what areas of music are actually exciting to you in music, in 2018

Yeah, I basically have a friend who's cooler / more plugged-in than me and tells me about stuff he thinks I'd like.

I'm fortunate to have a decent college radio station where I am and, I swear, I get turned on to more stuff I had no idea about there than I do any place else online or off.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, April 16, 2018 7:21 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea we have two really incredible college radio stations in cleveland and i am consistently turned on to new (and new to me) stuff all the time

but those I guess are all mostly still retro stuff that I just never heard before and not necessarily contemporary stuff

the salesman thing tho, is it an illusion that there were ever many scenes that didn't have some kind of sales angle, idk

Twitter: “Beyoncé just...”

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real talk though, basically just experimental electronic music and African rock bands

the salesman thing tho, is it an illusion that there were ever many scenes that didn't have some kind of sales angle, idk

― marcos, Monday, April 16, 2018 6:34 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

everything wants to be sold obv but i feel like its all aiming for the same places

I doubt you and I have much of anything to say to each other about music, but I'll take the thread title at face value and say that jazz is fucking incredible right now. There's a whole school of players, almost all under 35, coming out of the UK who are making music in a very community-oriented way; they all play on each other's albums, they're almost all on Bandcamp and just doing it for the love of doing it. Yes, they have publicists, but the art is the point. I recommend:

• anything Shabaka Hutchings is involved with (Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming, Shabaka and the Ancestors)
• Nubya Garcia (recording on her own and as a member of Maisha and Nérija)
• Ezra Collective
• Ill Considered and Wildflower (two groups with several overlapping members)

And don't miss the We Out Here compilation.

There's a ton of great US players, too, way too many to list here. I'm doing a column for Stereogum running down 15 new albums every month and I'm constantly leaving great records out.

stara rzeka, innercity ensemble, polish underground

everything wants to be sold obv but i feel like its all aiming for the same places

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, April 16, 2018 7:40 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQLi-sroW8ioFCrU0PaEDM0VuWJImGQVp3UEwPabeB4iRXQ5EP6

the Sahelsounds label

Is this another thread for music critics

Memphis and Detroit rap scenes

Definitely agree with this, will add the Bay as well.

Not following any particular trends. Either it’s existing artists with new records (beach house, us girls, iam) or things I get turned on to by here or friends

ambient/drone music is in a good place right now imo

some of my favorites from the past few years: Sarah Davachi, Pulse Emitter, Steve Hauschildt, Evan Caminiti, Klara Lewis, Loscil, Noveller, Panabrite, Andrew Pekler, Christopher Willits, Matthewdavid's Mindflight, Jonas Reinhardt, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Les Halles, Taylor Deupree, Marcus Fischer, Celer

these artists all sound different but they all make music that to me is futuristic & transportive

Is this another thread for music critics

― brimstead, Monday, April 16, 2018 6:49 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its a thread for ilxors

feels like everything 'talked about' seems to come through the same PR matrix and if I find something dope outside my immediate scope of vision its 8-14 months late & it slipped in w/ a 7.6 at pitchfork but was never talked about again

I very much relate to this, as I'm sure do many ILXors who started or revived threads that go nowhere because everyone is talking about the same five things. It's weird when even hyped stuff seems to fizzle out immediately. Everyone talked about that new Nils Frahm album (which I loved) for like three days and now it seems like it's already a distant memory. I'm guessing this is even tougher on newer artists who can't exactly build careers on a half week's worth of positive tweets and a few nice reviews.

Sadly (or not), I'm starting to resign myself to not having a virtual community (social media, ILX) of people to talk about music with. It's also made me question what there is to gain from this kind of discourse in the first place. Unfortunately I don't know many people in real life who are trying to collect all the Workshop 12"s, nerding out about Ali Akbar Khan, or watching Brian Blade videos on Youtube. It's fun to be able to talk to someone about how great something you just discovered is, but increasingly it feels like either my tastes are more specialized than they were five years ago (they aren't), or there's just simply too much music for everyone to keep up with, and zero consensus outside of the same handful of pop star celebrities (who I care nothing about).

I have enjoyed U.S. Girls, Katie Dey and Black Dresses.

In general though, I'm feeling incredibly down about music in 2018. I feel like a part of my brain that enjoys recorded music has been coloured and twisted by "a loss of faith in the good intentions of my fellow humans."

My bf has been rather cheekily getting into "the whitest available music", like, trying to out-white me or something. Shortly after everybody started to finally cancel Morrissey, he rather loudly became a Smiths fan. He is now smirkingly asking me what Radiohead albums he should get. I am instead going to get him into Portishead.

