WARMER MIXTAPES #1310 | by Bruno Miguel [:PAPERCUTZ]

1. Peter Gabriel | Red Rain
I've mostly picked up on your songs that are attached to some kind of really specific memory for this list. With that in mind... My parents weren't massive Music fans, but my father did enjoy listening to a couple of bands, mostly Progressive Rock stuff like Genesis and its offspring's, Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel's solo careers. That's one of my first musical memories, I would say. Funny enough I've come full circle about PG's work and would easily consider his album So a Classic Pop must listen album.

2. Robert Johnson | Me And The Devil Blues
I studied in a really preppy College and remember when this long haired older guy enrolled in my class and was struck how cool his hole ensemble looked like. We ended up becoming friends through Music Sharing and he was really into Rock and Metal. He also played a mean electric guitar and that kinda led me to stop my piano lessons and study the Electric Guitar. I wanted to be cool as well, I guess. At the time he mentioned that if I wanted to play Rock Guitar the right way I should study the classics… The Blues that is. A little known fact about me: if I'm at a house party, the vibe is friendly and the drinks are flowing, if there's a guitar laying around, chances are you might find me doing some Blues licks by early morning hours.

3. Nine Inch Nails | Down In It (Demo Version)
Studying in University Music, again, was the perfect way to strike a conversation. I mean, just the house that I lived on was packed with guys who had their own garage bands. That meant multiple Music genres being played on the communal speakers all day long and parties with amps being set on the living room. One dude I met, who is still my friend, was crazy about NIN and had all the Halo releases including Halo 1, which featured a demo of NIN's first single. He was the one that got me into the work of Trent Reznor and though some off Reznor's work understandably doesn't excite me that much anymore, I'm still a huge fan of his instrumental output and would definitely consider him a creative genius and someone who cleverly managed his career.

4. David Sylvian | The Devil's Own (with Ryuichi Sakamoto)
Another one of my friends was big on Crooner Music and got me interested in David Sylvian's work. This track is from my most loved album of his and features one of my favorite pianists and composers, Ryuichi Sakamoto. I have nothing but the biggest respect for these two who've clearly set out to pursue the most adventurous sounds even if they were at times, big Pop stars. Sakamoto is also responsible for my interest in the discovery of Popular Music made in Japan which could easily lead to a list like this.

5. Radio Boy | McDonalds
I had a Master Class once with Matthew Herbert where he explained his Personal Contract for the Composition of Music. It mentions we should use our own sounds in our recordings and that they should make sense in the context of the Music they're being used on. Like tell a story on their own. That was pivotal for my debut album Lylac and the way I captured and sampled small ambiances to give this introspective feeling to the album. His own Radio Boy is one project that clearly shows that use like in Sampling sampled McDonald's merchandise as a protest against Corporate Globalism and I was gobsmacked at how crazy it all sounded, nothing I had listened to at the time compared to it.


6. Steve Reich | Section IIIA (from Music For 18 Musicians)
Some other Music piece that struck me as totally unique was Reich's Music For 18 Musicians. Fortunate to have seen this played live with Reich on the piano in my favorite concert house in my hometown Porto, Casa Da Música. Also special was catching Steve Reich/London Sinfonietta premiere of Radio Rewrite in an unexpected sunny London. I would consider him the most important Modern Classical composer of our times.

7. The Creatures | Seven Tears
That colorful out of the ordinary feature of Reich's Music I believe really comes from the use of wood percussive instruments like Marimba. And I've used this in my own Music, mixing it with Electronic instruments. In my cockiness I was under the impression to be one of the few using it in Pop Music, till, when working on The Blur Between Us, our producer Chris Coady showed me this project from Siouxsie Sioux and Budgie called The Creatures. It wast like feeling humbled and at the same time a realization that there was this weird percussive Pop act sounding so amazing with just a couple of instruments instead of the typical layers I've always imprinted in my own Music.

 8. Nas | N.Y. State Of Mind
I've always listened to Hip Hop, either second hand through commercial Pop Music (still very much in love with Timbaland+Missy Elliott combo) or Electronic acts that used it as a fingerprint for their beats. But really only had my first live experience when I got to see Nas crew (including DJ Premier) play the entire Illmatic album on SXSW. The song I picked up was kinda the one that really stuck with me and made me want to discover a lot more, leading to more Experimental stuff like J Dilla and also personal perspective Rap like Kendrik Lamar. When I was back living in the US a year ago, lived in a neighborhood where Hip Hop was omnipresent and that made me search for even more Underground stuff.

9. Brian Eno | 1/1
I was lucky enough to be present for a Brian Eno lecture in NYC, through Red Bull Music Academy. I mean this is a guy who's one of the most innovative and influential recording artists in Contemporary Music, so that was a real highlight! Discovering a part of his work, his Ambient series was such a breath of fresh air when I was looking for new inspirational sounds. So much so that it made me discover a bunch of new artists, some of them I ended up inviting for a special release which resulted in Do Outro Lado Do Espelho (Lylac Ambient Reworks).

10. Oumou Sangare | Iyo Djeli
I'm not a festival guy... Not really into that whole massive attendance and portable bathrooms, but there's this Music festival in my home country, similar to WOMAD, called Festival Músicas Do Mundo Sines (translate to Sines World Music Festival with Sines being the place where it happens) which I do find special 'cause you get to witness live acts from the deepest and far away parts of the World. That's where I got to see this amazing performer. I do think David Byrne nailed it with his complains about the term World Music 'cause it does not make it justice and might get listeners away from it when in fact there's so much to learn from it! African Music alone is omnipresent in the importance of Polyrhythm and the choral vocal properties in most of the Music we hear, especially West African Music. And funny enough I got to discover this through the works of Western composers (Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, David Byrne…) who embraced and have exploited this cultural richness with no prejudice and open arms.