Optimistic Underground's Best Albums of 2024 list

Oceanic - Choral Feeling [Nous’klaer LP 007]

Tracklist
1. Wren’s Joy
2. Self-fulfilling
3. Sing It to Happen
4. KxT
5. Cac/cio
6. Open Them Open
7. Sunshine, Dear
8. C-Loli
9. Even If I Lose everything 
10. Who Comes Next?

The Album is out on January 27 

Pre-order: https://ffm.to/choralfeeling

Choral Feeling

Buy/Stream

Oceanic - KxT - Nous'klaer LP 007

upsammy - Being is a Stone
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 132S
Release Date: 02 March 2023
Purchase: https://pan.lnk.to/BeingisaStone

upsammy shares ‘Being is a Stone’, the first single from the upcoming full-length album ‘Germ in a Population of Buildings’ out via PAN on May 5th.

Mastered by Rashad Becker
Mixed by James Ginzburg
Artwork by Jonathan Castro Alejos and Tharim Cornelisse

upsammy - Being is a Stone (PAN 132S)

Illumina

upsammy - Germs in a Population of Buildings
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 132
Release Date: 05 May 2023
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/GerminaPopulationofBuildings

On her sophomore album "Germ in a Population of Buildings”, upsammy moves through her surroundings with the curiosity of a place-bending landscape architect. The album is rooted in her interest for ambiguous environments in constant shift, and the feeling of discovering strange patterns in different ecosystems. Often, the Amsterdam-based artist finds herself zooming in and out beyond a place's most recognizable surface features to inhabit the microscopic and gigantic. Gathering field recordings and evocative environmental sounds, she shapes this source material into vibrating electro-acoustic rhythms and unstable, psychedelic textures.

upsammy's debut album, 2020's critically-acclaimed "Zoom", was praised for its careful reimagining of IDM, evolving vignettes that nodded towards the dancefloor without being shackled to its rigid set of rules. On "Germ in a Population of Buildings" her process has evolved considerably; the skeletal trace of IDM is still present but it's been trapped in amber, allowing her unique sonic landscape to develop organically. 'Being is a Stone' is a proof of concept in many ways, layering upsammy's contorted voice in rickety patterns beneath a lattice of fragile rhythms and faintly melancholy synths. It's never immediately obvious where the sounds are coming from - a hiccuping beat might be glass cracking underfoot, and larger pulses could be wet concrete, rusted iron or bent plastic. As the sounds develop they morph into each other, demolishing what came before and building on top of the ornamental wreckage.

On the dynamic 'Constructing', upsammy's sound design fluxes through hyperactive bass music structures, abstracting expectations at every turn. Often her sounds are whisper quiet, rattling and vibrating until heavier masonry drops and disrupts the structure. And when discernible rhythms subside into the background, like on the album's eerie title track, they become almost illusory, morphing between the real world and the electronic. upsammy's processed voice works like a bridge between these realms, snaking between stark, whimsical melodies on 'Patterning', arching from AutoTuned detachment into cooing, dreamy intimacy. By considering the harmonies between each location she's visited, upsammy has been able to build a unique topology that's an uncanny digital amalgam of her lived experience. It's a thoughtful alternative in an era more concerned with flatting the landscape than crumpling it and examining its peaks and troughs.

Mastered by Rashad Becker
Mixed by James Ginzburg
Artwork by Jonathan Castro Alejos and Tharim Cornelisse

Germ in a Population of Buildings

upsammy - Constructing (PAN 132)

What Stays In Vegas

Rat Lifestyle

from the album 'Activator' (12XU)
out January 12, 2024

12XU.bigcartel.com
12XUrecs.bandcamp.com

Gercyz Powers Rolin - Entrance

Spectral Evolution tracklist (one continuous track):

00:00  Intro				       
01:30  Changes			        
09:48  Descending		                
12:35  First Short Space	        
14:38  Take the Train  		        
19:02  First Long Space 		
25:36  Fifths Twice			        
30:59  Second Long Space	        
36:19  Your Goodbye 		       
39:49  Second Short Space	        
42:20  Ascending			         
43:15  Changes Reprise

Spectral Evolution

Dreamfear / Boy Sent From Above

Boy Sent From Above

Dreamfear

Pre-order: https://maloca.bandcamp.com/album/siiix-vol-1

Brussels-based label @malocarecords presents 'SIIIX, Vol.1', a compilation-turned-collaborative EP showcasing a dialogue between HIIIT (fka percussion ensemble Slagwerk Den Haag) and six producers - shimmering between footwork, IDM, UK bass and ambient.

The final result is six wildly different sonic outcomes, from the high-energy workouts of @upsammy’s ‘Embrytone’ to Julian Satorius’s warped rhythms in ‘Klutsel-Klötzli’.

More exclusive music

Premiere: upsammy 'Embrytone'

Queridão

VAI COMEÇAR PUTARIA (feat. DJ JR)

SADOMASOQUISTA

SADOMASOQUISTA (feat. DJ Dg Do Rb, MC PAULIN DO G, Braian, Pepeu & Dãan)

Whatever the Weather II

3°C

Besos Robados

Planet Inc

85805

tripping out

= = TROPA DO MEU'KIRIDO = =
Contrate para seu Baile : 
                                           (31) 98234-7567 
Since: 2012

SADOMASOQUISTA (feat. DJ Dg Do Rb, MC PAULIN DO G, Braian, Pepeu & Dãan)

DJ ANDERSON DO PARAÍSO

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