| END 2024
The totalitarian Assad regime in Syria falls as rebel forces take over the capital in December.
Donald Trump wins the 2024 US election vs. Kamala Harris, including the popular vote. Republicans achieve a government trifecta.
On Sept 26 Hurricane Helene, a giant category 4 storm, hits the Florida West Coast causing severe flooding. Two weeks later on Oct 10, Milton another powerful Category 5 hurricane, hits the same area, making landfall directly over tunefilter offices on Siesta Key.
Sean “Diddy” Combs arrested for charges of racketeering and sex crimes in Sept.
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The Cure
These are nicely produced songs but we can’t seem to get past Robert Smith’s vocals, which still sound exactly like they did when we were listening to the band back in the 1980s. Back then that slightly off-key winey, nasally sound seemed right for a underground band. Now though, with a full scale production behind them it seems a little out of place, not to mention dated. (Nov '24)
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Central Cee
From Lindsay@NYTimes: ”Central Cee — the British MC who broke into the mainstream in 2023 with “Sprinter,” a nimble collaboration with fellow rapper Dave — teams up with the Puerto Rican rising star Young Miko on this highlight from Cee’s recently released debut LP “Can’t Rush Greatness.” As my colleague Jon Caramanica noted, perfectly describing the appeal of Cee’s signature flow, “Tossed-off triple-syllable rhymes delivered like casual chitchat are just part of what makes Central Cee so effective.” (Jan '25)
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Fievel Is Glauque
From The Quietus: “Flute plays a dominant role on Rong Weicknes, mostly setting a playful tone and occasionally bringing drama with its cascades of sound." We’re calling it schizophrenic French jazz-pop or art-rock. (Oct '24)
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Plastic Estate
This Cardiff Wales based band caught our eye as they were playing The Lexington in London when we were in town. They are channeling some Thompson Twins and Ah Ha with the mellow 80s pop rock vibes. We’re really enjoying some of the songs here. (Oct '24)
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Oranssi Pazuzu
From The Quietus: “Muuntautuja, the title of Oranssi Pazuzu’s sixth album, is Finnish for ‘shapeshifter’, a simple phrase that so elegantly describes the band’s bizarre sound that it’s a wonder they haven’t used it before. Starting out as a particularly adventurous avant-garde black metal band, their sound has gradually morphed into increasingly unrecognisable shapes on subsequent releases, with the progressive black metal of 2013’s Valonielu blossoming into full-blown space rock madness on 2016’s breakthrough Värähtelijä, stepping far beyond the confines of even the most out-there black metal acts to deliver some of the most genuinely disorientating psychedelia to ever emanate from a metal band.” We think disorientating psychedelia is a good way to put it. We’re digging it. (Oct '24)
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The Shovel Dance Collective
From The Quietus: “Shovel Dance Collective’s raison d’être is to find hidden queer histories, feminist narratives and the stories of working people in old English, Irish and Scottish folk music. Into that bargain, they have exhumed plenty of misery lurking in the soil, with songs encoded with fascinating information; sonic documents that are their own kind of archeology. Passed down through oral tradition, and inevitably refashioned over the years, the haunting palimpsests of experience linger in these songs like ghosts. The collective have become adept at tapping into the bleakness, but also drawing out the hope and humanity.” We like this type of music – stuff you’d never hear on the radio unless it was a rogue DJ spinning obscure Celtic folk songs at 2am on a weekday. The vocal’s bassy baritone resonate as much as any of the other traditional instrucments here – the recorder, harmonium, drum or fiddle. (Oct '24)
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Fergus Jones
From The Quietus: “Fergus Jones’ previous work, mostly under the now-shelved Perko alias, has often had a meditative, downtempo bent to it, his productions frequently suited to the warm-up and cool-down hours of a club night, or the hazy comedown of the afters. On his debut album, Ephemera, he takes that angle to further, brilliant depths.” This is enjoyable not just for before or after the club, but nice quiet evenings as well. (Oct '24)
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Ka
We like the church has been about controlling his community theme Ka is touching on ... and we love the old school, 50s style samples in the background. However, his delivery gets a little monotonely repetitive too often to really hold our interest. (Oct '24)
