Who: Perera Elsewhere is a world away from the sound of Sasha Perera's band Jahcoozi, a fixture on the Berlin scene since the mid 2000s. Where the latter's fusion of dub, electro, and hip-hop shakes clubs to their foundations, Perera Elsewhere's lo-fi acoustic ruminations are the green shoots that come pushing up through the rubble: Wiry, resilient, and breathtaking in their stark beauty. Poised somewhere between Cat Power at her most subdued and Tricky at his most haunting, her debut album uses acoustic instruments and watery electronic effects to frame Perera's hushed, smoky voice in subversive ways: It sounds like Sunday-morning background music, but its understatement is precisely what pulls you ever deeper into her softly turbulent world. Thirty-seven minutes later, you snap out of your reverie to find the tea gone cold, and the light around you subtly changed.Sounds Like: Carmen Villain, Cat Power, TrickyWhere to Start: Her debut album, Everlast, which features Gonjasufi, Aremu, and Springintgut, and is out now on Los Angeles' Friends of Friends label.
Who: Melbourne, Australia singer-songwriter injecting slacker pop with witty lyricism and a gritty lo-fi alt-country lilt, backed by her five-person band, the hilariously named Courtney Barnett and the Courtney Barnetts. Telling of Barnett's tangential poetic gifts is "Avant Gardener," an imminently relateable tale of a day spent gardening that ends with a panic attack in an ambulance: "The paramedic thinks I'm clever because I play guitar/ I think she's clever because she stops people dying," Barnett sings, and then compares the asthma inhaler paramedics give her to a bong.Sounds Like: Helium, Pavement, WaxahatcheeWhere To Start: "History Eraser," a Lou Reed monotone on speed jangler off The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas (combining 2012's I've Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris and 2013's How to Carve a Carrot into a Rose), out now.[videoembed size="full_width" alignment="center"][/videoembed]
Who: Formerly a member of Miami, Florida rapper/producer SpaceGhostPurrp's Raider Klan, 18 year-old Curry takes that YouTube rabbithole darkwave murk and turns its weeded out worldview into anthemic personal-is-political hip-hop. Curry attended Carol City High School (he graduated earlier this year), the same school as Trayvon Martin, and celebrates the day the majority of the student body walked out in protest of Martin's murder on "N64." On his album Nostalgic 64, headspinning, '90s-invoking rhymes rub elbows with Internet eccentrics like witchhouse head Lil Ugly Mane, alt-R&B crooner Steven A. Clark, and Odd Future oddball Mike G.Sounds Like: Inspectah Deck, ScHoolboy Q, SpaceGhostPurrpWhere To Start: "Threatz," eerie, embattled fight rap off his album Nostalgic 64, out now.[videoembed size="full_width" alignment="center"][/videoembed]
Who: Leeds-based psychedelic sprawlers consisting of MB, EG, MJ, SS and JW (each member goes by their initials only), co-signed by heavy music connoisseur Julian Cope early on, banging out catchy Brit-pop like it's not big deal, and then, appending it with the trippy swirl of space rock, the drone of shoegaze, and bypassing typical verse-chorus song structure and still remaining eerily catchy. Their full length, Pearl Mystic begins with "Away/Towards," an eight-minute Hawkwind in the garage freak-out, soaking in the '60s but picking up the tics and tricks of experimental music since then, just as well.Sounds Like: The Black Angels, Spacemen 3, Thee Oh SeesWhere To Start: "Form and Function," an elongated acid-tinged noise rock anthem off their album Pearl Mystic, out now.[videoembed size="full_width" alignment="center"][/videoembed]
Who: Daniel Fisher, a New Jersey-born DJ and producer with a thing for cowboy hats, dodgy graphic design, and subtly tweaking dance-music convention. Playing New York's GHE20 G0TH1K parties alongside Venus X and $hayne, Fisher made a name for a "shameless" — his word — blend of mainstream pop and global club music; his P(eace) L(ove) U(nity) R(espect) On Earth mix mashed up holiday music with vintage rave. His recent releases, like whitelabel (for Sinden's Grizzly label) and Yes, I'm Elastic (for Fifth Wall), aren't afraid to indulge in camp pleasures, but only as stepping stones to a new kind of mind-body actualization, where winking acid-house tropes collide with darkly psychedelic, full-on dance-floor euphoria.Sounds Like: Depending on the song, James Ferraro, Green Velvet, Blawan, 2 Unlimited, or all four at onceWhere to Start: His Yes, I'm Elastic EP, out now.