XLR8R's Best Releases of 2020



Published: December 24, 2020 05:47 Source

1.
by 
Album • Oct 23 / 2020
Microhouse Ambient
Popular

The music of Darren Cunningham, the British electronic musician known as Actress, is notoriously difficult to categorize. Over the past 15 years, he has evaded the confines of more familiar dance music with avant-garde, abstract compositions that gaze inward. Although he references house, techno, dubstep, and R&B, he deconstructs, twists, and stretches them into practically unrecognizable forms. But make no mistake, his records are still intensely emotional—vivid soundscapes so full of depth and light that they can feel overwhelming. And *Karma & Desire*, his seventh LP, feels, in many ways, like mourning. Guided by meandering piano arpeggios and hushed vocals about heaven and prayer, it evokes funereal images of death and rebirth (“I’m thinking/Sinking/Down/In Heaven,” Zsela sings on “Angels Pharmacy”). A glitchy, fuzzy texture permeates the album, as if the tracks had been passed through an old-fashioned Instagram filter, and it builds a general sense of uneasiness. Actual beats are scarce, but those that do appear feel almost meditative (“Leaves Against the Sky,” “XRAY”), as if to provide relief from the amorphous expanse. It’s easy to see the metaphor for getting lost in dark corners of your own mind, and the solace that you feel when reality returns.

After recent mixtape “88”, Actress reveals new album "Karma & Desire". ‘Walking Flames’ featuring Sampha is out now. “Karma & Desire” includes guest collaborations from Sampha, Zsela and Aura T-09 and more. It’s “a romantic tragedy set between the heavens and the underworld” says Actress (Darren J. Cunningham) “the same sort of things that I like to talk about – love, death, technology, the questioning of one's being”. The presence of human voices take the questing artist into new territory. ‘Walking Flames’: “These are like graphics that I’ve never seen / My face on another human being / The highest resolution / Don't breathe the birth of a new day.” Flute-like melodies contributed by Canadian organist and instrument builder Kara-Lis Coverdale.

2.
Album • Jun 05 / 2020
Abstract Hip Hop East Coast Hip Hop
Popular

Retreat to the forest where the moon don’t shine And the sun barely sweeps the floor ELUCID Shrines is the new album from Armand Hammer—ELUCID and billy woods—their first since 2018’s AOTY Paraffin. As ever, this release finds the duo treading fresh ground; swimming through rogue rhythms, rhymes skating over the abyss. Fourteen songs. A hundred glassine envelopes in a shoebox. A thousand stops on the train. Fire is stolen, not given. Shrines features contributions from Quelle Chris, Moor Mother, Earl Sweatshirt, Navy Blu, Andrew Broder, Fielded, Messiah Muzik, August Fanon, KeiyaA, Kenny Segal, Nicholas Craven, Akai Solo, Curly Castro, Pink Siifu, Steel Tipped Dove, Fat Albert Einstein, Nosaj and R.A.P. Ferreira.

3.
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Album • Oct 16 / 2020
Ambient Electronic IDM
Popular Highly Rated

Autechre albums are like language immersion programs: At first they don’t make sense, but listen close and familiar shapes emerge. Not that *SIGN* is accessible per se: We’re still talking about something closer to computer programming than what most people would consider music. But for a group that can be almost mythically forbidding (2016’s four-hour-long—and 12-hours-dense—*elseq*), *SIGN* is almost pop. Thirty years in and the UK production duo’s roots still show: Hip-hop on “M4 Lema,” house on “psin AM,” far-out synth soundtracks on “F7” and “Metaz form8.” But it all remains deconstructed and once removed. Most music depends on memories of something you’ve heard before. With Autechre, you can feel your brain stretch as you listen. Normally they sound like they’re pushing forward or settling in. With *SIGN*, it’s both.

4.
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Album • Oct 28 / 2020
IDM
Popular

When Autechre’s *SIGN* dropped in October 2020, its hour-long running time and comparatively consonant tones marked a major shift from the tangled sonics and mazelike dimensions of 2016’s four-hour *elseq* and 2018’s eight-hour *NTS Sessions*. But Sean Booth and Rob Brown often have a trick up their sleeves: Just two weeks later they released *PLUS*, featuring nine additional tracks presumably cut from the same sessions. Darker and more turbulent than its predecessor, *PLUS* trades *SIGN*’s frequently rosy blush for squalls of dissonance. Brief but potent, “DekDre Scap B” sets an ominous tone with metallic drones and arrhythmic shudders that suggest a submarine tearing apart at the seams. The tensions at the heart of Autechre’s work, as randomness pulls against dance music’s repetitive structures, have long suggested a tug-of-war between the duo and its labyrinthine software creations, and on *PLUS*, it’s easy to get the sense that the software is winning. “7FM ic” shuffles like a cybernetic zombie, buffeted by noxious blasts; “marhide” begins with drum sounds familiar from electro’s classic TR-808s, but the hesitant groove, nearly suffocated in a fog of white noise, transmits the opposite of electro’s kinetic energy. That’s not to say there aren’t some jams here: “X4” spins canonical IDM’s jittery rhythms into a 12-minute epic, while “TM1 open” gives acid techno a heart-racing nudge. And there are a few moments of spare, almost delicate beauty: The stately chords of “esle 0” sound like church-organ music from the 23rd century. But by and large, *PLUS* sounds like Autechre is giving free rein to their machines and inviting us to come along for the thrillingly unpredictable ride.

