Lav's Music Corner

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...