The DAA Round-up: Issue 3
Q2 (Apr-Jun) '25 | Top 10 of the year so far...
The DAA Round-up is back for a Q2 wrap-up edition. I tried to write an April edition, but I scrapped that; I then tried to write an April + May edition, but I scrapped that too. So now here we are, and we're already halfway through the year. I've recently begun or resumed a bunch of other creative/research projects that don't revolve around keeping up with new music—an obligation which I forswore a few years ago yet can't seem to just quit. If I'm being generous with myself, this, in addition to my habitual incapacity for working on things long-term, is why I made (and continue to make) no promises about these issues or their regularity. Some of the aforementioned "other projects" might make their way onto this platform, or at least be shared via this platform. In any case, here are ten blurbs + a few extra recommendations for releases that came out between April and June, as well as a list of my top 10 releases for the first half of 2025.
Jean Philippe-Gross - Jump Cut (Tanzprocesz, Apr 1)
Dial this one up if you need your harsh synth itch scratched. If electronic abrasion comes in a spectrum from neon to monochrome, Jump Cut totters gleefully on the former end, allowing its menagerie of broken signals to spew, clash, and jostle for room without it all bleeding together. Joy and sincerity are the only compensation I will accept for tinnitus.
Kwon Han-kyul - The Other Side of Everything 2022-2024 (Jungle Gym, Apr 2)
The Other Side of Everything applies the kinetic thrust of micro-sampling to field recording, allowing a readymade aleatoric process—i.e. the split-second audiovisual capture afforded by an iPhone's Live Photo feature—to compile rapid-fire snapshots of daily life into gapless montages that quiver with implications of intimacy. Montage, classically, enables the suggestion of some longue durée via the strategic selection of cross-sections and their presentation by means of oft-overt editorial gestures that make clear and authoritative the role of the storyteller (for Eisenstein, montage was uniquely capable of linking mimesis and history this way). Things are no different, in terms of form, when one compiles an Instagram reel or updates their social media regularly with pictures: the suggestion conjured by the montage is one of a certain form of life or individual existence.
Let's call this the "neoliberalization of montage." How to combat it? One finds two options: deceleration—slowness, patient attention—or acceleration, i.e. lubricating the imbrications between capitalism and schizophrenia with motor oil. In politics, it's clear that the former is necessary if not sufficient, while the latter is abysmal folly. But in the holding pattern of aesthetic experiment, perhaps it's worthwhile to renegotiate what acceleration might mean as a genuine and pragmatic complement to deceleration (what Benjamin called pulling the brakes on the locomotive of history). Listening to The Other Side of Everything, I imagine an alternative history of montage, where the microscopic densification of its technique, rather than reifying the alienated autonomy of individual existence and locking it in a hall of mirrors, smashes these mirrors into smithereens and recasts the glass in the shape of something closer to both individuality and universality.
Skunk Wook Quartet - Skunk Wook Quartet (unifactor, Apr 4)
The definition for "good" free improv hews dangerously close to the "I know it when I see it" definition of porn. But this shit slaps: the bass/low end is just monstrous—a yawning chasm that's nonetheless an unshakable firmament. This record sounds like the inside of a big, heavy balloon, where the alternately skittering and torrential percussion, the prickly crackling of a static-soaked guitar, and the shrill piercings of an electronicist aping a saxophonist are all working together to pop that balloon violently open from within.
Papo2oo4, Subjxct 5 - Papaholic, Vol. 1 (self-released, Apr 7)
The sort of throwback record where the production value and cohesion of the thing makes for a product more deft and studied than many of the originals it's harkening back to. These beats have a rough-hewn, mid-fi veneer that cleverly withholds the amount of oomph they can pack, making your trunk rattle in unexpected (but always satisfying) ways. The nuance afforded by the sort of DAW-craft/synthesis one can get one's hands on in 2025 allows Subjxct to give his beats a warm, organic sound that nonetheless wisely refrains from over-professional polish; in this way, his subtle modernizations augment, diversify, and blend seamlessly with the more tropified lexicon of '00s rap sounds that Papaholic, Vol. 1 is anchored in. Papo's flow, with its muffled yet forceful braggadocio, is the thread holding it all together; it exhibits a balance between play, restraint, and daring that characterizes only the most genuine confidence. My favorite rap release of the year so far.
Manaka - Pretty Machine Gun (self-released, Apr 30)
A gem of a J-pop/-rap EP that fulfills the '00s-revival ethos better than any K-pop mini I've peeped in the past couple of years. "Tapping" is a propulsive opener whose melodic contours and buoyant synth arpeggiations merit its jersey beat (in contrast to a hundred other sexy drill or NewJeans copycat tunes who simply graft on the rhythm as if churning out an uninspired club remix). "Bad + Sad Boi" is the most infectious track here, with toplines that swoon and stutter in tandem with sugar-coated 808s whose bass distortion fizzes like carbonated infatuation. "Agari," in its aggro-rap affectation, is competent even as the least compelling song of the bunch; this makes "lol"'s lush bed of synths, its casual + shuffling pace, and the mid-range/mumbly melodic rapping stand out as parts of a much more assured tune. The EP closes with "Mawaru"—a superb ballad that seals the deal with a string of cascading lines that overlap from end to end and float weightlessly on top of a cloud of pure plugg'n'b goodness. Besides the attention to detail in the production, what endears me so much to Pretty Machine Gun is how naturally the vocalization and delivery of J-pop come together with that of anglophone pop rap in Manaka's flows; sometimes it leans more one way, sometimes the other. But it oscillates between the two smoothly, largely eliding the friction that the interaction between pop and rap typically still engenders in Asian (or more broadly non-Black) pop music. This one wins the award for being the biggest target of compulsive re-listening for me in 2025.
