Examining the Margins

Coming up with ideas for this newsletter usually comes from listening to something and having an idea or talking to someone (usually my wife) and coming up with an idea. That was not the case this week. Instead, the idea struck like lightning.

On Fridays, I’ll log into Tidal and see what albums the algorithm has thrown at me. (My algorithm has gotten to a weird point now where it puts experimental noise albums next to classical recordings next to hardcore hip-hop albums; it’s very strange.) In any case, I saw the following album cover:

This is the cover for the Lucre EP that features Elias Rønnenfelt of Danish noise punks turned rock wanderers Iceage and Dean Blunt, a man for whom an oblique question is a straight answer. (Fun fact: Dean Blunt and David Lynch are known adherents of Transcendental Meditation. Something to think about here.)

During the 16-minute duration of this EP, Rønnenfelt sings plaintive lyrics of wandering and self-inquiry over Blunt’s guitar-forward production. In terms of Blunt’s output, this is a more sedate outing. It glides by, asking little of the listener other than sitting back and enjoying the interplay between the two artists. But, that phrasing implies that this is a slight recording. It is not. In many ways, this provides an interesting entry point for both Rønnenfelt and Blunt, particularly Rønnenfelt’s most recent solo work. But, a longer review of this album is not forthcoming. The reason I brought this album up is because it gave me the idea for this week’s dispatch.

Dean Blunt is—and I say this as someone who has been listening to music from the underground and other strange corners of the world for decades at this point—a legit enigma. Do we know basic facts about Dean Blunt? Yes we do. He’s not strange in that way. He’s odd in the sense that when you see his name attached to a project, you do not know what that project will sound like. It can be pretty and serene like Lucre. It can be harsh and off-putting like his work with his rap group, Babyfather. It could also be a troll like Stalker, a hour-long song from 2020 that can be graciously described as infuriating.

In any situation, I can firmly say that Dean Blunt is doing something that few other people are doing in the music world: being a Black experimental musician. This led me to wonder who else would fall into the category of Black experimental artist. Before you start listing off artists in your head, there are caveats. First, they need to have made music within the last five years. I didn't want to be doing archival work again. As well, I wanted to skip over Moor Mother. She is great, but whenever this topic is discussed, she comes up every time like Living Color and Death in discussions about Black rock bands. I do recommend you listen to her music, but I wanted to talk about people in this space that aren't her.

So, with those rules in place, I started to compile my list. In an effort to keep people from diving into things they may not be ready for, I'm going to scale the bands on this list on a star level. One star is reasonably accessible. There are things on which someone who doesn't listen to noise drone music for fun can connect to. Three stars is like listening to Nurse With Wound or Wolf Eyes; only the truly intrepid need dive in these waters. Being the person I am, I suggest that you should listen to them all, but I don't hold a grudge if you aren't listening to the three-star artists.

Before I get this list started, I want to give a shoutout to Sneaks, the stage name for Eva Moolchan. Armed only with a drum machine and a bass, she makes deeply hypnotic post-punk punctuated by her funny, penetrating spoken lyrics. I don't put her in the list because I'm not sure if she still makes music. The last I heard about her, she was pursuing a MFA at MICA in Baltimore. In any case, check her out, particularly Gymnastics.

One Star Artists

L’Rain

Taja Cheek is a legit cool lady. You should google her and see what she does professionally. She also makes music under the name of L'Rain. Her music combines various styles such as psychedelica, soul, R&B, musique concrete, and rock into a stellar whole. While the first album deals with the loss of her mother, the next two deal with the emotions of change and confrontation. I personally think her strongest album is her 2021 album Fatigue, but any album is an excellent way to start into her work.

Niecy Blues

Based in South Carolina, Niecy Blues mixes R&B, gospel, ambient music, and indie rock into ethereal, haunting tracks. Using loops, samples, and her voice, Niecy Blues makes music that is transporting. Her debut album on Kranky, Exit Simulation, is an powerful, emotional trip. I only hope we get a new album from her sooner rather than later.

