Hello to my friends, enemies and to those on whom I have not decided. My April playlist is finished!

Hello to my friends, enemies and to those on whom I have not decided. My April playlist is finished! It’s a little shorter than usual, but please enjoy 2 and a half hours of hand picked tunes from all walks of life. Thankyou.​You Are Going To Love Me And Scream - A.A.L.: I am still totally obsessed with this Nicolas Jaar album, it’s absolutely mesmerising. I really love all the use of distortions and white noise throughout the whole thing, the intro to this song specifically is almost overtaken by crackles and pops before the beat kicks in but there’s a great moment in I Never Dream where a snare hit in the middle of nowhere is hugely overdriven for no reason and sounds like a horse kicking a car and it really makes me laugh.Suicide - Xanopticon: This is probably the most accessible song I’ve ever heard from Xanopticon because it at least sort of resembles the Gravediggaz song it’s sampling here and there. His album is just a pure assault on the senses but not in the usual breakcore/noise way, it sounds like someone sampled and rearranged the sound of each individual shard of a window breaking. I saw someone describe it as music that’s so busy it almost goes back around to being ambient again. Anyway this song is great and it’s a great choice of sample to open a song that’s just an extremly dark remix of an already dark song.Dreamin’ - Loretta Holloway: One of the funniest feelings is listening to a disco playlist on spotify and recognising every second song as the source of the sample in your favourite songs. Anyway this song is sampled in the Flume remix of Hyperparadise by Hermitude. I really think that music in 2018 could really do with bringing back the thing of doing a huge monologue in the middle of your song about how you can’t even trust your best friends and interspersing it with screams.Eid Ma Clack Shaw - Bill Callahan: I am so glad that Bill Callahan is on spotify finally, just in time for his starring role in the soundtrack for Wild Wild Country. This is one of the songs that I always wake up with in my head and used to have to listen to on youtube. I love the conceit of this song, it manages to be hilarious and heartfelt at the same time which is a very rare thing.Caravan - Bernard “Pretty” Purdie: This is the most unhinged version of Caravan I’ve ever heard. They should have based Whiplash on this, Miles Teller making king kong noises in the final scene. He is just going absolutely hogwild from the jump and then gets bigger and bigger as it progresses. There’s never been a good fadeout in music ever but fading out a song like this should be punishable with prison time, it runs out just as he’s really getting his screams going.War - Hypnotic Brass Ensemble: I suddenly remembered this Hypnotic Brass Ensemble album and how much I love this song this month when I was listening to Plastic Beach. My big gripe is I really wish they’d gone with a different drum sound rather than the extremely thin snare and bouncy kick they have, it just doesn’t match the power of the rest of it. This is something I’ve thought of and got mad about when I’m not even listening to the song, it’s a major concern in my life. Also this song was in the Hunger Games movie for some reason, what a world.Slug - Passengers: I cannot believe it’s taken me this long to find out there’s a secret U2 album where they let Ol’ Sourpuss himself Brian Eno join the band and make ambient jams as fake soundtracks for anime movies. There’s some great quotes about it on the wiki article: ‘Further, critical reaction from the fans and even the band members has been mixed. Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is noted for his dislike of the album: “There’s a thin line between interesting music and self-indulgence. We crossed it on the Passengers record.” Bono objected to Mullen’s statement in the same documentary, claiming that “Larry just didn’t like [Passengers] because we didn’t let him play the drums.”La Mezcla (feat. Toto La Momposina) - Michel Cleis: One of the coolest things you can do is shazam the DJ whenever you’re out and a good song comes on. Everyone thinks you’re really cool for holding your phone in the air and shushing them so that’s exactly what I do at every opportunity. And lucky I did cause this song is from another planet. I can’t tell if it’s some effect or just because the vocals have been sped up but the vibrato sound she does on some notes, mixed with the backing vocals is mystical. Unfortunately the main flute line does sound a lot like Frere Jaques which brings another dimension to the whole thing.Petrified - John Roman: This is also the result of Shazaming While Out but it’s worth it. The way the sample works in this song sounds like a slightly more relaxed interpretation of When You by Tha Pope. I love sampling like this that just reduces it to pure sound by sheer repetition before finally releasing it into some context now and then.Fist City - Loretta Lynn: A friend sent me this because he thought I’d like it and he was absolutely right. The song is absolutely viscious, and I’ve probably never heard a lyric as good as “If you don’t wanna go to Fist City you’d better detour round my town/'Cause I’ll grab you by the hair of the head and I’ll lift you off of the ground” in my life. That’s just as good as it gets. Also please look at the album art for this because it makes the song about a hundred times funnier.Same Airport, Different Man - Julia Jacklin: It is unbelievable how good Julia Jacklin is at songs. This song deserves to be an all time classic, it’s just perfect. I really