WARMER MIXTAPES #1422 | by Evelyn Malinowski (Experimental Housewife), Soren Brothers (The White Funz) and David Dunnett of Man meets Bear
Photo by William Kudahl Sorensen
SIDE A | by Soren Brothers
1. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci | Only The Sea Makes Sense
Euros Childs has been one of my favourite musicians and songwriters for years, and it’s almost impossible to choose a favourite song of his. I love all of Gorky’s albums, and also Euros’ solo albums since then, but this is one song that I feel captures him maybe at his best - a deceptively simple song with melodies that can call up anything from old Country to Medieval times, and lyrics which are perfect in their own distilled way, whether sung in English or (as is the case in many of his other songs) Welsh.
2. Do Make Say Think | The Apartment Song
I first began listening to Do Make Say Think around 2001, when I bought this album, Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead. It sat around for a while, not really catching my attention, until it struck me on one of the listens that it was one of the most accomplished, perfect albums I’d ever heard. I dove in deep, and this song was always for me one of the cruxes of the album. The phrasing of the song, the build-ups and anti-climactic pauses make it one of the most visceral and pointed expressions of Loneliness, expectations, and let downs that I’d ever heard.
3. Sparklehorse | Comfort Me
For years, Sparklehorse’s album It’s A Wonderful Life has been my go-to album for times of stress - beginning when I was a University student in Vancouver. This was the album that I would put on directly before writing any tests, sitting and waiting outside of an examination hall. Though I could’ve picked almost any song off of this album for this list, the title alone of this one suits the sentiment well enough.
4. Vincent Gallo | When
This entire album has a special place in my heart, as I bought it in a basement in Oban, Scotland, when I was working for a summer on the nearby Isle Of Iona in the Hebrides, in 2003. I first listened to this album on the ferry leaving Oban, and there was so much sadness and loss in the songs that I felt like crying every time I heard it throughout that summer. That was the same time and place that I ended up recording my first real Man meets Bear album, In The Starry Sky (which has since more or less disappeared and returned to the waves).
5. Hayden | Dynamite Walls
Every time I listen to Dynamite Walls, I’m transported to Ontario, picturing myself driving North out of Toronto on Highway 410, in the winter, towards Georgian Bay. I don’t know where Hayden wrote this song, or what he had in mind, but, to me, this song will always be describing the granite walls which were blasted to make way for that highway, with Ontario spruce and white pines overhead, the cold feeling of the back-seat window against my cheek, snow barely visible through the fogged glass as we speed northwards.
6. Neil Young | Ambulance Blues
It took me a long time to get into Neil Young, and many pushes from many friends. What finally opened me up to him was this song, Ambulance Blues. Someone had given me his album On The Beach, and I was listening to it while walking around in downtown Montreal, on a warm day, probably in 2008. I remember this track came on, and his slow repetition of being alone at the microphone drew me back to an older favourite album of mine, Alone At The Microphone by Royal City, a band from Guelph. Suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, I could understand all of Neil Young’s Music - I could see that I’d always been inspired by Neil Young, indirectly through other musicians, and the Magic of his songs has stayed with me ever since.
7. Mount Eerie | No Flashlight
The Microphones/Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum has for years been one of the most inspiring musicians in my life. Phil’s Music somehow walks the fine line of capturing a spirit of Nature, approaching impossibly beautiful and deep Universal truths, while shying away from a heavy pretension. To me, he always comes across as a regular person who is simply awed by the World, and is doing his best to describe the profound Nature of the Universe, and his home in particular (Anacortes, Washington)… In this song he describes climbing a local mountain at night with no flashlight. The only reason I can say ‘no flashlight’ is because once I forgot it.
8. Polmo Polpo | Requiem For A Fox
I first listened to this album walking down Bloor Street in downtown Toronto on the morning after a blizzard in late December, maybe 2001 or 2002. I remember the difficulty of walking through the high snow in my winter boots. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I was completely warm in all my layers - I just felt like exploring the city with its new blanket of snow. This was playing on my headphones, and the swirling rhythms that Sandro Perri created somehow fed back to the rhythm of my trudging through the snow, and for a moment I remember having an overwhelming sense that the Universe, my walk, the blue sky, the thick snow, the cold air, and this song, were all one and the same.