connor camburn - acousmatic temporal collage (Chained Library, May 2)
My favorite Chained Library release since 2022's Dear Master, [...]. Camburn is one of those artists whose passion for the analog fluke and the broken signal is unremitting; his latest, however, goes harder and hits more direct than a lot of his previous work, which, while thorny, tended more toward a sense of haunting—of ghosts inside the machine. You get a bit of that at the end here, but overall on acousmatic temporal collage, he instead delivers one chopped strobe of a transmission after another in rapid succession; while not exactly "loops," they have a circular and iterative quality that creates killer locomotion while retaining the mesmerism Camburn is already deft at conjuring. Tracks 2 and 6 are notable in particular for the way they manipulate distorted and spliced fragments of vocalization.
HiTech - HONEYPAQQ Vol. 1 (Loma Vista, May 23)
The boys are back. Not as good as s/t, but better than Détwat. More A-tier party ghettotech molded into trap forms, with the funny<->horny dial turned up another notch—i.e. just as ratchet as before, but with a little extra bombast. Crank this shit up!
BbyMutha - muthaleficent 2: gold edition (self-released, Jun 6)
One of the most consistent rappers outside of the mainstream over the past several years. This "deluxe edition" of 2021's Muthaleficent 2 tape doubles the runtime by adding 5 tracks that go just as hard, and the original release feels incomplete without them. It's a little more slapdash + less polished than more recent albums proper, but that's to this project's benefit: Glow Kit and BbyShoe are still my favorite BbyMutha releases anyway. Highlights include: "Muthaleficent March" (in which BbyMutha reps Sailor Moon over Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir, even if her kid disagrees) "Tig Ol Bitty" (a defiant gasconade with a bouncy/very Midwest-coded beat… she could back-and-forth with any Detroit rapper bar for bar); "LOL Dolls" (whose off-kilter tumble-dry beat BbyMutha navigates without breaking a sweat); "gossip <3" (maybe one of the best tunes Rock Floyd's made for BbyMutha—up there with "Heavy Metal" and "BBC"); "clap!!!" (relentless, like a rollercoaster to hell—each of those exclamation points deserved); and "GoGo Yubari" (which has the best line on the album: "Murder every rapist from the east to the west!").
Particals - Garzweiler (Ultra Eczema, Jun 7)
Particals helped me to realize that many, many experimental musicians would do much better to through-compose by deliberately arranging sounds in a collage rather than entrust the same sounds to improvisatory meandering, ambient oversaturation (i.e. a layered/looping "wall-of-sound" approach), or a wholly chance-driven structure. Sure, Garzweiler sounds really good—better than 95% of old head noise/industrial synth worship. But what makes it all stick is the way each track is bound by a kind of meat-and-potatoes formal logic: rising action, sustained climax, and denouement, always moving forward at a steady pace and suggesting a development of previous material without ever quite repeating itself. Like, I could be talking about Bach here. Maybe this is the upside of thinking about art as research, which is the way many 19th c. authors wrote novels or the way a certain ilk of 20th c. composers wrote music—and which, we're told, was the impetus informing this record: you probably want to present your results in a clear and striking fashion, and so you probably don't want to bury all the cool shit you found in a half-assed structure that would make them illegible. Give this one a shot if you like weird noises but find yourself desiring them in a more svelte yet also robust vessel than they typically come in.
Pyha / 폐허 - Dead and Forgotten (self-released, Jun 22)
A new Korean doom/sludge project that's got me hooked for reasons I can't quite explain. I appreciate their bare-bones approach to this sound; a lot of metal can feel overdetermined by one-upmanship, so it's refreshing to hear something that isn't going for bigger or badder or gnarlier but just wants to be big and bad and gnarly. What's more, Pyha aren't shy about building their songs around simple chord progressions that go straight for the gut in the same way any good pop song would—something I value in my favorite blackgaze/DBSM too. Maybe that's the hook: slow, heavy music for the sentimental. Anyone else want to raise their hand?
A few more Q2 albums I wanted to write about but didn't know how or didn't have the time
[upper left] Mamer 马木尔 - Awlaⱪta / Afar 离 (Dusty Ballz, Apr 9)
[upper right] Takashi Makino - Space Noise (ato.archives, Apr 11)
[lower left] v/a - Road Fever: New Generation Carnival Riddims from St. Lucia and Dominica (Soundways, May 9)
[lower right] Primitive Motion - Lost Frequencies (Discreet Music, Jun 25)
My Top 10 Releases of 2025 So Far… (In A-Z Order)
…all of which I’ve written about at some point within issues 1-3 of the DAA Round-up!
Thanks for reading, as always. Keep fighting the good fights.