Guess what I want to eat tonight

Mix 30: Checking in on Vietnam, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Kuwait, then going back in time to Mali, Japan, & Sri Lanka. Plus ghettotech from HiTech, a non-meme from Hudson Mohawke, and various Zinoleeskies.

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.

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Zinoleesky Jr.

Lots of good stuff this week, almost all from outside the US aside from the opening high-energy (not to say Hi-NRG) trio. Below you will find underrated samba kings, the Ugandan Björk, my Vietnamese single of the year so far, and an extremely talented six-year-old.

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: GUESS WHAT I WANT TO EAT TONIGHT

1. Hudson Mohawke & Nikki Nair: Set the Roof

Given I first started paying attention to him from a dumb Reddit meme that somehow made its way into my Redditless orbit, I guess I didn’t realize Hudson Mohawke has been on Warp for 14 years. This is a house collaboration with Atlanta DJ Nikki Nair, with vocals from Taylor Parx, better known for her writing credits. (Among the younger contingent in my household, her claim to fame would probably be co-writing Panic! At the Disco’s “High Hopes.”)

2. HiTech f. JMT: SHRIMP & GRITS

Exciting ghettotech group that I’m surprised is only coming across my Spotify radar screen now, as I’ve heard chatter about them earlier in the year. Booty music cranked up to hyperpop tempos, everything bent out of shape like they left the song out in the rain and it warped.

3. Lunice f. Cali Cartier: No Commas

Been holding on to this annoying falsetto gem for a few weeks because it didn’t fit anywhere, only to now discover that there’s a Hudson Mohawke connection (via Lucine’s side project with him, TNGHT).

4. Mai Âm Nhạc: Đố A Bít

This might be my Vietnamese track of the year so far, alternately glitchy and sexy R&B that is…maybe more literal about eating food than I initially suspected? Her background looks like a mix of reality TV, TikTok, and vicious online gossip, but I’m not searching very intently.

5. Ivy Queen: Toma

Have kept light tabs on Ivy Queen for about ten years now thanks to Jonathan Bogart’s evangelizing, and stumbled on this one — strong, if straightforward, reggaeton — this week. He recently released his belated 50 Songs of 2022 and as always it’s almost all new to me, a consistent window into scenes I don’t follow very closely, especially Caribbean music.

6. Alalalulu & Mc Erikah: Compromissada

This song is the first in an interesting Brazilian block, all baile funk or adjacent, but with a few features that distinguished them: here the playful interplay between Alalalulu (new to me) and Mc Erikah (whom I featured back in April).

7. Harrison First & MC LIPEX: Pop

This one’s a collaboration between a Philly-based DJ and a Brazilian MC — these kinds of cross-cultural experiments sometimes leave me cold, like the new Marshmello EP with Brazilian duo Tropkillaz, but here you get Miami bass and bed-squeak percussion, which will reappear in a very different context when we get to Zíur on track 18.

8. Yuri Redicopa & Dj Bnão: BEBÊ TÁ SOLTA

This one has a jaunty piano sample that if you squint could almost put it on the road to trot, in that it sounds on the verge of dropping a "We No Speak Americano" beat but never really does, just adds percussive accents.

9. Williamx f. Zinoleesky: Roll Up

One of two Zinoleesky features this week, though in the second one is the one where he’s pitched up to the point of being nearly unrecognizable…or is it??? (Foreshadowing!) This one is more standard-issue Naija pop.

10. Falz: Operation Sweep

More Naija pop making smart amapiano moves. I said recently over on still-dying Twitter that I’m surprised that Naija pop, though getting more popular in US hip-hop music, has made to my ears only clumsy inroads when it’s not just getting exported straight onto the charts, while amapiano has had almost no cross-cultural impact. But in Nigeria, amapiano is a natural fit, the two scenes mutually enriching each other.

11. Leon Keïta: Diarabi Mana [c. 1978]

Several archival finds this week. These are usually luck of the draw; I’m sure there’s a whole world of reissues I miss each week, but it’s a firmly (shamelessly?) dilettante exercise ‘round these parts, so here’s the one that made it through from late 70s recordings of Guinea-born Malian artist Leon Keïta. As far as I know this is the only preview from an upcoming October reissue from Analog Africa on Spotify, but “Dakan State, Korotumi” is great, too.

