Anthony Naples
Anthony Naples kicked off his debut album with a fakeout. The New York producer had made his name in 2012, at just 22, with an effervescent house jam that was ranked among the year’s best dance music, and he wasted… Read More
rock
TIBSLC
In just 10 releases over the past four years, Manchester’s Sferic label has established a remarkably consistent identity—one defined, ironically, by the near absence of identifying features. On records from Space Afrika, Jake Muir, and Perila, among others, Sferic has… Read More
Picnic
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
Kele
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
Lucas Santtana
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
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
Telex
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
96 Back
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
Vladislav Delay
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
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