Various Artists
One of music’s chief pleasures is the way it conjures up a sense of the now, of displacement from the rest of the world into moods and grooves and hooks and melodies. But nowness isn’t just about sonic immersion, it’s… Read More
pop
Yoshinori Hayashi
Like so many forces of electronic music—see Warp co-founders Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell, or Kelly Lee Owens—Japanese producer Yoshinori Hayashi spent formative years working in a record store. Hayashi’s time at Tokyo’s Face Records comes through in his genre-melding… Read More
CFCF
For those in the know, commercial “electronica” was always a sham: a marketing scheme masquerading as a genre that haphazardly threw together artists and scenes which often had little to do with one another. Originally used in the early 1990s… Read More
Haruomi HosonoHaruomi HosonoHaruomi HosonoHaruomi Hosono
After the dissolution of Japanese techno-pop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra following 1983’s Service (their final album until the one-off reunion Technodon a decade later), each of its members were eager to go their own way. Reluctant to call it a… Read More
Various Artists
It would be too easy to approach ARENA002, the latest release from Argentina’s AGVA Records, as a primer on Latin American club music. Since 2015, the Buenos Aires netlabel has helped nurture a community of experimental producers and created a… Read More
Ecco2k
Years before they formed the Drain Gang collective, Ecco2k and Bladee were in a hardcore band called Krossad (“crushed” in Swedish) as schoolmates. This fun fact has become part of the Stockholm group’s narrative: their noisy 2007 demo CD has… Read More
Basside
After the tragic death of SOPHIE earlier this year, the Miami duo Basside wrote in memoriam that the artist “wasn’t from this planet.” They were far from the first to observe the galactic magic of SOPHIE’s music, but the phrasing… Read More
HeckerOkkyung Lee
Okkyung Lee and Florian Hecker (aka Hecker) both find freedom in limitation, channeling the infinite possibility inherent in cello and code, respectively. Their methods sometimes verge on hermetic; some of their weaker work sounds more like a demonstration of every… Read More
Vegyn
In tarot, the flame-licked Tower card represents a mercurial period of upheaval and personal transformation. After producer and experimental artist Vegyn moved from London to Los Angeles last fall, the foreboding card became a regular appearance in his deck. The… Read More
Floating PointsPharoah SandersThe London Symphony Orchestra
In a 2020 interview with The New Yorker, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who turned 80 last October, said he hadn’t been listening to records for a while. “I listen to things that maybe some guys don’t,” he said. “I listen to… Read More