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Moin
From The Quietus: “Moin’s third full-length record sees a sharp retooling of their arsenal, as they fundamentally alter the way they use the human voice. The album is rife with collaborations. Where before samples were murky, ambiguous and hard to place, the vocals here are the result of different artists and writers interpreting the trio’s cold world and embellishing it with their own words. Half of the songs on You Never End are made with vocal collaborators, and the collaborators are always placed front and centre of their tracks, rather than just allowed to become another layer of the miasma.” We appreciate the sort of experimental nature of this as well as the breadth of vocal collaborators featured. It was interesting, but just not good music. (Oct '24)
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Saagara
From The Quietus: “In a globalised world, the word exotic has become increasingly loaded. What’s exotic to you may not be remotely exotic to someone on the other side of the world, and the whiff of orientalism and even primitivism is never far away. Nevertheless, 3 is exotic in its fusion of disparate elements: the occidental electronica of Polish musician Waclaw Zimpel and the Carnatic musical tradition of his four southern Indian collaborators. On their third album together – as it was with the previous two – the ancient and divine sit with the relatively modern and broadly secular. It makes for a wonderfully alien patchwork of sounds where the rich colours bleed into each other to create something vivid and unique.” This is a nice listen of sort of Indian inspired instrumentals. (Oct '24)
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Róis
From The Quietus: “With its bursts of crystalline electronics, darkwave-inflected synths, quaking basslines, industrial beats, tolls-for-thee bell chimes and cold vocal distortions, there is plenty of gloom to be found on Mo Léan, and yet this is only one small part of the record’s emotional scope. For a powerful and shapeshifting vocalist like Róis, real name Rose Connolly, death can be a time of unvarnished beauty, too – explored best on her deeply moving rendition of the hymn ‘Oh Lovely Appearance Of Death’, where her voice cuts sharply through drifting ambient backing – and even of humour; on ‘Death Notices’, she plays the role of a newsreader, their broadcast bookended by a warped theme tune, announcing in deadpan that sadly, today there are no death notices at all. It’s one of a series of short interludes across the record – the rest of which are called ‘Angelus’ after the devotional bells broadcast on Irish television and radio at 6pm each day, directly before the evening news – where the record’s incredibly deft touches of production are best felt.” Mostly ambient or experimental type background sounds, but with some darkly beautiful times such as in ”Oh Lovely Appearance of Death”. (Oct '24)
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Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld
From The Quietus: “The Christian & Mauro of the title are the given names of Blixa Bargeld and Teho Teardo, of course. Dusting them off suggests that what we hear here will somehow skirt closer to the source – the essence of the men themselves. Rome-dwelling Teardo brings the sonics of his extensive back catalogue that has included the soundtracks for Paolo Sorrentino’s The Family Friend and the black comedy of his political masterpiece Il Divo, Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk, as well as collaborations since the 1980s with the likes of Girls Against Boys, Lydia Lunch and Nurse With Wound. His ability to move between cinema, composition in the classical tradition and artists who tend to work in more song-based formats seems to give Bargeld great freedom – throughout Christian & Mauro we hear him present in the manner to which we’ve become accustomed to in recent years. He approaches his art and lyricism in the aleatory manner that always keeps us guessing, marrying the abstract with wildly evocative images stored away in folders that he summons by the powers of divination.” German singy spoken word over some nice background, showtuney type sounds. (Oct '24)
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Alan Sparkhawk
Another one of The Quietus's top 100 of 2024. Alan loves himself some autotune. This is basically pop songs with Alan signing on very aggressive autotune, which when it works for songs like "Heaven" are really good. But it starts to get a little too much when listening to the whole album on autotune. (Sept '24)
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NONPAREILS
