New Songs for Enhanced Interrogation of Your Frontal Cortex

Strange New Music Hasn’t Disappeared—It’s Just Hiding Out on My Genre-Busting Playlist

I’m too old to be rowdy, but I still cherish my rule-breaking music. That once meant long hair and gnarly amplified sounds. But rules are different now, so even alt-sounds arrive on the scene in unfamiliar guises. Below are seven brand-spanking-new examples.

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Sam Gendel & Antonia Cytrynowicz
Live a Little
Experimental Jazz Artist Makes Homemade Album with Untrained 11-Year-Old Singer

Listening to a Sam Gendel album is like experiencing the five stages of grief. You begin with denial and anger, and work your way to acceptance. That’s when you succumb to its inescapable demands. Again and again, I bravely battle against joining Sam’s club, but I always let down my guard in the end—whether he is playing heavy metal sax while wearing a creepy clown outfit in the back of a SUV, or reworking a peppy Duke Ellington dance song into microtonal chillout electronica, or dumping four hours of music on to Bandcamp in the middle of the night. But when Gendel decided to feature an untrained 11-year-old girl as singer on his new album, I thought this man has gone too far. I went through the stages all over again: denial, anger, and all the rest. But I finally reached acceptance, serenely buying into the proposition one more time. Maybe you can do the same.

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The Manakooras        
Jungle of Steel
Ominous Mood Music for Dangerous Poolside Luaus

Here’s essential background music for your most dangerous outdoor parties. Invite your enemies and a few wild animals. Put strange intoxicants in the appetizers. Burn voodoo dolls in the barbecue. And, above all, put on the Jungle of Steel album from the Manakooras on the loudest speakers you can find. The few survivors and stragglers will leave before you reach track four—allowing you to pour a strong Mai Tai with a tiny floating umbrella, kick back on the poolside lounge chair, and listen to the rest of the album.