Warmth
There might be ambient musicians better at tugging at the heartstrings or bottling the great sad mystery of the world, but if you want to bliss out until your eyes roll back into your head, you could do a lot… Read More
No
Claire Rousay
“What if?” can be a trapdoor to hell. Waiting on the other side of that interrogative lurk paranoid delusions and pipe dreams, both potent mood oscillators. In sometimes i feel like i have no friends, San Antonio composer Claire Rousay… Read More
GAS
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
Rx PapiGud
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
Lotic
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
Beneath
When poker players are on tilt it’s generally not a good thing. Their decisions are clouded by emotion; they make reckless plays, misjudge their luck, and tend, eventually, to spiral out. But it can be thrilling, in the most visceral,… Read More
The Juan MacLean
Had the notion of acid house not been comprehensively explored at the tail end of the 1980s, we might have minted the term to describe the Juan Maclean’s I Can’t Explain, which is inspired by mind-expanding drugs and old-school house… Read More
Domenique Dumont
Domenique Dumont’s music has traditionally entailed a game of hide-and-seek, concealing vocals behind layers of reverb and placing the drums right up at the front of the mix, daring the listener to dig to get to the center of it… Read More
Jake Muir
Jake Muir’s sonic collages, made from vinyl samples and field recordings, pair pristine detail with a shadowy, secretive pulse. His 2018 album Lady’s Mantle was a foray into surf-pop plunderphonics, incorporating aquatic field recordings taken from expeditions in Iceland and… Read More
Khotin
For Dylan Khotin-Foote, house music has long been a vehicle for careful studies of ambient tone and texture. On his 2014 debut album, Hello World, the Canadian producer used hardware synths and drum machines to craft muted compositions that traded… Read More