In recent weeks on Dazed, we’ve interviewed PC Music’s umru, Debit, Stromae, and Raveena. We’ve also looked at the Euphoria score, reassessed Original Pirate Material by The Streets and hosted a new Dazed Mix from VTSS. In many parts of the world, lockdowns have ended, and restrictions are loosening, but these are still challenging times. Despite the sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken uncertainties that colour the day-to-day realities of many, music continues to function as a shared communal space and a source of collective solace.

The pandemic’s economic impact has hugely affected the arts, with those already struggling financially being hit the hardest. Regardless of the difficulty setting of the moment, new and under-discussed talents from the worlds of underground music continue to use community and craft to find a way. For the first edition of our quarterly roundup for 2022, we’re continuing to reflect and acknowledge musicians, artists, producers and DJs from across the globe, all with strong communities, real visions, and important statements to make. Here are ten essential Q1 releases, all available on Bandcamp.

SLIKBACK, CONDENSE

WHO: The Kenyan experimental producer and DJ twisting club music into new shapes.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: When Slikback released his first two EPs, Lasakaneku and Tomo, through Nyege Nyege Tapes sub-label Hakuna Kulala in 2018 and 2019, he shocked and awed listeners with his fiery mélange of trap, footwork, grime, gqom, singeli and beyond. Five years on, he’s become a familiar figure to experimental club music audiences across Europe and Asia while regularly releasing new music at a breakneck rate. Fittingly, Condense sees Slikback teaming up with a cast of studio collaborators, including Giant Swan, MARTYYNA, quest?onmarq and 12 others. Equal parts maximal and spacious, it’s a fierce journey through Silkback and his friends’ uninhibited visions for the future of sound. 

FOR FANS OF: Debit, Burial, Dreamcrusher.

PATRICIA WOLF, I’LL LOOK FOR YOU IN OTHERS

WHO: A sound artist, field recordist and ambient producer from Portland, Oregon. 

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Forged with synthesiser, voice, samples and algorithms, I’ll Look For You In Others is an exquisite and moving album about grief and the afterglow of loss. Written in response to twin losses, the deaths of her mother-in-law and a close friend, the album saw Wolf processing her feelings and processing audio hand-in-hand, arriving at a new perspective and a new sound. Formerly one-half of the romantic machine pop duo Soft Metals, for Wolf, I’ll Look For You In Others is her debut solo album. It’s also the culmination of a longstanding engagement with live performance, synthesiser composition, and a series of intricate nature field recordings.

FOR FANS OF: KMRU, Huerco S., Pauline Anna Strom.

NIA ARCHIVES, FORBIDDEN FEELINGZ

WHO: The Manchester DJ, producer and singer making 21st-century jungle/drum & bass.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Her second EP in under a year, Nia Archives’ Forbidden Feelingz is an elegant blend of jungle/drum & bass, reggae, and R&B, as filtered through an understated pop sensibility. In this sense, her short-but-intoxicating songs recall the unforgettable records Congo Natty, Shy FX and DJ Hype’s True Playaz crew were crafting in the mid-90s. At the same time, as stated on her Bandcamp page, “Nia Archives is making soft-hearted lo-fi jungle for introverted extroverts,” a statement that makes it clear that she’s a voice for a new generation of jungle/drum & bass lovers. Context regardless though, Archives knows her history and as her recent Dazed interview illustrates, she’s looking at the bigger picture.

FOR FANS OF: Tim Reaper, DJ Flight, Sherelle.

ADELA MEDE, SZABADSÁG

WHO: A Slovak-Hungarian artist, composer and producer who uses minimal electronics and voice to look inwards.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Ostensibly speaking, Szabadság, the debut album from Adela Mede, is an avant-garde/experimental composition record with a deep interest in voice. Peel back the layers, and it’s also an art-pop record that reaches for the stars. Sung in three languages (English, Hungarian, Slovak) with ascendant vocal harmonies layered against street field recordings, syncopated machine rhythms, strings, and sparkly electronics, Szabadság is an engaging delight. Over nine captivating and exploratory songs, recorded inside her family home on the Slovakian border with Hungary, Mede takes inventory of her personal, familial, cultural, folkloric and geographic past and present, in the process charting new ways forward for herself and those who walk down similar roads.

FOR FANS OF: Holly Herndon, Eiko Ishibashi, Roomful of Teeth.

VARIOUS ARTISTS, SCENIC ROUTE – THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED VOL.1

WHO: A community of bedroom pop, ambient, club and electronica artists from across the globe.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Headed up by DJs Jon Phonics and Theo Fabunmi-Stone, aka Bryce’s Brother of 404 Eros, London’s Scenic Route began life in 2018 as a regular club night in Peckham. Since 2019, they’ve functioned as a label as well, helping bring modern 2-step/garage and electronic jazz releases from Desert Sound Colony and Lunch Money Life into the world. With The Road Less Travelled Vol​.​1 compilation, Scenic Route expand its world to include emerging artists such as Marshall Vincent, Bubba Janko, Brian Nasty, and J.Caesar. The music is deeply grounded in an understanding of musical history, but the lyrical content feels hyper-contemporary. Turns out the road less travelled is an exciting one.

