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Since emerging in the late 2010s, hyperpop duo 100 gecs' sound has been somewhere between pop and panic attack, chaotically combining the most extreme versions of multiple styles and then speeding everything up to near breaking points. It's fun, funny, knowingly and brazenly ridiculous music and would be easy to write off as simple obnoxious experimentalism if the songs weren't so fantastically catchy. Their 2019 debut 1000 Gecs sounded like club bangers made by psychedelic cartoon characters, and sophomore LP 10,000 Gecs (a "long-player" in name alone as its ten songs clip by in just under 27 minutes) expands the duo's cultural collaging to include cannibalizations of Limp Bizkit-style nu-metal, pop-punk, '90s alt-funk, ska, and anything else that captures the gecs' fleeting attention. "Hollywood Baby" sounds like blink-182 with the entire mix filtered through Auto-Tune, but the 8-bit feel somehow enhances the impact of the song's hooks. The album quickly detours between legitimately strong blasts of energy like the slap-bass weirdness of "Doritos & Fritos" or the computerized thrash metal of "One Million Dollars" to goofy Kidz Bop childishness like "Frog on the Floor" or the third wave ska send-up "I Got My Tooth Removed." Somehow 100 gecs take things even more over the top on 10,000 Gecs than they did on their already mind-boggling debut. The very nature of the group's hyperbolic and perpetually exploding design means they're still inherently polarizing, love-it-or-hate-it kind of music. For those who love it, 10,000 Gecs offers more -- so much more, always more -- to love.© Fred Thomas /TiVo

To the thousands of questions raised about themselves, the Arctic Monkeys answer Whatever People Say I Am, I Am Not. Their success story, born in bars and on the Internet, is as huge as it is dazzling. Smashing the British sales record – over 360,000 albums sold in a week −, they receive this memorable accolade from the Times: Bigger than the Beatles! In Great Britain, ever since the Libertines have burnt out, the horizon had turned dull grey. All until this fluorescent-adolescent quartet from Sheffield. Led by the timid Alex Turner, the Monkeys concocted for this perfect first album thirteen frantic tracks bordering on genius, that the NME ranked 19th in its 500 Greatest albums of all time list. It featured everything that had been missing from the rock landscape. Incisive guitar riffs for Turner’s scruffy compositions (The View From The Afternoon, I Bet You Look Better On The Dancefloor, Dancing Shoes) and Matt Helders’ cheeky drums. Andy Nicholson on the bass for the last time. They play, hard and fast. The whole thing is overflowing with extensive lyrics about the daily life of the English working class. Shiny but not polished, youthful but well formed. Recorded in the country side, in the Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire, this opus draws from the Strokes’ nonchalance (Riot Van), Franz Ferdinand’s dancing energy (Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured) and the Libertines’ phlegm (Mardy Bum), while also drawing inspiration from their idols, the Jam, the Smiths, and Oasis, already putting down their very own trademarks for years to come. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

It’s a well-known cliché: two heads are better than one. Two years after his debut album, the 24-year-old London multi-instrumentalist Tom Misch (who has a distinctly Jamiroquai-esque sound) has partnered up with 27-year-old drummer/producer Yussef Dayes (the brain behind United Vibrations and one half of the electro-jazz duo Yussef Kamaal) for this irresistible album What Kinda Music. Up until now, Misch has cooked up a gourmet mix of smooth jazz syrup, funky foam, droplets of soul, hip-hop spices and a pinch of velvety pop, inviting along a star-studded line-up including De La Soul, GoldLink, Loyle Carner and Poppy Ajudha while sampling from the likes of Roy Hargrove, The Crusaders, Stevie Wonder and Patrick Watson. All these flavours and sounds form the foundation of this 2020 vintage, making the rhythmic side even more solid. Yussef Dayes jazzes up his interventions and makes his improvisations even more sophisticated. Each artist brings their own contribution to this truly collaborative work and the record strikes a perfect balance of voice and instrumentals. Both artists grew up in Peckham in South London and Tom Misch even saw Dayes play drums in the school talent show when he was 9! “Yussef comes from a more experimental background, and he has a lot of loose, crazy ideas. I know how to write a catchy melody, but with interesting chords and I have a good understanding of popular song forms, so I think I streamlined those ideas and made them accessible.” It’s this perfect symbiosis between accessibility and refined genre fluidity that makes What Kinda Music sound like a laidback trip - perfect record for electro-jazz geeks. Plus, there’s another reason for Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes to bulge their chests with pride: their album has been released on the prestigious label Blue Note, confirming that they embody a certain contemporary jazz sound. “Everything feels so divided these days, it would be nice for people to hear the record and hear two very different musicians coming together and realize it doesn’t have to be that way.” As for the featuring artists, the duo invited along Freddie Gibbs (who raps on Nightrider), Rocca Palladino (son of the illustrious bassist Pino Palladino who often practices with Alfa Mist) and the saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi. An immediate Qobuzissime, this record is the umpteenth proof that the London jazz scene is alive and kicking… and now showing its funky side! © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