9. LIVINGSTON | Springtime
Henry Adam Svec is a folklorist, musician, and teacher from Southwestern Ontario, a strange peninsula with a history of cultures laid thickly over one another to the point that the concept of local has become all but lost. Just as Jorge Luis Borges created his own romantic folklores and mythologies from scratch, so has Svec sculpted his own Canadian and Ontarian mythologies, most recently through LIVINGSTON, a computer which is programmed to write classic Canadian Folk songs, which Svec brings to Life by involving local musicians. I first heard Springtime while walking around Guelph, Ontario, in the depths of the winter vortex, around January or February of 2014, and everything about the song captures the essence of Southwest Ontario, and its hollowed face which eludes definition.
10. The Dinner Is Ruined Band | Bought Yerself A Bullet
The reputation of Toronto within Canada is generally one of a business city, overrun by black suits and ties, and empty, clean streets. For me, Toronto has been, and will maybe always be, something of a caged animal… Despite its outdated puritanical laws, the city meshes with the surrounding countryside in a way I’ve rarely seen in any other urban environments - growing up downtown, it was rare to pass a summer night walking through back streets without running into a raccoon or skunk, and I’ve always felt like this energy somehow extended to the people who live in the city, which sometimes to me feels like a village of five million people in a swampy forest, intersected with hidden ravines and back alleys. No Toronto group, in my opinion, has reflected and captured this sentiment as much as Dale Morningstar’s The Dinner Is Ruined Band, and this song off their album A Maggot In Their Heads is a great example of the confused, disjointed, unleashed culture of Toronto which hides in the bushes, islands, and industrial yards, just below the surface.
SIDE B | by David Dunnett
1. Fela Ransome-Kuti and The Africa '70 with Ginger Baker | Let's Start
Live! I can never get bored of this album. Geniuses at work. Beautiful, beautiful stuff.
2. Tortoise | Eden 2
Standards. Underappreciated Tortoise album. Tortoise didn't do much for me when I first heard them in the TnT era, but after seeing them live in Toronto on the Standards tour I heard the band completely differently and have had Standards on regular rotation ever since.
3. Fleetwood Mac | Go Your Own Way
Rumours. I got my beat-up copy of this record (along with a shit-ton of Hall & Oates and a copy of Paul McCartney - McCartney II) from a box on the curb in front of a neighbour's house in 2003. It surprised me how much this album took me in once I put it on. I don't care how Mainstream or overplayed these guys were back in the day, this album is a goddamn classic. The production is glorious, the songwriting is spot on, and the performances are absolutely captivating.
4. His Hero Is Gone | Like Weeds
Memphis Crust Punk. This shit is just so powerful. Majestic and awe-inspiring. Weird song-structures, jarring changes that totally work, and a convincing, massive sound. The whole thing just feels like a huge ship barreling through violent sea storms in the night.
5. Shotmaker | Failure
Ontario legends at their prime. The slithering, clacking, bending bass and that iconic pseudo 3/4 drum beat, with the driving guitar and that ridiculous but somehow fitting caterwaul. So mechanical but so moving.
6. Holy Other | Know Where
Very nice open, empty, Electronic stuff.
7. Jim Croce | You Don't Mess Around With Jim
A true classic. Skateboarders of a certain vintage will recognize this as Rodney Mullen's main track in the Plan B - Virtual Reality video. Love it to death.
8. Eiyn Sof | Weight Of The World
I bought this record from Rick White's Blue Fog Recordings label on a whim while visiting Toronto a few years ago and it's been in regular rotation ever since. A pleasing and exploratory mix of a record, it continues to grow on me with each listen.
