First Floor #246 – See You Next Year

a.k.a. Putting a lid on 2024, plus a round-up of the latest electronic music news and a fresh slate of new track recommendations

Dec 12, 2024

Are you still with me? I know there’s been a lot of First Floor in your inbox this week, but things always get a little hectic this time of year.

For those who missed it, I’ve already published lists of my favorite tracks and favorite releases of 2024, and last week I kicked off the year-end festivities with a more wide-ranging look at how dance music—and especially the narratives around it—evolved in 2024, and where things might be headed in 2025.

And that’s it. That’s all the reflecting and listmaking I can muster. Today’s edition of First Floor is just a standard-issue Thursday digest, rounding up the past week in electronic music with a whole bunch of news items, new release announcements and suggested reading links. I’ve also assembled a big batch of new track recommendations, and though picking them out wasn’t easy—believe it or not, last Friday was easily 2024’s busiest day for new releases, at least in my world—I’m happy to say that the quality is on par with the music dropping during any other time of the year. (The days of December being a musical dead zone may officially be over.)

Oh yeah, there’s also a guest recommendation from James K, who was arguably the defining voice of the ambient / dub / trip-hop / shoegaze realm in 2024.

But before we get into any of that, I do want to quickly say thanks to everyone who’s been reading First Floor this year. The newsletter turned five a few months ago, and it just keeps on growing—more than 17,000 people are now subscribed to this thing, and they’re scattered all around the world. It’s kind of nuts, especially given that the whole project is still run by exactly one person (me) and operated independently out of my apartment in Barcelona.

And that’s why—you guessed it—I need your help. Unlike most other music publications, First Floor has no advertisements, no sponsored content and no brand partnerships, and it sure as hell isn’t selling tickets either. Paid subscriptions are what pays the bills around here, and unfortunately only a small fraction of First Floor readers have signed up for one. This newsletter is basically my full-time job—truth be told, putting it together actually requires way more than 40 hours per week—and as much as I like writing this thing, I’d like it a lot better if it generated something closer to a sustainable income.

I know the economy sucks. I know you probably have too many subscriptions already, and it doesn’t help matters that seemingly every single corporation, publication and “content creator” on the planet is now constantly asking for money. I know it’s easy to ignore these pleas and just keep cruising along on the free tier. But if you genuinely like what I do, and you think the existence of independent media is important, even in the often frivolous world of electronic music, there’s only one way to help ensure that First Floor survives: By signing up for a paid subscription. It’s that simple.

As a little added incentive, I’m offering a 20% discount on all paid subscriptions though the end of the year. For just €4 per month or €40 per year, you will not only get access to the entire First Floor archive, but you’ll also never see another paywall again. (That alone is worth the cost of a subscription—those things are annoying!)

Upgrade to Paid (with a 20% Discount)

Anyways, that’s the end of my little sales pitch. Thanks again for all of your support this year, and whether you’ve been following First Floor since the very beginning or this is the very first time I’ve landed in your inbox, I appreciate you taking the time to read what I have to say about electronic music.

Have a great holiday season and rest of the year. The First Floor digest will return on Thursday, January 9, but before we officially hit the snooze button on 2024, let’s get caught up with what’s been happening during the past week.

SOME OTHER THINGS I DID

Aside from the newsletter, First Floor also exists as a monthly radio show on dublab BCN, and the latest episode premiered last Thursday. It’s now been archived, so anyone can go back and listen at their leisure, and I’ve also posted the full tracklist, which includes new music from perila, CCL, upsammy, Elori Saxl, Merope, Zaumne and several other artists.
Writer Chris Zaldua has been doing some great work with his Thoughts of a Certain Sound newsletter during the past few months, and just yesterday he decided to republish a 2015 interview with Icee Hot, a San Francisco-based party / label that some friends and I ran during the first half of the 2010s. Back when the interview was first published, we were preparing to throw our final party—a 28-hour blowout, which was all but unheard of in the US at the time—and while nearly a decade has gone by since we had that conversation, it does provide an interesting window into a bygone era of dance music culture and San Francisco nightlife. (At Zaldua’s request, I also went into my archives and dug up a bunch of old Icee Hot flyers, which make the piece even more enjoyable.)

REAL QUICK

A round-up of the last week’s most interesting electronic music news, plus links to interviews, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.