appreciate the decision to keep the instrumentation so simple and let her voice and guitar conduct this series of small crescendos throughout, and couple with the screaming metal sounds in the far distance it gives the whole piece the best of both worlds of being a solo vocals and guitar thing but adding a huge amount of atmosphere to compliment the lyrics.Hesitation Blues - Jelly Roll Morton: I’m only aware of this song because of Marisa Anderson’s Hesitation Theme And Variation Blues, so I thought I had better go back to the source and I’m glad I did because this song is straight up pleasant.Corn In Sun + T (Moon) - Cecil Taylor: It seems a real shame that the way I find out about someone like Cecil Taylor is by finding out he’s died. I’ve never ever heard someone play piano like this before. It’s like music from an alternate history, an alternate present where a whole different musical tradition dictates a whole different set of rules and I’m sad I never got to hear about it earlier.Little Maggie - Sandy Bull: Someone put out a new compilation of American Primitive guitar and banjo 1963-1974 called The Thousand Incarnations Of The Rose and it’s very good, this song especially. I’ve never explored the banjo side of it much but I really like this song, the way the melody rhythmically distorts in the middle section as everything churns around it before coming back together in the finale is really magical.Pecussion Gun - White Rabbits: I was thinking about this little genre that popped up in like 2007 where it was supremely percussion focused indie but it turns out the only examples I could think of was White Rabbits and The Dodos, so maybe it was more of a coincidence than a genre. Also I was thinking about how much this band sounds like Spoon and it turns out the guy from Spoon produced this album, so that’s everything wrapped up with a neat little bow.Fools - The Dodos: I remember seeing a review of this album that was saying it really proves how much there is that you can still do with just vocals, guitar and drums and that makes a lot of sense to me. This song is so good because it feels so hyperactive, constantly trying to come up with new ideas to keep you interested - the scattered yelling in the background, the incessant rhythm, the overdriven guitar strummed to hell in the breaks. With everything stripped away this would still be a perfectly nice strummy acoustic song but the busyness piled on top of every part of it makes it great.Winter - The Dodos: This is the most heartbreaking song I’ve heard in a while and I think it’s mostly because it’s just so bitterly mean. “Goodnight my love, you seemed so nice 'til I knew you better”. Also the line in this “I want a lover and a sister, but we know that’s not right” is so similar to one in another very destructive song Futile Devices by Sufjan Stevens “I think of you as my brother although that sounds dumb” and is that interesting? Probably not.Owls - Leo Kottke: This is the platonic ideal of a Leo Kottke song because it shows off both sides of him so perfectly. The unparalleled clockwork, churning fingepicking side and the rarely seen introspective, spacious side. I love the slow building as the moody centre starts to heat up again into the refrain near the end.Look Away (feat. Caroline Polachek) - SBTRKT: I only just now found out that it’s Caroline Polachek from Chairlift that features on this song after listening to it for years. I love how bizarrely noisy this song is. The piano is a million miles away, the percussion is insanely close and sharp, there’s all kinds of beeping and clicking competing for your attention, the side to side panning drums in the chorus. It gives the whole song this huge bubbling unease throughout the whole thing.When I Get To Heaven - John Prine: This is like the direct opposite of Hurt, as far as 'this is my last song ever’ type songs go. He’s gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long when he gets to heaven. It’s such an open handed, ambivalant acceptance of the end that it almost made me cry. “Buddy, when you’re dead. You’re a dead peckerhead.”Red Horse (Judges II) - Colin Stetson: This is one of a few songs that are just constantly in my head. The others are Baby I Love Your Way by Peter Frampton and the theme from Super Mario Bros 2. Just all the time some combination of those songs, it’s horrible. Anyway, this song is pure power. It feels like some kind of dark ritual that undoubtedly ends in blood. The way it starts low and then drops into this extremely low register that feels like it’s pushing the limits of the microphones with how wide it spreads before the percussive parts start in and the way it develops from this pulsing rhythm to the interspersed screams is purely malicious.In This Modern Land - City Calm Down: This City Calm Down album is unbelievably good, and it sounds stupid but I really really love the production. Every single part just sounds amazing. Even the intro riff of this song is just so thickly textured and warm, it sounds amazing. I love how much time this song gives itself to fully develop. The way it slows and falls apart before it comes to a complete stop in the second verse before the riff kicks back in, and the development back into the soaring final section with the big brass and synth swooping through.Like A Cat - The Number Twelve Looks Like You: The best part of songs like this is looking up the lyrics after listening to it for ten years and finding out that he’s actually saying “Farewell to the Oldsmobile, acknowledge the new models” in the middle part. I wrote a song when I was at school that had a really similar riff to this one and I only just realised