Lots of great house records still coming out all the time, all over the world. It doesn't sound exciting, but it is.

underground house and techno is best, go to warehouse raves deej

Les Halles is great, I love their super soothing degraded panpipes thing. I agree that it's a great era for ambient/drone, at least stuff that rhymes with my aesthetic vibe

(Xp to crut)

The whole afro-dystopic non records / ptp thing is giving me life — geng, embaci, wwwwings, chino amobi, dedekind cut, more I can’t think of ...

vaporwave
although the golden era has passed, the sheer amount of it should be enough to last me a decade at least

underground house and techno is best, go to warehouse raves deej

― the late great, Monday, April 16, 2018 7:44 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im going to movement in may. i should reconnect w friends i know who are doing this sort of thing here though

i tried checking out beats in space & felt like i was constantly getting boring deep techno sets, and occasionally getting good ones

or like, ppl flipping over the same exact music they've been playing in those sets for like ten years now ... im very aware womack & womack had a good album in the late 80s but it feels odd ppl are still throwing 'missing persons bureau' into their mixes now

i still love it but beats in space is stuck in mid-00s beardo disco amber ya. nts, bcr more /cutting edge/

sheesh they’re called anthems

and we’ve already talked about the emphasis on continuity in disco culture cmon man this is like real house music 101

i’m not really into any particular podcast or other more into the vibe at parties

though if you find the deep house and techno vibe boring i guess it’s just different strokes for different folks

ag / experimental scene is still really great here. no good rock bands. maybe a couple. the bands i've loved for a while that still tour and/or make records. underground house & techno via a coworker. would go to raves but major sobriety risk also even when i did do drugs 11pm - 6am was just ridiculous, so rough. discovering old music. classics i never got around to. occasionally a set will blow me away. if i see at least 5 great shows in a year i'm happy.

also yes the house techno scene in the us skews toward old ppl i think and it makes me feel young to hear the music of my youth, more often than it makes me feel old anyway

im not saying all deep house/techno is boring!! ive been listening to it for 15+ years lol

i just feel out of touch & the stuff ive come into contact w/ feels kind of *coughs* zone of fruitless intensification but with like ~vibes~ instead of drum programming

zone of fruitless intensification but with like ~vibes~ instead of drum programming

hmm that's an interesting take on it!

can not believe you aren’t excited about a whole generation of house DJs with names like DJ Eddie the Dog from Frasier

you're named whiney g weingarten

adding MPB to my next set thx deej

fwiw to contribute to things/scenes i find legit interesting here are my rap contributions:

underground memphis epitomized by blocboy jb shoot which inspired an alright i guess drake collab, but also just random youtube finds in that lane like co cash and young n ruthless and big boogie and fast cash boyz

also detroit stuff like sada + drego's blxck party but also cash kidd and FMB DZ and Babyface ray

adding MPB to my next set thx deej

― flopson, Monday, April 16, 2018 8:11 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Folk Version" is best IMO you can find it in my 2009 'summer luau luv' mix

btw i thought the jazz post upthread was a Good contribution

speaking of jazz, the hailu mergia album from this year ruled ass to me

Relating to the realm of Calzino's above recommendations, Bandcamp and its social/following functionality is really where my attention and discoveries are directed and stemming from these days, especially in the realms of jazz, electronic music and metal.

(I'm not on any streaming services proper because the one service that I really got a lot out of, Rdio, went out of business like three years ago or so, and what I loved about that site was being able to follow people/fans/artists whose taste I was drawn to and keep track of what they were adding to their collections, which Bandcamp now does swimmingly IMO)

Also, NTS rules IMO, especially the Do!!You!!! Breakfast Show, which is exactly the sort of mix of music styles I want to anaesthetize my day job slog to

Well, there’s always dancehall, reggae and soca. Popcaan - and to a lesser but still considerable extent Alkaline - have been on fire this year. But no one seems to care outside of those already playing attention. It’s frustrating, but it also means the scene stays pure.

I like the areas of music where there is a deckchair with a beer next to it, and a bank holiday has just been let out on remand and is heading this way.

The council throws out a lot of this stuff but if you're brave enough they have some down at the docks as well. I don't know the names of these records because classification is a form of oppression and anathema to airiness and carefree days. Facebook collaborating with the bizzies once again. Occasionally I remember some of this data but I try and think of something else quickly if this misfortune arises

NTS has been a total gamechanger for me in recent months - even if I don't have time to listen to a particular show, the fact they publish tracklists means I can tell if something is going to be of interest to me based on name recognition or lack thereof.

