Maybe it's just the latest example in an ancient tradition of humans banding together in defiance of a cold, unfeeling world, but never has it been more needed than now, when civilization sits precariously at the precipice of its own existence. "Frontier" seems to have similar aims: Its rhythms are martial and its prickly melodies anthemic and otherworldly, the sound of a group of people rising up together. She quoted the musicologist Jordan Jordania, who theorized that early humans could have used dissonance in their singing as a way to "obtain collective identity in order to fight together, as a unit, for their common survival." In the lead up to her third studio album, Holly Herndon mused on this on Twitter, noting the curious fact that a lot of listeners heard traces of Bulgarian choral music in one of her singles, "Frontier," when she'd actually been trying to evoke the New England tradition of Sacred Harp music. ![]() There are solo sopranos who can bring even the hardest hearts to tears, but something special happens when multiple human voices join together in unison. "XanaX Damage" shows that he’s still a pop craftsman through and through. Yet even at his most structurally simplistic, the track is measured and studied in a way that few Future singles ever are, honing a career's worth of experimentation into a single punch of carefully crafted bliss. At just 1:44 in length, it’s certainly the shortest track on the EP, with hardly more than a pair of skeletal choruses to set the tone for the entire release. Where the early single "Love Thy Enemies" introduced bluesy guitar chords and hazy production, opener "XanaX Damage" paired this newfound interest in textural guitar lines with a stunning, melodic hook. ![]() His Save Me EP offered a focused portrait of the rapper’s softer side, with seven songs that cut to the heart of Future’s moody, emo-adjacent appeal. Hilary Pollackįuture is undoubtedly one of the decade’s biggest success stories, but even in the last year alone, the Atlanta superstar has proven that he’s still a force to be reckoned with in a genre often dominated by teenagers. ![]() If robots start doing ecstasy, this is what they're going to listen to while they peak. It's surreal and sexy, but grounded in viscerality. "LesAlpx" starts out with muffled, heartbeat-like thumps, then overlays them with glimmering synth lines that are part Hackers, part The Knife. It would have made great interstitial music as the ravers rush to find the warehouse where their night will transform into a Bacchanal of ecstasy, crop tops, and make-outs, or during the film's climax, when the tripping masses throb with joy as they dance to the breaking dawn. "LesAlpx" gives me the same feeling as wide-eyed viewings of Groove, wherein I tried to understand how electronic music could be so glitchy, repetitive, and simple, yet so profoundly emotional. As the sun sets the records start spinning, setting into motion a night that no one will forget." Saturday evening, two hundred people secretly converge at an abandoned San Francisco warehouse. The word spreads quickly through the city: the party is on. Here's the synopsis, per IMDB: "On Friday, a single e-mail blips through the Internet. When I was in middle school, I developed a fascination with a 2000 indie film called Groove centered around the rave scene in San Francisco. Like her more chaotic-sounding work, it just makes the spell even stronger. Is this some kind of statement about the creative process? Death? (She references a burial.) Sex? (She sings about sticking "two fingers in the earth, into erotic lines, into the honeypot.") But the ambiguity and weirdness don't detract from the fact that this is the closest thing to a pop song the Norwegian experimentalist has produced. Over time, the dream gets increasingly confusing. Buoyed by pillowy chords and a feathery but propulsive dance beat, it’s a song about a dream she had about writing a song-one that might also be the song we happen to be listening to, which also shares its name with a David Bowie hit. It’s not the only moment on "Ashes to Ashes," from 2019’s epic The Practice of Love, that feels meta. ![]() As she sings the line, a crashing wave of synthesizer appears from out nowhere, as though to underscore the sheer vastness of that sorrow. "Even the groove was filled with sadness," Jenny Hval informs us.
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