In recent weeks, Olivia Rodrigo and Charli xcx have been the targets of "open letters" from their respective fans, which go beyond expressing disappointment over their new singles. In Rodrigo's case, one fan complained that her song "drop dead" had too many "similarities to other artists" without providing evidence, and criticized her for blocking country artist Ella Langley from the top of the Billboard charts (despite her currently being number one). Meanwhile, another fan demanded a "proper rock album," as if she hadn't done rock-inspired fare for her entire career.
Wagner Ribeiro de Souza wasn't carrying much in his backpack. A local compilation of techno, house and jungle hits, a couple of news clippings and a VHS tape with footage from the club where he played weekly: small fragments of a music scene that he, under the moniker DJ Patife, and some friends were building in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was 1998. He had travelled to London to talk his way into the office of Movement, one of Britain's most important drum'n'bass nights, with a single goal: pitching an edition of the party in Brazil.
It comes in the final 10 minutes. It's 2023: a euphoric high point in Kylie's career. Padam Padam, the first single from Kylie's 16th album, Tension, has just been released. Then the words One More Thing flash across a black screen. Cut to present-day Kylie arriving at the studio, singing songs from Tension with her longstanding team of British songwriters.
Turning 80 is probably not something Cher places much importance on after all, conventions and expectations have never mattered much to her. Her fearlessness has made her one of the greatest icons in pop music history. Alongside her unique contralto voice, instantly recognizable to generations of listeners, it is above all her versatility and willingness to try new things that have led artists like Lady Gaga and Beyonce to cite her as an inspiration.
UNTER STRØM debuts with “Orynth,” an exhilarating track released through the renegade label Breathing Records. The duo, comprised of seasoned artists Alex Gonzales (known for his work as Matte Blvck) and John Kunkel (of The New Division and John Grand fame), seeks to broaden the horizons of techno, melodic house, and industrial music.
Now serving window number three. Welcome to the United States Immigration Center. Can I see your passport? Green card? Birth certificate, please? And what is your occupation, sir? A rapper? A rapper? OK.
“Pushing the most Iranian elements right up against the most American ones brought me a certain kind of joy.” As the United States has escalated its attacks on Iran, there's something pleasingly transgressive about bringing Iranian elements into such overtly Western music-so much so that the songs without Yaghmai's playing seem a little subdued in comparison.
“I've been a music producer for well over 12 years, trying to crack the electronic music scene for a very long time,” says Pearce. But it wasn't until Pearce became a father that he cracked a market no one saw coming, toddler techno! “I was in my home studio trying to make bangers, but the only melodies in my head were nursery rhymes,” he says.
“Together” features Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza, and Prentiss in a pastiche of samples and electronic melodies that play like the stuttering but pleasant memories of a floppy disk over a dance beat. The song strikes an emotional, dream-like tone midway through with the singer conjuring nostalgia through technology: “Staring at a picture on my phone/ Staring at a memory that's old.”
“Black,” the second single from Ray Noir's forthcoming EP Gothstar, is a vibrant blend of high-camp rave and metalcore that navigates themes of excess, identity, and queer empowerment. This audacious track is designed for both the dancefloor and the mosh pit, showcasing a sound that's both loud and unapologetically eccentric.
In 2023, she begged for time in Smith's shuttered archives, discovering hours of non-American music, before learning to perform and share it. Marisa Anderson: The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music Vol 1 Here, Anderson interprets nine of these tunes, pointedly taken from regions shaped by major US conflicts since her birth in 1970. While her fascinating liner notes track what is lost and found when trying to translate these compositions, their universal musicality still cuts through.
Like many dot-com era ideas ushered into use just below the radar in the early 2000s, the Discogs project was poised to solve a niche problem. Floating among the flotsam web forums and message boards were calls for what, in theory, would be an IMDb (Internet Movie Database) for vinyl records-an online place to catalog and organize data for physical albums.
The “lightbulb” moment behind Electronic Music Club (EMC) started when Erik Carlson, founder of EMC and a piano teacher of 12 years at the time, was in the middle of a lesson when his student announced that he was “sick of piano” and would rather be making techno instead.
She didn't click for me until earlier this year, when I heard her reach a flow state over Gloworm's 4XL white tee era trap horns on " Hello Moto." A few months back, I went to a Bushwick bar to see her perform, but showed up too late and only caught one song, which I could barely make out through a wall as a couple tongued each other down next to me. It still sounded pretty cool, though.
He called her Roxanne. He spent, by most accounts, an afternoon on the thing. Possibly a long lunch. Certainly less time than I will have spent writing this column. That song, in February 2022, helped Sting hand his entire songwriting catalogue, some six hundred tunes, to Universal Music Publishing for a reported $300 million. Roughly £240 million in real money. For lyrics scribbled on hotel notepads, in the back of tour buses, occasionally in the bath.
Having survived both the wild winds of the pandemic and the wild swings of the music industry, the Pacific Mambo Orchestra remains grounded and surprisingly invigorated. Led since 2010 by co-founders trumpeter Steffen Kuehn and pianist Christian Tumalan, the Grammy-winning, 20-piece ensemble recently released a new MP3 single, “Suite Tito Puente.” In the track's 12:33 minutes can be heard the unexpected mix people ironically expect from PMO: modern arrangements of classic Latin jazz music, traditional salsa tunes and boleros, covers of American jazz standards and R&B hits, and classical music such as Tumalan's mambo arrangement of Rachmaninoff's “Concerto #2 for Piano and Orchestra.”