5.
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Album • Aug 26 / 2020
Trap Pop Rap Southern Hip Hop
Noteable
6.
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EP • Apr 20 / 2020
Pop Rap Trap
Noteable
7.
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Album • Feb 14 / 2020
Electronic
Noteable
8.
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Album • Jul 03 / 2020
Alternative R&B Experimental Hip Hop UK Bass
Noteable

BUY SEGURIDAD ON VINYL www.diggersfactory.com/vinyl/229713/gaika-seguridad Seguridad" features productions from the following NAAFI family members: Lao, Zutzut, TAYHANA, Wasted Fates, OMAAR, Lechuga Zafiro & Debit.

9.
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Album • Oct 22 / 2020
Ambient

Moving away from the American surf pop manipulations of his debut 'Lady's Mantle', Jake journeys through a nocturnal city-scape meandering the dimly lit streets via club back rooms and decadent boudoirs; his ode to the endless night and those who take residence under it's cloak. A psychedelic map of ASMR rattles, drones and tones melting in-and-out of the night with the heaving intensity of an open window on a busy city street, lubricating familiar rumbles with sensual tones, mirroring the blurry high of a low-light encounter. Boomkat: 'The hum of your veiled voice’ was written by Muir in the wake of his transition from a life in Los Angeles to a new start in Berlin. It sees him transpose field recordings of his former home city into a hazier sort of mid-ground that subtly diffracts the difference with Berlin in summer, refining the shimmering production tekkers of his West Coast surf-pop tribute ‘Lady’s Mantle’ (2018) with a nuanced, lower case emotive tactility intended to arouse heady states of atmospheric tension between nostalgic sehnsucht and romantic promise.  Muir readily acknowledges influence from the more washed out, elusive textures, timbres, and spatial awareness of artists such as Philip Jeck, Richard Chartier, and Marina Rosenfeld, as opposed to the usual touchstones of AFX or Eno. But more implicitly he references a sense of queered ambience shared with Chartier’s Pinkcourtesyphone, and as such his music is seduced by the allure of “gay bathhouses and spas, club back rooms and decadent boudoirs” in a way that suffuses the whole record with an, intoxicating, aphrodisiac quality.  Supine and seductive in its illustration of an “endless night”, the devil lies in the album’s evocative intricacies, using a signature light touch and Akira Rabelais’ Argeïphontes Lyre software to ruffle locked grooves and dusty jazz loops into ASMR-triggering texturhythms and dematerialised, hea(r)tsick blurs between the ear-stroking ephemera of ‘fleeting touches’ and the way his music appears to waltz out of an open window over Berlin at night in ‘the dimness of the sealed eye’, and land on the pillow next to you ‘like sweet thoughts in a dream’.

10.
Album • Aug 28 / 2020
Nu Jazz Psychedelic Soul Avant-Garde Jazz
Popular Highly Rated

When LA-based vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow isn’t releasing such underground R&B gems as *Overload*, she records as the one-woman ensemble Jyoti (a name bestowed on her by the late Alice Coltrane). But *Mama, You Can Bet!*, the third Jyoti release after *Ocotea* and *Denderah*, is the first to feature Muldrow’s singing. There are still instrumental cuts, including “Zane, The Scribe,” “Swing, Kirikou, Swing!,” “Hard Bap Duke,” and “The Cowrie Waltz,” which capture her way with sonic mystery, atmospheric harmony, and abstract funk as compellingly as ever. There are also two head-turning Charles Mingus “Geemixes”: “Beemoanable Lady,” which employs Eric Dolphy’s yearning alto sax as raw material in a collage of Muldrow’s radical design; and “Fabus Foo,” based on “Fables of Faubus,” with its punctuated horn theme lurking strangely within. There are elements of acoustic jazz texture that Muldrow often brings to the fore, but also timbres that evoke West African drumming, or electronic sound sources that are more elusive, even unidentifiable. The sparse and haunting meditations “Orgone” and “Quarrys, Queries” are in a category of their own, evidence of Muldrow’s next-level compositional gift.

11.
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Album • Mar 27 / 2020
Instrumental Hip Hop
Popular

LA producer/songwriter Glen Boothe’s second album as Knxwledge for the venerated Stones Throw label is the kind of thing you put on, let run, and don’t think much about until you reach up to play it again—and again, and, yeah, all right, why not, again. Fragmented as it is (most of these tracks are under two minutes), the overall feel is smooth and narrative, each moment like an interlude hinged to an interlude, an association to an association. The gospel of “do you” leads into the more carnal slow-jam pleasures of “Thats Allwekando.,” and “Listen” into “Learn,” with bits of conversation and interview samples playing like a meta-commentary on what you’ve just heard or are about to hear. Boothe is funny like that, and clever. And, as a guy raised in the Pentecostal church but saved by rap tapes, a little conflicted, mixing up the sacred and profane impulses of R&B and hip-hop in ways that, like all great beatmakers, use bits and pieces of other people’s work to lay bare a journey that feels deeply personal. Come to think, there’s a word for this: flow.

12.
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Album • Nov 19 / 2020
Neo-Psychedelia Art Pop Ambient Pop
Noteable
13.
Album • Feb 28 / 2020
Ambient

Mostly piano, vocals, efx and unconscious arrangements make up Laila Sakini’s “Vivienne” on Total Stasis. It asks, what if things were different? Tender symbols – flowers, butterflies, potion – portray an idealised life. But in a scene of ennui, waiting, in-between feelings are held, and released, reluctantly - like a longing sigh. In this ever-shifting landscape, these sentiments are imbued within Laila’s oneiric, gently repetitive compositions to form a fittingly hypnotising embrace. Unfettered and reflective, Laila etches this fantasy with a reality more interested in the delicate and impromptu than compositional rigour.