Another of Quietus’ Best 100 of 2024, this one has nice production value, uses childrens toy chimes, but we’re finding the vocals sort of underwhelming and lost in the background of the mix. “Opening Chord” is a pretty decent song, but we’re not resonating with much else on this release. (Sept '24)
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Sealionwoman
From The Quietus: “Dark fables of sex and death offer a useful place to start with Sealionwoman. A London-based duo of vocalist Kitty Whitelaw and double bass player Tye McGivern, this pair are doing something entirely new by tapping into a rich seam of traditional folk. Their first album, 2018’s Siren, was all at sea, and set adrift, if you will. For the followup, Nothing Will Grow In The Soil, they’ve crawled onto the dark, desiccated land, and everything is firmer, harder, dryer.” We concur, we think this shit is great. Dark, minimalist until it suddenly isn’t. We can’t wait until the next dinner party when “Charcoal” comes on the playlist and, after 3 minutes of folks putting up with the mellow start everyone completely losses their shit halfway through the song when it turns heavy. (Sept '24)
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Xiu Xiu
From The Quietus: “According to Xiu Xiu, the two motivating forces behind 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletti With Bison Horn Grips were “the destruction of previous aesthetic notions, as well as the band’s recent move from Los Angeles to Berlin”. It’s a typically Xiu Xiu mix of high drama and self-deprecation, but feels very true of the record, which reflects both a deliberate decision to try a different sound, and the more subtle, almost subconscious switches that can come from a change of location and perspective. Expansive post rock opener ‘Arp Omni’ aside, the album is industrial pop music, heavy synth glam, big riffs and capital letters.” At tunefilter HQ here, we haven’t been the biggest fans of Xiu Xiu in the past. It’s usually too frenetic for us without the moments of brilliance that, say a Deerhof would interject. For that reason, we probably resonate with ‘Arp Omni’ more than any other song on this one, but still wouldn’t put this on our heavy rotation. (Sept '24)
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Dialect
We think it’s nice ambient soundscapes that, in addition to incorporating field recordings outright, mimic nature, making for enjoyable soundtrack to your Sunday mornings. (Sept '24)
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Rex Orange County
This is a bit of a weird mix of soulful R&B man crooning over folk songs, piano ballads, and showtune orchestrations. Not our cup of tea. (Sept '24)
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Britt Warner
From the artist: “these tracks were created for the Song A Day For A Month challenge in January of 2021. Each one is improvised and unedited, using a Voice Live Touch 2 looper and one microphone, recording directly into Logic. Melodies, harmonies, and lyrics were all created on the spot, in the moment. That sort of trust-fall into the strong arms of the universe is, I believe, a natural feel we all possess and can tap into under the right circumstances. It's a much different process than "The Ransom" was, since I wrote and produced most of those songs over a longer period of time, worked with other musicians, etc. The Portal is straight from my heart to your ears.” This is a good album. We have Growing Up In Neverland, Revival, and Forgiveness on heavy rotation. (Sept '24)
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Brama
We couldn't figure out what language they're singing in before noticing they are from central France, but we liked how The Quietus described this: “... rollicking power trio fusing folk with 70s hard rock, psych, krautrock ... there are few slow-building drones here; tracks like ‘La Bruma’ burst out of the speakers with such joyous intensity that you can’t help but be swept up in it ... they remind me of Mdou Moctar in the way that they revitalise hoary rock tropes through a combination of local flair, blistering musicianship and infectious enthusiasm.” (Sept '24)
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Fcukers
This is the debut EP release from the NYC-based electronic-dance band. The sound weaves in elements of 90s/00s house, indie dance, and trip-hop, all underpinned by sneaky attitude and sensual vocals. “I Don’t Wanna” is our fav here, but we’d pick “Homie Don’t Shake” to shake up the dance floor a la Wet Leg mixed with Fat Boy Slim. (Sept '24)
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TBD
TBD. (May '23)
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MID 2024
Assassination attempt on Trump occurs at a MAGA rally, Trump’s ear injured as he narrowly avoids death on live television.
