Cool Tracks From 2024
Another look back at some interesting music this year
Check here for last year’s post. You can listen to these tracks as a mix in podcast form here:
Also there’s a playlist of these tracks (+ last year’s) here BUT BE ADVISED this is incomplete as not all selections are available on Spotify.
Dezzy Hollow - The Cut
My brother in Oceanside, CA recommended I check out Dezzy Hollow, and it’s good stuff! This track is more fun & loose than the rest of the album, but it's hard to deny this G-Funk vibe.
DMX Krew - Birthday Funq
Some nice classic electro funk from the legend DMX Krew.
Silv-o - It Iz
Solid new release from a new UK artist. A nice and warm lo-fi ambient track here.
Max Graef - Around The Globe
This one sounds like half 1990s rompler-style and half 1970s analog-style. It works, though. Nice groove & solid weird house vibe.
Fracture - 0860 (Slow Ambient Mix)
This might be my favorite album of the year. If you like the vibes of drum & bass music but can't stomach the high BPMs or frantic energy, here's a track (and album) for you. UK drum & bass producer Fracture slowed down the sound and pushed it into lo-fi ambient territory. Still full of classic D&B and pirate radio samples.
Soshi Takeda - Long Dream
I will call this "Rompler House". Tight & clean deep house with some ambient/new age leanings. All the elements have that dialed-in "in the box" sound, like everything's coming from a 1990s rompler or groovebox.
JP Haynie - Floating
An old friend returns to putting out music after a long absence! This track is sort of an outlier on the album, but it's a cool piece of outsider ambient music.
John S. Weekley - The Scavver Hunts
I reviewed "Ashes" in Issue #3. A new episode came out this year (game is still 100% free FYI), along with a new soundtrack. Great stuff as usual.
John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, Daniel Davies - Shadows Have A Thousand Eyes
Don't sleep on the past decade of John Carpenter's musical output! Sometimes I do wish the production was simpler and more minimal, but these recent releases are great. Really enjoy the composition on this one.
Xeno & Oaklander - Magic Of The Manifold
Xeno & Oaklander continue to push the sound of traditionally sequenced synthesizer music to new levels. They seem to be using more “west coast” additive synth tones here. Love the layered/twisting sequences & melodies.
Masaka Masaka - Nothing Makes Sense
A nice grimey, trappy track from a new Ugandan producer. Definitely check out the Hakuna Kulala label.
Headie One - Recall / Why You Look So Tired
Cool UK drill style with solid production and good melodic hooks. The transition between the two parts is nice.
Sound Stream - Show Off
Sound Stream is the best house producer right now. Definitely flexing on this one.
MPU101 - APEX CA 91352
Just some solid ambient synthesizer music.
CRC X VC-118A - Answer Machine
Some nice breakbeats, spaced out lo-fi textures, and clean 808 sounds. Cool art too.
Legowelt - A Vast Comfortless Universe
Can be difficult to keep up with this dude's output sometimes, but I really liked this new album. This track really captures the Legowelt sound, especially the soft interval sequence at the start and the wild synth that comes in around 50 seconds in.
Outrage & Sonar's Ghost - Sling Shot
Off the wall track of modern classic drum & bass from the Future Retro London label.
Match Grip - Pleochroism
Ending with something from left field. This is from a compilation of MIDI tracks recorded on different hardware modules, and this particular track was recorded from a Yamaha MU100. Great to see people doing cool things with these underappreciated machines (and the MIDI format).
Korg Drumlogue Update :(
I reviewed the Korg Drumlogue in Issue #5, and although it had some clear drawbacks it seemed like it would be fun and useful playing live. Well, after spending some time attempting to prep a live set with it I can say this machine is far too flawed in its current state. An annoyance I didn't mention in the review is how it handles saving. A pattern is saved as a "program" and an associated "kit". The kits are not instanced when saved to a program, so any change you make to the kit will change all programs that use the kit. There is also no ability to save individual drum sound presets (this alone would save a lot of time diving in menus).
The major unforgivable issue though is the machine seems to have trouble staying synced to MIDI devices, and it can start to drift out sync after a few minutes. There might also be some MIDI latency as even triggering sounds via MIDI was not sounding quite right (didn't bother recording and measuring this). This is a pretty crazy oversight for any machine and a surprising lack of quality control from Korg. It might not be a problem if you're using the Drumlogue as the master clock, and there's a chance these issues can be addressed with a firmware update, but I wouldn't count on it (last firmware update was over a year ago).
Thanks for reading!
Compiled by KJ
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