2015 was the year of live music for us. We covered eight festivals. I don’t think I’ve been to that many before in my life.
Hip hop seemed to make a return on here. That’s what we started on, but hit a major dip from 2010 to 2013. It started back up in 2014 with Kendrick Lamar, and predecessors have been poppin’ up all over the place since. Some with possibly more potential than Kendrick himself. One at the top of this list.
Other genres in electronic dominated the year even more. We got out a good amount of Kawaii in the first half, but future & trap took over the second. And of course house has been most dominate. Going from the deeper, heavier side and splitting into future & chill house near the end, as well as the funkier side of house music to jack to.
The amount of new singers seems to have dipped compared to past years, but the quality hasn’t. Anderson Paak, Madelyn Grant, Liz Vice & Joey Dosik to name out of the dozen others with clear personalities in their voices.
We’ve collected 29 tracks in total and a list of our 12 musicians with the most potential. Plus our biggest accomplishments of the year below that, the playlists. We put together 35 in total! That’s up from 25 last year.
I first met Lauren in 2011 on Twitter because of a Facebook Ad I was running about a SoundCloud initiative I was doing for Silence at the time (I love how convoluted that sounds). As many people as I’ve talked to on Twitter over the years, I’ve never met someone so honest about her love for music. Someone without another agenda. And I see her dedication every day.
I usually don’t start my daily SoundCloud listening until later on in the day, but this girl is up at the butt crack of dawn listening to the shit out of it (she seriously wakes up too early) and she always gets in the comment or reshare before I do. The one thing I’ve given her shit about is what she’s doing to contribute in music, but she’s been doing something about it […]
You should also dance to last year’s list.
All I Need does something I love to see in house, the gradual reveal. Grey Area, Desiree & Michael, start the track with the vocals chopped short, but lay out the full chorus line gradually towards the end. You won’t appreciate it until you listen a few times through, but eventually your mind will start to fill in the chopped up parts in anticipation for the full thing. Makes for a fun dance (in ya head).
One of the first times I heard the term “four on the floor” was in a favorite documentary of mine on house music, but I didn’t get the meaning right at first. Initially I thought it meant the type of laid back house for relaxing – or really for fuckin. Think of it in sexual terms. However, it actually means a consistent drum bass on the fourth beat, which is one of disco and more so house’s key ingredients.
To honor my creative thinking in what four on the floor meant, I give you a playlist of sexy house music. Plus it’s got a lot of what the original definition meant, that consistent drum beat.
The great thing about running your own site is that you get to do whatever you want with it. The problem with it is you do whatever you want and that means you overlook somethings some of the time, letting stupid shit slip through without getting someone else’s opinion first.
JaFunk once again starts out our list of groove music, the first being Groovewit. We decided to call this one Groovetits because sometimes it feels like no one is reading these things. So I thought I’d try to get some kind of reaction. And it was refreshing to know I could post whatever the hell I want. Even though this’ll probably be one of those things that I should have gotten a second opinion on.
Fuck it, at least the music will last.
What is this ‘the feels’ thing going around this past year? It sounds like a middle school kissing disease. But if someone were to give me good feels, it would sound like FEELS The Anthem. Fitting.
I don’t know what style we’re gonna end up calling this kinda music, I guess they’re going with future bass, but it sure is the future for the two best things to do with music, dance & fuck.
I’ve been to a handful of music festivals this year, but rarely did I dance. A lot of the house & techno at these festivals were more for raving than dancing and I prefer the midtempo soul anyway. Something you find in a lot of hip-hop and trap these days.
This playlist is all about what I love dancing to most right now and if you really love to dance you will too. I guess most of this would fall under trap music, but like every other style it seems ruined by mainstream.
It may sound funny at first, but this is what the future of dance music sounds like. It’ll at least be up there with house. I’m tellin ya!
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I went to Treasure Island Music Festival this year to see two performers. I’ve been a fan of Viceroy’s productions since 2012 and was amazed by deadmau5’s live “4D projection” in London around the same time. Unfortunately my expectations were high, which usually doesn’t lead to good things.
A few days before the festival I got a promo email from deadmau5’s team giving us pointers on what we should cover with his TI set. The one thing that caught my eye was letting us know that
deadmau5 is not a DJ. He is and should be referred to as an electronic musician or electronic music performer.
Deadmau5 in’t a DJ. Sure, technically. Funny thing is the day before I read an article on some all about the buzz music blog that deadmau5 got rated one of the worst DJ’s of this year (second behind David Guetta). I think most people consider any live performance by an electronic producer as DJing. And his performance was dated. […]
This has the most hypnotically pleasing sound I’ve ever heard. I’m just gonna cut that clip out, put it on repeat and use it as white noise when I’m sleeping. Just kidding (I’ll try it once).
I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before, but I’m sure I’ll be hearing it again. Wait until you get to the drop of dontloveme’s Dunes and you’ll hear it too. Let me know if you’ve heard something similar before.
See it on our next future glam fucks.