The 2024 Summer Olympics begin, hosted in Paris, France.
Charli XCX releases album “Brat”, inspiring ‘Brat Summer’ trend and becoming Collin’s Word of the Year.
In May, OpenAI announces GPT-4o continuing the AI Boom of the Early-Mid 2020s.
Kendrick Lamar releases diss track “Not Like Us” against Drake, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
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Hamish Hawk
We think Hawk, intentionally or not, is sort of a modern-day Morrissey. And we say this with all due respect, but the vocal tones, subject matter and phrasing of this release, and in particular songs such as “Questionable Hit” could be right off of Morrissey’s 1990 release Bona Drag. We like it! (Aug '24)
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TORRES & Fruit Bats
This is a six-song EP created by Mackenzie Scott (TORRES) and Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats), both co-writing, producing, and mixing the project. We like both artists separately, albeit we find TORRES albums to be more scattershot - some great highs, some lows - where as Fruit Bats have a consistence quality throughout. We think Scott brought some of the inconsistances here. A Decoration and Pink Triangle are the stand out songs. (Aug '24)
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Mavi
From The Quietus: “Shadowbox, MAVI’s third album, is a doggedly direct and frequently morose examination of the lows of substance abuse and the depression that can be fuelled by addiction. Set against a bed of equally melancholic and bright, soulful beats, the North Carolina rapper’s lyrics are refreshingly candid as he speaks self-critically of taking Percocets (‘I’m So Tired’) and “pills while mum was making dinner” (‘Tether’), and addresses the long road to recovery and accepting help. It’s a journey that he’s still openly navigating now following the completion and release of Shadowbox, and for that reason, there are few overwhelming moments of salvation sprinkled across the record, but what you get instead is a bracing exploration of the flaws that many of us will see in our own selves as we navigate life.” We love our dark gloomy music, but maybe it’s the rote repetitiveness, this isn’t going to make our heavy rotation. (Aug '24)
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Laura Cannell
From The Quietus: “Laura Cannell’s music shines a modern light on ancient melodies. The East Anglia-based composer draws on the tenets of early music to inform her works, capturing a spectrum of moods in the process. On The Rituals Of Hildegard Reimagined, Cannell looks to one of the beloved composers of medieval monophony, Hildegard von Bingen, for inspiration, crafting her own vignettes inspired by von Bingen’s spiritual melodies. Cannell’s tenth album builds on the composer’s prior work by continuing to showcase wafting music that feels like a refraction and reflection of the past.” These are simple instrumentals often of one or two basic instruments – e.g., a recorder, an oboe, the kalimba, or "thumb piano," maybe run through a little reverb and echo and that’s it. (Aug '24)
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Mild Universe
Local SF band we noticed was playing a free show at the Rickshaw. This is sort elevator music, Kenny G of indie rock. (July '24)
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Clairo
Pretty straightforward easy listening 70’s style pop vocal album. Very easy on the ears. (July '24)
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D'En Haut
This made The Quietus' Top 100 of 2024 list. They write: “The Pagans label and La Nóvia collective are two of the most crucial incubators of talent within the French folk scene, and with D’En Haut’s self-titled second album, they’ve helped to bring one of the year’s most compelling releases into the world...D’En Haut might well be this year’s French folk masterpiece." We like ole worldy, folk as much as anyone. We also generally like interesting percussion (hello tunng) such as "clacky, woody percussion, bells, drone and buzzing acoustic bass." We are not as sold on this as the Quietus. It’s okay at times for some background music but has a lot of grating moments. (June '24)
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Xylitol