14.
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Album • Sep 11 / 2020
Electronic
15.
Album • Oct 09 / 2020
Ambient New Age
Popular Highly Rated
16.
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Album • Dec 16 / 2020
Slacker Rock Noise Pop
Noteable
17.
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Album • Jan 31 / 2020
Boogie Synthpop Alternative R&B
18.
Album • Mar 06 / 2020
Jazz Rap Abstract Hip Hop
Popular

There’s a moment about halfway through *Purple Moonlight Pages* where Rory Ferreira—the Maine-via-Chicago rapper formerly known as Milo—recounts sitting on the toilet at a gas station and reading a dialogue between two previous visitors, the first of whom wants to know the purpose of life, the second of whom answers, “To be the eyes, the ears and consciousness of the creator of the universe. You fool!” at which point Ferreira cracks up laughing. For the trainspotters, it’s a Kurt Vonnegut quote, but its function in Ferreira’s vision of the universe is clear: To those with eyes open, wonder can be found anywhere, from the grand peaks of art (“Leaving Hell”) to the routine of household chores (“Laundry”). If anything, Ferreira seems to set forth from the notion that such distinctions—between the grand and the modest, the exceptional and the everyday—aren’t as useful as we might think. As with his Milo projects, Ferreira’s grace is that for all his galaxy-brain tendencies, he always ends up coming off as a funny, grounded dude with more respect for the world outside his head than the one in it—at one point, he raps that he’d rather be trained as an electrician than get famous. The production—by the trio of Kenny Segal, Aaron Carmack, and Mike Parvizi—is just as inspired, zigzagging with the jazzy circuity of thought.

"His job is inventing trophies of experiences-- objects and gestures that fascinate and enthrall, not merely (as prescribed by older generations of artists) edify or entertain. His principal means of fascinating is to advance one step further in the dialectic of outrage. He seeks to make his work repulsive, obscure, inaccessible; in short, to give what is, or seems to be, not wanted. But however fierce may be the outrages the artist perpetrates upon his audience, his credentials and spiritual authority ultimately depend on the audience's sense (whether something known or inferred) of the outrages he commits upon himself. The exemplary modern artist is a broker in madness." - Susan Sontag. The Pornographic Imagination.

19.
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Album • Jun 19 / 2020
Neo-Soul
Popular Highly Rated

Released on Juneteenth 2020, the third album by the enigmatic-slash-anonymous band Sault is an unapologetic dive into Black identity. Tapping into ’90s-style R&B (“Sorry Ain’t Enough”), West African funk (“Bow”), early ’70s soul (“Miracles”), churchy chants (“Out the Lies”), and slam-poetic interludes (“Us”), the flow here is more mixtape or DJ set than album, a compendium of the culture rather than a distillation of it. What’s remarkable is how effortless they make revolution sound.

Proceeds will be going to charitable funds

20.
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Album • Sep 18 / 2020
Neo-Soul
Popular Highly Rated

When the largely anonymous UK collective Sault released *Untitled (Black Is)* in June 2020, it arrived on the heels of global unrest spawned, this time, by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. That album spoke to the profound grief and rage that so many Black people (and their allies) felt, offering a lifeline and a balm at the perfect moment. *Untitled (Rise)* comes three months later, celebratory in its spirit and poetic in its motion—the fresh air inhaled after a summer of drowning. Soulful disco and buoyant funk inform the album from the outset. “Strong,” complete with regal marching band flourishes, beckons to listeners to get up and move: “We\'re moving forward tonight,” a vocalist commands in the early seconds of the opener. “We won\'t back down tonight.” What follows is a monument to resilience and Black people\'s ability to conjure joy under any circumstances, and the songs keep the freedom of the dance floor (or the square) in their center. “I Just Want to Dance” is an intoxicating collage of percussion, while the loose groove of “Fearless” and the kineticism of “Street Fighter” keep up the energy. Elsewhere, “Son Shine,” with its affecting gospel choral arrangements, connects spiritual history with the present, a reminder that so much of this magic has long been intertwined with the sacred: “Let the son shine through my pain, so we will rise.” Towards the back, the tempo slows into the meditative, strings replace the much of the percussion, and the spaces between lyrics become more prominent leading into “The Black & Gold,” a solemn instrumental that evokes peace or rest. The final track offers one last thematic tie: the pain but also the divinity, a guilty world and the preservation of innocence. At its core, *Untitled (Rise)* is about duality and holding multiple truths in a single heart; it asks and extends levity while ensuring, also, that we do not forget.

