Lav's Music Corner

This week some big favorites dropped duds and the best songs came from a few surprising places.  5.  Life  - Jamie xx (feat. Robyn) Even lacking the variety of his legendary debut album, the singles from Jamie xx's long-awaited follow-up have still been satisfying. Life  sees him teaming up with Robyn, who appears to be fully back in 2024, for what may be the most satisfying of the bunch. Jamie's vibrant house beats combine with Robyn's unmistakable direct swagger for a crossover that meets the moment perfectly. Listen 4.  TGIF  - GloRilla Glo isn't slowing down off the release of her admittedly pretty solid mixtape earlier this year. Her voice continues to be one of the most commanding in all of rap and the sparse popping beats she chooses to lend it to make things hit even harder. Even if this track has one or two lyrical moments that tend to drag down the energy with silly punchlines it's still an absolutely thumping song.  Listen 3.  Favourite...

This week was headlined by a major new release in the electronica world. See where it laded among a series of promising indie singles.  5.  Point Him Out  - That Mexican OT (feat. DaBaby) I was late coming around to That Mexican OT's big hit Johnny Dang  last year but eventually, the song grew on me a lot as I continued to hear it on the charts. So far this year he's shifted away from the faster and more slick flows that made the track so unique into something harder-hitting. I wasn't crazy about it on his first new single but it works better here with an assist from DaBaby who fits right into this style.  Listen 4.  Sideways  - JT On her second solo single JT continues to experiment with a colder and less expressive demeanor than much of her City Girls music. On Sideways  it's even more of an embrace without some of the confident interludes and attention-grabbing jokes involved.  But what results may be an even more focused and impressive di...

The EP is a format I've often explored on this channel with the intention of finding breaking artists on their earliest work. While that is also normally mixed in with a handful of more established and polished artists who wanted to dip their toes into the EP pool, I can name dozens of artists I loved who I first covered on this blog with the release of early EPs. This year, however, that wasn't necessarily the case. The theme of this list is more about side projects, artists going solo, collaborations, and just a vibrant and exciting collection of little projects where beloved names do something entirely new. It made the process of listening to all of these projects, ordering them, and writing the list itself a rewarding creative challenge that resulted in a collection of boundary-pushing projects that I'm happy to be recommending.  10. The Other Side  - Ruth Radalet The former frontwoman of Chromatics finally debuted as a solo artist this year, but she isn't necessari...

Streetlands EP - Burial It's been a weird few years for Burial as fans lament the loss of the more beat-driven elements of his music and ultimately the loss of drums entirely. You'd think that would mean that fans who come down more on the ambient side in the first place like me would be thrilled, but even I haven't necessarily been head over heels for the recent Burial output. His Antidawn  EP earlier this year felt like the most significant statement any Burial project had made in a long time in concept, but it turned out to be yet another VERY loose collection of ambient motifs. Thankfully, Streedlands  while still a very disconnected trio of ambient songs, does actually seem to give a lot more attention to how these songs develop and how the individual parts form a whole. A good example of this comes from the title track whose nearly 15 minutes makes up about half of the EP all on its own. It opens up with a thick cloudy mix and the pitched-up fizzled vocal samples that...

Burial is one of the most acclaimed and one of the most mysterious artists in all of electronica. After releasing two classic albums in the 2000's and a number of massively acclaimed EPs in the 2010's. After his last few releases were more compositionally abstract in design, Antidawn  was promised to be his most ambient leaning project to date. Review By Lav: I love Burial and that's no secret. He's made appearances on my singles and EP lists a few times but it's really the stuff that I didn't get to cover like Untrue  and Rival Dealer  that show off why his chilling electronic soundscapes are so compelling. Given my love for ambient music and his distinctive sound I was excited to see what direction he took on this EP. One of the first things that surprised me about the project is that despite being an EP it's almost 45 minutes long. Perhaps even more surprising is that it features dozens of distinct ambient soundscapes many of which only last for a few min...

1. Burial - Claustro Taking the #1 spot with a last minute swipe preventing a second three-peat in the first half of 2019 if Burial who returned to drop a new split single which is his first new material since 2017 and has the electronica community waiting with baited breath. 2. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Giannis (Feat. Anderson .Paak) After dropping what is probably their best single yet and scoring a #1 on this chart Gibbs and Madlib recruit Anderson .Paak for what could have been their third chart topper but get sniped by an artist with some serious pedigree. 3. Free Nationals - Time  (Feat. Kali Uchis & Mac Miller) Anderson .Paak's touring band hits it off with their second single featuring the always indelible Kali Uchis and a surprise feature from the late Mac Miller that was allegedly recorded all the way back in 2017. 4. Dreamville - Down Bad  (Feat. J. Cole, JID, Bas, Earthgang & Young Nudy) The Dreamville sessions earlier this year were one of the...