WARMER MIXTAPES #1334 | by Nicolas Richard Hillman (Jackson & The Spangles, Hannah Williams & The Tastemakers) of Keke Mokoro and Ephemerals

1. Squarepusher | Come On My Selector
Someone showed me this song once. I can't remember who. I don't know what the fuck is going on, but it's fucking great. I don't know how you program computers to be so distracted. I saw this guy play in Budapest. I'd only heard this song and I didn't really know what to expect. He walked out holding a laptop like somebody would at a party, with this nuts orange Adidas jacket on and a 90's bucket hat, plugged it in and then got a bass guitar. Then he played mental Jazz bass to the computer's seemingly random beat and tempo structure for an hour. That's the most amazing thing I've seen with my own eyes except when I flew above a huge storm in France.

2. Dakhla | Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla (Live Session)
Our friends made this. They're the best band in England. I was co-running a London residency last year and we booked a band to play. They were OK, but their sax player gave me a CD of another band she played with. It was Dakhla. They are amazing. Char ended up playing baritone on our album. She doesn't wear shoes, but never gets glass in her foot. During the recording process I explained that I didn't wear crazy clothes because I didn't want to regret how I dressed in the future when I look back. She educated me to see it that I should regret because it means that I lived in the moment. That's a very important lesson I learned. She writes this Music. Matt Brown, the drummer, played with Rodriguez, who you'll know from the Searching For Sugarman film, was instrumental in overcoming apartheid in South Africa. That's a crazy story. Anyway, Matt Brown is the best drummer I know. He also plays like he is afraid of the drums, like they are a box of snakes and he is trying to swat them without being bitten.

3. Dong Yi | Song Of Mulberry Field Of Qin (Chinese Traditional Song's Cover)
I was trying to track down a guzheng player for a project I was working on (and still am!) and I found Yi on the Interwebzzz. I messaged her and she was cool and met me for lunch. She bought lunch despite it being my meeting. I didn't know anything about her except the metadata that she played this instrument. She gave me some CDs and told me her story. It turned out she was basically the top guzheng player in China and played in the Royal palaces and shit. Crazy.

4. Die Antwoord | I Fink U Freeky 
Got into this one via the DVDASA podcast. That stands for double vag/double anal sensitive artists. It's the podcast by David Choe, the Gambling millionaire/Graffiti artist /maniac and Asa Akira the pornstar. I was really into it for a while. David Choe is a don. He played drums with these guys. I hate the song, but I often listen to it because it's just something that I would never come up with, and, as a writer, that is interesting to me.

5. Alice Coltrane | Ptah, The El Daoud
This one is all about not knowing what the Music's about. I don't understand the title and there are no words. It's all feel. That piano. You want to sink into it like when you're in love and you see that person and you just want to somehow squeeze them so hard you combine like dough.



6. Kelan Philip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble | Zincali
Kelan played for Sun Ra and then had a load of kids with a load of different girls. All his sons made a band and they are The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Even though he is really old and they are really successful, he explains on the vinyl sleeve that he wanted to make an album with them. I think he also says that Zincali is what Spanish gypsies call themselves and that he likes to play the song at his residency at an Ethiopean restaurant. I can only imagine what that must be like.

7. Rahsaan Roland Kirk | Ain't No Sunshine (Bill Withers Cover)
My favourite song. I collect versions of it. There are a lot. A song on the next Ephemerals album has strong hints of it. Anyway, this guy plays two saxophones at the same time. He can also circular breathe which means he can play wind instruments constantly! Apparently he used to play violin duets on saxophone for half an hour as a party piece. He plays some flute on this one and sort of sings into the flute so you hear this really crazy version of the vocal. Everybody's been there - you split up with your girl and there's no sunshine and you are a drunk in the street singing and falling all over the place. His singing on this is that. It's perfect.

8. Sarah Vaughan | The Mystery Of Man 
Based on writings by one of the old Popes, can't remember which one. There's a really cool bit from the Sarah Vaughan - At Mister Kelly's album where someone falls over some mic stands in the middle of the performance and it all goes to shit. I like to put this one on at the end of a long night or in the middle of the night when everyone is selecting Drum And Bass. You can really fuck with the mood in the room and I like that.

9. Penny & The Quarters | You And Me
Basically I used to live on a canal boat with my girlfriend and we were listening to this and we decided to get married. We got married on the boat of course and all our friends stood on the path next to the canal to witness it. My organ player came and played I Want To Hold Your Hand by The Beatles in some mental Church organ style and we all sang it like an hymn. It was a radical day. We only took a few weeks to plan it so everything was chaos. We would invite friends over to plan stuff, but we'd end up just getting wrecked and being like it'll be OK on the day. It was, to be fair. There's no romance in spending three hours choosing the colour of the napkins at your fucking wedding.

10. Sun Ra Arkestra | Nuclear War
I used to cover this with an old band called Jackson & The Spangles. We played some really shit places. It was a University band. When Obama was about to be elected, we played Talking About Barack Obama instead. The band hated it. One time, one of the four people in a bar we were playing in came up and told me not to sing political songs. The original is a bit of a treasure trove for writers/producers because it has so many things in it that you hear and say, OK, yeah, this is possible, I can do something here like they just did and it's actually cool. That's important. Apparently this song was Sun Ra's big chance. He thought it was a great recording. He took it to a load of labels and got rejected every time. It turned him very bitter towards record labels. He couldn't understand why they didn't like it.