21.
Album • Mar 06 / 2020
Downtempo

The German pair of Hauke Freer and Matthias Reiling are no strangers to releasing quality long-format albums and while rising through a discerning community of DJ’s have previously released three consecutive albums on tastemaker label Delusions of Grandeur culminating in 2017’s “Listen To Your Heart”. Their latest and fourth studio album set to be released on 'Night Time Stories’, the London based sister label to the coveted ‘LateNightTales’, marks a notable move towards the downtempo dynamic of artists like Nightmares on Wax, DJ Shadow and Portishead. Artists that have all played a strong influence in Session Victim’s variety of output over the last decade. ‘Needledrop’ provides a suite of both uplifting and easy-listening moments, refined and understated individually, yet cohesively crafted with the honest musicianship and inarguable credentials that we know of production duo Session Victim. As accomplished producers, Session Victim have been intent on delivering a characteristic body of work for uninterrupted play, and with ‘Needledrop’ they have landed with significant inspiration from the lavishly textured and subtly layered jazz and soul compositions that found their way into late 90’s trip hop. Fusing an array of live instrumentation and organic groove through their intuitive sampling sessions, Session Victim’s fourth album succeeds in actively engaging the listener’s mood and intellect in equal measure. A setting, a mood, all exposed to the almost random dropping of the stylus on a vinyl record; ‘Needledrop’ as the name suggests, positions Session Victim among downtempo’s most quality works by delivering a genuine feeling of intuitiveness in its production approach; entirely natural in composition yet flawlessly precise in execution. Album opener ‘Bad Weather Mates’ sets the tone with a palette of retro soul and feel-good warmth of instrumental hip hop that continues right through to ‘Still High’; as authentic an exhibition of their strengths as record collectors as their nuance as producers. It takes significant commitment to do so, yet Session Victim have displayed experienced restrain to avoid the album’s tracks being lured back to a 4/4 dancefloor formula while retaining a fusion of jazz, electronica and low-slung house music for which their energetic international DJ sets have become synonymous. Tracks ‘The Pain’, ‘No Sky, Blue Sound’ and ‘Glimmer’ incorporate electronic touches where required, while keeping the original broken groove skillfully in-tact. With this album, Session Victim have focused their attention on a large arsenal of dusty influences across long forgotten vinyl, 90’s computer games and beyond, rediscovering the intuitive and playful sides of their production personalities, while also demonstrating their cherished music knowledge.

22.
Album • Nov 01 / 2021
Electro
23.
Album • Jun 05 / 2020
Sound Collage
Noteable

hybtwibt? _______________________ because you never asked me. how it feels mixtape including off cuff new work / cuts / edits & extractions from our same titled NTS Transmission (30.05.20) ~ written / recorded early - late hours, 31.05.20 - 03.06.20 ~ all revenue will be donated to: Black Lives Matter Global Network National Bailout (NBO) The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust NAACP Project NIA Black Minds Matter The Black Curriculum make it mean something love, SA ~ have you been through what i've been through? ~ #blacklivesmatter Photo Imagery by Tibyan Sanoh

24.
Album • Jan 31 / 2020
Drill and Bass
Popular

Once upon a time, Squarepusher’s Tom Jenkinson was hailed as the master craftsman of drill ’n’ bass. You don’t hear that term so much anymore, but on Squarepusher’s first album since 2015’s *Damogen Furies*, he revives the style’s dizzying spirit: *Be Up a Hello* is a tour de force of high-velocity drum programming, punishing basslines, and frankly mind-bending sensory overload. Recorded largely in single takes on a hodgepodge of vintage gear, it’s also flat-out fun, with a dynamism in keeping with its spontaneity. “Oberlove” cheerfully pairs relentless breaks and bass riffs with almost melodramatic melodic flourishes; the unhinged “Speedcrank” shudders like a tilting pinball machine. It can be surprisingly pretty: “Hitsonu” taps into a naive grace seldom heard since Squarepusher’s early releases on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label. As a counterbalance to all that untrammeled adrenaline, the ambient “Detroit People Mover” and “80 Ondula” give the British producer the chance to explore his most cinematic inclinations. And the glowering “Vortrack” moves into darkly atonal territory—proof that even looping back to the sound of his early work, Squarepusher keeps pushing forward.

25.
Album • Oct 02 / 2020
Deep House
Noteable

Around the time of 2010’s *Sketches*, Theo Parrish shifted from sampling old soul records—long the cornerstones of his house and techno 12-inches—to cooking up his own funk from scratch. Six years after the knotty jazz keys and sprawling drum workouts of 2014’s epic *American Intelligence*, the Detroit musician goes still deeper on *Wuddaji*, a hypnotic, mostly sample-free collection of rhythm studies that blur the line between house, funk, soul, and jazz. Parrish lays out his approach in the opening bars of “Hambone Cappuccino,” in which a soft yet insistent Rhodes melody prods at muted kicks and rimshots like a cat nuzzling wooden furniture. In track after track, moody keys slip and slide around loose, off-the-cuff drum programming; as loops and layers build up, these long, linear tracks only become more enveloping. Where the skeletal “Angry Purple Birds” strips down to drums alone, cuts like “Radar Detector” and “Wuddaji” use jazzy chords and splotchy textures to paint a fuller picture of deep-in-the-pocket groove music. Woozily polyrhythmic, “Hennyweed Buckdance” is a late-night party jam for fired-up juke joints, while “This Is for You” occupies the album’s soulful center of gravity, with Maurissa Rose’s graceful benediction—“I see you, sister/I see you, brother/Keep on holdin’ up each other”—rounding out a blissful swirl of electric piano and drums. If most dance music is about the moment at hand, this song takes a longer view, building a bridge from Black America’s past to the long-promised future.

