1. Cozy | Coyote
Here is a long-time friend and collaborator (cozyESMK on Soundcloud). When you work in close proximity to someone, you start to listen to their Music a little different. You see the influences, all the strides of work and learning, the honing of skills, and the great culminations where the technique meet the ideas eye-to-eye.
2. Susumu Yokota | Amanogawa
A slightly older Japanese Ambient piece. I think from the late 90's or something. It's really as simple as it gets. A single beautiful looping Ambient crescendo. Just image search Amanogawa and it sounds like that.
3. Machinedrum | Center Your Love
Off his recent album Vapor City. I've been totally hooked on his Music for a couple years now. He is, in my opinion, one of the most forward thinking producers in the biz. A lot of Electronica I group in one of two categories, stuff you listen to alone with headphones and stuff that better suited for big clubs with big subs. This track easily falls into both. It's full of cool polyrhythms and has this really interesting emotionally ambiguous vocal sample. It's really airy and beautiful and it drops a few times without you even noticing.
4. Childish Gambino | III. Telegraph Ave. ("Oakland" by Lloyd) (Ta-Ku Remix)
The original is tight. It's super Psychedelic and almost arhythmic at times, accelerating into bombastic hooks. This remix on the other hand is strict and controlled brutal genius. It turns a song of longing into one of brutal urgency. The beat is amazing, the drops are immaculate, the chord progression plays with your head, and the vocals sped up as they are, shed the aggressiveness of the original for more a song-like delicate tone. It's pure fucking honey. This is exactly the emotion I always want a song to bring me.
5. Maya Jane Coles | Burning Bright (feat. Kim Ann Foxman)
I love songs the most that are deceptively simple. Kind of a dark muddy repetitive beat with really gorgeous vocals. Not a single flashy piece of anything happening, which is obviously a great decision.
6. Only Girl | Perfect High
There's practically no percussion for the first minute or so, and like no chords either. It's only vocals and this Metal banging like a half mile away. You think you're listening to some really out there shit and then like a minute in it drops into a super tight Christina Aguilera era sounding jam.
7. Jessie Ware | Devotion
A well put, ice cold Love song.
8. Andy Stott | North To South
This track straight up has influenced the hell out of me. Every time I hear it I feel like I'm possessed by a demon. Makes me wanna thrash and do sinister things to good people. Beyond being one of the most Evil sounding Dub tracks I ever heard, it does a lot of cool things with Space. All the sounds are battling it out, trying to come out the loudest. There's so much open room but it's still not enough for the sounds to hit environmental symbiosis. Usually Minimal tracks give me a feeling of Open Space and, at its best, so much Open Space it feels lonely. This is the opposite. It's claustrophobia.
9. DMX Krew | You Can't Hide Your Love (Hidden Love Mix)
Remix by Aphex Twin. You know when vocals are just so vapid that they start to mean more in ways you don't understand? This track's from quite a few years back and we still, as a species, haven't caught up to it emotionally. The instrumental and vocal seem to go off on their own separate paths. They act out and do whatever they want in each other's face and it becomes an act, a drama full of attitude.
10. Calvin Harris | Thinking About You (feat. Ayah Marar)
This track got played so many times this year, OMFG, so many times. It's candy coated and delicious. That high-class kind of candy though. Like some tiny bittersweet pitch black chocolate that costs $30. I'm fucked up every time it ends.
