Nadia Rose - "Skwod"
Speaks for itself really...


Laura Mvula - "Phenomenal Woman", "Overcome", "Show me Love", "Ready or Not"
Celestial rays of angelic sound bathe earthy vocals in extraordinary compositions of empowerment and joy.


Adele - "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)"
I love Adele best in her cheekiest ("Right as Rain") rather than moodiest ("Rolling in the Deep") modes, and "Send My Love" is really the former in the guise of moody confrontation. A spare confessional blossoms into harmonic overdub, each added voice a layer of regret, coalescing into an insistent clamor of resolve, perhaps closure


Solange - Don't Touch My Hair (album)
Solange's emotive territory is much more intimate and mysterious space than Beyonce's public autobiographies. If Beyonce sort of Represents for the Other through the self, than Solange blurs the line between self and universal, Channeling .


Little Mix ft Sean Paul - "Hair" 
Overcoming Shitty Breakups through Female Solidarity and Makeovers!


Kacey Musgraves - A Very Kacey Christmas (album)
Christmas in 50's Hawaii, where Willie Nelson meets tropicana.


case/lang/veirs - "Honey and Smoke"
"Honey and Smoke" sounds like something David Lynch would like. Creepy and plaintive.


Drake - "Hotline Bling"
Not a Drake fan, but the combo of sad sack/Cosby dancing/Casio presets won me over hard.


Domo Genesis ft Anderson.Paak - "Dapper"
Remember Faith Evan's "Love Like This"? Well I'm pretty sure these guys do too. Domo Genesis' Mace impression provides the perfect half-baked counterpoint to Anderson.Paak's raspy feel good sing song.


Yemi Alade - "Ferrari"
Warm, afrocentric afropop.


Justin Bieber - "Company"
Easy, breezy tropicali put Beiber on the map, but "Company" is the easiest and breeziest.

2016 TREND LEGEND
+ Dance Pop or Korea's infatuation with EDM, a synonym for Electronica, a term the West Rejected
+ More and Darker 90's R&B in digital clothing
+ SM Kingdom
+ Girls, Girls, Girls
+ Hip Hop = BeWhy, Hash Swan
+ Sexy

Exo - Ex'act (Album)
In the past, f(x) consistently pulled off the dance/pop marriage - with credit rightly going to SM for overall concept. The direction in the case of Exo, leverages heretofore disparate strengths - boyish edginess, epic bombast, and urban soul - into one sophisticated persona. Ex'act is an ode to urban music that gracefully avoids retro pitfalls - embellishing essential characteristics yet preserving a sense balance. The moving parts feel very whole. Harmonic choral textures blossom into cold, digital dancefloor volumes and boom bap spaces. Lush pop melodies flower over familiar dance composition. References shade into each other fluidly.

1. "Lucky One" - modernized electro disco strung on a sexy Michael Jackson vibe
2. "Monster" - epic bad boy bombast emphasized by spare rubbery beats and elevated by a lush, worship-me chorus
3.  
4. "Artificial Love" - throbby, seductive UK house springs a trap that feels inevitable on the hapless
5. "Cloud 9" - late 90's swagger R&B, but looser, swoony and more romantic, this is "change in the pockets beats, daydreamy vocal scribbling." ref. Bobby Valentino
6. "Heaven" - chunky piano chords, cavernous hip hop beats and dense production pave the sidewalk for earthy chorus. ref. Mary J Blige 
7. "White Noise" - very groovy, slightly dirty, wonky house
8. "One and Only" - R&B confessional sprinkled with squee synths
9. "They Never Know" - minor key body roll gets to business with an instrumental two step chorus. ref. Silk meets Craig David.
10. "Stronger" - the improvisational quality of the composition makes this ballad an ideal show off piece. ref. Jodeci Unplugged. 

"London Night-o"


NCT 127 - "Firetruck", NCT U - "The 7th Sense"
"7th Sense" was a surprisingly knowing appeal to contemporary notions of cool, but LDN Noise's "Firetruck" rode all the perfectly timed drops to the more satisfying climax and a UK Funky house comedown.
Soca "Sobangcha!"

Heize ft DEAN - "Shut Up & Groove"
DEAN officially ruled the roost last year with various production projects and superb 130 mood:TRBL to set the mood for Korea's 90's to aughts R&B revival (admittedly a personal sweet spot), but modernized. There's so much to love on this bouncy duet, from the proggy arrangement, the splashing/crashing forward motion in the production, the gradual transformation from coy crooning to sing-song to pop rap, all layered with a lightness that reads as complete narrative. Relaxed and sweet, Heize has never sounded better than in conversation with Dean's heartthrob exclamations.