26.
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Album • Apr 03 / 2020
Psychedelic Soul Neo-Soul Jazz-Funk
Popular Highly Rated

Stephen Bruner’s fourth album as Thundercat is shrouded in loss—of love, of control, of his friend Mac Miller, who Bruner exchanged I-love-yous with over the phone hours before Miller’s overdose in late 2018. Not that he’s wallowing. Like 2017’s *Drunk*—an album that helped transform the bassist/singer-songwriter from jazz-fusion weirdo into one of the vanguard voices in 21st-century black music—*It Is What It Is* is governed by an almost cosmic sense of humor, juxtaposing sophisticated Afro-jazz (“Innerstellar Love”) with deadpan R&B (“I may be covered in cat hair/But I still smell good/Baby, let me know, how do I look in my durag?”), abstractions about mortality (“Existential Dread”) with chiptune-style punk about how much he loves his friend Louis Cole. “Yeah, it’s been an interesting last couple of years,” he tells Apple Music with a sigh. “But there’s always room to be stupid.” What emerges from the whiplash is a sense that—as the title suggests—no matter how much we tend to label things as good or bad, happy or sad, the only thing they are is what they are. (That Bruner keeps good company probably helps: Like on *Drunk*, the guest list here is formidable, ranging from LA polymaths like Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Louis Cole, and coproducer Flying Lotus to Childish Gambino, Ty Dolla $ign, and former Slave singer Steve Arrington.) As for lessons learned, Bruner is Zen as he runs through each of the album’s tracks. “It’s just part of it,” he says. “It’s part of the story. That’s why the name of the album is what it is—\[Mac’s death\] made me put my life in perspective. I’m happy I’m still here.” **Lost in Space / Great Scott / 22-26** \"Me and \[keyboardist\] Scott Kinsey were just playing around a bit. I like the idea of something subtle for the intro—you know, introducing somebody to something. Giving people the sense that there’s a ride about to happen.\" **Innerstellar Love** \"So you go from being lost in space and then suddenly thrust into purpose. The feel is a bit of an homage to where I’ve come from with Kamasi \[Washington, who plays the saxophone\] and my brother \[drummer Ronald Bruner, Jr.\]: very jazz, very black—very interstellar.\" **I Love Louis Cole (feat. Louis Cole)** \"It’s quite simply stated: Louis Cole is, hands down, one of my favorite musicians. Not just as a performer, but as a songwriter and arranger. \[*Cole is a polymathic solo artist and multi-instrumentalist, as well as a member of the group KNOWER.*\] The last time we got to work together was on \[*Drunk*’s\] \'Bus in These Streets.\' He inspires me. He reminds me to keep doing better. I’m very grateful I get to hang out with a guy like Louis Cole. You know, just me punching a friend of his and falling asleep in his laundry basket.\" **Black Qualls (feat. Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington & Childish Gambino)** \"Steve Lacy titled this song. \'Qualls\' was just a different way of saying ‘walls.\' And black walls in the sense of what it means to be a young black male in America right now. A long time ago, black people weren’t even allowed to read. If you were caught reading, you’d get killed in front of your family. So growing up being black—we’re talking about a couple hundred years later—you learn to hide your wealth and knowledge. You put up these barriers, you protect yourself. It’s a reason you don’t necessarily feel okay—this baggage. It’s something to unlearn, at least in my opinion. But it also goes beyond just being black. It’s a people thing. There’s a lot of fearmongering out there. And it’s worse because of the internet. You gotta know who you are. It’s about this idea that it’s okay to be okay.\" **Miguel’s Happy Dance** \"Miguel Atwood-Ferguson plays keys on this record, and also worked on the string arrangement. Again, y’know, without getting too heavily into stuff, I had a rough couple of years. So you get Miguel’s happy dance.\" **How Sway** \"I like making music that’s a bit fast and challenging to play. So really, this is just that part of it—it’s like a little exercise.\" **Funny Thing** \"The love songs here are pretty self-explanatory. But I figure you’ve gotta be able to find the humor in stuff. You’ve gotta be able to laugh.\" **Overseas (feat. Zack Fox)** \"Brazil is the one place in the world I would move. São Paulo. I would just drink orange juice all day and play bass until I had nubs for fingers. So that’s number one. But man, you’ve also got Japan in there. Japan. And Russia! I mean, everything we know about the politics—it is what it is. But Russian people are awesome. They’re pretty crazy. But they’re awesome.\" **Dragonball Durag** \"The durag is the ultimate power move. Not like a superpower, but just—you know, it translates into the world. You’ve got people with durags, and you’ve got people without them. Personally, I always carry one. Man, you ever see that picture of David Beckham wearing a durag and shaking Prince Charles’ hand? Victoria’s looking like she wants to rip his pants off.\" **How I Feel** \"A song like \'How I Feel’—there’s not a lot of hidden meaning there \[*laughs*\]. It’s not like something really bad happened to me when I was watching *Care Bears* when I was six and I’m trying to cover it up in a song. But I did watch *Care Bears*.\" **King of the Hill** \"This is something I made with BADBADNOTGOOD. It came out a little while ago, on the Brainfeeder 10-year compilation. We kind of wrestled with whether or not it should go on the album, but in the end it felt right. You’re always trying to find space and time to collaborate with people, but you’re in one city, they’re in another, you’re moving around. Here, we finally got the opportunity to be in the same room together and we jumped at it. I try and be open to all kinds of collaboration, though. Magic is magic.\" **Unrequited Love** \"You know how relationships go: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose \[*laughs*\]. But really, it’s not funny \[*more laughs*\]. Sometimes you—\[*laughing*\]—you get your heart broken.\" **Fair Chance (feat. Ty Dolla $ign & Lil B)** \"Me and Ty spend a lot of time together. Lil B was more of a reach, but we wanted to find a way to make it work, because some people, you know, you just resonate with. This is definitely the beginning of more between him and I. A starting point. But you know, to be honest it’s an unfortunate set of circumstances under which it comes. We were all very close to Mac \[Miller\]. It was a moment for all of us. We all became very aware of that closeness in that moment.\" **Existential Dread** \"You know, getting older \[*laughs*\].\" **It Is What It Is** \"That’s me in the middle, saying, ‘Hey, Mac.’ That’s me, getting a chance to say goodbye to my friend.\"

