#music-infused

#music-infused

I love reading about bands. I've read the AllMusic reviews of my favorite albums multiple times over. If my Apple Music selection has a writeup to go with, I'll read it. And I can read a good band book in a matter of hours. I'm not a professional nostalgia whore, but reading about these bands really does put me back in that time, and in that headspace. Like the music itself! I can't get enough of that particular high.

Thaiboy Digital's first album in four years showcases a collaboration with the Swedish production collective Swedm, featuring contributions from Varg2™, Eurohead, and Jamesjamesjames.

Galen Buckwalter, a 69-year-old research psychologist and quadriplegic, participated in a brain implant study to contribute to science that aids those with paralysis. The six chips in his brain decode movement intention, allowing him to operate a computer and feel sensations in his fingers again.

R&B in the 21st century has been in a constant state of flux, tugged between safe traditionalism and blurry attempts at progression. For the last decade-plus that "progression" has seen R&B music become more indebted to trap records and the moody atmospherics of alternative bands like Radiohead, Coldplay, or My Bloody Valentine.

Radioposter has built what it calls Paper-fi: physical books with synchronized audio soundtracks that follow readers in real time as they turn each page. No chips embedded in the paper, no QR codes to scan. The system uses patented computer vision and other modes through a smartphone or smart glasses to track your place in the book and play the corresponding audio.

Turns out every soul song with a lot of blank space in it just needs to be filled to the brim with Jersey club stomps and squeaks.

Whether it's a slept-on post-punk album from the '80s, a new sci-fi novel, or a cult classic horror movie, we're always finding new obsessions here at The Verge - and we want to share those obsessions with you. Sometimes that might be a new release, but often it's going to be something a little older, something not necessarily plastered all over TikTok or sitting at the top of the charts on Spotify.

Natanya tears genres open and rebuilds them in her own image. Her drums swing loose and jazzy over heavy 808s; synths drift dreamily before snapping into gritty guitar riffs. Writing, producing and arranging all her own work, she weaves together neosoul silk, R&B groove, indie edge, and flashes of grunge, all carried by a buttery falsetto that nods to Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse, Janet Jackson and early Destiny's Child.

The staff of Pitchfork listens to a lot of new music. A lot of it. On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we're sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff's favorite new music.

But to anyone tracking the data over the past few years, it was inevitable. In 2022, Bad Bunny's Un Verano Sin Ti redefined the market, driving Latin music's streaming growth to new heights. It later became the first Spanish-language album nominated for Grammy Album of the Year. The takeaway is simple: When you have accurate, real-time data, you don't guess where culture is going, you know.

"Many found the music offensive, the dancing objectionable, and the popularity of both with young people verging on a mental health crisis." So writes music historian Susan C. Cook about ragtime, the heavily syncopated ancestor of jazz that arose in the late 1800s. Like all things, ragtime's subversiveness faded over time, and, a century later, the works of Scott Joplin and other practitioners had been relegated to carnivals and fairs, their jaunty piano melodies now evoking quaint notions of old-timey fun.

The only song here that really matters. Written just hours after the murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and released a few days later, Springsteen names names (looking at you, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem) and speaks bold, specific truth. With a title that recalls his own impactful Streets of Philadelphia, a melody reminiscent of Bob Dylan, and an urgency not felt since Neil Young's Ohio, it may not be groundbreaking musically, but Streets of Minneapolis is exactly what we need right now.