9. Godspeed You Black Emperor! | Storm: 1. Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas To Heaven...
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven... I just have to list the whole album here. I mean sure, I guess the different songs have names, but I have always just listened to this album the whole way through and treated it as a single work. This was always a good album for long-haul drives. It's special to me though, because I saw them touring this album in Toronto at the Bloor Cinema, and at the time it was hands down the best show I had ever seen, and it still ranks way up there for me today. It's a show I very nearly missed though. Because when I showed up to the venue I opened my wallet to get the ticket out and found that it had somehow vanished within the last couple of hours. The show had long-since sold out with no sales at the door and I was afraid of missing what promised to be a totally amazing show in an equally amazing venue. So I hurriedly retraced my steps under full panic. With luck, and to my great relief, I found the ticket lying in the gutter by a streetcar stop back in Chinatown. I ran back to the show and managed to get there just in time to see the show start. And it was glorious.
10. Betty Harris | There's A Break In The Road
I was introduced to Betty Harris by the Saturday Night Fish Fry compilation of New Orleans Funk and Soul, an album which is chock full of gems. And Betty Harris, as I later found out, has produced loads of great material outside of what's featured on that compilation. But this track in particular stands out for me. It's filled with piercing guitar feedback and these drum patterns during the chorus that sound like a never-ending break falling over itself again and again.
SIDE C | by Evelyn Malinowski
1. Bark Psychosis | Rose
///Codename: Dustsucker. Walking around the 13th district of Vienna, I fell in hard, Macrocosmic Love with this album, and realized that it was going to be my favorite album of all time, for the rest of my life, whether I like it or not. The production, mood, song titles and flow, lyrics, German lyrics vertraue mir in the last song Rose: it still feels like this album is meant for me personally. The only thing that could top this would be a new BP album, and I know I'm not the only fan eagerly awaiting such an occasion.
2. Mahogany | Light Will Deserve A Place
Memory Column: Early Works And Rarities 1996-2004. I love Mahogany. They are a relatively unknown, sweet mixture of Belle & Sebastian + Stereolab, with a Shoegaze finish. Given my predisposition to Techno and Electronic Music, I like that Mahogany's songs all sort of sound the same. This album is the best collection of their work, and it fits driving through Montana (where I live), contemplating the concept of home/belonging, and feeling the pull from the direction North.
3. Cocteau Twins | The Spangle Maker
It is very difficult to narrow down on the Cocteau Twins, but this track never fails to take my breath away. It is heavy, ominous, beautiful, and structurally outlandish; it is a four minute piece that continues to inform my musical tastes as well as sustain my intellectual aspirations; it wails on about inclination towards intense romance while complements my deep longing for True Love. It is a reflection of a personal or tangible indecisive storm which I want to listen to over and over again. Loudly. Simply put, I'm positive it is the greatest Love song of all time.
4. Aix Em Klemm | Sophteonal
I don't remember the particular circumstances, but I remember turning up Aix Em Klemm while in my car, probably stoned, 17 years old. I fell into complete awe of the surprising beauty and expansive geography of my home state under the influence of this album's strange poetic drone. It fit those pink clouds and miles and miles of power lines so well. I then journeyed onward into the sounds of Windy & Carl, Gastr Del Sol, and Do Make Say Think, into Post Rock, which led me back to Electronica, but transformed, ready for Minimal Techno and beyond.
5. Sting | If I Ever Lose My Faith In You
Ten Summoner's Tales. We all have our guilty pleasures. This Sting album stands in place for similar nerdy, New Age tastes, such as Enya, Dead Can Dance, Steve Roach, David Sylvian (recommended by my bandmate Soren), Roxy Music, etc. I choose this one, though, because I have strong memories associated with it. I liked it as a child when it was first released, and I remember driving around the suburbs of Houston listening to it from the car cassette player with my mother at the steering wheel. Ten years later, during the summer of 2005, this album returned to focus, and it came to represent intellectual, nostalgic, and mystical tenets coming together for me. Something about its anglophylia, romantic melodies, and eruditely lyrics fit my interests and aims at the time, which were familiarizing myself with the English canon and pursuing Medieval studies. I went to the UK for the first time that summer, which was my first time abroad ever. I was very attuned to my surroundings, enjoyed contemplating the staying power of pre-Christian mythology, and searched for it in Medieval texts. The reference to Chaucer here is also fitting.
