It’s a bold move to title your first album Legacy, but by 2013 Kavain Space had earned the right. The Chicago producer, better known as RP Boo, was already legendary in his hometown, having spent the mid […]
Highway: Monochrome
Seattle-raised vocalist Highway is the kind of rapper-producer who understands that well-curated vibes are their own art form. He orbits the same universe as many other somber rap-crooners, but he’s not as emotionally distant as Dro […]
Memotone: How Was Your Life?
Bristol’s Will Yates makes music inspired by folk rituals and ley lines—music of landscape and weather, of legend and myth. Recording under the aliases Half Nelson, O.G. Jigg, and, mainly, Memotone, he has made records based […]
Madison McFerrin: I Hope You Can Forgive Me
Madison McFerrin has many sides: She is lonely, she is scared, she is godly, she is trying. On her debut full-length, I Hope You Can Forgive Me, the Brooklyn singer-songwriter explores the joys and pitfalls of […]
Oval: Romantiq
If you’re worried about the fate of your favorite musicians in the face of AI, consider the case study that is Markus Popp. In the early 1990s, recording under the name Oval, Popp became synonymous with […]
Midwife / Vyva Melinkolya: Orbweaving
Madeline Johnston and Angel Diaz make music at the intersection of beauty and sorrow. In Johnston’s pensive, minimalist work as Midwife, she finds moments of soul-stirring radiance amid thick clouds of synth and guitar. As the […]
Lucy Liyou: Dog Dreams (개꿈)
The title of Lucy Liyou’s second album, Dog Dreams (개꿈), comes from an elastic Korean concept of the fleeting nonsensical visions we have, whether they’re quaint reveries or ghoulish fears. Liyou’s new record considers both with gut-wrenching […]
Daft Punk: Random Access Memories (10th Anniversary Edition)
It was a provocative thought: What if, Daft Punk wondered, we take our retro flirtations and lean all the way in? Is it the moment to fully consummate a Pharrell connection that stretches back over 12 years? […]
Cusp: You Can Do It All
For a while, any band with a Big Muff pedal and a tower of stacked Marshalls was stamped as a Dinosaur Jr. understudy, and some of them courted the comparison firsthand. But lately, the tides have […]
Alison Goldfrapp: The Love Invention
Beyond the Juicy Couture rhinestones and TMZ flashbulbs of 2000s tabloid culture lay another, cheekier way of keeping up appearances: high glam. Arty flamboyance strutted through the aughts pop industrial complex, offering up outré, high-fashion […]
Ofege: Try and Love
According to Soundway Records boss Miles Cleret’s liner notes to the 2008 compilation Nigeria Rock Special: Psychedelic Afro-Rock & Fuzz Funk in 1970s Nigeria, the Afrobeat movement wasn’t that nation’s most popular musical style of the […]
The Dead C: Harsh 70s Reality
In spring 1997, when the increasingly obtuse New Zealand trio the Dead C had been releasing records and tapes for about 10 years, Pavement appeared on the cover of Pulse!, formerly the in-house promotional arm of Tower Records. […]