10 Y.N.X.716 – “DIE BROKE (Instrumental)”
Buffalo’s Y.N.X.716 comes like a thief in the night this year, billed on Bandcamp as a”lyricist” but apparently beholden to some pretty substantial forays, this instrumentals EP spanning 22 minutes and sounding very much the work of a professional like Pete Rock or Jay Dee.
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9 Andrew Bird – “I Cover the Waterfront”
Indie rock mainstay and perennial vanguard vagabond Andrew Bird returns this year with Sunday Morning Put-on, an album billed interestingly under “jazz” on Bandcamp but really spanning genres adamantly, like you’d expect from such a time-worn industry denizen as Bird. “I Cover the Waterfront” makes its mark as disarmingly simple but genuine smooth jazz, over stridently eclectic instrumentation.
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8 Denzel Curry – “SET IT” feat. Maxo Kream
I never thought I’d be saying this five years ago, but with the complete deluge of phony, jazzy sampled beats pervading the comfortable territory of boom-bap, trap almost seems more and more appropriate these days, potentiated, of course, by an unorthodox, wild delivery like that of Denzel Curry, who blends anthem penchant and verbose diction on “SET IT” for a solid, hard-nosed album centerpiece.
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7 Color Green – “Coronado”
Taking the torch from Acid Dad, whose 2021 psych-rock masterpiece Take it from the Dead forged new grounds in barbecue rock, Color Green don a similarly trippy, laconic approach toward construction of songs which always seem like more than the sums of their parts. “Coronado” helps Fool’s Parade to be a model in production, with a thick veneer of abrasive guitar return crashing the party of their succinct, brilliant approach to the pop song.
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6 Stetsasonic – “Message in Our Music”
I have to say I was completely blown away by Brooklyn’s Stetsasonic, hip-hop’s original band which seems preternaturally cemented on to the original SPIRIT of hip-hop. When I saw they were an old group, then, I immediately with dread worried that Here We Go again was a re-release. It turns out it’s an organic 2024 effort, anyway, blending retro techniques and live enthusiasm seamlessly on a sprawling beast of a rap album.
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5 Tommy Crane – “DMFAO”
I thought for sure “DMFAO” was like some LMFAO nod until I realized it’s actually an acronym for the album title — “Dance Music for All Occasions.” And as ambitious and self-assuming as this title selection seems, it comes across as merely charming when you hear how unpretentiously these easy electro-jazz grooves (think The Internet or The Detroit Experiment set to beats) sidle along, blending ’70s soul and street DJ beat for one proud, world-ready amalgamation.
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4 Lilacs & Champagne – “Rude Dream”
Lilacs & Champagne, rather than being Rembrandts-approximating ’90s revivalists they sound like, are actually a couple of blue-collar-looking dudes from Sweden who channel out this surreal, unbelievably blissed-out electro/DJ operation. “Rude Dream” seems just a little more narcotic than the rest of the tracks on the aptly title “Fantasy World,” where the m.o. seems more firmly planted as, more than anything, fully obfuscating the listener’s former conception of what music can do.
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3 Ibibio Sound Machine – “Pull the Rope”
The title track opener on the succinct, rabid new offering from British dub-leaners Ibibio Sound Machine is a light, bouncy homage to boom-bap and visceral synth, rendered as something like a jazzy, improvisational update on Afrobeat.
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2 Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O – “Baby Ngimanzi Wuthando”
This group of renegades from South Africa is booked as a South African trio (or “tree-o,” to be scientific about it) but actually seems to possess about seven members, or so, according to the credits on Bandcamp. Anyway, this Malcolm Jiyane character certainly sounds every bit the type to not sweat the tiny details like this, belting out bits and anecdotes of South African wisdom with a sort of laid-back sense of triumph, all over glove-tight, ambient worldbeat grooves.
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1 Blu & Shafiq Husayn – “CA All Day” feat. VCL the Moslem
With song titles like “LA 2020”; “CA All Day” and “LA Summer”; this hip-hop duo left no mystery as to their place of origin. Blu is the rapper here, with fellow local Shafiq Husayn laying down laid-back, stoned but bumping beats which allow to Blu to get verbose, even egotistical on the mic: “We come from CA / All day / And we don’t give a fu** what any of y’all say”.
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