The definition of digital music has by no means been broader. It would imply hyperpop or drum’n’bass, Balearic or footwork, Colombian membership or Brazilian funk, post-everything ambient or good outdated Chicago home. This 12 months’s greatest digital releases tick all these packing containers and extra, relating Egyptian road types, the Afro-Portuguese diaspora, and a 71-year-old former punk alongside the way in which. In alphabetical order, these are our 35 favourite digital releases of the 12 months.
Try all of Pitchfork’s 2024 wrap-up protection right here.
(All releases featured listed here are independently chosen by our editors. Once you purchase one thing by our retail hyperlinks, nevertheless, Pitchfork could earn an affiliate fee.)
A. G. Cook dinner: “Silver Thread Golden Needle”
Perhaps A. G. Cook dinner is loopy for testing the eye span of his chronically on-line viewers with a 10-minute album intro. Or possibly “Silver Thread Golden Needle,” the bionic opener to Cook dinner’s Britpop, is scintillating sufficient to remain fixated on. The music refracts like a prism at excessive midday, full of stuttering blips that shapeshift at every flip. And the merry-go-round of yelps and vocal chops at its core gleam like Christmas morning. A. G. Cook dinner’s digital epic is every part fashionable music has grow to be: digital, artificial, amorphous—finally only a WAV file in some sticker-laden Macbook. Effectively, it’s every part however concise. However there’s no bother sitting by this one. –Olivier Lafontant
Hear: A. G. Cook dinner, “Silver Thread Golden Needle”
Actress: Statik
Every new Actress launch invitations a brand new mind-set in regards to the artist, as followers ponder what’s completely different this time about the way in which Darren Cunningham approaches his typical fare (cryptic pranks, nostalgia, nostalgic pranks). Statik is one in all his easier, and, thus, extra beguiling, case research: What if he turned the structural trickery down a notch, and turned up the atmosphere? You could be unsettled by how comparable Statik can sound, at instances, to any variety of earlier slow-burn atmospheric thinkers in digital music—from the ’90s ambient-techno greats by to earlier Actress tunes to in the present day. However the nagging uncertainty that makes Actress enjoyable remains to be right here, jockeying for place below layers of cozy, Actress-ian haze. Cunningham makes anxiousness really feel unusually snug. –H.D. Angel
Hear/Purchase: Tough Commerce | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Burial: “Dreamfear”
Of the handfuls and dozens of vocal samples Burial has used all through his almost two-decade profession, the repeated squelch of the juvenile taunt “Again from the useless, fucked up within the head” on his observe “Dreamfear” might be the funniest. It contains some signature Burial sounds—the threatening synth stabs, the pitched-up vocals, the wet crinkles for texture—however raises the depth whereas reducing the introspection. As a substitute of feeling like a touch upon rave music, “Dreamfear” is rave music, a hardcore tackle the sounds Burial was so influenced by however which his productions finally inverted. Operating a dozen minutes, the observe operates like a mini-mix, with varied actions taking their flip walloping you with amen breaks. It’s an actual puttanesca of hardcore. “I’m the lord of ecstasy,” goes one of many different lighthearted vocal samples. Perhaps it’s a few drug vendor, possibly not. If Burial is speaking about himself, it’s a well-deserved humblebrag. –Matthew Schnipper