Come and feel the entropy
Mix 42: Vibes (mostly figurative, though some literal) from Chile, South Africa, Denmark, Poland, and Iceland. Plus: digging for dembow, and the year to date in Ari Falcão.
Experiencing an uneasy calm this week, despite all the noise. Back in the fall of 2020, I wrote about the previous election with a similar queasy sense of a-little-too-quiet:
“California Dreamin’” is one of those songs that transports me, not to the winter the narrator describes or to the perpetual summer of his dream — Mom’s dream, maybe — of California, but to the autumn of their photo shoots, apple-picking excursions or walks in the woods, the air a little damp, the sky gloomy. We’ve had that weather recently. It suits the tense interregnum of our political moment, the uneasy quiet of the eye of a hurricane or a tenuous ceasefire. Here we are, as if in a dream, waiting for something else to happen, sensing something even more awful still on the way.
No wonder I was in the mood for a vibes-based playlist without any huge standouts. In the meantime, I’m going to keep my head down over here, not to say way down (in the sand). See you on the other side.
Previous 2024 mixes
MIX 42: COME AND FEEL THE ENTROPY
1. Javiera Mena: Entropía
Will admit to not being consistently interested in Mena’s career—have trouble picking her out of a line-up—but the second single from her upcoming album balances a singer-songwriter indie-pop hodge-podge with sleek space disco. It’s a grower—in fact, it “grew” to the lead spot this week after starting out somewhere in the middle and getting promoted as all of my obvious lead tracks kept annoying me enough to remove them. (Sorry, JADE! Cool video, though!)
2. Adam Ten f. Emma El Shir: Alor
3. 031CHOPPA, Royal MusiQ, DBN Gogo f. Djy Biza: Hamba No Choppa
Keeping the vibes going with plenty of bongos, the first dance-pop from an Israeli DJ and the second upbeat amapiano that also has some lovely literal vibes on top of the figurative ones.
4. Steve Poindexter: Happy Stick [1991]
Not sure how I’m able to determine which dance music that winds up on my playlists is cash-in Spotify filler (from their “All New Dance” playlist) and which is legit, with storied history and all that. I can only tell you I know it when I hear it. This week it’s a Numero Group rerelease of Chicago house pioneer Steve Poindexter’s 1991 single “Happy Stick.”
5. Citizen Deep f. Nia Pearl, Bontle Smith: Nomvula
6. DJ Tira, Dj PepexKwah, Worst Behavior f. Captain, TNS, DJ Arh & G Star: Siyaphothula
Two more from South Africa. I had a different Citizen Deep song in this slot (lots of them turned up on my playlists last week), but was unhappy with it and listened to the whole album until I found a better one, clearly forgetting that Brad Luen had already written about this very track, and it was in fact that write-up that primed me to even notice Citizen Deep in the first place. He wrote: “harkens back to Afrotronica of the golden age (three years ago) in that when every new sound comes in I think ‘yeah, he must’ve thought about that,’ and adds innovation (starting the process of melodicizing the 3-step donks, the natural next step for the genre.)” Yeah!
DJ Tira takes a kitchen sink approach to South African dance, an uninformed judgment on my part somewhat corroborated by the genre tags: kwaito, gqom, house, afro soul. I’d add: “…the rest.” A reminder for myself to work backwards a bit further in the timeline to get a better handle on South African dance music history.
7. El Alfa: Rikitan
8. Yailin la Mas Viral, Puyalo Pantera: Chapa
9. Donaty: To No Morimo
I’ve gotten fed up with the substandard dembow I’m getting from Spotify playlists, so decided to do a scan of my long-dormant global YouTube playlists bookmarks. I do consistently get El Alfa singles from Spotify, though, most of which hew to the c. 2019-2022 dembow norms of overlong track lengths and unadventurous beats. But the latest one, “Rikitan,” features some wild percussion from Chael Produciendo and is under two minutes.
The other two are YouTube finds. At number one on their Dominican Republic chart this week was Yailin la Mas Viral’s “Dale 2,” which led me to check out her other 2024 tracks. I went with the hypnotic minimalism of “Chapa.” The other find was Donaty, with a nice blend of bongos and noisy, mixed-in-the-red drums I associate with Brazil.