FOR FANS OF: Loraine James, Chaos In The CBD, Bradley Zero.

ICEBOY VIOLET, THE VANITY PROJECT

WHO: The electrifying rapper and producer bringing Manchester’s new experimental underground with them.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Four years in the making, The Vanity Project mixtape sees Iceboy Violet alongside a remarkable crew of collaborators: Space Afrika, Emily Glass, Jennifer Walton, Slikback & Nick Leon, Mun Sing, Blackhaine, Daemon & Orlandor, Exploited Body and LOFT (aya). Set against grime-tempo blast beats, maximalist synth-scapes and apocalyptic drones, the seven songs included temper defiant confidence with anxiety and introspection, all delivered in a stunning stream-of-consciousness style. Building on several years of hyped live shows and striking vocal features on projects from aya, Loraine James and Blackhaine, The Vanity Project is a jaw-dropping debut. What’s really exciting, though, is thinking about where things could go for Iceboy Violet next. 

FOR FANS OF: Gaika, Vince Staples, aya.

HEAVEE, AUDIO ASSAULT

WHO: A queer Chicago producer and DJ who sees common threads between footwork, VGM and the purple Bristol sound.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: After falling head over heels for Chicago footwork culture in his teens, Heavee found his way into production through the Digital Hitz Factory Playstation 2 video game (known outside of North America as Music 3000). Following on from futuristic collaborations with Zora Jones and Sinjin Hawke for Fractal Fantasy, an album with Teklife, and a Grand Theft Auto soundtrack placement, Audio Assault sees Heavee tying together his footwork and video game music roots into six club-ready songs for Kode 9’s Hyperdub label. Dreamy, confident and psychedelic, Heave conceived of Audio Assault as the soundtrack to a series of moments before, during, and after a dancefloor battle. This is one for the forever dancers.

FOR FANS OF: Jlin, Yuzo Koshiro, Kush Jones.

BEAST NEST, SICKO

WHO: The Oakland musician, producer and educator using noise, electronics and machine funk as healing tools.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Crafted in the years following the tragic Oakland, California Ghost Ship warehouse fire of December 2, 2016, Sicko is an entrancing and disarming integration of ambient, techno and experimental noise music that reveals new depths with every listen. For Sharmi Basu aka Beast Nest, a multi-disciplinary artist, community organiser and educator, creating the album was a way to use art and sound to transform the complex experiences of trauma and loss into joy and empowerment. Alongside making music, Sharmi is also one of the driving forces behind Ratskin Records, a collective record label and archival imprint that advocate for decolonial experimental music from the Bay Area and beyond. It’s a world well worth walking into.

FOR FANS OF: DJ /rupture, Hype Williams, Sarah Davachi.

DIRTY K & LJC, TOKYO RENAISSANCE / KAZUMI

WHO: Two upfront Chinese club music producers paying homage to Tokyo’s 90s Hyper Techno scene.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: As Japan’s bubble economy was peaking in the early 90s, a generation of young people found bliss on glitzy dancefloors across the country. The soundtrack was J-Rave, a Eurobeat and Italian Disco-influenced style, which evolved into Hyper Techno and became closely associated with a bevy of youth subcultures. With the Tokyo Renaissance / Kazumi EP, Eastern Margins affiliated producer/DJs Dirty K and LJC pay homage to the acid house squelch, uptempo grooves, rave stabs and late-night euphoria of that era. In compliment to Dirty K’s high-octane ‘Tokyo Renaissance’ and LJC’s piano rave track ‘Kazumi’, the EP also includes two souped-up club remixes from Japanese producers Wrack and T5UMUT5UMU. 

FOR FANS OF: Ayumi Hamasaki, John Robinson, RUI HO.

PUNKO, PLANTS SINGING

WHO: The reflective Newcastle/Melbourne songwriter and producer making hypnotic art pop for life’s quiet moments.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Previously known for her Hearing solo project and playing with fellow Australians Sui Zhen and Real Love, Plants Singing is the debut album from Liv Jansz’ Punko alias. Sitting in an interzone somewhere between new age, post-punk and bedroom pop, her songs let hypnotic synths and spare percussive patterns loop, build and stretch, creating mysterious backdrops for her yearning voice. As a lyricist, Jansz’ deals in invocation, manifestation and the oracular, working up enigmatic utterances that mix brief flashes of the future with fading echoes. In a sense, Plants Singing is about the memories of a relationship that has turned into dust, but it’s also about being in relation, finding and holding onto a better place.  

FOR FANS OF: Sui Zhen, HTRK, Manuka Honey.