The April 2026 edition of Beatique is now live on Mixcloud. This month’s installment features new music from Slayyyter and Kneecap, throwbacks from Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Armand Van Helden, plus lots more. If you want the whole tracklisting, you have to listen, but there are links to posts related to the songs and/or artists at the bottom of this post.
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“The Happy Dictator” is an earworm. On the few occasions that I’ve been able to play the Gorillaz song at a club, I’ve woken up the following day with it stuck in my head. This morning is no different. I played it early at Underground last night and now it’s lodged in my brain, with Damon Albarn and Russell Mael trading off vocals on a loop.
I don’t plan sets at all. I just drop 24+ hours of music on my laptop, sort it by BPM and then figure it all out as the night goes on. So, it’s only in hindsight that I can say that last night’s set at Underground was probably influenced by being at the anti-ICE protest/march in downtown Los Angeles earlier in the day. “The Happy Dictator,” “Police on My Back,” (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” “Shout to the Top,” “Tubthumping,” blah blah blah. Whatever is stuck in my head makes it into the set and then the set gets stuck in my head. That’s a DJ brain for you.
Anyhow, thanks to those of you who made it out to Underground last night. It was a blast as always. See you next Friday for Gorillaz x Daft Punk night! Set list is below. New-ish songs link back to previous mentions here.
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One of the first things I learned as a baby DJ was that genres aren’t all that useful. On a very basic level, they can refer to stylistic conventions (dub) or specific movements (punk) or both (hip-hop), but then the terms get overused (post-punk) and are totally watered down (psychedelic) until they become a meme (goth) and, ultimately, meaningless (indie).
Genres define music for marketing or search engine purposes, but they don’t mean much for human ears. Whether or not songs fit together has less to do with metadata and more to do with qualities that are objective, subjective and pretty hard to describe. That’s all just a long way of saying that I really like when there’s no genre tagged to a gig, which is the case for Splash at The Mermaid, where I played last night. Here’s the set list, which includes new music from Wet Leg, Marie Davidson, Model/Actriz and clipping., classics from Max Romeo (RIP), The Smiths and The Delfonics, a holiday tune from I-F and more.
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There was a lot of great music that came out this past year, so much that making a list of the best 2022 albums is a near-impossible task. Fortunately, last year, a good friend gave me a notebook designed for keeping track of music, so I was able to keep decent notes on most of the albums I heard in 2022. I followed the format of that notebook in putting together this list of albums I love and think you should hear. It’s not short— there are 23 full-length albums listed below— nor is it confined to any single genre. These albums aren’t ranked either. Each listing is followed by a link where you can buy the album.
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