Jenn Wasner and Jon Ehrens formed the duo Dungeonesse after individually becoming two of the most compelling figures in Baltimore’s underground rock scene – she with the massively successful duo Wye Oak, who record for Merge Records and play big rooms across the country, and he with dozens of lesser known projects ranging from the lo-fi solo excursions of Repelican to the high strung high concept trio The Art Department. But the two began collaborating as both were beginning to explore the world of synthesizers of drum machines, particularly on Ehrens’s wildly catchy pop project, White Life, which Wasner sang backup on.

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 Matmos, the duo of M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, formed in San Francisco in the mid-1990′s, and enjoyed a decade of success, including a string of albums for Matador Records and collaborations with Bjork, before relocating to Baltimore in 2007. But given the way Matmos has integrated themselves into their new hometown’s music scene, it wasn’t too surprising when, during last month’s Super Bowl,  Daniel openly rooted for the Ravens over the 49ers on Twitter.

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The latest Matmos album, The Marriage of True Minds, released on Thrill Jockey, bears some immediate fingerprints of the group’s time in Baltimore. The concept of the album involved telepathy, with the duo conducting sensory deprivation experiments in which they’d attempt to telepathically communicate ideas about the album to volunteer subjects. Many of those subjects were Baltimore musicians like Ed Schrader, who shows up on the track “Very Large Green Triangles,” singing about what he visualized during the experiments. There’s even a bit of audible Baltimore club music in the track’s danceable second half.

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Transantics, true to its name, is a project formed by a pair of musicians from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, who met in college and decided to make music together: Andy Shankman of Baltimore, and Cecilia de Lisle of London. That conceit, of course, imposed limits on the band’s future — with them now both situated in their home countries, there are no future plans for Transantics, only the recordings they’d made circa 2009-10. Shankman, who now leads his own band Jumpcuts and also plays in my band Western Blot, decided to finally unleash the Transantics’ songs as a self-titled album on Bandcamp at the beginning of 2013, rather than let them collect figurative dust on his hard drive. And it was a good idea, because it’s a pretty solid record.

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Labtekwon is a singular figure, both in Baltimore music and in a larger sense. Easily the city’s only rapper whose career spans the whole of the 1990s and the 21st century so far, with dozens of full length albums, the numbers alone set him apart. And then there’s his music itself, a dense lattice of social commentary, humorous shit-talking, high concepts and relatable human experience. With so many albums, often working from the same production palette of unpredictably chopped jazz and funk samples, they can run the risk of all blending together as if all minor variations of the same basic aesthetic. His latest album, HARDCORE: Labtekwon and the Righteous Indignation/Rootzilla vs Masta Akbar, however, is a standout in his catalog, perhaps one of his crowning achievements, while still firmly within his established mode.

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Twin-Hand Movement, the 2010 debut album by Lower Dens, was an immediate and substantial success, both in Baltimore’s indie rock scene and on a national level, winding up on countless year-end lists, and launching the band on several tours as well as, unexpectedly enough, an Exxon ad campaign. One would an imagine the mentality for following up that kind of album would be “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” particularly for a sophomore album coming so soon afterwards.

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Wordsmith has been one of Baltimore’s most tirelessly prolific rappers for several years now, releasing hours upon hours of music, usually on free mixtapes. When he does turn up with a proper retail album, Wordsmith tends to swing for commercial exposure, with especially radio-friendly tracks or a big name collaborator like Chubb Rock, with whom he created the 2009 duo album Bridging The Gap. But the latest Wordsmith solo LP feels significant in the context of his catalog for how it looks inward: King Noah, released just before Father’s Day this year, is something of a concept album about fatherhood, full of dedications to and advice for the rapper’s new son Noah.

On My Job

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