Happy solstice, team. Oh, let’s go around one more time.
2015: shows of the year
Four Tet x Floating Points @ Sugar Hill Disco
The best reasons to live in the UK came to NYC, played two shows, and I happened to luck into the one at the run-down restaurant / bar / etc in Bed-Stuy. It is hard to find deeper, more knowing DJs out there, these days.
JD Twitch @ Mr. Sunday
No one has a (secretly friendly) DJ sneer quite like Twitch, and nobody warms up the dancefloor like Twitch, and Mr. Sunday’s move to ‘way down south in Sunset Park helped keep the amateurs away from the best Sunday party in New York. Nothing but good times.
Dope Jams Halloween @ Good Room
The dudes are assholes – the dudes have great taste in house music. Simple as that.
Honorable mentions to Rabit & JLin at PS1, bringing the darkside thunder on a sunny Sunday; to Kode 9 at Cielo, and to Lindstrom at Good Room for playing the hits.
2015: tracks of the year
Tyler Drift – Style
This (*ahem*) cover of Swift’s cultural carpet bomb devoured me for at least first half of the year.
Psychemagick – This Must Be The Place (Psychemagik Naive Edit)
On the other hand, this is barely a cover, but is one hundred times a delight.
Julia Holter – How Long?
“Bewitching” is a deeply overused word when talking about female singers, but just name me another adjective for this tune. See? You can’t.
Profoundly honorable mentions to Hot Chip’s Re-Harmonize, Julia Easterlin’s cover of Leadbelly’s In The Pines, Four Tet’s gargantuant remix of Eric Prydz – Opus, Cloned by Paula Temple, Twig’s Glass & Patron, Fatima Yamaha – What’s a Girl to Do (yes, the reissue, like everyone else. so?), MFSB’s going deep on Touch Me In The Morning, and Deep Dish – Stranded (BT vs. DD Mix) (Danny Tenaglia’s Groovejet Dubby Edit), which I had on a mislabled MP3 in 1999, and found during a dig at Academy. What a year.
2015: albums of the year
Veeery strong year, here.
Africa Express – In C Mali
I wanted this album so badly I installed iTunes, bought it, and then uninstalled iTunes. In C is an obvious landmark that means many things to many people … but I suspect that this version is going to hang around for a very long time.
Arca – Mutant
… and let’s not forget about Xen, her album from late last year, or her work for Bjork and Twigs. Arca is the future.
Holly Herndon – Platform
Herndon is likewise the future. Her and the whole neo-idm / new aesthetic / internet music people are by far the most exciting things going on in 2015.
Julia Holter – Have You In My Wilderness
Holter, in contrast, is “just” making immaculate, ultra-lush baroque pop records. No big deal.
Honorable mentions to Four Tet – Morning / Evening, Floorplan’s Paradise, FKA twigs – M3LL155X, and Bjork’s rip-your-heart-out Vulnicura
2015: sets of the year
Objekt – Live at Freerotation, 2014
So last year. Whatever – this is as joyous and heavy and welcoming and brilliant a DJ set as you’ll hear in the next few years.
Natasha Kmeto – FACT Mix 514
As self-assured as you need music to be. Kmeto does just about everything, here, and does all of it well.
Jackmaster b2b Armand Van Helden Live @ Boiler Room.
Just as much fun as you think it should be.
Honorable mentions to Tama Sumo’s RA mix, Visionist’s ice-cold RA mix, Ben UFO’s live set from Factory Osaka, Peter Van Huesen from Labyrinth, and of all people, Sasha’s RA mix.
2015: concerts of the year
FKA twigs presents Congregata
Oh. My. God. Impossible voice, amazing choreography, undeniable stage presence, mindboggling lights (yes, that’s a laser off a sequined top), show of the year by a country mile. FKA twigs is a far, far better future of pop music than we deserve – if you are not watching her, start now.
James Holden Live at Le Possion Rouge
My boy. I think I’m out of superlatives for Holden, and his live show of The Inheritors deserves all of the ones I’ve used already.
SK Kakraba at Bossa Nova Civic Club
“come at 11 there’s an african dj”, texted a friend of mine. If he had said “there’s a man playing the gyil“, which is what I walked into, I would have been there on the dot.
Floating Points Live at Music Hall of Williamsburg
Concerns about accidentially going to a Third-Stream show not withstanding, this was a monster of a thing: 11 players, amazing visuals, huge sounds, huge peaks.
Honors out to Holly Herndon at The Wick, the Dark Circuits show at Spectrum, a tiny NYU composer’s concert with lots of Feldman, and the NY Phil’s CONTACT concert at National Sawdust. More next year.
week 138
Back in action.
– If you have not read Bret Victor on the climate crisis, do so right now.
– In similar heady reads, Kickstarter’s Yancy Strickler on Fighting The Power is also important.
– Of course, people are also making mad, loopy techno by stacking records up, so there may be some hope for the world.
week 137
Still on catch-up.
– Google has open-sourced their machine learning system. This is sort of amazing, even if some of my academic pals are not impressed by it. Google is basically saying “even if you can match our code, you can’t match all of our data”.
– I mentioned China’s credit score / life score – here’s a more personal look at it.
– Other scary stuff: Mirriad can put ads into ad-hoc videos. How long until that can be done dynamically, depending on who is watching the video? Not long.
– “music / video social media” continues to be a thing: Fusic is a good example – and what happens as the tech from Mirriad becomes commonplace?
– And, lurking ‘way down the list is app streaming. Native apps, no install. Here we go again.
week 136
Late, again, but lots to talk about.
– Y Combinator is starting a research lab. Which is interesting in at least six ways. I, personally, hate the lack of speed in academia, but there are many things that said lack of speed enable.
– LineFORM, from the Tangible Media Group at MIT, is sort of neat. We currently think of our personal supercomputers as phones / black mirrors / etc, but they for sure do not have to be. (The actuation looks pretty cheap, to me, but the idea is particular)
– We went on an art field trip at work, and saw, among other things, the monumental Frank Stella retrospective at the Whitney, along with lovely things by Elsie Driggs.
– Ellen Jewett, on the other hand, is not much of a modernist, but is amazing.
– Biosciences just get more and more bonkers. I think I’ve mentioned CRISPR before, but it really can’t be mentioned too often. Note the money line of the “editable mouse” – that’s us in a few generations.
– Brian McFee pointed me at Neural Storyteller, which is terrifying and wonderful.
week 135
– If you’re not reading James Bridle, well, you can start now.
– Mat Dryhurst’s SAGA is super interesting and makes me feel like some Stack will steal it. But it’s also so XANADU-esq that it may be doomed to failure.
– Map projections, projecting.
– Uber, but for doctors. That’s basically Pager. Software is coming for your job. Look out.