It’s a shame that Ray Philp doesn’t publish his Microplastics newsletter more often, because when he does, he offers up articles like this thoughtful, thoroughly annotated re-examination of Goa’s dance music history. Going beyond the usual narratives and obvious hippy stereotypes, he tracks how the music associated with the Indian outpost evolved over the course of the ’80s and ’90s, and also considers whether the onset of what came to be known as “Goa trance”—and the explosion of white raver tourism that followed—ruined what was previously a rather unique scene.
When its comes to streaming and the many ways it has upended both the music industry and music culture in general, there’s no sharper critic than Liz Pelly, and while her hotly anticipated book for One Signal Publishers, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, was first announced in 2022, it now has a proper release date: January 7, 2025.
Passion of the Weiss isn’t where one would usually expect to come across an interview with harpist Mary Lattimore, but in an expansive new conversation with writer Sophie Steinberg, the LA-based artist tackles a litany of topics, from her relationship with her chosen instrument to how her life in California differs from the years she spent living in Philadelphia. She also discusses a recent LA concert where she shared the bill with her own mother, who’s also a classically trained harpist.
While it can be fun to scroll through all of the year-end lists that hit the internet this time of year, they can start to blur together after a while. For anyone who’s already feeling a bit of list fatigue, Oli Warwick’s reflection on 2024 for International Orange offers a more personal look back at the year gone by, weaving together the “predominantly dub-minded music” he enjoyed the most during the past 12 months.
Resident Advisor has named Mia Koden its “breakthrough artist of the year,” and marked the occasion this week with an in-depth profile of the rising UK artist. Written by Safi Bugel, the article follows Koden on a tour through London, excavating both her own history and the wider history of bass music and soundsystem culture.
It’s not often that I will recommend a piece of blatantly branded content, but DMY published a fun feature this week in which Beats in Space host Tim Sweeney shares a list of 10 remixes that he thinks outshine the original song. Although his choices will surely be debated by dance music nerds, any list that involves names like Larry Levan, Andrew Weatherall, Donna Summer, Le Tigre, Daft Punk and Maurice Fulton is at least worth a look.
Located in Brussels and currently celebrating its 30th anniversary, the Fuse nightclub doesn’t always get the same level of adoration as its counterparts in Berlin and London, but the Belgian nightspot has made plenty of techno history over the years. Much of that history has now been captured in a new book, Fuse: 30yrs of Making Noise, which is available now via Afterclub. Written by journalist and author Koen Galle, it chronicles the club’s evolution over the past three decades, and also features both “stories from key figures and an extensive visual archive of flyers and posters.”

OBLIGATORY BOOK MENTION

My first book is out now. It’s called First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture, and you can order it from my publisher Velocity Press. However, if you’re outside of the UK, I recommend that you either inquire at your favorite local bookshop or try one of the online sales links that have been compiled here.

JUST ANNOUNCED

A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.

Following an extended period of quiet in which he released only some archival bits and a few odds and ends, experimental club stalwart M.E.S.H. has returned with a surprise new album. Released last week via PAN—his longtime label home—the LP is called Noctian Airgap, and it’s actually credited to his Hesaitix alias. For those curious to know what it sounds like, I’ve written more about the record in the “New This Week” section of today’s newsletter, but the full album is available now.
Psychedelic rock outfit Dungen is not a group that would usually appear in First Floor, but last week the Swedish band’s frontman, Gustav Ejstes, quietly dropped a jungle EP via Tim Reaper’s Future Retro London imprint. Entitled Otis, the record—which was released under the name Dungen—is a proper “worlds collide” event, and does not appear to be some sort of stunt. According to Reaper, Ejstes’ enthusiasm for the genre is genuine, and the two men first connected in Stockholm last year after the UK junglist played a gig in the Swedish capital.
In advance of a forthcoming reissue of HTRK’s 2009 debut album, Marry Me Tonight, the Ghostly International label commissioned a new EP of covers and remixes. String of Hearts features contributions from perila, Loraine James, Liars and Double Virgo (a.k.a. Sam Fenton and bar italia’s Jezmi Tarik Fehmi), and it’s out now.
An addendum to the collaborative Disconnect album that was released earlier this year, Otherness is a new EP of ambient and experimental sounds from KRM (a.k.a. The Bug) & KMRU. It’s available now via the Phantom Limb label.
Venezuelan raptor house don DJ Babatr decided to wrap up his 2024 with two new offerings. The first, Chup!, is an EP of his own productions, while the second, Raptor House 2024, is a 19-track, name-your-price compilation showcasing a wealth of different artists and their various takes on the genre. Both are out now through his own label, The Raptor Records.
Back in 2022, techno icon Marcel Dettmann released the Fear of Programming album via Dekmantel, and now the Dutch label has prepared a follow-up remix EP. Due to arrive on February 14, it’s called Fear of Programming Remixes, and includes reworks from JASSS, Interstellar Funk, SHERELLE, Dopplereffekt and L.B. Dub Corp. The latter’s take on the song “Suffice to Predict” has already been made available.
UK dub explorer Al Wootton has a new EP on the way. Calvinist Hospitality is said to venture into “psych industrial dub ritualism,” and before it lands on January 17 via Wootton’s TRULE imprint, he’s already shared the opening track, “Facing the Horses Tail.”
Run by Will Hofbauer and Sangre Voss, the whirm label spent 2024 issuing wiggly (and highly enjoyable) bits of bass music, but the UK outpost also puzzled listeners by sticking a track of what sounded like piercing static in each of its five releases to date. (All of those releases can be found here.) As it turns out, there was a method to whirm’s madness, as a newly posted Instagram video explains that actual music was buried under those noise tracks, and that by combining all five in Ableton or some other DAW, a secret song will be revealed.