GRAMMYs 2021 Winner - Best Progressive R&B Album Thundercat has released his new album “It Is What It Is” on Brainfeeder Records. The album, produced by Flying Lotus and Thundercat, features musical contributions from Ty Dolla $ign, Childish Gambino, Lil B, Kamasi Washington, Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington, BADBADNOTGOOD, Louis Cole and Zack Fox. “It Is What It Is” has been nominated for a GRAMMY in the Best Progressive R&B Category and with Flying Lotus also receiving a nomination in the Producer of the Year (Non-Classical). “It Is What It Is” follows his game-changing third album “Drunk” (2017). That record completed his transition from virtuoso bassist to bonafide star and cemented his reputation as a unique voice that transcends genre. “This album is about love, loss, life and the ups and downs that come with that,” Bruner says about “It Is What It Is”. “It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at different points in life you come across places that you don’t necessarily understand… some things just aren’t meant to be understood.” The tragic passing of his friend Mac Miller in September 2018 had a profound effect on Thundercat and the making of “It Is What It Is”. “Losing Mac was extremely difficult,” he explains. “I had to take that pain in and learn from it and grow from it. It sobered me up… it shook the ground for all of us in the artist community.” The unruly bounce of new single ‘Black Qualls’ is classic Thundercat, teaming up with Steve Lacy (The Internet) and Funk icon Steve Arrington (Slave). It’s another example of Stephen Lee Bruner’s desire to highlight the lineage of his music and pay his respects to the musicians who inspired him. Discovering Arrington’s output in his late teens, Bruner says he fell in love with his music immediately: “The tone of the bass, the way his stuff feels and moves, it resonated through my whole body.” ‘Black Qualls’ emerged from writing sessions with Lacy, whom Thundercat describes as “the physical incarnate of the Ohio Players in one person - he genuinely is a funky ass dude”. It references what it means to be a black American with a young mindset: “What it feels like to be in this position right now… the weird ins and outs, we’re talking about those feelings…” Thundercat revisits established partnerships with Kamasi Washington, Louis Cole, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Ronald Bruner Jr and Dennis Hamm on “It Is What Is Is” but there are new faces too: Childish Gambino, Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington, plus Ty Dolla $ign and Lil B on ‘Fair Chance’ - a song explicitly about his friend Mac Miller’s passing. The aptly titled ‘I Love Louis Cole’ is another standout - “Louis Cole is a brush of genius. He creates so purely,” says Thundercat. “He makes challenging music: harmony-wise, melody-wise and tempo-wise but still finds a way for it to be beautiful and palatable.” Elsewhere on the album, ‘Dragonball Durag’ exemplifies both Thundercat’s love of humour in music and indeed his passion for the cult Japanese animé. “I have a Dragon Ball tattoo… it runs everything. There is a saying that Dragon Ball runs life,” he explains. “The durag is a superpower, to turn your swag on. It does something… it changes you,” he says smiling. Thundercat’s music starts on his couch at home: “It’s just me, the bass and the computer”. Nevertheless, referring to the spiritual connection that he shares with his longtime writing and production partner Flying Lotus, Bruner describes his friend as “the other half of my brain”. “I wouldn’t be the artist I am if Lotus wasn’t there,” he says. “He taught me… he saw me as an artist and he encouraged it. No matter the life changes, that’s my partner. We are always thinking of pushing in different ways.” Comedy is an integral part of Thundercat’s personality. “If you can’t laugh at this stuff you might as well not be here,” he muses. He seems to be magnetically drawn to comedians from Zack Fox (with whom he collaborates regularly) to Dave Chappelle, Eric Andre and Hannibal Buress whom he counts as friends. “Every comedian wants to be a musician and every musician wants to be a comedian,” he says. “And every good musician is really funny, for the most part.” It’s the juxtaposition, or the meeting point, between the laughter and the pain that is striking listening to “It Is What It Is”: it really is all-encompassing. “The thing that really becomes a bit transcendent in the laugh is when it goes in between how you really feel,” Bruner says. “You’re hoping people understand it, but you don’t even understand how it’s so funny ‘cos it hurts sometimes.” Thundercat forms a cornerstone of the Brainfeeder label; he released “The Golden Age of Apocalypse” (2011), “Apocalypse” (2013), followed by EP “The Beyond / Where The Giants Roam” featuring the modern classic ‘Them Changes’. He was later “at the creative epicenter” (per Rolling Stone) of the 21st century’s most influential hip-hop album Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly”, where he won a Grammy for his collaboration on the track ‘These Walls’ before releasing his third album “Drunk” in 2017. In 2018 Thundercat and Flying Lotus composed an original score for an episode of Golden Globe and Emmy award winning TV series “Atlanta” (created and written by Donald Glover).