Beats In Space I don't check in to with the same regularity of even two or three years ago but I think that's because so many sets on it now seem centred on midtempo arpeggiated disco with not much more going on.

A lot of stuff that really excites me is coming from that "misfit club music" scene - stuff that takes the hard drums of grime and techno and the rhythms of funky/garage and the sound design of, well, anything. But a lot of that stuff seems to exist in 128kps Soundcloud rips and poorly tagged mp3s and to me that makes it harder to keep afloat of what's going on properly. I mean I'm not an audiophile snob but the ramshackle approach means you're never sure if you're listening to an official compilation or someone's hastily-filled Soulseek folder.

also the Music From Memory and associated ~weirdo reissues~ scene. A lot of this stuff is really good and it's exciting to see a timeline and story emerge that runs alongside the standard canon.

yeah nts is a perfect gateway into lots of different scenes. it can be a bit hit and miss but every now and again i hear a show where a whole new little hidden kingdom opens up before me. of course that depends on where you're starting from, but there's a diversity to the programming, a lack of concern for commercial considerations and a very non-hierarchical, diy approach that keeps it really fresh.

Well, there’s always dancehall, reggae and soca. Popcaan - and to a lesser but still considerable extent Alkaline - have been on fire this year. But no one seems to care outside of those already playing attention. It’s frustrating, but it also means the scene stays pure.

― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Tuesday, April 17, 2018 7:57 AM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Surprised dancehall, soca etc haven't been mentioned more in this thread. Soca and its many permutations (jab, chutney) is a font of fun and inventiveness right now.

Also, very little mention of African and Afro-centric music - afrobeats, afro-pop, African house, rock bands like Jupiter & Okwess, and also mad 190bpm Sounds of Sisso/Shangaan stuff, there's something for everyone in there and more often than not it's remarkable.

speaking of jazz, the hailu mergia album from this year ruled ass to me

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, April 17, 2018 2:19 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes it's a beautiful bit of work. The title track especially puts a smile on my face. There's a track on there that reminds me of Chop Suey by System of a Down (!!!?!)

I'm not sure what the visa situation is these days but if you can get down to Boundary Park or Perm there's still some bargains to be found in amongst the discarded centre halfs

Co-signing on young UK jazz, and on afro-centric.... and especially on NTS, who I discovered in February when Flo from the breakfast show bought some records from me on Discogs. Their archive is phenomenal, this 3.5 hour Floating Points/Four Tet live DJ set in particular: https://www.nts.live/shows/four-tet/episodes/four-tet-and-floating-points-live-from-brilliant-corners-10th-july-2017

ha i'm listening to flo right now - what did she buy from you?

UK urban music, drill and afro-basement and so on. It feels like we're at one of those points where UK people are taking sounds from elsewhere (US rap, dancehall, afrobeats) and making something new out of them like we've seen with jungle, garage, grime etc in the past, so it's good

I have enjoyed U.S. Girls, Katie Dey and Black Dresses.

omg yes! there's a scene of trans electronic artists who are all friends with each other and they're basically putting out a zillion albums right now and it's all fire

the scene was nicely overviewed in the following compilation a few weeks ago

https://blacksquares.bandcamp.com/album/out-of-flux-with-the-universe

don't overlook the Girls Rituals solo album either

https://gameoflife.bandcamp.com -- kozepz, in particular
https://gameoflife.bandcamp.com/album/kozepz-part-to-grow
https://kozepz.bandcamp.com/album/plumdub-1-explorations
^^Ciat-Lonbarde stuff

https://xuiqen.bandcamp.com/album/moir (excellent, Autechre-like music)
https://uiqmusic.bandcamp.com/album/glasz-uiq0005 (not so Autechre-like, but pretty dope)

people making music with Ciat-Lonbarde instruments, semi-modular, synth demos etc. - a lot of it on YouTube (and SoundCloud) - artists like Ann Annie, Adam Borseti, r beny (more ambient-ish), Ehsan Gelsi, Funk Tree, Hainbach, Caspar Hesselager (Make Noise "shared system" patching), Alex Knoll, Lightbath, C Nich0lls, Jogging House (minimal / ambient).. demos by DivKidVideo, Mylar Melodies, Knobs, LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER (entertaining, mad scientist ischt)

I would've highlighted ann annie.. it's a bit quaint, boutique-y

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf_l8F01d2RtvoVf0R1-lHg/videos
choice: https://youtu.be/wHD1WlF0nN0
https://youtu.be/8WDNgfnZ3HM

ha i'm listening to flo right now - what did she buy from you?