From The Quietus: “It’s apt that Anemones looks to the lithographs of early biologists to communicate its ideas. Those images contain both discovery and a sense of an ancient throughline. Opener ‘Rosi’ introduces this aquatic world with squiggly percussion, deep bass and spliced loops. It creates images of bustling colonies of fish, or time lapses of primordial organisms gradually growing features. ‘Jelena’ balances languid atmosphere and speedy rhythms, its breaks cut up over patient pads. Those pads glitch and squeak when they’re played solo at the end. Like much early jungle, its base elements are no less cosmic when cobbled together from what’s lying around. Crucially, though the record uses elements that have existed since the early 90s, it remains forward-looking rather than doggedly nostalgic, as “revivalist” jungle and hardcore can sometimes be.” This is sort of drums & bass but with the bass replaced by bleeps and bips. Good for when the coffee isn’t working at keeping you awake. (July '24)
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Tashi Wada
From The Quietus: “On What Is Not Strange?, Tashi Wada’s music curves, steepens and plateaus like a trail on the way to a vista. The Los Angeles-based composer’s drones continuously evolve; his fractured melodies stop before they’ve started or swerve into unexpected directions, collecting surprises along the way. Throughout, Wada uses an 18th-century tuning system developed by music theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau, which coats his glistening drones and broken-down songs in dissonance, and he works with vocalist Julia Holter, percussionist Corey Fogel, violist Ezra Buchla and bassist Devin Hoff. The alternate tuning allows for his music to expand beyond just the conventional stylings of his keyboard, while his collaborators help each track grow into kaleidoscopes built from the shards of each musical phrase. More than anything, though, What Is Not Strange? is an album about choosing one winding path and following it – even if it ends up somewhere previously unknown.” This is largely dark ambient instrumentals and good lonely late night listens. (June '24)
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Senyawa
From The Quietus: “Vajranala is a masterclass in tension-building. It’s a journey that leads to ritualistic experiences, with subtly constructed lyrical structures on one hand and rapturous, predatory, and trance-like motifs on the other, often based around Wukir Suryadi’s homemade bambuwakir, a percussive and stringed instrument, that drives the duo’s music, creating an intense sonic experience. Senyawa’s music is a unique blend of traditional and modern elements. But on Vajranala, instead of synthesis, they extend their musical language by juxtaposing droning passages with rapt, ecstatic motifs, muttering, singing, and shouting. They seek catharsis in new forms of ritual by building this kind of modern heavy ritual in a dense, rapturous sound on the borders of what is traditional, what is metal, what is subtle, and what is rapture, showcasing their innovation and creativity.” We think this is not bad. But not something we see listening to on a regular basis. (June '24)
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Gnod
We found lots of nice droney spacey rock in this one, from a group that is probably better known for, as The Quietus puts it, "purveyors of the sort of music that suits getting blasted and waving your arms around". Peace at Home and Luz Natural are great medatative pieces. (May '24)
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British Murder Boys
This may resonate better with us if we were on our 7th RedBull and Vodka at the club at 2AM. (June '24)
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Agness Twin
This four song EP was mostly a product of the 2020 pandemic but took didn’t materialize until after Agness Twin, the musical project of California based artist Elisa Ovrahim, wrapped up their 2023 US tour backing Vinsantos as he open for Love & Rockets. Ovrahim’s style is reminiscent of early 90s alternative music mixed with a little dark folk. Vocal layers, enigmatic ringing guitars, chattering piano all
arranged with modern elegance. The artist suggests “In the dark” as the standout single, but we think the two moodier closers “Ice Caps” and “The Flood” that play on the same hypnotic bass and guitar riffs that remind us a bit of something we might hear from Vetiver – at least until Vinsantos comes in on the piano.