27.
by 
Album • Jan 30 / 2020
Ambient Ambient Dub
Popular

"'Tumbling Towards a Wall’ is a keening batch of dematerialised atmospheres and lilting rhythms bound to lull listeners into hypnagogic states with its anxiety-sink ambient spongiforms and diary-like and drift-away textures. In eight low-lit and fuzzy parts they feel out smudged textures flecked with iridescent, gauzy melodies and habitual, stream-of-consciousness keys that toe the finest line between enervated and ember-like. It’s a proper, cockle-warming sound that says its piece with measured modesty and a glowing sense of soul that resonates with Dominique Lawalrée and Ryuichi Sakamoto just as much as Ulla’s peers, such as Special Guest DJ and Pendant. The sort of record that may leave users struggling to even get up and flip the sides, such is its soporific pull, ‘Tumbling Towards a Wall’, enacts a sort of slow motion collision with all the sensuality of knackered Ballardian pillow-talk. Each track here teases the senses with a range of frayed, fractured and breezily unresolved structures that exert an ideal ambient sleight-of-hand primed to lead listeners’ thoughts off on their own woozy tangents between the music’s mix of syrupy/brittle rhythm and elusive atmospheric clag. On the A-side the sounds all remains detectably electronic, but for those who manage to keep their lids over half-mast, the B-side blossoms with sampled acoustic textures between a scudding choral cut-up that’s surely worth the entry alone, and in the closing thread of rainy day piano keys that perfuse and wilt in the heart-clutching closing piece. For solitary reflection, Ulla’s first mononymous release is a gorgeous record that mellows and balances any physical or mental space it comes into contact with." - boomkat.com

28.
Album • Nov 13 / 2020
Tape Music Dark Ambient
Popular Highly Rated

Where William Basinski’s 2019 album, *On Time Out of Time*, wrung ethereal drones out of data captured from the collision of two black holes, his 2020 follow-up returns to a more personal scale. Like his masterpiece *The Disintegration Loops*, *Lamentations* represents a journey into the Los Angeles ambient composer’s collection of tapes gathered over the years, in which loops of strings, voice, or unknown sounds have been slowed and stretched into eerie, wraithlike formations. Some of the source material reportedly dates back as far as 1979, but it sounds positively timeless, conjuring aching melancholy out of ghostly wisps of choir and orchestra. In “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” church bells are smeared into a deep, coppery drone; “The Wheel of Fortune” swirls orchestral snippets into uneasy patterns hanging just on the cusp of dissonance. Originally created for Robert Wilson’s opera *The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic*, “O, My Daughter, O, My Sorrow” sets a haunting scrap of Balkan folk song against a lulling backdrop of strings, suggesting an apparition rising from a watery grave. But even the most abstract pieces carry a heavy emotional punch: “Silent Spring” is little more than a shadow of an echo, but it beckons powerfully toward the abyss.

