In the instrumental-only sphere, the stuff that gets top play is usually pop remixes—injecting an extra bounce and stutter for TikTok dance clips. But what excites me the most is a lot more crazed and cursed: the demolition zone surrounding producers like Steez and qua. A collective they’re in, Cathedral Music, dropped an EP months ago that sounds like you’re trapped in a two-second gif of a horrible traffic incident—incoherent shouts, restless kicks, gunshots and groans. Where dariacore makes a neuron-bursting blitz of beloved pop samples, producers like olly, haze, and alone turn cultural ephemera like Johnny Bravo and the Punch-Out Wii theme into a pulverized scrap heap. Ask AI to transcribe the lyrics for olly, noah, and HydroBoi’s edit of a scene from The Bee Movie, in which Barry B. Benson says “Ya like Jazz?,” and you’ll probably get something like: Fuck yo mama like jazz? Ya like jazz? Tch tchYa like-fuck-chaya-ya-eeee-ya [I’M SORRY, I CAN’T COMPLETE YOUR REQUEST, THERE ARE TOO MANY CLANGS]. There’s a real technical prowess to the way these producers slice and manipulate tension; it’s like frenetic jungle breakbeats but vocal shards are used as the drum elements.

The Ever-Mutating LatinCore

A comically clunky term for an array of freaky beats streaming out of Latin America, “LatinCore” was coined by Colombia producer CRRDR, co-owner of the electronic label Muakk. Vague as it is, I’ve found it nifty for navigating SoundCloud and Bandcamp to find juicy microgenres like “uwuracha,” “hyperwaracha,” the warped percussive machinations of “post-baile-funk” (for that and other madness, peep TroubleMaker Records’ compilation Cerol 25). One of the coolest things I’ve heard this year is Amor de encava, a tape from the Venezuelan group weed420 released on Deprerreo, a delightfully fried and furry-friendly Spanish label. The collective used “encava” bus sounds and samples to concoct a dizzying, plunderfucked mix, with the idea of capturing the grim loneliness of how it feels to live in Venezuela now. On the subject of marijuana, I’ve been digging everything by Mexico City producer DJ weed. Their thunderous “put’em in a trance” and “BRUJERIA” (from NACA Worldwide’s Dedicatorias Perronas Vol. III tape) judder like amusement park rides that have turned evil and won’t let you get off.