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

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