Colder than the streets in Anchorage
Mix 31: A Lil Wayne guitar solo, a belated aespa appearance, more Debmaster, more Goat, more amapiano, and....uh, Penguin Cafe?
Each week I skim through about 2,000 songs mostly from Spotify's company-curated New Music Friday playlists. Whenever I find 80 minutes worth of music I like, I make a CD-length mix and write a newsletter about it.
Things are winding down over at the Website Formerly Known as Twitter — Tom Ewing announced the end stages of the People’s Pop polls, which he’ll retire in about eight months barring any further erosion of the polling platform. I’ll have a lot more to write about the polls after they go.
Meanwhile, the league games at the standalone People’s Pop site are chugging along, small but mighty — the one I participated in is in its final week and then will start a new season with new nominators.
A quick pitch for the League of Extraordinary Tracks: if you like getting new music each week, this is a mini-tournament in which twelve music obsessives nominate songs each week based on a theme. You vote for the best four songs you don’t already know (which will usually be all of them!) and the most votes overall wins the week. If you are a music obsessive yourself, I highly recommend participating as a nominator (you can sign up every couple of months). If you are a music enthusiast, I recommend creating a login and at least becoming a voter — I can guarantee you will find a handful of songs in each group that you could never have heard otherwise.
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17 // Mix 18 // Mix 19 // Mix 20 // Mix 21 // Mix 22 // Mix 23 // Mix 24 // Mix 25 // Mix 26 // Mix 27 // Mix 28 // Mix 29 // Mix 30
MIX 31: COLDER THAN THE STREETS IN ANCHORAGE
1. aespa: Better Things
Not sure why the arguably better aespa single this year, “Spicy,” didn’t really do it for me — “Better Things” feels a bit more like it’s in the post-NewJeans K-pop environment that is simultaneously subtler and more adventurous, at least in terms of moving outside of some of K-pop’s comfort zones. The NewJeans secret sauce was Erika de Casier (on their EP, anyway, doesn’t explain why their previous material also had secret sauce, i.e. suggests that NewJeans is the secret sauce) (and as long as we’re doing gratuitously long parentheticals read this interview with Erika de Casier!). Here it’s probably supplied by co-writer RAYE.
2. Perfume: Moon
First of three songs on this week’s mix from Katherine St. Asaph — this one is the only one that actually showed up in my playlists this week. Perfume’s album from late 2022 was excellent, so it’s nice that this one-off — the theme song to a new Japanese TV drama — gives me the opportunity to feature them.
3. she: You Rock Me
The second KSA pick, though she shared a different song off of this upcoming album only available on Bandcamp (“Next to Me”). This was the only 2023 song of theirs on Spotify so far, and it sounded perfect after the Perfume track. Interesting background: Polish-born but Swedish-based artist Lain Volta has found a sweet spot between video game soundtracking, EDM, and a less sneering take on PC Music style metapop (not exactly hpyerpop, but like something that predates it). It is very much my sort of thing.
4. SONIKKU f. DJ_Dave & Deto Black: Unhinged
Skitters around like the present zeitgeist but also quaintly gets high like a G6, which is to say I miss Dev, like, a lot. Deto Black is a Nigerian artist but I can’t tell if that’s her singing (she is involved in some way, because she shared an Instagram reel of herself lip syncing to it) or DJ_Dave, who’s the one lip syncing in the official video and whose other work sounds similar. Or they could be taking turns. Who can keep track of this stuff!
5. Miso Extra: 50/50
London artist who created a whole Misoverse, though from what I can tell it’s mostly polite bangers for high-end furniture stores. (This is one of my favorite genres, but I don’t know that it lives up to a whole -verse.)
6. Anitta: Casi Casi
My cup overfloweth with baile funk, yet Anitta leaves me cold, seems much too far removed from the hot center of the trend even though she’s arguably the most commercially popular “crossover” from funk. So I suppose it makes sense that the song of hers I’ve liked best this year is the one that basically leaves funk alone.
7. DJ Shadow: Ozone Scraper
No idea where this one from DJ Shadow came from — is he making instrumental demos for Phoenix now or what?