(May '24)
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Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
In our 2025 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass prep, we’re spinning the fourth Studio album from Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats. The artist, originally from Missouri, got his breakthrough with the song “S.O.B.” off their self-titled debut (2015), a track that was originally just meant to close their live shows but ended up becoming a viral hit. Their sound is heavily influenced by classic soul and R&B — particularly the Stax Records roster like Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Booker T. & the M.G.’s — mixing horns, Hammond organ, and gospel-tinged fervor with raw, emotional lyrics. This is well done, but we’re not just big fans of our country music being mixed with soul. (June '24)
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Bòsc
Nice Ole World Celtic folk feel to this one. Pretend you're a ambient artist creating soundscapes twiddling knobs and samples on your synths today but were suddently dropped back in 1450 Ireland. This might be what you create. We'll call it Celtic ambient. Background music that is interesting, and at times jarring enough to break into the foreground and leaving you trying to figure out what ancient culture the music is channeling. (May '24)
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Wu-Lu
From The Quietus: “There’s an overwhelming feeling of emptiness that many of us can relate to at the moment – a feeling that weighs heavily in the context of surrounding events, becoming our everyday experience. It’s somewhat normal to be furious yet numb; profoundly sad yet totally void of the appropriate response mechanisms. In both the title and contents of his new EP, South London vocalist and musician Wu-Lu has managed to capture this emptiness, as well as the corresponding impulse to push through and find something to grasp firmly with both hands. Learning To Swim On Empty is intimate in its writing but the recurring motif of water and of drowning and floating which runs throughout makes it a record that holds both listener and artist close, in a compelling way.” At its best, this is spoken word over dark smokey jazz worth a late at night listen. (May '24)
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Start 2024
Taylor Swift releases her album “The Tortured Poets Department”, breaking Spotify records.
Donald Trump’s hush money trial begins, which will eventually find him guilty of felony charges. Additionally, Trump’s mugshot is released to the public.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland collapses after being struck by a ship.
Total solar eclipse occurs, visible in North America for the first time since 2017.
Oppenheimer wins Best Picture at the 2024 Oscars.
Project 2025, a Conservative Plan to Overhaul U.S. Public Policy and Government, comes to light and is seen by some as the blueprint Trump will follow if he gets elected again.
Geopolitical competition becomes evident with the growing cooperation between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. It's not quite an alliance, but they are deepening ties: Iran has sold Russia thousands of drones, North Korea has provided Russia with millions of artillery shells, and China has helped rebuild Russia’s defense industrial base.
Israel continues to hammer Gaza and Russia keeps at it with Ukraine to continue wars from from last year and staying in the news cycle throughout 2024.
The civil war that began in Sudan in April 2023 continued unabated in 2024. This one gets nowhere near as much news coverage as Isreal or Ukraine.
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Big Brave
We pick up some Sigur Ros crossed with Low vibes from this one. There’s something about Wattie’s singing that, for us, doesn’t really seem to mesh with the wall of sound happening behind it. (Apr '24)
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Jacken Elswyth
We really like this album. We sort of view it as this having the potential to do for bluegrass what William Taylor’s “Modern Country” did for country music.. (May '24)
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Fat White Family
From The Quietus: “As well as growing lusher, Fat White Family’s sound has become denser on their latest album thanks to several layers of carefully constructed multiple instrumentation, so pieces like ‘Polygamy Is Only For The Chief’ sound like a Prince impersonator fronting Depeche Mode. “Did you ever get the feeling that nobody’s listening for a very good reason?”, it asks. More people than ever might be drawn into listening now that, for instance, ‘Feed The Horse’ has a soaring chorus that would be suitable emanating from the mouth of Charlotte Church. The equivalent on ‘What’s That You Say’ is the catchiest earworm they’ve ever created.” Our take: The The recently came out with a new release a couple of months ago, but this was probably the The The 2.0 disc fans were waiting for. (Apr '24)
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Bianca Scout
