At the turn of the century, around the same time as the rise of the Shibuya-kei movement, Japanese producer Nobukazu Takemura was spearheading the development of a style that writer and musician Nick Currie (Momus) would later dub “cute formalism:”… Read More
The Las Vegas-born musician Ivana Carrescia’s voice flits about the edges of her club tracks like a benevolent ghost. She sings in a downy falsetto that rarely rises above lullaby levels, and she whispers as often as she sings. Her… Read More
There are hard truths to be gained from burst myths. So it was in 2017, when I interviewed the respected Chicago DJ/producer Ron Trent about the birth of “deep house,” a dance-music genre often reduced to a palette of muted… Read More
Since releasing their ninth studio album Mind Made Up in 2008, Manchester mainstays A Certain Ratio have been taking stock of their history and settling themselves comfortably in the present. Last year’s ACR: BOX tracked their evolution from the icy… Read More
PC Music founder A. G. Cook settled on Apple as an album title, he says, because the word evokes so many things: the eponymous tech company (which, historically, has been regarded as the opposite of the Windows-based personal computer, or… Read More
When Avalon Emerson and her girlfriend made a cross-country road trip from Los Angeles to New York this summer, they shot a set of impromptu videos that neatly encapsulate Emerson’s musical choices and mixing style: kinetic, evocative, and deeply personal.… Read More
In the December 1960 issue of Arts and Architecture, the critic Dore Ashton described the peculiar experience of encountering Ad Reinhardt’s “black paintings”—a series of 60 x 60” canvases that appear monochrome, but that reveal subtle, multicolored geometries upon close… Read More
During his brief, glorious early ’70s peak, it seemed that Marc Bolan could send seismic tremors through the universe with delectable nonchalance. He switched from Tolkien-esque freak folk to Chuck Berry boogie in the span of an album. On a… Read More
The best thing about Sam Prekop’s solo electronic music is the way that it leaves space for the listener. Across three albums—2010’s Old Punch Card, 2015’s The Republic, and now Comma—the Sea and Cake frontman has used modular synthesizers to… Read More
In a scene that typically moves at a relentless pace, Zora Jones is an artist of slow, microscopic precision. Before the pandemic shuttered nightclubs around the world, the Austrian-born DJ, producer, and visual artist was living a nomadic lifestyle with… Read More