Soundcheck

K.I.Z.’s back with Urlaub fürs Gehirn and they haven’t softened at all. Tarek, Maxim, Nico, and DJ Craft are making crude, funny, aggressive music—there’s literally a track called In Your Mother—but the provocation isn’t the whole thing. The musicianship is there too, it’s just not what anyone would call respectable. That’s kind of the entire point. Songs like Abteilungsleiter der Liebe show they can do romance if they feel like it, but that’s never going to be their lane.

Austra is almost the opposite. Katie Stelmalas sings with this trained, operatic clarity over minimal synth and clean production. It sounds cold until she opens her mouth. There’s something about that restraint—reminds me of Fever Ray or The Knife—that becomes more intense the longer you listen. Feel It Break doesn’t waste space. Everything in there earned its place.

Chiddy Bang’s Peanut Butter and Swelly doesn’t try to be clever. Summer rap from Philadelphia, electro samples, bouncy bass, Chiddy rapping in something close to grime. It’s pure soundtrack material—the kind of thing you put on for the park or the pool or Friday nights when you’re not thinking too hard, just moving. It knows exactly what it is.

SebastiAn from the Ed Banger crew finally dropped Total and it’s the least immediate of these, but weirdly the more interesting too. There’s something almost wrong about his melodies—this small deliberate wrongness in tracks like Love Motion and Ross Ross Ross that makes them impossible to forget. He knows exactly how close to the edge he can step.

Four Tet’s 2001 release, Rounds, is something else entirely. The production is so intricate and granular that listening feels like watching something restructure itself in real time. It’s hallucinogenic without the drugs. The album sounds like elves and fairies like the original description said, except I actually mean it—there’s something genuinely alien about the sound design. It makes you wonder what’s possible with synthesis.

And then Battles with Mirrored—just pure math rock mayhem. Complex polyrhythms, glitchy synths, no melody, no regard for ease. It’s aggressive in a way that most rock music isn’t anymore. Gets my heart rate up just from sitting with it.