REC 01
Charli xcx
Magic Metal Montana
♪ art-pop / guitar-popA whole song dedicated to A.G. Cook as collaborator and friend, and it's sweet. Part of Music, Fashion, Film, Charli's fashionably short, first-draft "one for me" record that trades BRAT's club pop and wounded electronics for guitars, and career self-doubt for creativity and gratitude. This one requires familiarity with Charli's whole deal: by now you're supposed to understand she's in on the joke.
REC 02
Neuro… No Neuro
MemLoss
♪ post-glitch ambient minimalismKirk Markarian's record documents the confusion left behind by his speech and memory becoming inconsistent. His music is unrepentantly electronic, honing in on machine-generated tones, oscillations and pads, isolating and sculpting fragments into soundscapes that despite irregular pulses, bleeps and whirs have a chaotic yet cohesive, cosmically attuned flow.
REC 03
Steve Lacy + Erykah Badu
Pure Color
♪ neo-soul / funkErykah Badu has been Lacy's named influence since he was a teenager, and on 'pure colour' she meanders through his loosest soul groove, bending her lines however she likes while he keeps it carefully constructed, singing that she does not recognize herself anymore. In his response verse, he confronts relatives who think he'll turn into his father: 'They don't know shit, take control of me.'
REC 04
Standing on the Corner
Gimmie My Gun
♪ experimental hip-hop / avant-soul collageOff Standing on the Corner II, Gio Escobar's outfit oscillates between gospel keys and blistering guitar solos, part of a heat check that trades accessibility for creative entropy. Their distorted mix of jazz, hip-hop, soul, funk, and spoken word delivers dispatches from a crumbling society where Black and Brown folks pick up the pieces, moving through samples like expert collagists.
REC 05
Benny Blanco + Bb trickz
"Joven y Salvaje"
A simple repeating melodic figure sits over a house-inspired beat while Trickz (last seen on Charli XCX's Brat remix album) delivers verses on the recklessness of youth: "Young and wild / I haven't slept, and it's a Tuesday." Jake Schreier's video moves her through minimalist white space into racing gear before the room erupts in fireworks. A preview of Blanco's fourth album, Hermoso.
REC 06
Kiyasume
silent
♪ experimental bedroom popThe bedroom artist, who died earlier this year, was working on silent before her passing. Where her catalog favored sparse voice-and-guitar 'negative pop songs,' these introduce experimental electronic touches: discombobulation on the jittery 'Wakaranai Koto,' glossy synthesized strings on 'Karaapo.' A gorgeous, bittersweet document of being caught between life and death.
REC 07
Hector & The Malcouns
Ka Rica-Tar
♪ afro-funk / jazzA Munich-based group whose record feels birthed out of the Ethiopian synth-funk lineage, with Western jazz players moving toward the afro-sound. Dinner Music slots it into a run of exile-adjacent grooves that bridge community traditions and studio craft.
REC 08
Four Tet
☼⃝☼⃝◉ ҉⃝O◉◖ƪ❍⊁◞..◟⊀...
The latest dispatch from Kieran Hebden's unpronounceable Wingdings alias, born as a workaround to sneak untraceable loosies onto his 192-hour Spotify playlist. Where 2024's Three ran downbeat, this keeps tempos brisk: half the tracks skate atop house and UK garage grooves. Track five, a crowd-stoking anthem built on modular whorls and an 'I've got feelings' hook lifted from Britney's 'I'm a Slave 4 U,' defines contemporary UK house at its most pleasing, while the opener's slow unfurling against zithers and heartbeats marks his most explicit engagement with Indian music since Morning/Evening.
REC 09
Gangrene
Better Than McDonald's
♪ underground hip-hopShatter the Standards frames the Alchemist and Oh No's Gangrene as the place loops get chosen on the basis of how ugly they are, the pair rapping stoned, angry, and pleased with themselves over samples no sane producer would give a client. It's the deliberate inverse of the smoothed-over daytime client work both men leave at the door.
