On Rotation

Battles finally put out Gloss Drop after the wait. They’ve added more vocals this time, and it sounds strange until you realize it works—everything still feels off-kilter in the best way, the kind of thing where you remember that instruments are doing something. It’s still their experimental, fractured style, just with voices in there now.

Michael Jackson’s Thriller sits in music history like a fact. Not perfect, just inevitable. Billy Jean, Beat It, the whole thing—you listen and understand why he became what he became. It’s not complicated, just true in a way that matters.

Cinematic Orchestra’s Ma Fleur from 2007 showed up at the right moment. Fontella Bass’s voice moving through these tracks, Patrick Watson threading through everything, the band following the current. Smooth without being slick, intimate without working too hard.

James Drake’s Mixtape shouldn’t work. Two artists that don’t belong together, hip hop and post-dubstep and soul and electronic all bleeding into one another without fighting. It sounds both new and familiar, which you don’t hear that often.

The Cure’s Greatest Hits is Robert Smith being Robert Smith. The whole aesthetic thing isn’t separate from the music, it’s just how it comes out. Dark, atmospheric, moody as hell but hitting you somewhere personal anyway.

Paul Kalkbrenner made Icke Wieder—sixty minutes of instrumental tracks that sound like he’s not trying to prove anything. Minimal, direct, the emotional part still there even when everything else is stripped away.

They all keep rotating through. Some new, some old, some both. That’s the thing.