6. M.I.A. | MATANGI
After much deliberation, I've decided that I love all the M.I.A. albums equally, and claiming this one as my favorite demonstrates that decision. I get excited just playing around with the idea of playing the album to channel its hari kari for writing about it.
7. HTRK | Give It Up
Psychic 9-5 Club. This album came out in April 2014 on a label that I used to consider my favorite label. I find their new catalogue impotent, uninteresting, and pretentious. Not this HTRK album, though. I got it last summer because I heard and enjoyed the opening track enough that I felt like I should try the whole thing out, especially because I always moderately loved HTRK. Listening to it again and again in mellow moods during these hot afternoons, not seeking anything in particular out of the Music, I came to realize that I love this work, and that it really speaks to me. This is one of my top five favorite albums of 2014, I think.
8. Dettinger | Untitled (Track 3 on Intershop)
As stated earlier, one of my favorite themes of Techno and Electronic Music is Repetition. This artist is one of the best examples which suits the Repetitive Techno subcategory. Intershop, however, is a collection set apart from his other work. Dettinger is a somewhat mysterious producer who hasn't released any material since 2000. His tracks seem to usually exist out of only a handful of samples, some of which are from Cocteau Twins. Intershop is a concise collection of these beautiful and simplistic tracks that have no beginning nor end, just fading in and out. They are spacious, gentle, and always recognizable, as if pieces of the archetypal continuum. Furthermore, they sound like snow falling on Berlin.
9. Paula Temple | Colonized
Paula Temple is one of my heroes, and this song is rank with superior sick crunchy bombastic fuck yeah plus political attitude. Just play it, turn it up, and you'll hear what I mean, and understand why I can't articulate more than profanities in describing it. Communication. Break. Down.
10. Bvdub | A Quiet Doorway Opens
Tribes At The Temple Of Silence. Prolific, relentless production of relentlessly repetitive, big Electronic sounds + terribly cheesy titles = one of my favorites forever. This album is so beautiful, and I like the percussion.
+11. Sasha | Xpander
One of my themes for Life, Time Travel, and the medicinal uses of archetypes; still to date the most beautiful, epic Dance Music song - I don't care if it's Trance.
1. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci | Only The Sea Makes Sense
Euros Childs has been one of my favourite musicians and songwriters for years, and it’s almost impossible to choose a favourite song of his. I love all of Gorky’s albums, and also Euros’ solo albums since then, but this is one song that I feel captures him maybe at his best - a deceptively simple song with melodies that can call up anything from old Country to Medieval times, and lyrics which are perfect in their own distilled way, whether sung in English or (as is the case in many of his other songs) Welsh.
2. Do Make Say Think | The Apartment Song
I first began listening to Do Make Say Think around 2001, when I bought this album, Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead. It sat around for a while, not really catching my attention, until it struck me on one of the listens that it was one of the most accomplished, perfect albums I’d ever heard. I dove in deep, and this song was always for me one of the cruxes of the album. The phrasing of the song, the build-ups and anti-climactic pauses make it one of the most visceral and pointed expressions of Loneliness, expectations, and let downs that I’d ever heard.
3. Sparklehorse | Comfort Me
For years, Sparklehorse’s album It’s A Wonderful Life has been my go-to album for times of stress - beginning when I was a University student in Vancouver. This was the album that I would put on directly before writing any tests, sitting and waiting outside of an examination hall. Though I could’ve picked almost any song off of this album for this list, the title alone of this one suits the sentiment well enough.
4. Vincent Gallo | When
This entire album has a special place in my heart, as I bought it in a basement in Oban, Scotland, when I was working for a summer on the nearby Isle Of Iona in the Hebrides, in 2003. I first listened to this album on the ferry leaving Oban, and there was so much sadness and loss in the songs that I felt like crying every time I heard it throughout that summer. That was the same time and place that I ended up recording my first real Man meets Bear album, In The Starry Sky (which has since more or less disappeared and returned to the waves).
