Bohan Phoenix raps like he’s born and raised in Brooklyn.  His style is so close to the Beast Coast vibe, that he could be a Flatbush Zombie bitten by a Chengdu werewolf.  He flexes flows between English and Mandarin with such ease, sometimes it’s hard to tell; you think he’s just flowing some fresh new slang you’re not hip to.  His beat selection is Sichuan.  His flow is sharp as a Jian.  His swag is Flatbush AF.  His Jala EP is rolling into your collection like a cloud of Kush smoke.  You’ll be rapping in Mandarin before you know it. See him live at Zone One at Elsewhere on 03.09.

Brooklyn Multimedia artist Miss Eaves is Feminasty as she wanna be.  She says what she wants and, doing her own design and video directing, she gets what she wants.  Since her Feminasty album dropped last year, she’s been fomenting her assault on the mainstream.  With nods from HuffPo and Glamour, she’s got a strong start.  Her throwback flow is a pleasant contrast to the electro-clash production she’s currently rocking.  If you’re looking for something to rock on your next roadtrip to a protest, Miss Eaves will let everyone know how you roll. Oh and, this year, she’ll be at SXSW, but you can catch her at Silent Barn tomorrow for a V-Day Messup!

Split between NYC and Minneapolis, Nadine is a band that freshen the mystery of how a band can function when its members live far apart (hey, it worked for Pavement!). This is a collaborative project involving singer Nadia Hulett (part of the collective Phantom Posse) and Julian Fader and Carlos Hernandez (both of Ava Luna). Their recently released debut LP is a playful and extremely enjoyable take on avant-pop, with jazzy overtones. The band celebrated the album’s release at Baby’s All Right on February 8th and will travel to SXSW in March.

NYC indie pop-rock band RANN is back with a new single after the release of their 2014 debut album Yellowgun. The track develops the quartet’s sophisticated sound in a darker direction, supported by ambiguous lyrics with vague political overtones. The band’s ’80s pop influences – think INXS and Peter Gabriel from the post "So" years – are brought to life by the deft production of Michael Brauer (Coldplay, John Mayer). 
RANN’s EP "Renegade Holiday" will be out on February 23rd.

It seems rather appropriate to open the day after a divisive State of the Union speech with this video by sister duo Hegazy celebrating the values of family and friendship within racial diversity (by the way, how did it happen that one of the very few New Yorkers that don’t get tolerance and inclusiveness ended up in the White House?). Leila & Omnia are also New York born, and decided to join their musical careers as solo artists back in 2015 after the death of their father, who always insisted they were stronger together. They’ll be celebrating the release of their debut EP at Mercury Lounge on Friday February 9th. Check out their video for single "Here To Stay," streaming below.

Hello good music diggers!

The Winter 2018 issue of The Deli NYC (our 53rd!) is now available for you to read online, here!

This is also the first NAMM issue of The Deli, since a week from today we’ll be at the Californian musical instrument convention with a huge booth full of guitar pedals!

That’s why we took the opportunity to put on the cover of our magazine the legendary Brooklyn noise rockers A Place To Bury Strangers – a band that makes their own stompboxes, called Death By Audio.

The issue features a lot of other local artists (and their pedals) and also an article about the best records of 2017 by emerging NYC Artists – check it out!

Here’s a playlist of the artists featured in the issue.

Brooklyn darlings Kino Kimino‘s debut LP "Bait is for Sissies," featuring Sonic Youth Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley serving as session men, will throw you off-guard, just like the band’s bizarre, at time nonsensical videos. The brainchild of Kim Talon, the power trio offers deadpan vocals, gritty guitars, and 90’s-cool-kid vibes embedded in an ever-shifting sonic soundscape. The final result fully justifies Kim’s recent move from LA to the edgier NYC scene. Don’t miss their uipcoming show at Elsewhere on January 30th, and those of you into guear and guitar pedals should check out the Kino Kimino’s Q&A with Delicious Audio!

Today Stereogum picked still unreleased LP "All This Will Be" by Closer, a Brooklyn band blending punk and post rock we first covered about a month ago, as their Album of the Week. The records drops this coming Friday January 19th. We are posting below the two singles currently available for streaming. The release show will be at Silent Barn on the same night.

Stuyedeyed is an alternative worldview presented through noisy and loud psych-rock, led by Nelson Antonio Espinal’s exuberant blues-inflected vocals. Their music is grounded in the punk DIY scene and the NYC garage tradition, and their personal revolt against the disingenuous and the gentrified shines through with each howl of rage. With fuzzy layers so thick you can practically wrap yourself up in them, the Brooklyn-based band delivers a serious ’70s guitar rock feel and loads of lo-fi goodness. Our sister blog Delicious Audio managed to catch Nelson before their three week February tour to ask him a few question about gear.

With an appreciation for the jubilance of pop music and the willingness to explore new sounds that NYC is known for, in 2014 the city’s electronic musicians created music that could soundtrack all-night dance parties or pensive nights alone. Beshken captured that contrast best on For Time Is The Longest Distance Between Two People. The album migrates between spacious, simmering instrumental sections and buoyant, pulsing rave-ups. Overcoats played more heavily on thumping, dance-floor anthems with their debut album YOUNG, but lyrically the duo looked further than the party scene. Overcoats’ portrait of inner emotional struggles rivals the tact of many veteran pop songwriters. The electronic genre also took influence from the indie rock world. Guerilla Toss, featured on our cover this past fall, released GT Ultra, a mish-mash of post-punk, psychedelia, and electronica that’s near impossible to accurately categorize. Covering stuttering electronica in a dream pop-inspired haze, Blood Cultures’ Happy Birthday balanced the danceable with the moody. Perhaps not quite fitting into the electronic realm, Sneaks made a post-punky sophomore album using almost only a drum machine, bass guitar, and vocals to craft the expertly concise and individual It’s a Myth. To be fair, that album came out before Sneak’s Eva Moolchan moved to NYC, but since the band’s relocation we’ve proudly embraced them as our own. Belonging to the Electronic realm are also two NYC records we recently blogged about: Torres’ dark and mysterious Three Futures and Standing on the Corner‘s avant-hip hop masterpiece, and recent Deli NYC Record of the Month, Red Burns. – Cameron Carr

Torres‘ musical path could be used as an ideal example of what should happen to a musician who dares to move from Nashville to NYC – something she did in 2015, soon after releasing her sophomore album Sprinter. Her 2017 follow up, Three Futures, reveals a more daring artist with an uber-edgy sound that makes abundant use of synths and guitar pedals. The tracks share a claustrophobic atmosphere that seems like an unavoidable by-product of the transition from the big spaces of Music City to the "coziness" of the Big Apple. The labels took notice (the album was out on legendary 4AD), the critics applauded (Three Futures is one of the top-ranked albums on Metacritic.com with a score of 79) and the fans multiplied. And more recently, the UK newspaper The Guardian included the video for Skin (streaming below) in its Best of 2017 list. Since the release, Torres has been gigging non-stop in the US, Canada and Europe.

It’s hard to place a firm finger on Standing on the Corner’s latest album, a 60 minute, two-track release entitled Red Burns, but the record – which opens with warm crackling, synth-y harp strums, and omnipotent narration treated with the kind of vocal distortion that sounds as if your cassette’s brown tapes have melted – is wildly innovative, and strangely mesmerizing. The project, headed by Gio Escobar and Jasper Marsalis, a Crown Heights based duo armed with a jazz background and an interest in rap and electronica, is a response to recent political and nationwide events, chronicling them with the distinctive viewpoint of those facing direct oppression, but expressing them through a medium that is widely freeform and experimental. (Olivia Sisinni)