Stacks And Lists And Histories
Chinese emo, Soviet punk, and marginalized scenes from the US of A
As much as I love a good non sequitur for a title, this one is quite literal. The round-up this month is populated by several Substacks, list-based articles, and the excavated pasts of music scenes in various stages of ascendance (these are not all mutually exclusive). The electronic music outlets uphold their status as a bastion for in-depth journalism, with Dj Mag/Mixmag/Resident Advisor all making the Report. BD covers DC, Christian music gets taken seriously, and Travel & Leisure publishes an impressively passionate travelogue. The term “scene report” gets stretched to the point of breaking, and I say good riddance—strict definitions are bad for the soul.
The Album
Some of the most satisfying paths for discovering new music are also the most circuitous. This album rec came, in a roundabout way, from the the Travel & Leisure article. That piece named exactly zero artists, but it turns out the author is also a musician who built a career blending the harp with electronic music. It’s surprisingly hard to find her music online (even on her own website), but she does have a link to a collaboration with the Indian DJ and producer Kohra, who featured her on the opening track to his pandemic-era album akhõ.
I listened to that intro and ended up playing through the entire album, which led me down a different internet hole. Kohra, I learned, is Madhav Shorey, the founder of Qilla Records, a label nd deep house collective also based in India. His stage name means “fog” in Urdu, and akhõ is named after a Gujarati mystic poet from the seventeenth century. Both namesakes fit the record’s patient forays into introspective, mist-shrouded house, which Shorey tints with just enough acid to warp the edges. It’s not an album that rushes you through, which is also fitting. The best things are often those that take the longest to find.
The Reports
Sham Hanieh spoke with six Palestinian electronic musicians for DJ Mag, discussing their struggle to keep up their practice amidst the destruction of their homeland as well as their push-back against the victim narrative so often applied to artists from Gaza and the West Bank.
Jake Newby dedicated his most recent newsletter to China’s emo scene, which is so hot right now that people are starting to throw the word “revival” around.
There’s been some chatter recently about DC and SF being monocultures, which is a false but understandable impression given the outsized influence that politics and tech have on each city’s respective vibes. In Bandcamp Daily, Henry Ivy set the record straight for the Capitol, diving deep into the Washington, DC dance music scene that clearly hasn’t been getting sufficient attention. (Bandcamp has previously provided similar counterpoints for the Bay Area here and here)
In one of two blockbuster histories published this month, Madison Moore writes about the shrinking number of queer Black clubs for Resident Advisor, citing a litany of damaging forces from racism to gentrification to the toxic masculinity embedded in 90s-era hip hop. (fun fact - the article extensively quotes the DC-based DJ Juana, who was also featured in the above-mentioned Bandcamp Daily piece).
In the second history, Tracy Kawalik gives Chicago footwork the classic Mixmag longform treatment, penning what must be the definitive history of how it moved from the American Midwest to dancefloors across the globe.
Nick Eustis is collaborating with the Substack Is It Propaganda? on 3-part series digging into the history of rock music in the Soviet Union. Leading off with lines like “smuggling contraband philosophy in three-chord progressions,” the whole series is sure to be a banger.
Christian music is getting an update, with artists like Big Freedia and even Kendrick Lamar showing that music can address religious themes without sounding preachy. This month, the Lebanese news outlet Naharnet looked further afield to explore how styles like trap and Afrobeats are being embraced by Christian artists to push the genre (?) forward.
I was on the fence about whether to include this piece in Travel & Leisure about electronic music venues across Asia, since it doesn’t actually reference any artists. But ultimately, the spaces where ravers gather is as important to the culture as the music they listen to, and Nirupama Belliappa’s article is so clearly written from a place of respect and experience that it balances out its somewhat touristy slant.
In other news, I recently published a piece for Bandcamp Daily about the record label Perpetual Doom, a quirky alt-country outfit weaponizing irony from my hometown of New Hope, PA. Not a scene report but definitely under-covered.
The Playlist
Paid subscribers have access to a custom playlist featuring one song from each of the articles above.
