Cyesm is a French producer/composer who has been releasing music for over two decades now, giving us a wide range of material in the process. Most recently, he gave us a collection of beats in September of last year simply called Beat Baker. Now he is back with a completely different type of project, the score to the film Hors du Monde (Bande Original). One of the interesting parts of following Cyesm’s career is that he’s worked on so many different types of projects over the years, you never know exactly what to expect out of his next one.

Yutaka Hirasaka is a Tokyo-based producer and guitarist who has been releasing music over the last ten years. Just this past December, he gave us a collection of previously unreleased material called Beee. Now he is back with new full-length album out on Inner Ocean Records, In the Moment. Now, if you do a quick search online for downtempo or ambient hip hop and/or instrumental guitar music, you’re going to find a lot of forgettable music that is completely white noise that sits in the background.

Back in 2016, we were introduced to an artist from Tucson by the name of Lando Chill when he dropped his debut album for Mello Music Group, For Mark, Your Son. This was followed up in the next two years with two more brilliant albums produced by The Lasso, culminating in one of the best albums of the decade, Black Ego. After that album, The Lasso moved back home to Michigan, and Chill moved on to Los Angeles.

Lady Wray is an Atlanta based artist who has had a long career full of twists and turns. She released her first album back in 1998, but then spent much of the next decade in limbo, with features here and there, but never truly getting a chance to build upon that initial foundation. In 2012, though, she reinvented herself by teaming up with vocalist Terri Walker to form the retro soul group Lady.

Grandace is an artist from Cincinnati who has been putting out music since 2015. Most recently, he dropped the French Vanilla EP in May of last year. He’s released a few singles and teasers since then, but now it’s time for his first new project of 2022, Virtual Memory Unit. Virtual Memory Unit is an interesting project, in that the inspiration for the EP is largely that of older technology and the escapism it afforded Grandace in his younger days, with songs like “Silvia S15,” “Handwritten Cheat Codes,” and “Memory Card Slot 2.

Justjoey is the artist formerly know as Lucid Optics. He came up in San Jose and had been putting out music under the previous name for years, working along the way with artists like Illogic, Museum, and knowmadic made. A couple of years ago, he got evicted and took a job at a startup in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. After an intense and short period of time in which he lost his job and his girlfriend, Joey made his way back west and settled in Eugene, Oregon.

New York artist Uncommon Nasa first teamed up with Baltimore producer Messiah Muzik back in 2014, when they did a couple of tracks together for Nasa’s album, New York Telephone. Since that time, they had worked together here and there, with Nasa always meaning to get on the same page with Muzik so that they could make a full-length album together. This finally happened last year, when Uncommon Nasa released Only Child in August.

Back in 2018, Taku joined up with Jakarta Records to start a new imprint called 823, the numerical representation of the phrase, “Thinking of you.” Essentially, it has served as a way for Taku to put out smaller releases from lesser known artists and hopefully give them more exposure. Previous releases have come from quickly, quickly and Kuzich, as well as Taku’s collaboration with Matt McWaters, Please Wait. It’s been a minute since the last 823 release, but now they have a new Australian producer to introduce, Cabu, who releases his sophomore EP, So Far To Go.

Birmingham producer The Phasing Octopus has only been releasing music for a couple of years, but once he got started, he went at a steady clip. His most recent release came this past October, when he gave us the EP, inspired by a trip to LA: sounds. Now he’s back with an ambitious album, a long night. Listening to a long night, it won’t take long to realize what a special talent The Phasing Octopus is.

Ackryte is a producer from Minneapolis who has been releasing music for over a decade now. Over the years, he’s collaborated with artists like J’Von and Prof.Logik, but mostly he’s been releasing amazing instrumental solo releases. Most recently, he dropped his album Focus just about one year ago. Now he’s returned with a new solo album, Spirits Up. If you’ve never listened to Ackryte before, Spirits Up is a great place to start, because you just get a crash course in all the things that make his music so interesting and enjoyable.