WARMER MIXTAPES #313 | by Pedro Rios [Branches]

1. Blues Control | Rest On Water
This Blues Control record is so special. It’s a lo-fi out-rock record, but it’s not what you expect from that tag (which, like all tags, say little about what’s it all about). And you don’t expect a jewel like Rest On Water: delicate guitar strumming on the background, a sinuous-sexy saxophone, childlike piano, lots of free space. It’s breathing music and you need to breathe nowadays, more than ever. In the last months my long term passion with the ocean has been growing (specially by surfing), so music that evokes the sea is perfect for my mental/body flow.

2. Panda Bear | I’m Not
Noah Lennox is my favorite modern artist. Every time I listen to Person Pitch that idea gets deeper in me. Total immersion music, so simple, so powerful. It’s like aquatic dub music, but with less focus on the rhythm and more on the echoes, the reflections, the sound of sound being manipulated, the power of a four second sample being repeated until another samples gets in, naturally, without friction. The importance of “Person Pitch” is yet to be assessed, I believe.

3. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti | For Kate I Wait
We need a serious academic article about the current generation of so-called hypnagogic artists. David Keenan article was one of the only serious efforts to do it. There’s of course a lot of hipster aspects of that scene, but I think that to see only the superficial side of things is to diminish the relevance of a new generation of artists comfy with pop music. A refreshing change in a conservative indie rock scenario and also in a holier than thou out-rock scene. What Ariel does in this song (his undisputed masterpiece) is superb: total wisdom in pop balladry, from obvious years and years of digging pop from other eras, delivered with the attitude of a kid who found Throbbing Gristle to be an epiphany. A miracle.

4. Richard Youngs | Once It Was Autumn
Seeing Richard Youngs in Oporto in 2005 was an important moment for me, as a music fan and as a music maker. A lone man on stage using an e-bowed guitar and his voice (his voice is the center of his most beautiful work). I could put here almost any of Richard Youngs tracks. This one is astonishing: alien electronic sounds, the voice of Richard multiplied and disfigured in noise, a mantra that invites you to be with yourself seeing the passage of time and nature - and becoming time and nature.

5. Ramones | Baby, I Love You
You can’t get a better pop song: perfect lyrics, euphoric orchestral parts with an early rock’n’roll attitude. End Of The Century is one of my favorite Ramones albums. This is the song that I choose to evoke my punk rock background in this list.

6. Deerhunter | Desire Lines
One of the best records of this year. Fuck indie rock music, this is heart music. It’s your daily dose of torpor but shaped in a rock form (like a wolf in sheep’s clothing). And the never-ending crescendo and twin guitars… Ah damn!, straight to indie rock canon.

7. Roxy Music | India
Oh my God, what a miniature gem! With less than two minutes, it has so many things going on with beautiful grace. Also, it was great to recognize that Excepter’s Rockstepper beat was sampled from the end of India.

8. Kanye West | All Of The Lights (feat. Rihanna)
The fast beat intertwined with fake horns makes this my most beloved hip-hop track of 2010 (even though I’m not an hip-hop head). Rihanna sounds so confident. There’s a part in which she reminds me of M.I.A. - she’s so great at doing it that it reminds me of how bad the last M.I.A. record was.

9. William Basinski | Dlp 1.1
This is the sound that you get from a deep hole listening to the world outside (all the world, all the people, all the streets from all countries) - at least that’s what I imagine that would be. An unbearable/impossible noise turned into something beautiful, via continuous degradation processes.

10. Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté | Kala Djula
One guitar, one kora, nothing more than greatness. This is music I listen while I’m working. I am a journalist, so I spend way too many time on computer. When I listen to something like this, I can escape from the grim reality of being in a cubicle in front of a computer rather than enjoying nature.