Central brings a pair of brief but incredible 12″ vinyls that explore the deep, weird ends of techno and house in a way that few artists in 2016 are even attempting. The density of quality here is breathtaking, and sets a high bar for any eventual full-length. Together, this hour of music is some of the freshest sounds I’ve heard all year.
With his 2015 debut LP Elaenia, Floating Points made a startling leap from purely electronic composition to hybrid jazz mastery, using a full band to bring his creations to life for the first time. The album should have been on my best of 2015 list, but I’m doing my best to spread the word going forward.
Recent posts have made clear my newfound obsession with under the radar ambient artist Gigi Masin, especially his Gaussian Curve project. Masin’s incredibly delicate, emotionally heavy music sends me floating, flying, and fantasizing through daydreams with ease.
Nite Funk arrives after years of hot anticipation, fully living up to the cloistered hype that a handful of us have fostered ever since a seemingly one-off single was dropped in 2010. It was a beguiling, dusky pop tune from one of the most unlikely duos in modern music, this perfect forgotten gem, a single song that held the spark of so much untapped potential. This little EP proves that they knew it too.
In the lead-up to the big 4th of July holiday weekend, I’ve spent almost every night working on a new mixtape. I’ve finally got my passion for mixing back and it feels incredible. Instead of months or years between tapes, I hope to make them a regular feature here.
However, this latest mix isn’t quite ready yet. It needs a little more polish before I publish next week. In the meantime, I want to share the best new music I’ve been into all week. At least one of these three things will make your hair stand on end.
6 is the second album from FP-oner, the latest alias of techno legend Fred P, aka Black Jazz Consortium. While his deep house and techno releases under that name became some of the best work I’ve heard all year, I was unaware that he’d dropped a followup to last year’s incredible but under the radar 5, under the new name.
The past two weeks rolled with dark gravity, anchored by the massacre in Orlando that saw 49 people killed in an LGBT dance club. It may be only the latest in a nearly constant string of mass shootings in the US, but it’s the most devastating in my lifetime. I’ll never forget the gut punch of hearing the news.
It’s important to seize on the image of us at our worst, not just to examine how and why, but so we can truly appreciate us at our best. Still, it’s just as important to grasp the good news when we have it. With that in mind, I want to share the great musical discoveries I made in the past couple weeks.
Optimistic Underground 