The last decade has seen the rise of a loose clique of ambient musicians enamored by barely there beats, vaporous pads, and big, dubby bass subductions. Many of them are Midwestern, including Huerco S. and Mister Water Wet, whose short-lived… Read More
In 1984, London’s Bronski Beat rejected the industry’s ideas about which in-your-face marketing tactics could be applied to a trio of working-class gay men. Instead, they crafted “Smalltown Boy,” a kitchen-sink drama about a bullied outsider who flees home but… Read More
Born in Bahia but long based in Rio de Janeiro, Lucas Santtana should have had both ears plenty full from those two centers of Brazilian culture. With his colloquial, imagistic Portuguese and references to all manner of regional and historical… Read More
3MB feat. Magic Juan Atkins is a story of a musical friendship being forged, of techno spreading its steely tentacles, and of Berlin’s musical rebirth. To understand 3MB—Berlin producers Moritz von Oswald and Thomas Fehlmann, joined here by Detroit techno… Read More
When Belgian musicians Dan Lacksman and Marc Moulin first joined forces as Telex in the late 1970s, the goal, Lacksman said last year, “was to do something not serious,” like taking a well-known French song and make it as slow… Read More
A timeworn means of rebelling against one’s parents: loud guitar music. But in Evan Majumdar-Swift’s case, embracing rock’n’roll represented a rejection of another strain of music long associated with youthful hijinks. His father, Matthew Swift, is hardly your garden-variety Boomer:… Read More
Sasu Ripatti knows that few things will humble you like time spent in the wilderness. “You learn to face your own limits and fears,” he’s said of his Arctic hiking experiences. His latest solo albums as Vladislav Delay take inspiration… Read More
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
In a city of 23 million, Ahmed El Ghazoly sometimes had trouble finding a receptive audience for his brand of club music. “My stuff is too weird for Cairo,” he told The Wire a few years back. In fact, El… Read More
Mouse on Mars believe in the creative potential of chaos. “Music is a strong anarchic force,”Jan St. Werner, a member of the duo, told the New York Times in 2018, effusing about its propensity for mutation and cross-fertilization. In a… Read More