Prestige Format Picks 14 March 2025

here's some good music that you might like

Author

Ryan Ruppe
March 14, 2025 • Read this in about: 5 minutes

I’m taking another social media break. As I said on Bluesky, I thought I could handle the constant deluge of horrible news but I cannot. But I like posting about music, so that’s going to happen here.

I’ve also been listening to physical music releases a lot more, and taking pictures of them. That’s going to be at least part of the format going forward.

I’m also partway through Liz Pelly’s Spotify exposé Mood Machine and I highly recommend reading about all of the various ways that Spotify has worked to make the entire music landscape much much worse over the last decade+.

The conjunction of those 2 things means: I want to post here more, so I need to make it less work for myself. I’m also even more sour than I already was about streaming services. Thus: way fewer links to music. You can search up most albums I talk about pretty quickly anyway, I’m just offloading that work to you. 💖thanks

Here’s the good music:

that little red button at the bottom of the pic is a Wendy’s Kids Meals Fidget-bot that I stole from my child, and it’s the most satisfying button i’ve ever clicked.

Dense, dungeon-adjacent synth compositions from the head of tape label Good Glass Records, who I happen to know is like me in that he’s Joy Electric lifer.

they’re atop a gold Korg Monologue

The Avalanches - Since I Left You

Primal Scream - Screamadelica

I needed a serious emotional pick me up yesterday, and blasting these two albums back-to-back did the trick. They are stone-cold classics and auditory sunny days.

Simian - We Are Your Friends

This album came out when I was a college radio DJ and the one-sheet called it “like if the Beatles had been produced by the Neptunes”. It’s full of jams, and the remix competition they had for the title track ended up launching Justice’s career and is directly responsible for Zac Ephron playing a DJ in 2015.

I got that receiver with the cool silver knobs for free

Cornelius - Fantasma

This is a watershed classic for me. It’s so inventive and creative and still silly. And they played one of the tracks live on Yo Gabba Gabba

I really posed this one out, huh? let’s see: clockwise from left we have: Knight armor turbo changer Grimlock, Roland midi cable, audio junction box built by my grandfather, tron legacy light cycle usb drive, beholder keychain, and half of a wicked witch of the west

There’s a clear through-line from Cornelius’ Fantasma to this one, though they don’t sound very similar. They’re both artists making collage music based on their own nostalgia.

I just love how Why? bridges the sound of anticon dense sad rap with 2000s indie rock (if that even IS a real genre)

Sometimes you need super heavy stoner metal

oooh vinyl, and a thank you note! and a peanuts comic

An album killer of instrumental jams from jack-of-all-trades Yuuki Matthews and the dearly departed Richard Swift.

that’s Psychic Temple’s “Doggie Paddlin’ Through the Cosmic Consciousness” behind it, which is one of my 2024 AOTY

Why?/Anticon adjacent drum’n’stuff jams. Great great focus music imo.

that’s it! Tell your friends

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