"An entire history of innovations in recorded music could be told through the lens of so-called musical mistakes. Do they even exist? At the level of intention, are errors ever actually errors?" - Piotr Orlov writes in a beautiful essay about 'Dilla Time', the new biography of legendary Detroit hip-hop producer James Dewitt Yancey, Jr. (aka J Dilla or Jay Dee) by journalist and NYU professor Dan Charnas. "What might the musical future look like when its supposed mistakes and proficiencies are based primarily on sets of data? ... Aren’t what previous generations’ power brokers dictated as errors turning out to be some pretty decent guides to a mindful development of th

Music writer Ted Gioia opens a question on the role of conductors with an interesting take on the double meanings referring to both music and traveling. "When we refer to the movement of a classical work or a favorite track on a playlist, or even to structural forms such as the fugue (etymologically linked to the verb to flee). Take for example, the ancient Greek word oimê, signifying song, which is connected to the similar word oimos, designating a road or path".

The Spectator introduces 'Industry', the British-made TV drama about young bankers: "More and more bankers are shirking expensive bottle-service clubs for those which can be considered ‘cool’ – venues such as Fabric, Fold and Oval Space, many nestled in the half-gentrified warehouse districts of east London. These play techno, house and other strands of electronic music which eschew the sugar-rush build-ups and bass drops of commercial dance. Many bankers treat this more in-the-know kind of clubbing as social camouflage: escaping the stigma of a boring corporate job with a night under strobe lights".

Music writer Ted Gioia takes a critical look at today's music magazines which are (supposedly) leaning too much towards nostalgia: "Music writers serve as the conscience of the art form. They don’t simply reflect back to fans what they expect or want to hear. This is always important to remember but especially right now when the dominant platforms reward technocrats at the expense of musicians. Music media outlets have a responsibility to push back against these forces of marginalization and homogenization that not only hurt individual artists but weaken the en

"Listeners—especially young ones—are not concerned with what category each track falls under, but instead in how each track makes them feel. The abundance of homemade playlists coupled with the popularity of experimentation has made the fixation on traditional genres akin to insisting that the guy has to pay for dinner on a first date... Organizing music by mood finds promise in one simple fact: some people can’t tell you what genre a song falls under, but everyone can tell you how it makes them feel" - Tiffany Ng points out in her new essay about genre-less times.

h threats to our physical, psychological, and emotional well-being, and in order to feel safe and secure, we’ve had to get a bit more resourceful than usual. Enter dissociation, the response at the root of so much trauma" - Pitchfork introduces its longread about "dissociation culture", including "dissociation music". The author finds examples in songs by Mitski, Drakeo the Ruler, Black Midi, and many more.

Tablet Magazine published an interesting longread about Ariel Pink being cancelled after attending January 6 attempted coup d'état. "Rosenberg’s career is the story of how indie rock purged monsters that the culture had wrongly tolerated—or perhaps it’s the story of how even the most supposedly open sectors of the American creative scene abruptly slammed shut, losing any remaining patience for the complexities and cognitive dissonances that form the bulk of human existence. Both are really the same story, of how American culture got so stupid and so boring so quickly".

Ambient music has risen in popularity, Pitchfork is wondering what will this mean to artists and the genre itself: "There’s something perversely thrilling in the idea that listeners with little to no professed interest in experimental music might be served genuinely outré sounds under the auspices of self-care... But I have also wondered—when these playlists command so many listeners, and are so explicit in their presentation of the music as something to play while you’re doing something else—whether they might end up tipping the delicate balance of Eno’s famous dictate about ambient: away from the interesting and toward the ignorable".

ces by Pitchfork's Jeremy D. Larson: "As one of nearly half a billion people who pay a small fee to rent the vast majority of the history of recorded music—not to mention the 2 billion people per month who use YouTube for free—I have found that, after more than a decade under the influence, it has begun to reshape my relationship with music. I’m addicted to a relationship that I know is very bad for me. I know I am addicted to Spotify the same way I was addicted to nicotine or Twitter. It makes me happy, aggrieved, needlessly defensive". However - "the beauty of the algorithm of your mind is that it makes perfect sense to no one but yourself".

The Face asks whether Coachella is being transformed from a festival into a platform: "As hundreds of thousands influencers and festival-goers flocked to Indio, California for the festival over the past two weeks, an abundance of content surrounding everything except the music flooded the internet. The veil of manufacturing fun and doing things solely for the internet has lifted, begging the question: has Coachella transformed from music festival to content festival with music in the background? And what does that mean for festival style?".