On Loop: My favorite music from the first months of the year
Plus: A dance music documentary and essays about journalism and 'Tenet'.
Let’s just get into it. I haven’t given you some personal writing and recommendations in a minute, so here they are. My favorite music of the year so far includes pop out of Denmark, electronic reissues and a gorgeous set of home recordings from the late Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. I also highlight an essential documentary about the origins of modern dance music, plus a couple of new essays.
Hope you give some of these picks a go. If you do or already have, tell me what you liked!
Astrid Sonne - Great Doubt
People who are much more in touch with the music industry than I have recently touted the avant pop of Danish songwriters such as ML Buch, Erika de Casier (who I will get to in a little bit) and Astrid Sonne. Great Doubt by Sonne — a violist, singer and composer based in London — is a pop record splitting at the seams. Its performances and textures tug between being physical and delicate, acoustic and computer-generated. It’s the uncanny space in the middle where Sonne’s tender melodies roam.
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou - Souvenirs
This long-awaited archival release by Portland’s Mississippi Records collects eight intimate solo recordings of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, an Ethiopian composer, pianist and nun whose life in her home country was blighted by war and religious persecution. The songs in Souvenirs, recorded in Ethiopia in the 70’s and 80’s, feature Guébrou’s folkloric melodies, her flittering voice and delicate piano, all constantly switching in speed and direction. To hear these songs is to let love — and the pain for which it could not exist without — into your heart.
Erika de Casier - Still
Erika de Casier, who is also from Denmark although born in Portugal, has cited the smooth, shape-shifting confessionals of Destiny’s Child and Aaliyah as major influences in her music. Still isn’t an ode to turn-of-the-century R&B so much as a simulacrum of it, an album not for this reality, but for a world where forward-thinking music like it wasn’t snuffed out by the war and tragedy of the new millennium. It’s gorgeously produced and de Casier is a talented vocalist, but it left me thinking more of her inspirations who, at the time, pushed popular music forward.
Jonny From Space - back then I didn’t but now I do
Jonathan Trujillo, the Miami-based DJ known as Jonny From Space, concocts a humid, colorful habitat in an album of ambient, downtempo and IDM. It’s a mellow and entrancing listen, sparked by hard-hitting drums and mechanical whirrs.
Microstoria - init ding + _snd (Remastered)
Speaking of mechanical whirrs (and clicks, and hums, and hisses), they’re at the core of Microstoria’s sound. This remastered reissue of two of their albums from the 90’s is an exquisite and definitive showcase of German glitch and ambient electronic music. Given that Microstoria’s members are Jan St. Werner of Mouse on Mars and Markus Popp of Oval, what more would you expect?
Sons of the Morning (Teebs & Prefuse 73) - Speak Soon Vol. 1
An instrumental hip-hop/lo-fi electronic wonder from eleven years ago that I thought I’d never hear again, Teebs & Prefuse 73’s only collaboration as Sons of the Morning is finally available to stream again. Like the rest of Teebs' singular catalog, Speak Soon Vol. 1 glows vibrant with plinking keys, sampled vocals and bird calls, and a powerful undercurrent of low end.
Mount Kimbie - “Fishbrain”
The second single from the band’s forthcoming album The Sunset Violent (out April 5), is the messy younger brother of “Marilyn”, the quiet centerpiece of 2017’s Love What Survives. Mount Kimbie have moved on from the pops, clicks and dog yips of their earlier albums and are now effectively post-rock band. What’s stayed with them throughout the years, as evidenced on “Fishbrain” and its wall of distorted guitar, is their immaculate production.
Maestro (streaming on Criterion Channel)
In 2003, Josell Ramos released a documentary exploring the roots of what at the time was modern dance music and club culture. It all started, Ramos argued, with the fashionable stylings of Larry Levan, resident DJ in New York City’s Paradise Garage. Or was it David Mancuso and his Loft parties, which unlike Paradise Garage were exclusive to those invited and which featured a state-of-the-art sound system? The answer isn’t clear from Maestro, which was restored for streaming by Criterion. It might not matter: Ramos — along with the DJs, dancers, producers and former club employees he interviews — wants you to know these parties gave Black, brown and queer people an opportunity to have power and room for self-expression. Then it all came crashing down when the AIDS epidemic reached New York City. There is a monologue in here delivered by remixer François K. about this period that shattered me.
“How I Healed Post-Layoff” (via palabra.)
Making a career out of journalism is harder than ever. Audio reporter Mónica Ortiz Uribe was laid off unceremoniously in 2022 after years of covering news along the U.S.-Mexico border. This piece, which describes her life after losing her job, shows how relentless and fickle the industry can be. Leaving it, whether forcefully or voluntarily, can be rejuvenating.
“'Tenet' Is a Backward Movie for an Upside-Down World” (via Vulture)
Tenet is in IMAX theaters years after its opening was completely derailed and trampled by the coronavirus pandemic. Author Bilge Ebiri argues that director Christopher Nolan uses the concept of time in the movie — as well as in Interstellar, Inception, and Oppenheimer — as a way to make us think about our personal footprint on the future. Finally, Tenet makes more sense.
And these other new songs:
So many good recs! I’m gonna start with Souvenir