5. Hayden | Dynamite Walls
Every time I listen to Dynamite Walls, I’m transported to Ontario, picturing myself driving North out of Toronto on Highway 410, in the winter, towards Georgian Bay. I don’t know where Hayden wrote this song, or what he had in mind, but, to me, this song will always be describing the granite walls which were blasted to make way for that highway, with Ontario spruce and white pines overhead, the cold feeling of the back-seat window against my cheek, snow barely visible through the fogged glass as we speed northwards.
6. Neil Young | Ambulance Blues
It took me a long time to get into Neil Young, and many pushes from many friends. What finally opened me up to him was this song, Ambulance Blues. Someone had given me his album On The Beach, and I was listening to it while walking around in downtown Montreal, on a warm day, probably in 2008. I remember this track came on, and his slow repetition of being alone at the microphone drew me back to an older favourite album of mine, Alone At The Microphone by Royal City, a band from Guelph. Suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, I could understand all of Neil Young’s Music - I could see that I’d always been inspired by Neil Young, indirectly through other musicians, and the Magic of his songs has stayed with me ever since.
7. Mount Eerie | No Flashlight
The Microphones/Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum has for years been one of the most inspiring musicians in my life. Phil’s Music somehow walks the fine line of capturing a spirit of Nature, approaching impossibly beautiful and deep Universal truths, while shying away from a heavy pretension. To me, he always comes across as a regular person who is simply awed by the World, and is doing his best to describe the profound Nature of the Universe, and his home in particular (Anacortes, Washington)… In this song he describes climbing a local mountain at night with no flashlight. The only reason I can say ‘no flashlight’ is because once I forgot it.
8. Polmo Polpo | Requiem For A Fox
I first listened to this album walking down Bloor Street in downtown Toronto on the morning after a blizzard in late December, maybe 2001 or 2002. I remember the difficulty of walking through the high snow in my winter boots. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I was completely warm in all my layers - I just felt like exploring the city with its new blanket of snow. This was playing on my headphones, and the swirling rhythms that Sandro Perri created somehow fed back to the rhythm of my trudging through the snow, and for a moment I remember having an overwhelming sense that the Universe, my walk, the blue sky, the thick snow, the cold air, and this song, were all one and the same.
9. LIVINGSTON | Springtime
Henry Adam Svec is a folklorist, musician, and teacher from Southwestern Ontario, a strange peninsula with a history of cultures laid thickly over one another to the point that the concept of local has become all but lost. Just as Jorge Luis Borges created his own romantic folklores and mythologies from scratch, so has Svec sculpted his own Canadian and Ontarian mythologies, most recently through LIVINGSTON, a computer which is programmed to write classic Canadian Folk songs, which Svec brings to Life by involving local musicians. I first heard Springtime while walking around Guelph, Ontario, in the depths of the winter vortex, around January or February of 2014, and everything about the song captures the essence of Southwest Ontario, and its hollowed face which eludes definition.
10. The Dinner Is Ruined Band | Bought Yerself A Bullet
The reputation of Toronto within Canada is generally one of a business city, overrun by black suits and ties, and empty, clean streets. For me, Toronto has been, and will maybe always be, something of a caged animal… Despite its outdated puritanical laws, the city meshes with the surrounding countryside in a way I’ve rarely seen in any other urban environments - growing up downtown, it was rare to pass a summer night walking through back streets without running into a raccoon or skunk, and I’ve always felt like this energy somehow extended to the people who live in the city, which sometimes to me feels like a village of five million people in a swampy forest, intersected with hidden ravines and back alleys. No Toronto group, in my opinion, has reflected and captured this sentiment as much as Dale Morningstar’s The Dinner Is Ruined Band, and this song off their album A Maggot In Their Heads is a great example of the confused, disjointed, unleashed culture of Toronto which hides in the bushes, islands, and industrial yards, just below the surface.
1. Fela Ransome-Kuti and The Africa '70 with Ginger Baker | Let's Start
Live! I can never get bored of this album. Geniuses at work. Beautiful, beautiful stuff.