Crush - "Woo Ah"
A silky drip drop of controlled, plinky synth cascading into a seductively wonky slow jam and descending into a woozy refractory outro.


G. Soul - "Far, far Away"


Babylon ft. Dok2 - "Between Us"
Update to early/mid 2000's swag ballads with knee melting chorus, and backed by an equally impressive B-side. First heard Babylon on Zico's "Boys and Girls", a song which in retrospect should have made it onto last years list for sheer fun quotient.


Zico - "I am you, You are Me"
Unexpectedly wistful and romantic mid-tempo slow jam, delivered by one of Korea's more respected idol rappers (with a mid-song rap cameo played by himself). 



Vixx - "Milky Way"


Hyolyn ft Jay Park - "One Step"
The breathy vocals and daydreamy intimacy grew on me slowly and stealthily until "One Step" had somehow become the defacto mental soundtrack for waffle weekends. I suppose the topical likeness to Mariah Carey's "Underneath the Stars", a favorite from the Daydream album, reinforces the aura of self pleasuring diva vu.


Block B - "A Few Years Later"
Rubbery beats and arpeggiated interstitial melodies slide into each other on separate yet parallel temporal rails as a perfect mash up. This is pop songwriting at an ambitious and very subtle high.


Twice - "TT", "Cheer Up"
While Black Pink moderately filled the shoes of (finally) officially defunct 2ne1, I.O.I concluded a long string of forgettable releases with an overly frantic, "Very, Very, Very", and Unicorn penciled in for f(x) with very good "Blink Blink" (presaged by also very good "Huk" in 2015), JYP's girl group released the catchiest-catchphrase-iest girl group songs of the year including "Cheer Up" (aka "Shy, Shy, Shy") and unusual Halloween freestyle "TT". Twice has a lock on the cheer squad head cock and coy/cheeky insouciance they first promoted in "Ooh-Ahh", because the music supports their puffy sticker visuals with a strange confetti of cartoon sounds and fickle beat change mashups. It was hard to deny them attention this year, and therefore this spot gives way grudgingly before the same weird-cute aesthetic that was Got7's "Just Right".


Oh My Girl - "Liar Liar"
A satisfyingly straightforward counterpoint to Red Velvet's busy "Russian Roulette" in the bubblegum department.


Cosmic Girls - "Secret"
A standard girl group staple performs the magic trick of weightlessness, and exceeds its own charm quotient as the chorus ramps up subtly and takes off melodically into the stratosphere.


Winner - "Baby, Baby"
Doo wop soul


Snuper - Platonic Love
Nails the references.


HONORABLE MENTIONS

Nu-est - "Overcome", "Love Paint"
Reminiscent of awkward early Vixx, with overblown bishi concept videos


Luna - "Free Somebody" 


U-Kiss - "Stalker"
Sexyback fart beats meets Shinee meets Ne-Yo


Jay Park - "Aquaman", "Solo" (2015)
Cha Cha Mode


Seventeen SVT - "Check-in"

Best Taco plate ever, with fluffy yellow rice, creamy beans and the most amazing crispy tacos. Tuscon!

Not enough superlatives for this collection from Ted Chiang - feast for a hungry brain that didn't know it was even hungry. Chiang applies the precise reasoning of the best hard sci fit and the melancholy reflections of the best humanist sci fi to the angst of religion and evolutionary intelligence with rigorous prismatic perspective. While the thought experiment has fallen by the wayside in recent years as a backlash to the speculative literary or the opportunistically filmic, Chiang's resuscitation of private obsessiveness in science fiction is a welcome return to the notion that natural inquiry should by necessity inform our approach to the mysteries in life.

The film, Arrival, is a wonderful adaptation of Story of Your Life - a titular tale of first contact but also a reflection on the ways which communication and knowledge have the power to transform. Overly atmospheric but meditatively beautiful, Arrival leans hard into the personal and elides the science behind the premise. Such slippery dramatic editing tunes the sympathies of a broad audience to the inherent triumph of the heart or the mystical deus ex machina of the plot. However, the central strength of Chiang's story is a rationalist's emotional transcendence - the idea that the details of scientific resolution matter, that the hard work of gaining knowledge in order to truly comprehend and break through, is something that no greater power can gift us.