Soundcheck

You get to a point where music is just everywhere, and most of it doesn’t stick. Friends forwarding things, labels dumping releases, YouTube rabbit holes at 2am. But every once in a while something actually lands.

Blood Orange is Devonté Hynes, 25, who’s done a few other projects already—Test Icicles, Lightspeed Champion—before settling here. Coastal Grooves sounds like it came together in a bedroom late at night. New wave 80s atmosphere, romantic without being obvious about it. It’s the kind of album where you can hear the person behind it, not trying to impress, just making something real.

Active Child is one guy—Pat Grossi—making something that sounds like a full orchestra. The album sits between folk melancholy and theatrical harmony, lots of layered voices with synth underneath. Fleet Foxes is maybe the closest comparison but without the preciousness. He understands how to write something that gets under your skin.

B. Fleischmann started as a drummer before getting serious about electronics. The Austrian composer founded the Charisma label. Pop Loops for Breakfast is intricate instrumental work, dense and methodical. One of those albums that sounds different each time you come back to it.

Takagi Masakatsu makes film and music in Japan. Apple found his work precise enough to use in their ads, which says something. Eating is peaceful and exact, no wasted moments. The kind of thing where every note is exactly where it needs to be.

Then there’s Bang Bang’s Cover Me mixtape—old songs done new. Björk, Coldplay, The xx. Most covers don’t work because people don’t understand that covering something means rewriting it completely. These ones got it right.