How do you follow a monumental achievement like the 1972 masterpiece Exile on Main Street? The short answer is: you can't. And so if the Stones—who'd been on a massive roll of success from 1968's Beggars Banquet through Exile finally made a less than acclaimed album, who could blame them? Hence the tale of 1973's Goats Head Soup, the album forever blamed for the Stones inevitable stumble. While it's true that nothing on Goats Head Soup is on the level of Exile's many highlights ("Rip This Joint," "Tumbling Dice," "Sweet Virginia"), the album does have the Stones' finest near-ballad—the hit single "Angie"—and "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)," with Billy Preston on organ, and whose lyrics suddenly have fresh relevance ("The police in New York City/ They chased a boy right through the park/ And in a case of mistaken identity/ The put a bullet through his heart"). After that, however, it's a mixed bag. While they still can't be mistaken for top drawer Stones, much of the rest of the album—tunes like "Hide Your Love," "Winter" and "Can You Hear The Music"—is in retrospect not quite the filler they appeared to be in the wake of Exile. The last record produced by Jimmy Miller, who was key to their 1968-72 successes, Goats Head Soup was also one of the worst sounding Stones records before being remastered and reissued in 1994, 2009 and 2011 (Japan only), with the only difference between versions being censored or uncensored versions of the infamous last track, the Chuck Berry-styled rave up, "Star Star." Here the entire record is available for the first time in a much-improved 96kHz/24-bit hi-res mix. Among the included outtakes is a ripping instrumental take of "Dancing with Mr. D"—Mick Taylor playing slide is truly revelatory and "Scarlet" (with Jimmy Page on guitar) which while promising sounds unfinished. Also part of the reissue is the extraordinary Brussels Affair, a 1973 live show broadcast on French and American radio. Unquestionably essential, the pace of this greatest hits set has Mick Jagger out of breath the entire way. Mick Taylor has never played better and Charlie Watts, yes, the band's stone-faced metronome, turns in one of his most frantic performances. It’s the persuasive exclamation point on an overdue reappraisal of one of the Stones most maligned albums. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Nancy Sinatra and the team at Light in the Attic knocked it out of the park with the 2021 compilation Start Walkin' 1965-1976, an absolutely top-shelf selection of twenty-three of singer's best cuts from her prime era that beautifully showcased her hits as much as it did the wide streak of weird that ran through much of her material during that time. That set was so good that one would be rightfully suspicious that this 2023 companion piece focused on deep cuts, rarities, and unreleased tracks would be a barrel-scraping exercise meant for completists only. Well, the barrel may be getting scraped, but Nancy Sinatra's output from the mid-'60s through the mid-'70s was a delightful combination of high-gloss AM radio perfection and freewheeling experimentation.  These tracks may not have had the same cultural impact as "These Boots Were Made for Walkin'" or "Some Velvet Morning" but are still rewarding in their own way.The collection starts off strong with the evocative pop-noir of "The City Never Sleeps at Night" (the bouncy b-side of "Boots") and "The Last of the Secret Agents," a dazzlingly goofy novelty number that served as the title theme for a 1966 parody of James Bond films starring Sinatra. Although there are a few weaker numbers scattered throughout—"Tony Rome" is atypically apathetic, and an inexplicable cover of the Move's "Flowers in the Rain" shows that baroque psychedelia may not have been Sinatra's forte—Keep Walkin' is more than balanced out by dizzyingly great numbers like the languid and louche "Easy Evil" (a 1972 demo that was previously only available on the 1998 Sheet Music compilation) that show how her willingness to be weird never abated.Sinatra's early '70s material is often overlooked. Not only did the cultural zeitgeist decidedly move on from her style—too square for the cool kids and too quirky to be "easy listening"—but she only released two albums during the decade, both in 1972. She nonetheless had a great run of non-LP singles between 1973 and 1976, and while some of those A-sides made their way onto the Start Walkin' collection, Keep Walkin' rounds out the tracklist by including her phenomenal cover of Lynsey De Paul's "Sugar Me" (as well as the B-side, a somewhat questionable cover of "Ain't No Sunshine") and the stunning "Kinky Love" from 1976. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz