The New Monday is an eclectic set of rhythm vehicles caught in traffic somewhere between hip-hop, spiritual jazz, and the psychedelic fringe of techno. It fully invests in several directions at once, offering a warmly disorienting maze in its ping-ponging structure. This is Shigeto returning to Detroit, trying on its signature sounds, and realizing they fit better together than anything he’s done before.
I’ve been thinking even more about the future since my son was born. Considering that science fiction and futurism are some of my biggest passions, that means a lot. I’ve curated this focused mindset with the help of some very specific sounds along the way, and I decided it’s time to share them.
This might be my best mixtape yet. Each one has been a self portrait of a specific slice of my life, and Deep Future is no exception. It is simply the most accurate reflection of my own private future. This is an adventure under hazy cyberpunk sunsets and new age neon skylines. A glowing mesh of deep house beats and world music textures cocoon the listener. It’s the sound of tomorrow’s dreams.
In an interview with Pitchfork last week, Oneohtrix Point Never explained how he needs weird breakages and colliding contrasts to happen for music to feel truthful, and how this also applies to all good film scores. After listening to his soundtrack for Good Time, a new film by the Safdie brothers, reading this passage felt like a tiny lightbulb flickering on.
It’s the rough, distinctive patina surrounding everything he’s ever recorded, the philosophy underpinning the very reason his music is so often astonishing. It’s something he’s expressing most clearly on this, a movie score that basically functions as a proper new album.
This mix explores the cyberpunk dream world where deep techno and hip-hop meet.
It’s a reflection of where my head is at in early 2017, meshing flights of fancy with the hard texture of life right now. Everything feels weird, glowing with potential for catastrophe and catharsis. Every day is spent finding a new sense of balance, eyes finding the horizon.
Three years ago, Actress, aka English musician Darren Cunningham, dropped the apocalyptic, noise-damaged Ghettoville and promptly announced that he was retiring the moniker for good. Sure, he was cryptic, but there aren’t many ways to interpret “bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image,” or “R.I.P Music 2014.” The album was maybe the best album of the year so it would have been a grand finale.
As it turns out, Cunningham’s eulogy was mercifully premature. He just released a new Actress single, and it’s a revelation for anyone familiar with his work. X22RME sounds like a whole new evolution for the artist. Check the video:
An Act of Love is a gentle midnight surprise, music as pulsing revelation birthed in the moment between waking and tumbling into dreams. It comes on ominously before dissolving into inescapable rhythm, leaving a breadcrumb trail through memory toward some warm place half-recalled.
R23X is about to make a much larger name for himself in the nebulous sound world curated by the Dream Catalogue label. VELTAHL is a striking moment of clarity sustained over 20 tracks of kaleidoscopic digital fantasia. It’s an explosion of crystalline tones and warped samples, adventure music for kids who grew up on pixelated visions of the future.
Optimistic Underground 