JAMES K HAS BETTER TASTE THAN I DO

First Floor is effectively a one-person operation, but every edition of the Thursday digest cedes a small portion of the spotlight to an artist, writer or other figure from the music world, inviting them to recommend a piece of music. Today’s recommendation comes from James K, a New York-based ambient / experimental / dub / trip-hop / downtempo artist whose voice has been seemingly everywhere in 2024. This year alone, she’s popped up on records by Moin, Priori, Fergus Jones and Significant Other, and she’s also released her own series of evocative singles for the AD 93 label, including “Blinkmoth (July Mix),” which during the past two weeks has repeatedly been named as one of 2024’s finest tracks. Her full catalog, which dates back more than a decade, is even more impressive, and on top of collaborations with artists like Yves Tumor, Mykki Blanco, Drew McDowall and Parris, she’s appeared on labels like Warp, PAN, Incienso, UNO NYC, Dial and 29 Speedway, to name just a few. How James K finds the time to do all these projects is anybody’s guess, but here she’s carved out a few moments to share a vintage downtempo gem.

G.O.L. “Soma Holiday” (Waveform)

A beautiful track with a unique mixture of sounds, “Soma Holiday” has this dramatic, dark-mystic energy, sitting at the intersection between dub-downtempo, husky spoken-word vocals, and dark Balearic synths. The lyrics, paraphrased from Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World, are also some of the best I’ve heard. Shout out to my friend Nico (a.k.a. Gaul Plus) for showing this to me many years ago, in a choice state of mind, which imprinted the song in my deepest memory.

NEW THIS WEEK

The following is a selection of my favorite tunes from releases that came out during the past week or so. Click the track titles to hear each song individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list if you prefer to listen to them all in one place.

Aisha Vaughan “Across the Golden Land” (Leaving)

Everyone loves Enya, but since she seems determined to spend most of her time holed up in an Irish castle, somebody else needs to pick up the mantle of Celtic new age. Why not Aisha Vaughan? Hearing her sonorous singing and lush textures, it’s hard to believe that the Welsh artist grew up in a home where music was banned altogether, though that does help to explain why her tender compositions are so warm and inviting. This is music for healing—it’s also music you might expect to hear during a particularly fraught scene of a period drama—and on “Across the Golden Land,” a gorgeous standout from her new album The Gate, Vaughan sounds like she’s tapped into the deepest recesses of her psyche. There are no actual words, but she doesn’t need them, as the rich timbres of her voice radiate raw emotion.