The Quietus likes her. They write "Steadily, unselfconsciously, and to a mystifying dearth of general acclaim, Bianca Scout has been fashioning a netherworld, its crevices inlaid with shards of her consciousness. The decade-stretching oeuvre which functions as the visible front for this hidden psychic reverse now comprises six albums, a strewing of singles and EPs... But to know her work, in full or in part, is to remain palpably distant from Bianca Scout, the persona and the person. She expresses herself with a sort of uncanny ingenuousness, a candour which communes with the emotions and perplexes more rational engagement. Revelations promptly dissipate on taking off the headphones, the fog of mystique gathers once more. Which is to say, listeners coming to her work for the first time through Pattern Damage need not feel underprepared; there are no privileged entry points." This feels like something we might write about The Exciting Sounds of Savo. Scout's music is probably just as approachable. (Apr '24)
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Judas Priest
We were listening to this stuff in high school and loved it. Now, it just sounds like stuff you would … well, listen to in high school. (Mar '24)
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Big Brave
We pick up some Sigur Ros crossed with Low vibes from this one. There’s something about Wattie’s singing that, for us, doesn’t really seem to mesh with the wall of sound happening behind it. (Apr '24)
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Roc Marciano
From The Quietus: “No stranger to a self-referential album title – see Marcberg, Marci Beaucoup, Mt. Marci and other releases – cult underground rapper Roc Marciano’s latest project is an enthralling trip through lo-fi, low-key beats and his typically laidback, gruff vocal delivery. Like many of his past records, much of Marciology is produced by the rapper himself and folds in samples of, or references to, old jazz and soul records, while the sinister callback to classic Memphis horrorcore instrumentals on the opening cut is instantly absorbing. Tracks like the Blaxploitation-soundtrack-referencing ‘Goyard God’ and subtly eerie ‘Gold Crossbow’ underline just why Marci is credited as one of the most influential underground hip hop figures of the past decade or so. Perhaps with the release of Marciology, it’s about time he got his flowers more widely.” We’re digging the background beats/samples on “Higher Self”. (Mar '24)
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Shelter Of The Opaque
From The Quietus: “Changing landscapes and our relationships with them are at the heart of Shelter Of The Opaque: as places evolve, where do we fit into those, and how does it affect both our sense of self and our relationship to the past? The passage of time also runs throughout the album. The start of the unsettling track ‘Castling’ recalls Gareth Smith’s roots in Hull, the call of home feeling ever present as he seeks to understand his past in the context of the present. The song is also one of several on the album that explores climate change too: the drones on the track sound like an electronic sea of sorts, and one that threatens to subsume its surroundings at any moment. An underlying ticking beat stresses how time is running out for the planet.” We’re game with the spoken word poetry over soundscapes, and find it an interesting listen, but probably prefer our dark ambient listens spoken word free so we can concentrate on our own in-our-head thoughts. (Mar '24)
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Ex-Easter Island Head
From The Quietus: “On their previous, highly rhythmic album, Twenty-Two Strings, Ex-Easter Island Head pushed their musical boundaries, creating polyrhythmic structures and rushing motorik compositions. This evolution in their sound, reminiscent of the Glenn Branca Ensemble, among others, is further showcased on their latest release, Norther. After eight years, the band, now a quartet with the addition of Andrew PM Hunt (AKA Dialect), continue to draw from their unique methodology of playing guitars with mallets and sticks, painting sonic palettes at the intersection of minimalism and ambient music.” This is pretty decent ambient but at times energetic music. Frenentic and improvy at times it's not always a relaxing listen. (Mar '24)
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Erika Angell
On The Obsession With Her Voice, Erika Angell creates her own universe out of her ever-changing voice. The Montréal-based artist cloaks her vocals in mystical haze, transforming them into alien reveries; she speaks poetry with scalding clarity; she sings melismatic songs that swirl around lush instrumentals. We think it's interesting, but not enough to grab us into repeated listening. (Mar '24)
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Mohammad Syfkhan