Philip Bailey - Children Of The Ghetto (12")
Womack & Womack - Radio M.U.S.C. Man (LP)
Fern Kinney - Beautiful Love Song (12")
Alisha - Baby Talk (12")

nice! pretty sure i heard her or charlie bones play that last one because i have it written down on a scrap of paper from a couple of weeks back

Italian power metal
doing the bandcamp thing where you buy a whole label's discography for half price or less - I got a Russian ambient label's whole catalog & it's a whole world unto itself
tech / shredder metal, the strictly uncoolest stuff made by dudes for whom Rush is way too basic and Dream Theater's not hard enough

UK drill is mainly enjoyable to me as karma for Britishes ilxors who mocked Chief Keef having to listen to nth gen iterations of his music for the forseeable future but is kind of unlistenable to me past that

Afrobeats stuff like j hus is killer though

In seriousness thanks for NTS Radio, I’d seen before but never dug around really. What is it that makes this feel so much better than whatever red bull is trying to do? Is it just the lack of Corp branding

yeah there's that but also -though it skews towards electronic and dance orientated sounds- prime time slots are also shared with shows dedicated to prog and medieval plainchant and opera and rap and metal and drone. there seems to be less selection of djs based on the sort of music people play, it's kind of a crazy melting pot tbh

I'm lucky enough to have lost near-complete interest in playing bands no one has ever heard of. I'm reading books as a main hobby now.
I try to let things come my way and to have a sort of organic relation with what people around me listen to. I try to listen to hits too. Basically I'm like a mollusk attached to its rock and gleaning particles when it feels like opening its mouth. I still have my RYM account, and obviously roam here from time to time, but I'm very selective and only download a couple things here and there.
As for genres, I'm happy to know that the turn of the 80s (synthpop, new wave etc) and more recent classics (all genres really) will never be exhausted for me. I also tend to like music from all over the globe, but without feeling the need to listen to 100 samba records or to every southern soul single ever.
These days I mostly care about my afro-hits playlist. I try to avoid American stuff because I don't relate to it / don't like the current sound.

A lot of stuff that really excites me is coming from that "misfit club music" scene - stuff that takes the hard drums of grime and techno and the rhythms of funky/garage and the sound design of, well, anything. But a lot of that stuff seems to exist in 128kps Soundcloud rips and poorly tagged mp3s and to me that makes it harder to keep afloat of what's going on properly. I mean I'm not an audiophile snob but the ramshackle approach means you're never sure if you're listening to an official compilation or someone's hastily-filled Soulseek folder.

I mostly find new stuff via Twitter, radio shows (NTS/Rinse, Radar but not anymore), and following labels on Bandcamp etc.

Deej I'm sure most of that music isn't to your tastes but it's consistently exciting for me. Not all of it, but the best is totally worthwhile.

I've come to accept that I'll never be one of the forward scouts in the Endless Quest for Obscurity, but then again, I'm neither a journalist nor a musician nor a record dealer nor a producer. Part of what has made it increasingly less appealing to me over the years is its implied exclusivism: you have no choice but to focus on a given genre at a time, two at the most, at the expense of all others, lest you fall behind, which is bound to happen anyway due to, well, overpopulation. I also try to listen to every album that comes my way at least twice (unless I absolutely loathe it from the get-go), which also runs counter to the ephemerality of rummaging through Bandcamp/Soundcloud and their ilk. More often than not, I don't really know if I like a record upon first hearing it. I'd rather give it the benefit of the doubt, which requires time, time that's taken away from scavenging about.

I used to be a "three listens per album" guy and it eventually got stiffling, not just because I wasn't keeping up w/ everyone but also because giving an album another listen even though it didn't grab me started to feel like a chore. Now I try to just let my instincts guide me with that stuff, which does end up meaning I have a very shallow understanding of most of the stuff I end up listening to. Can't win!

I’m not interested in chasing obscurity so much as an experience of music not shaped by the lame social pressure of the media bubble

Digging around nts I’m finding some cool shit, one thing that always confuses me abt stuff like this is when they have house or techno djs they’ll have like Theo Parrish but when it comes to hip hop it’s some dude playing future and grime or someone like Wiki doing a “Dj set” but never like actual us rap DJs

It seems pretty clear that if you want to find good music outside that's not served up by a Spotify algorithm or PR money, then you need to either put some active work into investigating a scene you're interested in, or have some sort of connection/involvement with people who do that.

