The Mask, the Algorithm, and the Clan
Aaron Jerome’s self-titled debut as SBTRKT landed like something that had been missing from the conversation without anyone noticing it was gone. He built the record from the bones of UK bass music—breakbeats stripped to their essentials, dubstep worn lightly rather than brandished—and then invited Jessie Ware, Sampha, and Little Dragon to breathe life into it. Hold On is the entry point, Wildfire is better, and by the time you’re through the back half you’ve stopped ranking them. The mask was a statement too: anonymous producer, total focus on the music. It worked.
Classic albums operate differently in the rotation. The Aphex Twin Richard D. James Album has been in mine, intermittently, since it came out in 1996, and I still can’t produce a clean explanation for what it does to my brain. The description "Mozart of techno" has always struck me as flattering to both parties while being accurate to neither—Mozart was a social animal who wrote for rooms full of people; Richard D. James appears to write for some private frequency that occasionally aligns with human perception. The density of it, the tempo that sits just above comfortable, the sounds that shouldn’t cohere but do: years on and I still can’t fully account for it.
Múm’s Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know has been sitting in a corner of my library since 2009. The Icelandic group occupies territory that should be cloying—pastoral, nostalgic, vaguely psychedelic—and instead makes it feel like something with actual weather in it. The nostalgia in these songs is for experiences you didn’t have, which is somehow the most effective kind.
Wu-Tang Clan’s Legendary Weapons is a back-to-Staten-Island record: dense production, layered verses, Termanology and Cappadonna and Sean Price filling out the corners. Four years since 8 Diagrams, and the energy sounds banked and ready. C.R.E.A.M. is decades old in cultural terms by now, but this doesn’t sound like a legacy act coasting on reputation. It sounds like a group that still has something to prove, which is the correct attitude.
Theophilus London’s Timez Are Weird These Days is a debut that doesn’t announce itself as one—no grandiose statements, no genre-flag planting, just a dense pop/rap/indie hybrid that works equally well in headphones and out of a car window. Brooklyn context matters: it’s city music without the clichés, which is harder to pull off than it looks.
Five records. Start with SBTRKT.