1. Brian Eno | The Big Ship
This sketchy doodle of a song sounds to me like a cinematic Love theme written by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Brushstroked with primitive rhythm box textures, a warmly powerful cello-like melody carries you as a chattery projector plays back to you every important experience of your life thus far while glistening firefly notes lilt on top. You shed a solitary tear and eat from a comically large bucket of popcorn as your seat becomes a row-boat floating on the stillness of an orange sea.
2. Gary Hoey | Theme From The Endless Summer (The Endless Summer II Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
This is sort of a family song. When we used to visit Hawaii on surf trips, we would listen to this in the evenings and play dominos and watch the sunset from some balcony attached to our hotel room. It was one of these evenings where I recall my father explaining the feeling of nostalgia to me to help me understand why I felt sad and happy at the same time.
3. Prefab Sprout | Bonny
Powerfully relatable yet somehow elusive in meaning or intention, as a Rock song Bonny is as moving as I have ever found. The production is perfectly dynamic for a song that arcs so lushly. When it ends I find myself silently begging for it to be longer.
4. Sebastien Tellier | La Ritournelle
Tony Allen plays loose, Jazzy, syncopated swooshes while grand piano and strings transport you to a dusky garden somewhere with a spilled glass of wine and the love of your life turning their head in slow motion.
5. Choice | Acid Eiffel
Haunting Acid track which imbues all the alien bleeps with yearning existential longing and theatrical moonlight.
6. Cocteau Twins | Cherry-Coloured Funk (Seefeel Remix)
When you are experiencing a profoundly lovely day that feels like one of those cartoons where Spring finally comes and birds are singing and squirrels are chasing flirtatiously, you should try listening to Cherry-Coloured Funk. When you remember that day, you should try listening to this remix.
7. Art Of Noise | Moments In Love (Beaten)
My preferred mix of a definitive statement of a feeling and headspace that will never be bettered.
8. Portraits Of Past | Bang Yer Head
My first favorite album was the Portraits Of Past LP. Released posthumously, I had a cassette of the album on one side and all the other songs they wrote and released on 7” on the other, passed down from one of the members, through my brother, then to me. Cold Half Moon Bay waters crash on jagged Rock cymbals while guitars echo Pacific blue coils of Reverb.
9. Ishinohana | Lucia
A musical expression of the Perfect Harmony found in Nature. The guitar repeats like a watermill in a stream that never stops gently rotating.
10. Brian Eno/John Cale | Spinning Away
All the flanging, chorusy, wooziness of standing on the cliff above the sea and feeling extremely open as this plays from the speakers of your Jeep, which you left running, parked 15 feet behind you.
+11. Terry Riley | In The Summer (Lifespan Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
A reminder that within the flow of the Earth you are microscopic and meaningless and alone, but through the right eyes everything around you is cosmically bound together. This song helps you meditate in any physical setting, even on a city bus filled with hopeless junkies, as I found when I lived in San Francisco. Conversely, when I drove through the hills of Marin, I would sometimes think to myself this is Riley country and imagine that the dome houses I would see were his home or, at the very least, listening to one of his Improvisational pieces.
+12. Harold Budd | Bismillahi 'Rrahmani 'Rrahim
The Pavilion Of Dreams... A record that makes me feel like I am 100 years old and living in mid-day Serenity. A quiet breeze turns pages for me and flower petals break off and float away weightlessly. My armchair hovers inches above a reflection pool.
+13. G.W. McLennan | Haunted House
Understated, gentle, and impeccable Pop song that I heard a lot as a child.
+14. Solid Sessions | Janeiro
Transporting you across the face of calm seas shimmering with setting sunlight and lifting you to the God inside everything. Silhouettes of bodies dancing in worship, maybe some of them wearing sarongs, you lose yourself eternally.
