03/16 - Where Trouble Melts Like Lemon Drops

A week of dislocated shoulder, morphine, a cold and a lot of books. Let's space out.

Aphex Twin - Logan Rock Witch

It's an unenviable position to follow on the heels of Girl/Boy Song, the crown jewel of the Richard D. James Album. But even in that shadow, this perfectly calibrated cacophony of odd sounds shines and sparkles in the sun. The little knocks. The toy flute. The beat drop at 3:03.

Axel Boman - Fantastic Piano

Swedish. Liquid. Fantastic. Crackling. Makes me long for summer.

Slow Magic - Feel Flows

I know nothing about this tune, except that it surges like the sea.

Dmitri Shostakovich - Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op. 102: II. Andante

Next to Beethoven's Emperor Concerto the most unapologetically beautiful piece of music I know. Romanticism, sentimentality, nostalgia, melancholy; I'll have it all, thank you! Once that piano starts tinkling my defences are worn down.

Bill Frisell - Somewhere Over the Rainbow

There's something breathtaking going on here. This is the music equivalent of what I look for in good drawing; a bunch of high tension lines, tentatively seeking out the contours of a greater whole; carving away at its essence, and then stopping just before completion, leaving every trace of the search alive to the eye.

02/16 - Whispering As We Tumbled

Aaah! No discipline! Top 5 is slipping through my fingers! Yet; I've got music! Enough candidates for three lists. So here goes the first:

Cali Swag District - Teach Me How To Dougie

What can one add, except; can someone teach me how to dougie?

Fat Tony ft. Kool A.D. & Despot - Hood Party

Funniest rap about gentrification you'll ever hear. Can't wait for a full length from Despot, he's my fav underground rapper.

Stop asking where Brooklyn at coulda just looked on a map
Half the cats yelling back ain't where they're from just where they're at
Running from their stubborn dads, lunches that their mothers bagged
Hunches that they gon' be something good for nothing college grads

Pusha T ft. Ab Liva - Got Em Covered

If I would've ended up doing a best of 2016 like I should have, King Push would have been a contender. The beats on this album are something else. They get under my skin, they clatter and clank along beside me on the street.

Velvet Underground - I Heard Her Call My Name

Has a guitar ever sounded this violent? Only VU would think to juxtapose that with what is essentially a pop song....

...and then my mind split open!

Robin Trower - Daydream

It's guitar revival day it seems. Sometimes you just gotta lay it on. The timing here is everything. It's like every beat hangs lazily in the air, before settling in with a rumble. Meanwhile the guitar holds back, and holds back, ...and then spurts like an adrenaline rush!