the similarity this month, which makes me feel like a teenage compositional genius.Like Knives - The Fashion: I love this song even though it has a line where he implores the dj to cut him a slice of his track. I have an extremely strong memory of watching the video for this song on Rage when it came out and just being completely hooked from the introductory drum fill, it’s just straight up perfect mid-2000s indie rock you can dance to.When You - Tha Pope: This is the song that plays in my head whenever I see a meme that starts with 'when you’. It’s kind of a shame that footwork didn’t end up being the wave of the future I’d hoped it would be but Bangs And Works 1 and 2 are still incredibly good compilations, and they gave us Jlin so you’ve got to be happy with that. I love the extremely smooth organ intro moving straight into the sound of a young Michael Jackson getting stuck in a printer, and for such an insanely busy song it’s relatively sparse. There’s not a lot of elements, they’re just all operating at 400% for two minutes.Blood - City Calm Down: Another great song from the City Calm Down album, another great song which I’m choosing to believe is literally about a vampire rather than looking into it any further.Honeycomb - Deafheaven: Deafheaven have been sent by God to make metal guys mad and they’re only getting better and better at it. They put this song out with a video that looked like a Lana Del Rey video. It was just super 8 footage of these guys (dressed in all black and band shirts) hanging out and looking happy in the park and I really loved it because it reflects the song so well. Somehow they’ve succeeded in keeping their sound but making it feel summery, or as a summery as Deafheaven is ever going to sound - the middle section where it breaks from the black metal onslaught into a very danceable riff and a solo to match, it’s even got tambourine for a little while! The lyrics in this are beautiful too: “I’m reluctant to stay sad, life beyond is a field of flowers / My love is a nervous child lapping from the glowing lagoon of their presence / My love is a bulging, blue-faced fool hung from the throat by sunflower stems”Drover - Bill Callahan: I really can’t imagine a bigger honour than writing a song and then having a Netflix original documentary series about a cult inspired by your lyrics seven whole years later. This is a beautiful song about having your cattle turn on you and then rising like a colossal hand buried in sand (?), a proper cowboy song. I am also totally obsessed with the little 'tss tss’ sound he makes in this song, I think it’s very very cool because I’m dumb.Mushroom Cloud - Hundred Waters: This song is beautiful but the part halfway through literally made me gasp, I have no idea what the sound is. It’s like she’s making a trumpet noise with her mouth and I can’t even tell if it’s processed or not because her voice is so amazing anyway. It’s such a strange choice and it sounds so perfect, I really can’t get over it.Drop The Pressure - Mylo: Someone in the youtube comments said Mylo made this whole album with open source software to prove that [Gusteau from Ratatouille voice] “enyonne can make a bangéur” and I think that’s very noble.19:11 - Danger: There’s a crime I’m mad about and it’s that Danger’s remix of American Boy by Estelle feat Kanye only seems to exist as a ten year old youtube video that sounds like it’s playing at the other end of a cardboard tube and also everyone in the comments is saying how much the song sucks. There is simply not justice in this world. This song however, exists in HD and thank god. It’s mesmerising, I love the way it feels like it’s tearing itself apart from the inside, it’s on the verge of total disintegration before the bridge kicks in and saves it.jatevee C - Autechre: I finally gave Exai a proper, sit down all the way through listen a couple of weeks ago and it’s really really good. I think this song is a really good starting point for this monolith of an album. The distortion of the constant crushed drums infecting the glassy background synths while the melody line just moves upward in what feels like MC Escher steps. It’s a relatively simple song as far as Autechre goes but the way the elements crash against each other constantly is magical.Im Heem - Lil B: I’m so glad that Lil B is on Spotify now because I really haven’t listened to him since about 2012 and it’s great to be back. Listening to him again after so long makes me realise I totally forgot about his bizarre thing of having a really quiet super long delay on the main vocal track that just builds this bed of voice throughout the song and makes you feel like there’s a hundred people talking right behind you by the end of the song. Now I suppose is a good a time as ever to give my OFFICIAL top 3 Lil B mixtape rankings: 1) God’s Father 2) I’m Gay 3) Blue Flame 4) 05 Fuck 'em gets special commendation just for being six hours long. 5) everything else.I Only Have Eyes For You - The Flamingos: A friend of mine texted me a few weeks ago asking to identify a song she heard that was 'slow, and sort of swinging and the only bit I could make out is a high pitched 'shubapshalup’ and I obviously had no idea but it turned out it was this song. There’s so much space in this recording, the harmonies are obviously absolutely amazing, but the little bits of distortion and clipping really make it magical. I keep rewinding the part near the end where they sing ’ but they all disappear from view’ over and over because that big distortion just after it is really doing something to my brain. listen here -- source link

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