John Glacier

A South London MC, John Glacier is pushing at what hip-hop music is. Rather than shouting over boom bap beats, Glacier sits back and spits at a languid pace, rarely raising her voice. Telling stories from her life and her surroundings, she is accompanied by beats inspired by the UK grime and club scenes. She just dropped a new album, Like A Ribbon, and it does slap.

They Hate Change

Aside from having an excellent name, this duo from Florida are actually trying to make hip-hop exciting again. This is made clear from how they blend together their solid lyrical skills, which are peppered with references to points far away from hip-hop such as Lucy Dacus and Poly Styrene, with beats that touch on techno, trance, Miami bass, jungle, psychedelica, and synthwave upon other things. The album that broke them out was Finally, New from 2022. They released a new EP, Wish You Were Here, in 2024 that goes.

Yves Tumor

While they've been at it for a while, I feel like Yves doesn't get the full amount of respect they deserve for how diverse their discography is. Any attempts to classify their music are wasted as they pull from everywhere. Their albums have included gospel, psych, nu-metal, college rock, R&B, and shoegaze, among other things. The thematic links are in the lyrics, which revolve around spirituality and desire. Their 2023 album, Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or, Simply Hot Between Worlds), is a whirlwind of shoegaze guitars combined with spiritual searching. All of their albums are worth your time.

Two Star Artists

Jlin

Jlin broke into the world as a by-the-numbers footwork producer. Her 2015 debut, Dark Energy, shows a woman with immense talent, someone who is from the Chicago footwork scene but isn't just aping DJ Rashad or RP Boo; she very much has her own spin. That has become clearer in her subsequent albums, where she has taken the skittering drums and chopped samples that make up footwork and added wild new elements such as classical composition, ambient music, and African and Indian percussion to her sound. Her 2024 album, Akoma, bangs and also features both the Kronos Quartet and Philip Glass, if that gives you an idea of the territory she's working in.

Loraine James

Much like Jlin, Loraine James is taking a genre of dance music and bending it to her will. Instead of footwork, James is pulling from drum and bass, IDM artists like Autechre and Fennesz, and R&B. To these sounds, she pulls in her experiences as a Black queer woman, giving her content a much more personal feeling. I'm a fan of her 2015 album, Reflection, and her 2023 album, Gentle Confrontation, but her entire catalog is worthy of investigation.

Liv.E

Liv.E is one of the young women who are doing fun things with R&B. In 2023, she made Girl in the Half Pearl, an album that merged R&B with drum and bass and jungle. It put her in conversation with artists like PinkPantheress and Nia Archives. The album was excellent, but Liv.E isn't one to sit on her laurels. We move to 2024, and her new album, PAST FUTUR.e, is an R&B album merged with synth-punk and minimal wave, with Liv.E delivering her lines with a fake British accent. Does any of this make sense? No, not really. But, honestly, it is really good. The hooks are strong and the beats are fun. With this change of tones, I can only wait to see what she does next.

Dean Blunt

I spent plenty of time talking about Dean Blunt at the top of this dispatch, so I’m not going to get into a lengthy thing here. That being said, this two-star rating is an average. Some of his stuff is one star. Some of it is three star. If you want to know where to start with your journey into his oeuvre, I recommend Black Metal 2, Lucre, and, for a slightly more gentle intro to his more outre work, The Attitude Era. If those grab you, have fun diving into one of the truly mysterious artists of our current era.

Slauson Malone 1

To be clear, the 1 means absolutely nothing. He went by Slauson Malone for a long time, and when he got signed to Warp, he added the 1. His music, like many of the artists in the two-star section, resists easy classification. The continuing theme is its sonic density. I did not become familiar with this gentleman until his 2023 album EXCELSIOR. When I listened to it the first time, I don’t think I got it. But, when I started this project, I came back around to this album and realized that I was an idiot. On this album, Jasper Marsalis works through his various feelings about life, death, desire, and queerness over music that moves in more directions than I can count. The point of reference that kept coming to my head was This Heat and Swell Maps, two experimental post-punk bands that operated in the late 70s and early 80s. This is an accessible album, but it is still a bit tricky, hence the two stars.