From The Quietus: “Mohammad Syfkhan’s impressive debut solo album, I Am Kurdish, was recorded in County Wicklow with musicians including County Sligo saxophonist Cathal Roche and Cork-based cellist Eimear Reidy. The record takes his domestic influences and fuses them with music from beyond those regions, from North African folk rhythms to Turkish psychedelia. It’s a glorious alembic not bound by borders, where Syfkhan himself brings a cultivated exuberance to his playing that belies his vintage.” We respect that this retains a lot of the Middle-Eastern vibe. We’ll certainly play it during our Middle-Eastern cooking evenings. (Feb '24)
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William Doyle
A solid member of our "Early 2020s Sensitive Anglo Digital Composer Boys Who Mostly Use an Initial or Two Instead of their First Name" playlist. Although Doyle does use his first name, because he's not using "Bill", we'll still let him in. Like the other dudes in said playlist, we still believe he was likely the kid getting bullied in highschool rather than the bullier. This, Doyle's fourth album, is a great release. But how could we not say that of a Doyle release co-produced with Mike Lindsay of Tunng and featuring contributions from Brian Eno and others. Doyle describes the 11-track collection as "art-pop for the Anthropocene." Okay. We're still going with our absurd playlist title to describe it. "Soft to the Touch" is a fantastic song. Just a mellow little floater that rambles around like a digital cowboy on robotic horse in a Wes Anderson spaghetti western ... until 4 minutes in when it drops off a creshendoing digital cacohphony of sounds to hit the last verse with minimal instrumentation for a brief bit before building back up to a almost a yodelling ending. Spectacular! (Feb '24)
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Milkweed
From The Quietus: “Folklore 1979‘s lyrics are lifted almost entirely wholesale from an issue of The Folklore Society’s academic journal, which Milkweed came across when a fan – who, incidentally, makes wands for a living and who they’ve never seen since – dropped a tote bag full of issues round their home. They picked one at random, chopped it up and put it to weird earworm melodies, fed it through a meat grinder of experimental production, and ruthlessly edited it down to just over ten minutes of running time. Occasionally, the album evokes experimental hip hop as much as it does folk music, although they outright reject any comparisons. They, for now, have coined the term ‘slacker trad’.” This is weird good stuff … sort of old world Celtic chants mixed with Chinese Erhu plucking over tribal drum beats. We can already see this pissing off some people at our next dinner party when “My Father’s Sheep is Dead” comes up next on the playlist. (Feb '24)
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Nadine Shah
From The Quietus: “There is a fine line to tread in any creative labour when opening up about your personal struggles. It’s delicate work to find how much honesty resonates with an audience and what becomes alienating. Nadine Shah navigates this rough terrain on her fifth album, Filthy Underneath, a record which deals with how, in a few very short years, she coped with the death of her mother, substance abuse, a suicide attempt, recovery and the end of her marriage. Any one of these topics could be completely overwhelming for listener and artist alike, but Shah’s control of the narrative makes her songs sound more confidential than confessional. She exercises the same incisive observational skills that she applied to songs about social unease and toxic relationships when she turns the lens on herself, as willing to be cutting, critical and humorous when she is her own subject.” This is a well done album, but nothing on here really sticks out for us. (Feb '24)
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Chelsea Wolfe
From The Quietus: “Chelsea Wolfe’s music has always been admirably vulnerable and honest, qualities that are in even greater abundance on her latest album than they have been on her previous releases. The metaphysically themed She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She is dominated by loud guitars and feels incredibly abrasive, not least because it follows a record of acoustic folk songs. It deals with how personal change can be achieved by our present selves communicating with our past and future ones.” We think fans of London Grammer should check this one out. (Feb '24)
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Helado Negro
This sort of Spanish pop-rock is a decent listen for us. With the possible exception of “Flores,” thought it’s probably nothing we feel we need to hear on heavy rotation. (Feb '24)
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Bill Ryder-Jones
This album also made Quietus’ best 100 of 2024, but unlike a lot of other discs on that list, this one resembles music most people would normally listen to. It’s indie folk rock with a hint of celtic folk. We feel this is very similar in style as well as the hushed, throaty vocal performance as Goldenboy back in the aughts. (Jan '24)
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Hi! CAPYBARAS
Haunted synth and spoken word tracks that are great late night listening. (Jan '24)
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