2. Tortoise | Eden 2
Standards. Underappreciated Tortoise album. Tortoise didn't do much for me when I first heard them in the TnT era, but after seeing them live in Toronto on the Standards tour I heard the band completely differently and have had Standards on regular rotation ever since.
3. Fleetwood Mac | Go Your Own Way
Rumours. I got my beat-up copy of this record (along with a shit-ton of Hall & Oates and a copy of Paul McCartney - McCartney II) from a box on the curb in front of a neighbour's house in 2003. It surprised me how much this album took me in once I put it on. I don't care how Mainstream or overplayed these guys were back in the day, this album is a goddamn classic. The production is glorious, the songwriting is spot on, and the performances are absolutely captivating.
4. His Hero Is Gone | Like Weeds
Memphis Crust Punk. This shit is just so powerful. Majestic and awe-inspiring. Weird song-structures, jarring changes that totally work, and a convincing, massive sound. The whole thing just feels like a huge ship barreling through violent sea storms in the night.
5. Shotmaker | Failure
Ontario legends at their prime. The slithering, clacking, bending bass and that iconic pseudo 3/4 drum beat, with the driving guitar and that ridiculous but somehow fitting caterwaul. So mechanical but so moving.
6. Holy Other | Know Where
Very nice open, empty, Electronic stuff.
7. Jim Croce | You Don't Mess Around With Jim
A true classic. Skateboarders of a certain vintage will recognize this as Rodney Mullen's main track in the Plan B - Virtual Reality video. Love it to death.
8. Eiyn Sof | Weight Of The World
I bought this record from Rick White's Blue Fog Recordings label on a whim while visiting Toronto a few years ago and it's been in regular rotation ever since. A pleasing and exploratory mix of a record, it continues to grow on me with each listen.
9. Godspeed You Black Emperor! | Storm: 1. Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas To Heaven...
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven... I just have to list the whole album here. I mean sure, I guess the different songs have names, but I have always just listened to this album the whole way through and treated it as a single work. This was always a good album for long-haul drives. It's special to me though, because I saw them touring this album in Toronto at the Bloor Cinema, and at the time it was hands down the best show I had ever seen, and it still ranks way up there for me today. It's a show I very nearly missed though. Because when I showed up to the venue I opened my wallet to get the ticket out and found that it had somehow vanished within the last couple of hours. The show had long-since sold out with no sales at the door and I was afraid of missing what promised to be a totally amazing show in an equally amazing venue. So I hurriedly retraced my steps under full panic. With luck, and to my great relief, I found the ticket lying in the gutter by a streetcar stop back in Chinatown. I ran back to the show and managed to get there just in time to see the show start. And it was glorious.
10. Betty Harris | There's A Break In The Road
I was introduced to Betty Harris by the Saturday Night Fish Fry compilation of New Orleans Funk and Soul, an album which is chock full of gems. And Betty Harris, as I later found out, has produced loads of great material outside of what's featured on that compilation. But this track in particular stands out for me. It's filled with piercing guitar feedback and these drum patterns during the chorus that sound like a never-ending break falling over itself again and again.
1. Bark Psychosis | Rose
///Codename: Dustsucker. Walking around the 13th district of Vienna, I fell in hard, Macrocosmic Love with this album, and realized that it was going to be my favorite album of all time, for the rest of my life, whether I like it or not. The production, mood, song titles and flow, lyrics, German lyrics vertraue mir in the last song Rose: it still feels like this album is meant for me personally. The only thing that could top this would be a new BP album, and I know I'm not the only fan eagerly awaiting such an occasion.
2. Mahogany | Light Will Deserve A Place
Memory Column: Early Works And Rarities 1996-2004. I love Mahogany. They are a relatively unknown, sweet mixture of Belle & Sebastian + Stereolab, with a Shoegaze finish. Given my predisposition to Techno and Electronic Music, I like that Mahogany's songs all sort of sound the same. This album is the best collection of their work, and it fits driving through Montana (where I live), contemplating the concept of home/belonging, and feeling the pull from the direction North.