Cities Aviv

Cities Aviv is a rapper who takes as much influence from post-punk as he does from hip-hop. Until I started doing some background research for this article, I had forgotten that I had listened to him before. I had listened to his 2014 album Come to Life, and current me remembers that I really liked it at that time. Because of how things can go in my head, I lost track of him for a while. I’m glad that he’s back on my radar. His 2024 album, Cafe Tom Tom, is his free-association raps spread out over chopped-up samples that share more than a passing resemblance with the laptop ambient artists that filled the rosters of Mille Plateaux and 12k as well as glitch mainstays like Oval. This album requires some patience, but I think its well worth the listen, making it a two-star option.

Three Star Artists

NB: Death Grips and clipping. will not be written about in this section. This is for two reasons. The first is that Death Grips sucks. They made one good song. It’s called “Spread Eagle Across the Block.” It is good because it flips a sample of Link Wray’s “Rumble,” not because of the at-best mid rap from MC Ride. The second is that clipping. is OK at best. An album by a noise rap group should not make me want to fall asleep. I will heed arguments on the second point. I will not on the first.

Model Home

Model Home is a duo from Washington, D.C., that understands how to make noise music. Lyricist NAPPANAPPA lets off improvised rhymes that are sent through reams of processing to make them into their own sounds. Pat Cain pairs them with squalls of drums and keyboards, reminding me of legendary noise act Wolf Eyes. Much to my personal amusement, they did an album with Wolf Eyes in 2023 called More Difficult Messages. If you are unfamiliar with Wolf Eyes, here’s a link to my favorite song from them. Model Home doesn’t go quite that hard, but if I’m being fair, it’s not super far off at times, hence three stars.

Oxbow

Take Nick Cave’s first band, The Birthday Party, and have them be produced by Steve Albini. All of the guitars shred the skin. The drums hit hard. The low end thumps. Rather than eerie Nick Cave, there is Eugene S. Robinson. His vocals menace the listener, throwing them off balance as they fall into the dark horrors of Oxbow. An institution for almost forty years, Oxbow meet at the collision point of noise and free jazz. A true pinnacle for me from them is their 2017 album Thin Black Duke, an album that works just as it should.

Klein

A young woman from South London, Klein started off making avant-R&B with gospel overtones. But she was never one to sit still. As time moved on, Klein got noisier. I had bookmarked her 2024 album, Marked, to listen to, and when I finally did, I was both shocked and impressed. On the album, Klein fills the space with guitar noise. Walls of squalling feedback fill the spectrum as her words find small fragments through which to come out. This album even challenged me, and that meant it had to get into a rundown of Black experimental artists and get into the three-star category (even though I hadn’t considered its space in the format by the time I decided I wanted to write about it).

Extra Thoughts

• There are plenty more artists to touch on here, but I thought that they hewed a little closer to their genres than being truly experimental or genre agnostic. They include Nailah Hunter, Actress, serpentwithfeet, FKA Twigs, and Spellling. To be clear, you should listen to every single one of these artists, especially FKA Twigs. I’ll have more to say about her new album in the coming weeks.

• If you are up to do some further digging on your own time, there is an entire world of electronic music from the African continent worth diving into. Young people from Uganda to South Africa are making just crazy stuff that runs at around 180 bpm. Look into Congolese band Kokoko or the work being released on Nyege Nyege Tapes. Another amazing archive to explore is Awesome Tapes from Africa.

• As just a point of note, there is an insane rap album from Antipop Consortium mastermind Beans called Zwaard. His regular high-density word flow is accompanied by beats made by Vladislav Delay, a Finnish techno producer of great renown. I just wanted to note, on a post about genre bending and experimental music, that this album exists. It felt appropriate, and it’s good.

As I said the last time I made a playlist, I would do something on YouTube instead, as it is accessible to everyone. I did. It’s at the bottom of the post.

Next week, I'm going to finish out Black History Month by doing a deep dive on a legendary lyricist that we lost far too soon: Ka. If that name means nothing to you, holy shit, prepare to get your mind blown. While I'm always excited to write, I'm thrilled to get to dive into his work. I was listening to a couple of his albums again today, and it just made me more excited for next week.

Until then, thank you for reading and tell your friends to sign up to get this in their inboxes when it drops.