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10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Le1f, Paul Banks

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, which means that we’re feeling somewhat fragile, having slept no more after Sleep No More, and also that it’s time for our regular roundup of new music to get your hands on this week. This week’s headline attraction is Le1f’s entire new mixtape for free download, which should be more than enough to get you clicking through post haste — but if not, there’s also a hip hop mixtape from, um, Paul Banks, along with a bunch of weird ambient atmospherics, Elite Gymnastics remixing How to Dress Well, neo-rave and neo-soul and various other neo- action for good measure. Get downloading… after the jump. … Read More

Music

50 Reasons to Be Excited About Pop Music In 2013

By Rohin Guha on

It is a truth universally acknowledged that in event of a nuclear holocaust two things will persist: cockroaches and pop music. In our monthly Pop for Skeptics column, Rohin Guha explains how the latter need not be a terrifying thing to navigate, nuclear holocaust or not.

No pop fan really knows what to do with himself in January. It’s a special time of year when new fads are still being cooked up and otherwise unremarkable artists — nice to see you again, Nicole Scherzinger! — stand a fair shot at selling more than just a couple records. Some enterprising pop oracles might consult science, the stars, and mathematical trends to make all kinds of predictions about what is set to become “the next big thing.” Others, like me, will wait until some stuff has happened to do that. Sure, with January finally over and done with, it’s probably a bit too late to be making prognostications about what we should look forward to in pop this year, but to borrow a phrase from last year: YOLO. Below, then, are precisely 50 reasons to look forward to pop music in 2013. … Read More

New York

Notable New Yorkers’ Cultural Resolutions for 2013

By Judy Berman on

Now that Christmas is nothing more than a pile of shredded wrapping paper and tinsel on the floor of your family’s living room, ’tis the season to think about how we can make slightly less of a mess of things in the year ahead. That’s right: New Year’s resolutions. Of course, here at Flavorwire, we’re not so interested in your plan to get ripped or reconnect with your middle-school best friend. Our favorite resolutions are of the cultural variety — and who better to ask about those than 50 of New York’s most promising emerging culture makers? We hope their compelling, diverse, and sometimes humorous resolutions will inspire you to make some of your very own. … Read More

New York

50 Up-and-Coming New York Culture Makers to Watch in 2013

By Judy Berman on

New York in 2012 may be a city that runs on money, but, contrary to all economic logic, it remains a city whose character is equally defined by the art it creates. Artists — by which we also mean artisans, writers, musicians, filmmakers, actors, designers, chefs, dancers, comedians, and makers of all kinds — and the entrepreneurs and curators who support them still populate the city by the thousands, maintaining its status as the creative capitol of the United States. … Read More

Music

The 15 Most Underrated Albums of 2012

By Tom Hawking on

It’s December, which means the music industry’s listomania is now in full swing. But wait, if on the off chance you haven’t written your own personal end-of-year list, then have a quick look at this one before you start anointing one of the usual suspects — Grimes, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Swans, Fiona Apple, etc. — as the best of 2012. We love all those records, but there are a heap of great albums released in 2012 that we think haven’t gotten anywhere near the amount of end-of-year love they deserve. We profiled some of them in June — read on to find out our selections from the second half of the year, and let us know if you reckon we’ve missed any. … Read More