Hollie Kenniff “Esperance (feat. Goldmund)” (Nettwerk)

Every year or so, Hollie Kenniff pops up with a stunningly beautiful ambient / avant-pop record and then quietly disappears back into the ether. Where is she during the rest of the time? That’s not totally clear—she seems to move between the US and Canada, and maintains a relatively low profile—but based on her new For Forever LP, wherever she lays her head must be an arrestingly calm place. “Esperance” is one of several highlights on the record—the song is also a collaboration with her husband Goldmund—and the predominant vibe is one of peace. There may be a bit of slowcore in its DNA, yet “Esperance” contains none of that genre’s signature mopiness; on the contrary, it’s practically bursting with light, its shimmering guitar notes and Kenniff’s soaring vocalizations conjuring visions of pastoral expanses and cloud-free skies.

Snad “Bubblescope” (smallville)

In recent months, minimal (or mnml, if you prefer) has found its way back onto tastemaker tongues, but what’s funny about this supposed “revival” is that it so far only seems to extend to music from 20 years ago (e.g. old Perlon records) and already-established contemporary artists who made their name in other genres (e.g. Huerco S.). At some point, some new minimal icons will need to be confirmed—and by “new,” I mean “new to self-appointed cool kids who previously paid little-to-no attention to the genre”—and from where I’m standing, Snad looks like an awfully strong candidate. A Berlin-based American who already has an impressive string of hypnotic, loopy records under his belt, he’s just debuted on smallville with the Bubblescope EP, and its title track—which clocks in at a whopping 14 and a half minutes—is an alluring exercise in understatement. It’s not often that something this chilled also contains such an enticingly soulful groove, but it seems that Snad is the rare producer who can make his dancefloor steppers sound positively plush.

Moonee “Brotherhood (Glitched)” (Last Year in Marienbad)

There’s a particular strain of low-key house music that can only be played either A) right after the doors open, when folks are slowly filtering into the club, or B) during the final moments of the night, when the dancefloor is dwindling and everyone in the room is on their last legs. “Brotherhood (Glitched)” is a song for these moments, a sleepy, R&B-infused cut with a gentle glow and a touch of garage-style swing in its step. The title track of the new EP from French artist Moonee, it sounds like Todd Edwards making a record for Dial or mulemusiq, and its hypnotic, eyes-closed appeal is further enhanced by the fact the whole thing has been dipped in silken static.

Joolmad “Rebel in You” (Limousine Dream)

“Rebel in You” is a chugger at heart, but UK producer Joolmad intriguingly refuses to stick to the standard tech house template. Whatever you think about the proggy groove that underpins the title track of his new EP, there’s no missing the song’s ’80s-style robot voice, which sounds a lot more like an old Afrika Bambaataa record than something that would have been played at Bar 25 back in the day. Is “Rebel in You” a little goofy? Maybe, and the presence of whistling birdsong only adds to the eccentricity, but here’s the thing: it works, and immediately makes this wiggly tune far more interesting—and fun—than 99% of the tech house fodder that’s floating around these days.

Pizza Hotline “The Racers We’ve Lost” (WRWTFWW)

Between the Lapsus label’s 2023 reissue of the wipE’out” soundtrack and the recently released WipEout Futurism: The Graphic Archives book, the seminal ’90s video game is having a real moment in the culture. Adding to that momentum is Anti Gravity Tournament, a new split release from Swedish producer Mitch Murder and UK artist Pizza Hotline. The latter has long made his memories of the original PlayStation a keystone element of his work, and it’s his “The Racers We’ve Lost” that shines brightest on this new record, swaddling its romping jungle rhythms in pastel clouds and crystalline keys. Lump it in with atmospheric drum & bass if you like, but that doesn’t quite capture the vibe; in the world of Pizza Hotline, it feels as though the laws of gravity barely apply.

Subjects “Take Me Up” (Deep Jungle)

Much of the talk about jungle these days understandably focuses on the genre’s newest generations, but when First Floor interviewed Tim Reaper—arguably the most prominent of all the “new-school” junglists—earlier this year, he specifically cited Deep Jungle founder Harmony as one of his heroes. First active during the ’90s, the UK producer reactivated his label in 2017, and has been releasing a steady stream of records ever since. Though it’s home to old heads (e.g. Dillinja, Tech Itch) and newer jacks (e.g. Kid Lib, Dwarde) alike, Deep Jungle remains committed to jungle’s classic sound palette—the label’s Bandcamp page specifically cites the ’93-’96 era—and sticking to that undoubtedly becomes a lot easier when Harmony himself is directly involved in so many of the releases. “Take Me Up” is the A-side of the latest 12” from his Subjects project, an ongoing—and incredibly prolific—collaboration with fellow UK jungle veteran Anthony John. A sparkling, diva-driven roller, it’s soulful, melodic and just a little jazzy, providing a welcome reminder that jungle doesn’t have to be menacing to mash up the dance.

