WILTLW: Aug 10, 2025

Hut - Hut

Down set Hut! Brooklyn songwriters Renny Conti and Darryl Rahn’s folk-rock side project releases its debut album after being a mainstay of New York City’s live circuit these last few years. I was in LA that whole time so couldn’t catch any of the shows, a fact made all the more unfortunate by how excellent this project is. Hut features a heavier sound than Conti or Rahn’s solo work, but their unforced and lived-in songwriting still forms the heart and soul of these tracks, elevating sweat-stained dive bar grooves into portraits of our cosmic journey in miniature.

Boundary - ³com ep

Here thanks to Philip Sherburne who’s Futurism Restated newsletter introduced me to Santo Domingo producer Boundary’s latest EP Epicenter Imager. From there I just sort of dove in whole hog, because I mean, how could you not. Understated ambient techno that pulls as much from the meticulously textured early 00s clicks & cuts crew as it does the expansive futurist world-building of pioneers like Drexciya and Model 500. Any of these projects is a good pick but I wanted to highlight this EP for its loving treatment of early memories in cyberspace, an ode to the great promise the web once held (and could still.)

Nick Sylvester - Stereo Music for Breakbeats and Samplers

I like music that breaks your brain a bit, that challenges your notion of what a song can be or what an instrument can sound like. On Stereo Music for Breakbeats and Samplers, LA studio denizen and smartdumb label founder Nick Sylvester does both, distilling the drum to its rawest essence, impact, and building from that 15 ultra-clean and totally unhinged breakbeat tracks that ripple, stretch and snap like fresh latex. The project reminds me of Squarepusher’s Go Plastic which performed a similar feat of sonic alchemy back in 2001, mind melting shit.

Chance the Rapper - STAR LINE

I liked this? It was good? Forgive the incredulity, those are just two things I wouldn’t have expected to say about a Chance the Rapper project in 2025. I thought this sound was dead and buried back in 2016, Coloring Book being the furtherest it could go with The Big Day following as an unfortunate but ultimately inevitable fall. Chance was just too goofy and too earnest to continue finding success in hip-hop’s increasingly numbed out and nihilistic post-modern era. But surprisingly I’m here for STAR LINE, it’s both a welcome return to form and a refreshing rewind to a time when it was cool to say that you cared. Chance has always worn his heart on his sleeve, it’s been his greatest asset and biggest fault over the years, and that remains the case on this latest project. This time however, instead of the unrelenting and empty positivity of The Big Day, we get something that’s much more somber in tone and subject matter. A tough half decade has Chance in a reflective mood, taking stock of the state of his people, his city and himself across a large body of tracks that dips back into the warm and vibrant Chicago soul sound he helped popularize over a decade ago alongside album guest stars like Vic Mensa and BJ the Chicago Kid. My favorite cuts are frequently the more personal ones like “No More Old Men,” “Link Me In The Future,” and “Back To The Go,” this was always the primary draw of Chance, the way his high-pitched and endlessly flexible yap could reach through headphones and bring you so immediately into his world. There are of course some clunkers, the biggest offender being “Space & Time,” an overly-sentimentalized reflection on his relationship with fame and his ex-wife that’s so bogged-down in lofty metaphor it amounts to one big eye-roll. But then even the cringe-inducing uncool-ness of sing-along tracks like “Tree” and “Ride” can come off as endearing because hey, at least he’s trying. Ultimately I think that’s the key word here: effort, after one of the most embarrassing fall-offs in rap history, it’s nice to see Chance putting in the work again and it’s nice to hear someone caring so much about what they do.

SOTW: Dijon - "my man"

I know everyone’s been singing the praises of Dijon’s second album for it’s beautifully raw depiction of love and fatherhood, but I've been going through it as of late so you'll have to excuse me if my favorite track is the one about a relationship’s dregs, when the time's worn thin and the fights have grown stale and the history’s too long to unwind. I'll let you make of that what you will. This also one of the gutsiest, most bone-breaking vocal performances of the year, Dijon’s on another level the way he drops his guard with such abandon.