The media bubble is all about vying for visibility so I'd argue that obscurity or, if you prefer, invisibility is what you're looking for. One 'solution' is to pay more attention to stuff that always has been and will no doubt remain nested in a blind spot from the perspective of hype capitalism such as contemporary classical music (and I don't mean the crossover/boomkat stuff) but that assumes you care for its sounds to begin with. Basically: do you want music that could stylistically fit into the media bubble but doesn't because there's not enough room for everyone, hence perpetuating the narrative according to which quality control exerts itself via competitive markets, or music that is excluded (and that excludes itself) by definition?

just listen to old music

It seems pretty clear that if you want to find good music outside that's not served up by a Spotify algorithm or PR money, then you need to either put some active work into investigating a scene you're interested in, or have some sort of connection/involvement with people who do that.

― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, April 17, 2018 11:19 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah I mean at some level I do already have this in Chicago, but it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees this way and I guess i just miss pre algo internet where obscure & popular could end up on the same level

Where I’m looking at an overview

when it comes to hip hop it’s some dude playing future and grime or someone like Wiki doing a “Dj set” but never like actual us rap DJs

I don't feel like rap is a DJ's medium these days...DJs get overshadowed by producers who really get overshadowed by rappers.

you should go to that club in chicago that has the sweet metal shows. i would. power trip are coming. could change your life.

put this on your calendar too. may 25th.

BÖLZER
DØDHEIMSGARD (Norway)
SUFFERING HOUR
DUMAL
KOMMANDANT

just listen to old music

Also good advice. I just got a 2CD set by Anthony Braxton, originally released in 1991, and it's great.

how do actual us rap djs play actual us rap these days?

It feels as a wrong scene when the whole point is to find music unblemished by PR, but discovering K-pop was as electric an experience as any I've had. Later replicated by delving into afro-beats/azonto/afropop/pop-music-mostly-from-anglophone-West-Africa-but-now-also-quite-a-lot-from-francophone-West-Africa-or-even-from-East-Africa-yay-Sauti-Sol or whatever you want to call it. In other words, I think there are as many scenes as before to dive into, they're just located somewhere else. Or they're digital, like NON or Quantum Natives or something like that. But they exist.

my question was where!!

also idk what it'll take to be sold on kpop but i think short of learning korean ive yet to 'get it'

how do actual us rap djs play actual us rap these days?

― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Tuesday, April 17, 2018 3:21 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

through serato?

im not really clear on what that question is. there are lots of rap djs in every major city in america

my question was where!!

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), 17. april 2018 22:44 (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure :) Just a general observation. If you want my best advice, it would be to follow the rolling afro-pop thread on this board, that's kinda keeping me alive through rainy days.

just responding to your "but never like actual us rap DJs" - i interpreted it as "but never like actual us rap DJs do" but I'm guessing now you meant that the djs who were playing rap were not actual us rap djs, lol.

yah just that they never book them, it all feels much more filtered through a uk lens (w/ a couple exceptions)

I guess because most of those internet stations are located in London, although NTS has an L.A. studio too.

American House and Techno DJs have huge inbuilt audiences in the UK, tour here all the time, etc. - US Hip-Hop DJs not so much.

its funny my favorite records of 2018 are Andrew W.K. and Cornelius. these are old acts i followed for around 20 years by now.

i'm never one to listen to the new popular stuff. i've never heard an Arcade Fire album. there are some acts i follow but mostly i am interested in listening to recorded music. there is so much music already made, made in a time when it was way more demanding to make and record music, incredible things just waiting to be discovered. i love discovering classic albums i am only just getting around to hearing, like Cheap Trick's debut.

as for current pop music, i never know what to expect, what really excites me is the internet, the idea that someone could create a song so massive that it becomes a global phenomenon. a song detached from the previous music industry, which doesn't need promotion or payola to become popular, a song that blows up and isn't just a one-day meme but a globally recognized Classic Song. the post-internet global market is new, it may only be a matter of time before someone strings together the right chords/words/sound combinations.

The rolling experimental misfit thread is really good rn, interesecting a bit with a lot of things mentioned here (non records, sounds of sisso comp)

Music with a spring in its step, its hat askew, and a glint in its eye. long raking passes into dream state also allowed.

I was super into music with a spring in its step, its hat askew, and a glint in its eye in 2016 but lately the scene seems a bit tired.

This thread was a pretty good predictor of my tastes this year

How about another vibe check on this.

agreed

Coupe Decalé is the most out-there "whoa I haven't heard anything like this" music I've heard in recent times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2jjSf2T2kc

francophone africa seems to consistently produce great & unique sounds

I still think this stuff is really exciting
Thraed of Nigerian Cruise / Freebeat

I find it a little weird how 'the west' seems more interested in dj tobzy imole giwa than dj yk mule, considering the latter is clearly bigger & more central to the sound locally. feels like outsiders getting into whats Weird instead of whats good. Not that weird is bad