Randomer “Home Invasion” (Mama told ya)

Five years removed from his last solo release, UK bass-techno alchemist Randomer is ready to rip. His new Everything happens for no reason EP is a full-speed-ahead affair, albeit one that thankfully sounds a lot more like a souped-up version of old Motorbass records than the jackhammering inanity of TikTok techno. With its serrated crunch and industrial-grade thump, opening track “I Saw the World Melt” might be the EP’s most effective dancefloor smasher. Yet the spooky “Home Invasion” is even better, with Randomer leaning into a horror aesthetic by pairing the song’s revving rhythm with some eerily tweaked synths and spine-tingling chimes.

Blawan “Done Eclipse” (XL)

Is Blawan still a techno producer? Maybe sometimes, but the contents of his new BouQ EP are far too freaky for the average dancefloor—in a great way. Nearly 15 years into his career, he seems to have tossed aside all of the usual rules and genre norms, focusing instead on seeing just how far his productions can go. The music is still dark—some things never change—but not in a way that feels forlorn or morose. The standout “Done Eclipse” could be described as a warped take on industrial pop, but listening to its twisted-up melodies and unintelligible vocals outbursts, there’s an obvious sense of irreverence at work, in a way that recalls artists like SOPHIE, or even Skrillex. (He and Blawan have been doing a series of back-to-back DJs sets during the past year or so; maybe they’re swapping studio tips as well?) What he’s doing won’t be for everyone, but it’s joyously weird and unashamedly adventurous. What does it sound like? In a word, freedom.

Cortical “Shiny Surgery” (Plasma Sources)

I’m last person who’d use EDM as a positive descriptor, but the larger-than-life sounds of Cortical’s impressive debut, Wretched Patterns and Terrible Mistakes, arguably owe as much to stadium-ready acts like Flux Pavilion as they do the mind-warping sound design of Emptyset. (As it happens, Empyset’s James Ginzburg mastered the record.) That’s not a knock on Cortical; the young duo are technically making an intensely detailed, sound design-heavy strain of experimental techno, but they’re doing it in a way that’s arguably better suited to the local IMAX theater than the average club. Their music is big with a capital B, and though “Shiny Surgery” is probably the least unhinged track on the new EP—at times, its ravey breakbeats sound like something Overmono might cook up—it does exude a kind of chaotic grandiosity, putting a premium on sonic acrobatics. Dancing to it might be tough, but watching these guys in action—and yes, of course they have a sensory-scrambling A/V show—you’ll more than likely be left saying “wow.”

Hesaitix “Volunteer” (PAN)

Noctian Airgap is the first new album from James Whipple (a.k.a. M.E.S.H.) since 2017, but his production skills don’t appear to have slipped whatsoever during his time out of the spotlight. The new LP—which is actually credited to his Hesaitix alias—capably tours through dystopian soundscapes, hazy drones, jazzy outbursts and avant-garde club rhythms. Noctian Airgap is by no means a straightforward record, let alone a DJ-oriented one, but those expecting something “deconstructed”—a word Whipple surely came to loathe—might be surprised by the LP’s variety of relatively steady grooves, many of which bear traces of vintage boom-bap. (There’s also the title track, which somehow sounds like a cross between Arthur Russell’s cello and a percussive suite of slamming drawers.) The standout “Volunteer,” however, goes in a completely different direction, combining sludgy drums and distorted squall in a manner reminiscent of ’90s post-hardcore—the punk kind, not the rave kind. Did I expect Whipple to make a song that sounds like Unwound? Absolutely not, but at this point, perhaps it’s better to throw any expectations I had about his music out the window.

That brings us to the end of today’s First Floor digest. Thank you so much for reading the newsletter, and, as always, I do hope that you enjoyed the tunes. (Don’t forget, you can find them all on this handy Buy Music Club list, and if you like them, please buy them.)

Until next time,

Shawn

Shawn Reynaldo is a freelance writer, editor, presenter and project manager. Find him on LinkedIn and Instagram—and make sure to follow First Floor on Instagram as well—or you can just drop Shawn an email to get in touch about projects, collaborations or potential work opportunities.