Warmer Climes

WARMER MIXTAPES #468 | by Christian Fuchs of Bunny Lake

1. The Rapture | Come Back To Me
Their recent album is amazing. Songs about love, life and redemption that make your heart go boom and put your ass in shaking mode. This track, with its yearning accordion intro, the nearly Gospel lyrics and the Dance break in the middle is my favourite.

2. Lana Del Rey | Video Games
I found out about her relatively late as I don't read music blogs regularely. But then she appeared like an angel out of my dreams: David Lynch-references, a touch of Rockabilly, incredible sad songs, that are strangely uplifting at the same time. The only problem I have: I couldn't get this song out of my head for weeks. Besides Lykke Li, Lana's my favourite torch singer these days.

3. The Horrors | Still Life
I've experienced a lot of drama in my life lately, breaking up situations, death, trouble. But also some amazing moments happened. And out of these beautiful moments, with despair around, I tried to say goodbye to my old pitchblack worldview. Let the sunshine in and move forward. This song, with its glistening synths and the chorus when you wake up, you will find me accompanied my period of change.

4. Apparat | Black Water
Pulsating slow motion melancholia from Berlin. This is simply so beautiful it hurts. Radiohead haven't wrote such a great song since Amnesiac.

5. Zola Jesus | Avalanche
There are so many amazing women in music right now, kicking all the guitar rocking boys around. Nika Roza Danilova is the queen of Ultra-Bombastic-Neo-Noir-Pop, which is a very essential genre in my book. I would drive endlessly through the night to her sound, if I would own a driving license.

6. Kavinsky | Nightcall (feat. Lovefoxxx)
The title song of the best movie I saw in ages. Drive is an hymn about loneliness, chrome, steel, love, violence, it's all about redemption again. And about hardcore romance. When desire calls, you have to walk out into the night and follow your heart.

7. Wolfram | A Thing Called Love (feat. Haddaway) (Legowelt Remix)
Sometimes Italo Disco is the best music in the Universe. Especially if it is from Austria, composed by my favourite musician in our little country and featuring the golden voice of one Mr. Haddaway. The Legowelt remix adds extra sehnsucht.

8. Florence + The Machine | Shake It Out
It may sound a bit pathetic, but sometimes I've got a serious struggle with inner demons going on. They brought good fun to my life, but also destroyed a lot. So it's important to cleanse yourself from time to time. And what's better for an exorcism than a woman like Florence Welch screaming Shake It Out!, with tons of tribal drums and all the musical drama in the World in the background?

9. The Drums | Days
I will be honest. Even if I try to follow the motto Sunshine is the new black, I fall constantly back to my old pessimism. Now The Drums do a wonderful thing: they sound like the happiest summer-band on the surface and still sing about total hopeless situations. A genius song.

10. Washed Out | Amor Fati
I was never a follower of the whole Chillwave movement, right now I couldn't care less and less about all the microgenres that seem to change weekly. But Washed Out's Within & Without album blew me away. It's just incredible Pop music, without all the stuff I hate about Pop these days. I don't even know how Washed Out looks. Amor Fati is one big dreamy chorus, a melody to kill for, a soft hymn for dreamers like you and me.

+11. CSS | Hits Me Like A Rock
Imagine your band is in a coma, everything is fucked up and going downhill. Don't write songs drenched in self-pity. Do it like CSS, who got nearly destroyed by the music biz: fight and smile and be proud. A comeback that hit me like a very gentle, very friendly rock.