3. Cocteau Twins | The Spangle Maker
It is very difficult to narrow down on the Cocteau Twins, but this track never fails to take my breath away. It is heavy, ominous, beautiful, and structurally outlandish; it is a four minute piece that continues to inform my musical tastes as well as sustain my intellectual aspirations; it wails on about inclination towards intense romance while complements my deep longing for True Love. It is a reflection of a personal or tangible indecisive storm which I want to listen to over and over again. Loudly. Simply put, I'm positive it is the greatest Love song of all time.
4. Aix Em Klemm | Sophteonal
I don't remember the particular circumstances, but I remember turning up Aix Em Klemm while in my car, probably stoned, 17 years old. I fell into complete awe of the surprising beauty and expansive geography of my home state under the influence of this album's strange poetic drone. It fit those pink clouds and miles and miles of power lines so well. I then journeyed onward into the sounds of Windy & Carl, Gastr Del Sol, and Do Make Say Think, into Post Rock, which led me back to Electronica, but transformed, ready for Minimal Techno and beyond.
5. Sting | If I Ever Lose My Faith In You
Ten Summoner's Tales. We all have our guilty pleasures. This Sting album stands in place for similar nerdy, New Age tastes, such as Enya, Dead Can Dance, Steve Roach, David Sylvian (recommended by my bandmate Soren), Roxy Music, etc. I choose this one, though, because I have strong memories associated with it. I liked it as a child when it was first released, and I remember driving around the suburbs of Houston listening to it from the car cassette player with my mother at the steering wheel. Ten years later, during the summer of 2005, this album returned to focus, and it came to represent intellectual, nostalgic, and mystical tenets coming together for me. Something about its anglophylia, romantic melodies, and eruditely lyrics fit my interests and aims at the time, which were familiarizing myself with the English canon and pursuing Medieval studies. I went to the UK for the first time that summer, which was my first time abroad ever. I was very attuned to my surroundings, enjoyed contemplating the staying power of pre-Christian mythology, and searched for it in Medieval texts. The reference to Chaucer here is also fitting.
6. M.I.A. | MATANGI
After much deliberation, I've decided that I love all the M.I.A. albums equally, and claiming this one as my favorite demonstrates that decision. I get excited just playing around with the idea of playing the album to channel its hari kari for writing about it.
7. HTRK | Give It Up
Psychic 9-5 Club. This album came out in April 2014 on a label that I used to consider my favorite label. I find their new catalogue impotent, uninteresting, and pretentious. Not this HTRK album, though. I got it last summer because I heard and enjoyed the opening track enough that I felt like I should try the whole thing out, especially because I always moderately loved HTRK. Listening to it again and again in mellow moods during these hot afternoons, not seeking anything in particular out of the Music, I came to realize that I love this work, and that it really speaks to me. This is one of my top five favorite albums of 2014, I think.
8. Dettinger | Untitled (Track 3 on Intershop)
As stated earlier, one of my favorite themes of Techno and Electronic Music is Repetition. This artist is one of the best examples which suits the Repetitive Techno subcategory. Intershop, however, is a collection set apart from his other work. Dettinger is a somewhat mysterious producer who hasn't released any material since 2000. His tracks seem to usually exist out of only a handful of samples, some of which are from Cocteau Twins. Intershop is a concise collection of these beautiful and simplistic tracks that have no beginning nor end, just fading in and out. They are spacious, gentle, and always recognizable, as if pieces of the archetypal continuum. Furthermore, they sound like snow falling on Berlin.
9. Paula Temple | Colonized
Paula Temple is one of my heroes, and this song is rank with superior sick crunchy bombastic fuck yeah plus political attitude. Just play it, turn it up, and you'll hear what I mean, and understand why I can't articulate more than profanities in describing it. Communication. Break. Down.
10. Bvdub | A Quiet Doorway Opens
Tribes At The Temple Of Silence. Prolific, relentless production of relentlessly repetitive, big Electronic sounds + terribly cheesy titles = one of my favorites forever. This album is so beautiful, and I like the percussion.
+11. Sasha | Xpander
One of my themes for Life, Time Travel, and the medicinal uses of archetypes; still to date the most beautiful, epic Dance Music song - I don't care if it's Trance.