29.
Album • Sep 25 / 2020
IDM

Wylie Cable Shimmer, Then Disappear Dome of Doom September 25, 2020 Los Angeles independent record label founder and multi-instrumentalist, Wylie Cable, is back with the new album Shimmer, Then Disappear. The record releases September 25th on Cable's imprint Dome of Doom and is the 8th full-length in his catalog. The compositional formats across the 40 minute album are dense and dynamic, bursting with heavy rhythms, crystalized harmonies, soothing breakdowns, and technical finesse. IDM, downtempo, lofi house, 808 filled trap, LA-centric beats, musique concrète, drum ‘n bass, jungle, modern classical; it’s an encyclopedia of 21st century sound that interlaces Cable’s musical voice with distinction and purpose. In this context, the album acts as one of the artists’ most realized works in musical range. Features across Shimmer, Then Disappear include a number of artists connected to the Dome of Doom family: God Damn Chan, Holly, Call Me and Goodnight Cody. Cable mixed the entire LP, with mastering from Daddy Kev at Cosmic Zoo Studios. Album artwork was completed by Dewey Saunders, an artist internationally known for album cover work with Anderson Paak, Future, Nxworries, Felly, Griz, and more. The collaborative recording process and abundance of gear on Shimmer, Then Disappear makes this an album of constant surprises and new revelations on repeated listens. Most sessions were completed at Cable’s home studio in the hills of LA and the gear set-up included a laptop, Ableton, Kitten Octave, Oberheim/Viscount OB-3 Squared, Roland TR-8, Roland JP-08, Critter & Guitari Pocket Piano GR, Arturia Keystep, Moog Sirin, AKG C214, and the AKG C 414 B-ULS. The Roland TR-8 and the Roland JP-08 were both given to Cable on loan by Daedelus right before he set off to Boston for his new position at Berklee on the EDI faculty. Daedelus' only request was that Cable keep making music. Argentina’s Dabow and Portugal’s Holly were both in Los Angeles during the same week last year, creating at Cable’s studio for a day straight and coming up with one of the record’s hardest hitting tracks. Maine’s God Damn Chan also created his two features at Cable’s studio during a trip to the west coast last year, knocking out their collaborations with speed and ferocity. They dive in and out of musical ideas first poured from pioneering and next generation artists across Warp and Ninja Tune. Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist Goodnight Cody was the only musician to record his part outside of Cable’s studio, submitting a solo recording of slide guitar for future processing and reconfiguring. Like many of his records over the years, Cable also adds vox, supplanting lyrics of self-examination and personal perseverance that are some of his most direct and intentional lyrics ever. All collaborations occurred before the COVID-19 pandemic, cementing the structure of the LP well before its eventual release in 2020. After the mental fog created from the world's collective state of social unrest started to slowly subside and the changing landscape within the touring/music industry was adapted to, Cable was able to initiate the second process of the album and flesh out the rest of the music. In March, during the initial shutdowns in Los Angeles, Cable locked himself in his home studio for a period of weeks and began making a new song every day. This would initiate first thing in the morning when he woke up. It happened slowly but it became an important process in finishing the record and creating most of the new solo material. In this process chain of the recording sessions and what was absorbed during those times, the album is a bridge from the world we knew into the world we all live in now. A perfect reflection of the transitional energy that was brought onto the world collectively over the last nine months. Closing the album in a similar fashion to past records with a beatless and sobering piece, the Mac Miller tribute “Mac Flip” was sourced from a sample Cable found online from a Canadian producer by the name Two Swings. It ties in the final scope of the record with a reflection on artistic influence and the value we hold on those who are still here and those who leave us. Labelmate thook, who released his Noise LP on DoD last year, was the one who first showed Cable the track. “I discovered this artist Two Swings from Canada through thook, who released his Noise LP on the label last year. Two Swings had made a song called "Tribute to Malcolm" that was released on SoundCloud, and I found it through a repost on thook's account. It's a really beautiful piece and starts with this piano and string section that I used to create my flip of the song. The original version from Two Swings then goes on to drop into a remix with some of Malcolm's vocals, etc. I just clipped the initial few second loop and used it as material to compose new melodies with. I also reached out to Two Swings to get their blessings to use the sample, since it sounded to me like the intro was an original recording. They were down so it ended up on the record.” Conceptually, Shimmer, Then Disappear is presented with an overall flow that connects all titles and thematic song styles as one dynamic story. The creator of this work takes up the lead character role, soul searching as realities start to cave in and exit ramps ensue. Cable elaborates further on the conceptual theme of the album, “The first song is called "How to Disappear", the second song is called "Travel Light'', then the next "End All Contracts.'' To me, the tracklist reads like a deranged to-do list of this character that is attempting to erase themselves and start a new life. Read chronologically, the track list tells the story of someone attempting to disappear, but coming up against all the pitfalls that, as humans, we all have. "Contacting People from your Past", "The Lure of Personal Success" and "Short Game vs Long Game" all speak to our desires to be connected to others. It is no way natural for us as a species to be isolated or cut off from our family groups, but in our modern world this has increasingly become the case whether we like it or not. I feel like I tell that story most directly on "Change Your Name" with the lyrics "What you see, is what you get, and what if you could change your name? Would you run from your regrets, or would you keep it all the same?" I guess for me music is always just a time capsule of my life at the time I was making it.” Pacing, peaks, valleys, bursts, the calm; every track follows from one another energetically and offers a personal unpacking of one’s soul. A vulnerability in transmitted reflections that pushes postering and ego to the side. The album title for Shimmer, Then Disappear has roots dug into Wylie Cable’s CalArts days in the early 2000s and his initial discovery of the works of Muslimgauze during this time. Wylie pulled the LP's title from a Muslimgauze song of the same name that appears on the 1997 LP Jaal Ab Dullah (Soleilmoon Recordings). “I'm sure the reference will be lost on 99% of people though as Muslimgauze has become a more obscure name in the electronic music collectors world. I personally have been obsessed with his music since college though. My old friend David Cohen introduced me to Muzlimgauze's music in his CalArts sublevel studio in the film department. We used to hang out endlessly and listen to the dudes music trying to figure out how he made all this shit with dub tape loops in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I really think you hear a lot of Muslimgauze influence in all of underground bass music, even if it's not a commonly regarded opinion. The guy was making insane distorted 808 breakbeat loops, recording all his own percussion and samples and doing the takes live on a board playing it like an instrument, ala King Tubby and other dub pioneers that advanced music by approaching studio equipment with new ideas that became commonplace later. As far as what the title means to me personally, I feel it's yet another way to look at impermanence, here today, gone tomorrow sort of a thing. My hope is that with my time on the planet I can create some things that are beautiful that remind others that there is wonder and grace and love in human nature... then disappear.” While running Dome of Doom over the last nine years, unfiltered culture has been injected into the underground music community with every release, flipping a staggering 18,000+ cassette tapes since the label's inception. Releasing music on his own label has afforded Cable the creative flexibility to mold his releases in an uncompromised vision and to connect dots that are personalized and true to his goals as a creative artist looking to bring worthwhile change to this world. Shimmer, The Disappear is the ethos of this mission at its core, presenting one-of-a-kind fusions that find their origins as a synthesis of Cable’s time as a classically trained upright bassist and his lifelong experiences within the hip-hop, punk, hardcore, and electronic music communities.

30.
by 
Album • Apr 03 / 2020
Neo-Psychedelia Art Rock
Popular Highly Rated

The earliest releases of Yves Tumor—the producer born Sean Bowie in Florida, raised in Tennessee, and based in Turin—arrived from a land beyond genre. They intermingled ambient synths and disembodied Kylie samples with free jazz, soul, and the crunch of experimental club beats. By 2018’s *Safe in the Hands of Love*, Tumor had effectively become a genre of one, molding funk and indie into an uncanny strain of post-everything art music. *Heaven to a Tortured Mind*, Tumor’s fourth LP, is their most remarkable transformation yet. They have sharpened their focus, sanded down the rough edges, and stepped boldly forward with an avant-pop opus that puts equal weight on both halves of that equation. “Gospel for a New Century” opens the album like a shot across the bow, the kind of high-intensity funk geared more to filling stadiums than clubs. Its blazing horns and electric bass are a reminder of Tumor’s Southern roots, but just as we’ve gotten used to the idea of them as spiritual kin to Outkast, they follow up with “Medicine Burn,” a swirling fusion of shoegaze and grunge. The album just keeps shape-shifting like that, drawing from classic soul and diverse strains of alternative rock, and Tumor is an equally mercurial presence—sometimes bellowing, other times whispering in a falsetto croon. But despite the throwback inspirations, the record never sounds retro. Its powerful rhythm section anchors the music in a future we never saw coming. These are not the sullen rhythmic abstractions of Tumor\'s early years; they’re larger-than-life anthems that sound like the product of some strange alchemical process. Confirming the magnitude of Tumor’s creative vision, this is the new sound that a new decade deserves.