12. Zani Diabaté & Super Djata Band: Zam Sourou [1982]

More from Mali, from what I can tell early recordings that sound very different from the much glossier records from the late 80s from the same group, meaning there is less shredding from the guitar but at least the songs are blissfully free from the “cheesy keyb” Robert Christgau singles out in his 1988 review.

13. Fatima Al Qadiri: Mojik (Your Waves)

Senegalese-Kuwaiti artist and DJ probably couldn’t get farther from her work on one of this year’s many Shygirl collaborations. This is a standout from an EP of ambient electro and singing (by Kuwaiti singer Gumar) of a complementary pretty, droning quality. (More context on Bandcamp.)

14. Saya Gray: PREYING MANTIS !

Toronto-based artist starts out droning but clicks into an indie rock groove before swerving through a few hyperpop detours.

15. ACIDMAN: type-A [2003]

Re-release of a Japanese emo-leaning rock band album from 2003. This was fortuitous timing as many strands of musical attention in my life — Brad Luen’s 2003 poll, an upcoming People’s Pop poll, and the next episode of Holly Boson and James Murphy’s podcast Pop Could Never Save Us — are all doing 2003. Guess I’ll have to fire up my old Constantines CD to see how it sounds these days.

16. Gyadu-Blay Ambolley: Highlife (Alan Dixon Edit)

Ghanaian highlife classic given a cosmetic disco edit. This was helpful to come across because the 1982 original has considerably more juice and helps me understand a bit why the current highlife that comes to me through Spotify feels so staid by comparison — it would be like hearing all those Daptone artists without having grown up steeped in oldies radio.

17. Musty “f. Zinoleesky”: Personal Cover

I was hesitant to put this on the mix while I was doing the usual blindfolded taste test because I was convinced it was TikTok nonsense — someone had just obviously pitched up one of my favorite Zinoleesky songs. But there was nonetheless something really captivating about it. So imagine my surprise when I discovered on finding the video for it that this is a six-year-old doing a note-perfect cover of the song. Suffice it to say you should really watch the video, too.

18. Ziúr f. Elvin Brandhi: Cut Cut Quote

If you had given me ten guesses I probably would not have pegged this noisy, Björkish skeleton of a song as a release on Hakuna Kulala, the Nyege Nyege Tapes’ subsidiary for more experimental music (though I think the two labels are sort of converging on experimentalism this year, maybe?). Sounds like the challenge here was figuring out to get the percussion out from the inside of the drum, like pulling someone’s guts out to find the beat.

19. Sam Gendel f. Meshell Ndegeocello: Anywhere

Meshell Ndegeocello sings incredibly sexy things over jazz subdued enough that you still might miss it, or get away with playing it at a cocktail party without anyone noticing, like how you can just play “Because of You” in an Applebees and no one’s even crying.

20. Wilson Baptista: Meu Mundo é Hoje [1972]

This is a track from a retrospective of influential samba composer Wilson Baptista, who would be 110 this year but died relatively young in 1968. I like the way they’ve built the arrangement around the old recording of his vocals, somewhere between a sample and a remaster, sounds like he’s trying to communicate from beyond the veil, or calling collect from the past. This particular song was popularized in 1972 by Paulinho da Viola.

21. Quase-ilha: O que tece o céu?

Another Brazilian group, two expats with jazz and classical bonafides, to wind things down, described in their own PR as “insular and adrift,” though they’re referring to Brazil as a country, whereas I’d apply it to the music itself, and not as an insult.

22. Rathna Sri Wijesinghe & Gunadasa Kapuge: Irabatu Tharuwa [1997]

Found a new Sri Lankan playlist and was intrigued by this cinematic Sinhalese number from ‘97 (as best as I can tell), though didn’t do much background research on it.

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You’ve made it to the end! I hope that as a reward, you get to eat exactly what you want tonight.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Mai Âm Nhạc’s “Đố A Bít” (“Đố anh biết em muốn ăn gì vào tối nay”)