WARMER MIXTAPES #1608 | by Praveen Sharma [Praveen/Braille] of Praveen & Benoît, Rights and Sepalcure

1. Miles Davis | Blue In Green
I could listen to this song on repeat for days. There is an absolutely heart wrenching amount of Longing and Sadness in this piece. This song is aching and plaintive and it's the perfect blanket to warm yourself with when everything else has gone to shit. To this day it's still unknown if Bill Evans or Miles Davis actually wrote this piece, but either way, Bill Evans’ piano playing is masterful here and it's been the most inspirational performance when it comes to my own playing.

2. Nas | The World Is Yours
A friend gave me this CD to check out and it turned out to be the first Hip Hop album I truly fell in Love with. I’ll never forget the chills I felt when I heard the beat drop on the intro piano line to this song. It opened up my ears to a whole new approach to Production.

3. Aphex Twin | IZ-US
When I lived in London briefly back in 1999, this song was the track that bridged my home in NY to my new home in Dalston. It was so much more straightforward than most Aphex Twin tracks around that time, but I loved it for its potency. I learned a lot about Dynamics from this track.

4. µ-Ziq | Brace Yourself Jason
Around the time my obsession with Electronic Music and Songwriting was picking up steam, I was really into Aphex Twin. I remember walking into a record store (Rhino Records, where I would end up working in the future) and telling the guy I was into Aphex. He recommended this album and the rest is history. It sent me down the rabbit hole of IDM, Drill 'N' Bass and more. The only access to a lot of this type of Music at that time was through record stores and MTV’s show, The Amp. Plenty of American Music friends of mine grew up watching The Amp - the importance of that show is incredibly understated.

5. The Remote Viewer | Snow It Falls On
The Remote Viewer perfectly defines a specific moment in Music for me. IDM had finally gotten stuck up its own over complicated ass and a small offshoot of artists were more interested in the melodic side than the technical side. This track represents that style of slightly broken, simple and overtly melodic Electronic Music I fell in Love with back in the early 2000s. Actually listening to this track at night in a snow storm with street lamps flickering by is a pretty special experience.


6. Tim Hecker | Music For Tundra (Part 1)
Granular Synthesis is a type of audio processing I’ve been particularly fond of since I first learned about it. In basic terms, you are chopping up incoming audio into tiny little bits (milliseconds) which you can then rearrange to create a variety of sounds. One of the types of sounds possible is this long, drawn out, expansion of Sound and Time. It's probably my favorite type of Sound. When I first heard Tim Hecker’s Music it was like coming home after being stranded on a desert island for a long long time.

7. The Sea And Cake | Bird And Flag
The Loop-based nature of this track was a good gateway to The Sea And Cake for me. I’ve always loved Sam Prekop’s airy vocals and they work so well to anchor this track. When I worked at Rhino Records, I remember always seeing this album in the used bin. I checked it out on a whim and never looked back. From my Rhino days, I’ll always remember those random CDs staring at me longingly from the used bin across the room. Why some of them enticed me to check them out over others, I’ll never know...

8. All Natural | It’s O.K.
Hip Hop was a big part of my musical journey. This track in particular has always stayed with me. It defines a certain moment for me in High School where I was learning how to DJ/scratch and was big into Turntablism. The Positivity, low key delivery and Jazz driven beats form the exact type of Hip Hop I gravitated towards back then the most. From the Windy City!

9. Mice Parade | Shalom
There is a simplicity and whimsical nature to this song which has always charmed me. When I’m stuck and overthinking my own Music, sometimes I look to this track as inspiration for Simplicity and cutting things back a bit. There is a mixture of Listlessness and Optimism in this song which I can relate to and I try to imbue into a lot of my work.

10. Model 500 | I Wanna Be There (Edit)
When it comes to Techno, Juan Atkins under his Model 500 guise has always been my favorite. Lots of late nights driving home from upstate NY raves were spent listening to this track. I also used to play this track at every Percussion Lab event I threw in Brooklyn. This track was a huge personal influence on early Sepalcure as well. Something about those Detroit style 7th chords gets me every time.