The2010s is music journalism at its deepest and most thoughtful. In an era of instant reactions, hot takes and public relations disguised as criticism, we’ve tried to craft a site that moves at its own deliberate pace. We’ve interviewed Grammy winners, collected and dissected the best music of the last decade and garnered tens of thousands of listens on our podcast. Now, we’re asking for your support. Before you check out our recommendations, please go to our Patreon page and consider chipping in a few bucks. We’ve got perks from custom made playlists to behind the scenes content and are honored to have your support.
Beauty in terror. For those unfamiliar, this is what Tim Hecker wields. It’s become more obvious over the last few years, with his scoring work for the pulverizing cold of The North Waters and the creeping dread of the younger Cronenburg’s Infinity Pool. In his return to a proper solo album, he once again tempers bursts of violence with shattering beauty. No Highs has traces of his last full length, the astounding Konoyo, with blaring synths replicating the sound of jets sweeping across city airspace, delivering payloads of bass daisycutters. But unlike the vibrant Konoyo which shook with rot, spirit and organic processes, Hecker has returned to a cold, mechanical world, meticulous as a master watchmaker. Aided by saxophone baron Colin Stetson, who adds dexterity and muscle to the melodies, No Highs unfurls into the icy abyss, beautiful as it is foreboding.
Principe has been a stalwart, radiant light in the dance world, slinging out discs from the grimiest Lisbon nightclubs. The delirious funk and bumping bass of their roster is unlike anything else on the planet. And DJ Danifox has made its finest gateway drug yet. Though Ansiedade is still filled to the brim with woozy rhythms and chuckling synths, the melodic focus is meditative, focused, resonant. Yes it’ll slay in the most off-kilter club you could imagine, but also fits perfectly in space cadet journeys, with the only guide being Danifox’s grooves. These are funhouse mirror versions of juke, footwork and cumbia, fit for only the most unhinged dancefloors.
“It's a very personal story that's wrapped in a shell of a Science Fiction concept album,” writes Iravu, the one-man black metal hurricane. Iravu might not be ready to talk about what caused the hardship that released the squall that is A Fate Worse Than Home, but even obscured by its sci-fi premise, the album screams with a fiery rage. This is a sad, desperate metal album, synths, strings and guitars swooning as often as they soar.
Dazzlingly prolific Mexican-American maestro Sadness already has three releases this year and promises more just around the corner. Is this split celebrating the joy and sorrow of surviving the winter the best of them? The hell if I know, but alongside fellow nostalgianaut oculi melancholiarum the tender warmth of “lowsun in a glistening” is one of his finest across his sprawling catalog, and the rest of the album follows a similar wistful logic, finding the logical threads between post-rock, emo and metal, fusing them into a unfurling lighters up moment, as likely to enrapture a My Chemical Romance stan as it is an Opeth lifer.
The UK jazz scene seems split between the revelatory meditations of post-colonial diaspora, mixing ancestral music with post-bop cuts (Yazz Ahmed, Shabaka Hutchings) and a steely sect fusing electronic noodlings with cool, collected songs indebted to classical. Norwich outfit Mammal Hands is firmly in the second category, but don’t let that fool you into thinking they can’t be warm and expressive. Gift from the Trees, inspired by a stay in the forest of Wales, is as pastoral and grand as the finest ECM releases, Jordan Smart’s immaculate sax playing replicating bird song, the human voice, the rush of wind through the branches of evergreens. Gift from the Trees reaches the rare balance of sounding mystical, unknowable, while still being deeply familiar and welcoming.
The pseudo-anonymous twinkle rock of South Korea’s Parannoul had never really hit me. Something about the faded shoegaze, mumbled vocals and production apparently done on a microwave oven left me cold. Turns out turning all of this hazy churn into full blown rock was exactly what I needed. After the Night is a sneaky showcase of South Korea’s finest cry-rock scene, with emo standout Asian Glow adding hefty bass, but the real winner is hearing those guitars properly lighting up like fireworks over stirring violins and rocketing drum work. For the folks who felt like they’d been transported by his previous glossy work–-I finally get it.
1 hour, 23 minutes, 15 seconds. Part 1. There’s doom metal, then there’s doom metal. Bell Witch are the genre’s transgressors and transformers, putting forth the scene’s best album in the all encompassing Mirror Reaper in the 2010s, and, now with Future’s Shadow, they are attempting to one up themselves. Yup, this is nearly 90 minutes of one track, serving as just the prelude in a potential trilogy of doom. But that undercuts the musical adventure on display. Humming organs, chanting reminiscent of medieval hymns and bass solos that flutter like they were composed for acoustic guitar tap Future’s Shadow as more than a metal album, swirling somewhere between the moroseness of slow-core and post-rock, while still delivering a thudding, earthquake inducing heaviness.
Gingerbee is a self described “internet band” both in influence and the fact they would have never met without subreddits, tumblr and all sorts of other brainworm producing tunnels. With members contributing from Brazil to Japan, Gingerbee takes strands of scenes then throws them into a particle accelerator and watch the explosions. M83 style build ups, American Football-ass twinkle guitars and sorrowful horns, bit-processed screams that tug at the eardrums? Yup, yup and you bet your ass. And that’s just the first song!
Smooth as fresh silk, cool as the other side of the pillow. As opposed to the meditative qualities of Mammal Hands, Swiss jazz outfit mohs. has little interest in the more introspective forms of post-bop. Instead, like fellow central Europeans Conic Rose, their methodology comes from supreme confidence and tranquility. And they’ve earned that near arrogance with a record as sensuous and sensual as Mirage.