Playlist gallery

227 tracks tracing reggaeton's actual genealogy, not its hits: late-70s Studio One and Channel One roots, King Jammy/Steely & Clevie digital dancehall and the Fish Market riddim, Panama's cassette-era reggae en español (Renato, El General, Nando Boom, Chicho Man, Sweet Edition, Apache Ness, dozens of forgotten Río Abajo acts), and Puerto Rico's Playero/Noise underground mixtape scene that turned Nando Boom's 1991 "Dem Bow" into the dembow riddim. Chronological from Jamaica to Panama to Puerto Rico, stopping just before reggaeton's 2000s commercial explosion.

Culture · Gregory Isaacs · Michigan & Smiley · Sound Dimension

Thirty tracks of techno that refuses the 303-and-4/4 template: Pan Sonic's oscillator-noise minimalism and Mika Vainio's Sähkö-era abstraction, the Sandwell District/Downwards lineage (Regis, Function, Silent Servant, Rrose, Ancient Methods), Northern Electronics' hypnotic Scandinavian dub-techno (Abdulla Rashim, Ulwhednar, SHXCXCHCXSH, Evigt Mörker), Hospital Productions' war-sample industrial (Vatican Shadow, Alberich), post-Soviet raw lo-fi loops (DJ Speedsick, Buttechno), and noise-into-techno crossover from Container, Emptyset, and Scorn.

Pan Sonic · Orphx · Ulwhednar · DJ Loser

27 tracks tracing raw black metal's noisiest, most hissing fringe: Youth Attack Records' blackened underground (Häxan, Grinning Death's Head, Ancestors' lo-fi hardcore-BM), the noise-wall/black-noise hybrid lineage (Sutekh Hexen, Gnaw Their Tongues, Aluk Todolo), and Nordic/Siberian raw and depressive BM cult acts (Ildjarn, Beherit, Paysage D'Hiver, Nortt, Darkspace, Grima, Frozenwoods, Wintaar). A tape-hiss, four-track-recorded, kvlt-as-hell listen.

Häxan · Grinning Death's Head · Ancestors · Sutekh Hexen

A deep dive into the actual genre that writes songs about programmers, hackers, and computers: nerdcore and hacker-rap deep cuts from Jonathan Coulton, Dual Core, YTCracker, and MC Frontalot sit alongside the electronic pioneers who first sang about computing (Kraftwerk, Daft Punk), and the outliers who wrote about machine consciousness and the tech industry from angles rock and pop rarely touch (Rush, Kate Bush, Gary Numan, Bo Burnham). Twenty-five tracks spanning code, git commits, viruses, phishing scams, and androids trying to crack their own code.

Jonathan Coulton · "Weird Al" Yankovic · Dual Core · YTCracker

The ten most recent Merzbow full-lengths actually streaming on Spotify (Feb 2025 through May 2026), sampled two-to-three tracks deep per record: harsh-noise-wall solo sessions (Epsilon, Ogres, Bariken Returned, Merzbuddha V2, Mimesis, Parakeet) alongside three collaborations — the koto-and-drum-machine duo Sedonis, the Amazon-rainforest-themed drone piece with ex-Sepultura drummer Iggor Cavalera and guitarist Eraldo Bernocchi (Nocturnal Rainforest), and the glitch-pop-adjacent Rococo ∞ Echomatter with Chicago's Kikù Hibino. A real-time snapshot of where Japan's most prolific noise artist is right now, not a greatest-hits.

Kikù Hibino, Merzbow · Kikù Hibino, Merzbow, Patrick Shiroishi · Merzbow · Eraldo Bernocchi, Iggor Cavalera, Merzbow

A journey through the regional dialects of Greek traditional dance music: Epirus's mournful free-rhythm clarinet laments and pogonisio open it, building through Thracian zonaradikos, Macedonian zurna-and-daouli carnival brass, and Pontic tik/kotsari/serra war-dances at full intensity, peaking with fast Cretan pentozali and maleviziotikos, then settling into Thessalian and Peloponnesian village grooves before closing with long, communal Aegean and Karpathian island dance cycles — sourced from field-recording archives (Domna Samiou, Simon Karas), 1929-31 78rpm reissues (Kitsos Harisiadis), and active village/brass ensembles, not tourist-folk arrangements.

Kitsos Harisiadis · Petroloukas Chalkias · Domna Samiou · Chronis Aidonidis