York. In the early days, the pair’s music was of a piece with the sounds popular… Read More
A DJ set from aya can be both thrilling and disorienting, a giddy maelstrom of jungle breaks, Dutch techno, UK funky, South African gqom, and who knows what else—plus edits of Charli XCX and “Call Me Maybe,” for good measure.… Read More
The bell sound on “Concept of Credence,” from Markus Guentner’s new album Extropy, is just the bees’ knees. It comes out of nowhere, through a crack in the dense clouds of choir-synth-string-harmonics that form the bulk of the record, and… Read More
Last year, when COVID-19 shut down the record stores and clubs and raves, along with the rest of the Western world, Eris Drew went to the woods. The past few years had been an epic come-up. In the 1990s, Drew… Read More
For Roberto Carlos Lange, 2019 seemed to be the type of year that any songwriter hopes one day to see. After over 10 years of crafting introspective and alluringly amorphous songs as Helado Negro, among other projects, Lange pulled it… Read More
D Malik is one of dance music’s newest faces, and with his debut release, he’s proving he’s here to stay. Teaming up with vocalist Michael Lanza, D Malik makes his massive debut with “Prince.” Out now on all platforms, “Prince”… Read More
On the opening track of Heartbeats, Cherise Gary snarls, “I just want to fuck.” It’s exactly the sort of direct statement you’d expect from Jersey club, the “X-rated” dance music that Gary, aka UNIIQU3, first heard as a teenager in… Read More
Anthony Naples kicked off his debut album with a fakeout. The New York producer had made his name in 2012, at just 22, with an effervescent house jam that was ranked among the year’s best dance music, and he wasted… Read More
Throughout an 11-year career, English production duo Disclosure have never exactly tested dance music’s boundaries. Brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence are classicists: torchbearers for the vintage influences they pull from Chicago house, Detroit techno, and UK garage. But within that… Read More