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
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
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
Before 2019, Alice Longyu Gao was known in downtown Manhattan clubs for her Harajuku-inspired fashion sense, energetic DJ sets, and, occasionally, releasing music that sought to translate her jester-like personality into well-written pop songs. Then, her song “Rich Bitch Juice,”… Read More
For anyone who has ever slouched out of a nightclub in the inhospitable hours of the new day, wondering what on earth they were thinking, Manchester producer Anz’ All Hours offers ample justification that it was all worthwhile. Her debut… Read More
Since 2017, the prolific Chinese artist Yikii has been releasing albums that have become increasingly robust and difficult to pin down. Initial records like ❀ [no pain] and Gentle Nightmare were sketch-like, with curious dabbles into glitch, ambient, industrial pop,… Read More
In the rabble-rousing pantheon of UK girl groups, only the Spice Girls have had more domestic No. 1 singles (nine) than the Sugababes (six). The mutable British trio were a defining band of the 2000s—and yet this 20th anniversary reissue… Read More
Fun is a central tenet of Yana Kedrina’s music. Liminal Soul, the Moscow-based producer and vocalist’s third album as Kedr Livanskiy, is defined by a wide-eyed, magnanimous playfulness, an openness to quirk that doesn’t inhibit the seriousness of her message.… Read More
Take it as an auspicious omen when you have to google the instruments used on a recording. Many listeners may find that the case with Máscaras, the fourth album by Canadian-Nicaraguan musician Brandon Valdivia, aka Toronto-based Mas Aya. A deft… Read More
Near the beginning of the documentary SHAYA!, the filmmakers note that amapiano “was born in the soil of the streets of South Africa, therefore it belongs to all of us.” The sentiment reflects the organic, bottom-up growth of the genre;… Read More