10. Yuri: Kantan Music
Yet another charming J-pop song that I am totally unequipped to tell you much about, except that the folks in the YouTube comments only seem to want to talk about the animation.
11. Masew, Double2T, Tuấn Cry: Xập Xình Xập Xình
Second V-pop track on my mixes this year from Masew and Tuấn Cry that combines traditional instrumentation and trap beats, this time featuring rapper Double2T. This hasn’t been the sound of Vietnamese pop that’s drawn my attention recently—I suspect my playlists aren’t giving me a good sampling of what’s available so I’ve already started a genre dive for next week—but I do seem to enjoy it.
12. DJ Luiz 011: Automotivo Vai Tomar Dormindo X Vai Senta nos Talibã
An easy baile funk inclusion for using “XO Tour Llif3” and making me wonder once again what the deal is with copyright enforcement for Brazilian music on streaming services. Some of it seems to get taken down, like a contender for my funk track of the year, which samples Rita Lee. But most stays up. Can’t imagine that most if any of the samples are cleared, but who knows.
Most of my funk energies this week went into compiling a curated and lightly sequenced Ari Falcão playlist of songs from 2024 (there are over 100 to choose from this year to date), based on Frank Kogan’s championing of her. She is definitely the missing link in the Brazilian Bimbo Summit, the Lindsay Lohan to MC Pipokinha’s Britney Spears and Bibi Babydoll’s Paris Hilton. This is also not a terrible way to get a sonic sampler of funk if you feel totally overwhelmed by, say, the quickly-approaching-400 Brazilian funk tracks I have not included in my mixes this year.
13. MC Menor JP: Menina de Vermelho
Light funk track mostly giving space to MC Menor JP’s singing, which is lovely. Never was able to explore my musings on Brazilian “melody literacy” any further, but I continue to hear a sense of melody even in rapping that isn’t anywhere in the ballpark of this style of studied sing-rap.
14. Kiko: Ayo
More dulcet singing from Togolese pop star Kiko.
15. KCee: Netfliss
Polyrhythms in six convinced me this was maybe from Côte D’Ivoire, but the singer is Nigerian and seems restlessly pan-regional — his breakout hit was the aptly named “Limpopo” 10 years ago.
16. Shakes & Les, Young Stunna f. Lee McKrazy: Thando Awpheli
Had a lot of room to stretch in the wind-down this week, so let’s start it off with a replacement level Shakes & Les amapiano track (which is to say, still a few standard deviations above most amapiano this year.)
17. Svaneborg Kardyb: Superkilen
I finally traced the origin of where I first heard Judith Horn’s fantastic “Deep Shit Times” to Bluesky mutual Kel, who just put out an October playlist that includes this relentlessly chill Danish electro. The whole album follows suit — do not listen while operating heavy machinery.
18. Les Sons Du Cosmos: Laundry
Stoner jazz-rock, sounds good after the Danes.
19. Błoto: Boczniak
Polish weirdos (electro/jazz subvariety) claim to be influenced by “brutal hip-hop grooves,” but while I’ll give them groove, both hip-hop and brutal are a stretch.
20. 070 Shake: Winter Baby / New Jersey Blues
What’s weirder than Polish electrojazz? Whatever this 070 Shake foray into Saturday Looks Good to Me-style ‘60s fetishism is supposed to be. I’ve never pinned down what 070 Shake’s alt-R&B is “supposed” to sound like, so can’t really tell how far of a divergence from her other material this is. But my guess is still pretty far.
21. Krassoff: Opnaðu Augun
How about an atmospheric Icelandic duet before you go?
22. Joyce Street: When I Get Home
And finally, bringing it home, an aspiring country star of the late 60s and early 70s who got an archival compilation in 2023, but as far as I can tell never got much critical attention paid to her—not enough to figure out how these songs were produced, anyway, at least in the one review I could find over at Uncut. This is an acapella demo from what I’m assuming is a second volume of unearthed material.
***
That’s it! Until next time, only feel the entropy if it’s working for you.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title translated from Javiera Mena’s “Entropía” (“Ven y siente la Entropia”)