8. Jon Batiste f. Lil Wayne: Uneasy
Jon Batiste’s album has the sort of big tent zaniness that I loved in will.i.am’s #willpower back in 2013, but where will was just-plain-tasteless, this is tasteful tastelessness, which explains why Lil Wayne gets both one of his more impressive guest verses from this year — just the sort of offhand expression of casual mastery that nominally “serious” music can inspire in him — and a charmingly bad three-note guitar solo, which I’d bet he’s prouder of than the Anchorage line.
9. Leon Thomas: Blue Hundreds
Was intrigued by the retro, Pink Floyd-ish sound with rap idiom, like…Lil Yachty making a prog/psych album? Can you imagine! (Lil Yachty’s prog/psych album is much weirder than this.)
10. UNE f. lIlBOI: Villain
Another K-pop track that I like more than some of the high-profile stuff I’ve come across recently. When a whistle hook works, it works.
11. WhyTek f. Tion Wayne: Saxo
The joyless excavation of 00s rap by 20s US rappers — usually barely changing a note and plopping a much-worse rap on top — is totally exhausting at this point. Better UK rap strategy to flash forward a decade and just sample “Mr. Saxobeat” at double speed.
12. Flipperachi: Fog Alnakhal
8-bit squiggles and sunshine rap from Bahrain.
13. Aunty Rayzor: Murder
Nigerian rapper in another strong 2023 collaboration with Debmaster, the producer on MC Yallah’s album, from their label, Nyege Nyege Tapes subsidary Hakuna Kuala. (Hoping the forthcoming album sustains the energy better than MC Yallah’s did.)
14. Bandish Projekt f. Isha Nair: Shyam
Final Katherine St. Asaph recommendation of the week, a collaboration between Indian DJ Bandish Projekt and singer Isha Nair. It rips.
15. Thrash Palace: Go
Trash rock with a healthy dollop of sludge from a trio with EMA along with two people I don’t know, Sarah Register and Vice Cooler. Vaguely reminiscent of Alvin and the Chipmunks on 16 Speed.
16. Jessi Colter: Standing on the Edge of Forever
The People’s Pop theme this month is Late Work, so here’s a good ‘un — Jessi Colter’s got a new album out soon. The first I’ve heard from her in many years, though apparently she’s put out some niche albums lately, a collection of psalms in 2017 and a children’s album in 2018.
17. Danny Vera: Beggin’ for Trouble
Very wax museum rock ‘n’ roll from a Danish songwriter, sounds designed to be mildly impressive in a local pub, but it worked in the transition to…
18. Goat: Unemployment Office
Goat! I guess I really like Goat? I seem to put something from everything they release onto a mix eventually, except for the instrumental soundtrack they put out this year that was too atmospheric.
19. Dina El Wedidi f. Twyxx: Ya Ghazal
Another good find from Spotify’s relatively strong curation of Egyptian pop.
20. Kabza De Small x DJ Maphorisa f. Nokwazi, Mawhoo, Mashudu, &LeeArt: Ungiphethe Kahle
Amapiano is back! I had time for it this week, hurrah — went for something less adventurous than Mellow & Sleazy’s new one — which is great but the file quality of Spotify sounded like garbage — but more adventurous than a lot of the plainer/prettier stuff I find more often.
21. Overmono: Calling Out
Joy Overmono was the first I’d knowingly heard Overmono — like this one a lot and have very little to say about it. I need a particular kind of mental energy to write anything interesting about this sort of electronic music and I cannot muster that energy this week, sorry!
22. Penguin Cafe: In Re Budd
God, I am such a sucker for Penguin Cafe. This is basically what I imagine my “vibe” sounds like, which is not necessarily something I’m thrilled about, but it is what it is. I’m older; I know myself better now.
***
Let’s try something new: questions for the comment section! Or you can just answer them in your head. Or ignore them entirely. I just appreciate you reading this far!
What soundtracks your whole “vibe” even if you wish it didn’t?
If Jon Batiste gave you a few bars to play a guitar solo and you could only choose three notes, what notes would they be?
Do you like Northern Exposure?
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Jon Batiste f. Lil Wayne, “Uneasy.”