Just a little touch
2023 Mix 9
Each week I skim through about 2,000 songs 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.
I was sweating whether I’d have this mix done in time—but a few late additions clicked everything into place like missing puzzle pieces miraculously appearing between sofa cushions, especially the opening four-song sequence.
Say, do you know anyone who would like to be presented with a somewhat chaotic weekly curated sampler of global pop? Send ‘em my way!
This month I’m embedding all YouTube videos in the hope that it makes it easier to preview songs you might be interested in. I’m on the fence about it visually, but I suppose sometimes form should follow function. As opposed to “form follows funk” — now there’s a maxim I’m always down with.
OK let’s go!
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8
MIX 9: JUST A LITTLE TOUCH
I’ll admit the charms of the Knife and Fever Ray remain elusive to me, but to my ears this is the best song they’ve put out in years. About as sexy as one can sound while transforming oneself into a human theremin. (John Cunningham pointed out the similarity between the album’s cover art and Will Forte’s character in I Think You Should Leave, the featured image.)
London group whose music I assumed was mere tasteful instrumental psych-rock based on the one song I heard by them last year (“The Link Is About to Die”). But it turns out they can have a party, too, with this cover-or-is-it of the frat rock staple.
Very little country has jumped out from New Music Country, but I still managed to find what turned out to be RZA’s daughter and her supportive, industry-navigating mom in my blindfold taste test this week.
4. Feza: Siwezi
Tanzanian pop: insouciant, infectious.
5. Mbuso de Mbazo x Tumelo_za x Njebstxr: Azikhale Ke (Boarding School Piano Edition)
Picking representative amapiano on a weekly basis is becoming a daunting task, as I could easily make a whole mix of the stuff each time. (Doesn’t help that I can’t seem to tell the difference between the stuff no one is listening to and the stuff everyone is listening to.)
This one stood out, both its distinctive shuffle and the singer’s mellow rasp: as the hummed hook intensified (“mm-mm, mm-mm”), from the backseat my youngest asked “what are the kinds of noises they’re making in this song, and why would someone make those noises?” I think he was taking notes; I didn’t have an answer.
Malian rapper appears to have chops, but really shines swapping stanzas in the chorus with a featured vocalist who as far as I can tell is uncredited.
Japanese freak-rock with shades of Beefheart blues in the warble and stomp.
8. Aria Wood: Nail Art [Spotify-only]
The rare artist only available on Spotify. (Searches for “Nail Art” on YouTube are predictably unhelpful, unless you’re interested in…nail art.) Australian electro-pop; her other stuff is good, too, but you’ll need to scan Soundcloud for it. (No sign of this one on there at press time.)
Portuguese DJ runs a jarring but sorta hypnotic vocal sample into the ground. DJ Lycox shares a label with the similarly avant/abrasive DJ Nigga Fox. Probably a scene I should explore further.
10. Boys Noize & Pilo f. DEEVIOUS: Pvssy
Miami bass-indebted dance filth from the German DJ/producer who is hell-bent on remixing every song that has ever been recorded (this one’s an original, though). I support him in this effort.
11. Barto Katt & Koza: 3OOO * MICHALIN
Polish weirdo rap, the weirdness set against what sounds a bit like flamenco guitars—there seems to be a cottage industry of weirdo rap in Poland at the moment.
Minimalist Argentine pop.
13. Ko-C: Deux oeufs spaghetti
Maximalist Cameroonian pop. The menu gets more specific in a short English verse: I caught two eggs, spaghetti, salt and pepper, beans, mayonnaise with sardines. I’d eat that!
Funk track that’s spare, but also has an almost glossy quality to it, lots of ambient sound stretching across the negative space, so that by the time the harmonic-minor whistle hook comes in you have a sense of the whole canvas filling up. Here’s one where I have the sense that there are a lot of class dimensions at play that I can hear but don’t understand; over at Wikpedia MC Hariel is identified with the funk ostentação movement popular with Brazil’s burgeoning middle class in the mid-10s. His image seems relatively wholesome, including appearing on a popular anti-drug anthem.
From what I can tell this is a new mix of a raï song that was released in 2017. I know absolutely nothing about raï, but it got a mention in Ady Thaplyial’s Substack last week in response to an Arab pop essay in Pitchfork. What I like about this one is all the grit remaining in it—you can’t even tell if there’s an oyster in there, but something is gleaming.
Good song with an even better Gondry-esque music video, credited to the Portuguese band Bateau Matou, but the stars of the show are the vocalists, who I had some trouble identifying.
Another interesting backdrop for the dancehall singer, this time spacious: mostly a plucked string section and snaps. He shrinks to the occasion, practically on tiptoe.
18. Rae Sremmurd: Tanisha (Pump That)
This one’s also small, a muted old-school hip-house beat, while Rae Sremmurd sing around it like they’re absent-mindedly twirling their fingers in the air, less a command to dance than an offhand suggestion. Good use of their recessive sound.
Second EST Gee track from this album that’s made my mixes and probably the last—the album didn’t really stick with me, but I did return to this fun interpolation of OJ Da Juiceman’s “Make the Trap Say Aye” that flashes its “Diamonds Are Forever” sample like it’s the real thing. But my loupe says that’s no Shirley Bassey even though she got a writing credit — sounds like a cubic zirconium.
20. Phoenix f. Clairo: After Midnight
Who’da thought this would sound so good next to EST Gee? Phoenix continue their endless wade in the indie-pop kiddie pool rather than write proper bangers I know they’re capable of, but at least they bring in a ringer for some texture.
21. Water From Your Eyes: Barley
I’ve imported an up-to-date Pitchfork playlist of best new tracks, and mostly it’s just added an occasional appreciative nod to a weird sound or idea penetrating my Spotify slog, as the sounds rarely sustain a whole song. Not sure this one sustains a whole song, either, but it moves and held my attention.
22. STASYA: Світ ловив [Svit Lovyv]
Earnest Ukrainian choral pop with a hip-hop bent—knitted wool caps! Acoustic guitar! Dreads, even!—that wins me over when the harmonies pile on in the chorus.
23. Kalk Yerine Yat: Dediler (Live)
Appears to be a live re-record of a late 2022 track. Scuzzy, good fuzz-bass, good drummer.
Post-rock fragment from the rising atmospheric composer. “Fragment” feels like the appropriate dosage.
25. T-Pain: War Pigs
The standout on a fun, if predictably uneven, covers album from a proudly de-Autotuned T-Pain, who sells this one on the vocals even though the band doesn’t really step up to meet his challenge. (Who on earth recorded those drums? Sounds like they’re playing on coffee cans.)
That’s it! Until next time, don’t be afraid to admit when you do not know what to call the noises they’re making in the song. Music criticism is hard!
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Fever Ray’s “Shiver.”