37/15 - I Can See You Prowling

This will be the last list of the year. I'll try to do a best-of-2015 later, but I've had these bangers saved up for too long.

Katy B x Four Tet x Floating Points - Calm Down

That's what genius producers do for you. I've been addicted to this beat for a couple of weeks now.

James Blake - Digital Lion

This is the sound of a rainy December day digitalised and lionised.

PRhyme ft. Jay Electronica - To Me, To You

Jay Electricity, baptizing in felicity
Where he been the past three years? It's a mystery

Dirty Projectors - No Intention

The extended, minimal groove from 2:50 – the brilliancy of eccentricity.

Joan Baez - Mary Hamilton

Posting from Glasgow. There's no execution today. No four Marys. But Joan's voice brings up old sorrows.

36/15 - The Sun Is Gonna Burn Into a Cinder

Bubbling over the brim. Then settling. Now calm.

Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues (live)

A classic, from one of the best live albums ever. So loose, so confident, and that guitar line could all but cut through prison window bars.

Art Ensemble of Chicago - Thème de Yoyo

Like Carl Perkins' guitar seemed on the verge of breaking the confines of the San Quentin prison in the former, so every instrument, and the lyrics, here seem to rail uncontrollably against the limits of whatever form they've been poured into.

Your head is like a yoyo, your neck is like the string,
Your body’s like a camembert oozing from its skin.
Your fanny’s like two sperm whales floating down the Seine
Your voice is like a long fart that’s music to your brain.
Your eyes are two blind eagles that kill what they can’t see
Your hands are like two shovels digging in me.
And your love is like an oil-well
Dig, dig, dig, dig it, on the Champs-Elysees.

Jay Jay Johnson - Jay

The happiest of jazz. Shuffle along to those giddy bongos!

Duke Ellington - Bluebird of Delhi (Mynah)

The Far East Suite – what an album! A life companion. The pure swag at 2:13! Duke 4ever!

Cat Power - Silver Stallion

Better than the original. Better than most. Chan is probably one of the best interpreters of other people's songs that there is.

35/15 - Everything Built On A Weak Foundation

I had enough songs for one sad list and one fierce list. I went with the latter.

Vince Staples - 65 Hunnid

What a banger. Are the words augmenting the beats or are the beats augmenting the words? Either way their concerted effort is to yank my head back and forth from beginning to end.

Dizzee Rascal - Pagans

No pop left. Just relentless fire.

Arca - Vanity

A fractured kind of beauty is often the best kind of beauty.

LV - Work

Recommendation from Manon. Already feels like I've listened to it for years. Hypnotic beats, a mean mantra.

Zarelli ft. Leonard Nimoy - Smoking, Waiting

I love BBC6 on Sundays. First Jarvis, then Freak Hour. Freak Hour's the best. Brought me to this fantastic album of Ray Bradbury prose combined with a crescendo of electronica.

Add to these selections, first, K Dot's amazing J- Cole remake:



And then, another brilliant joint from RTJ: