31/16 - You're Dreaming of Arcadia, You're Feeling Like a Baby Tooth

Overload to try and blow the cobwebs out. Words words words to protect me from anxiety. Beats to invoke a forward movement. Here's hoping it will work.

John Carpenter - Dark Blues

A widescreen vision of dystopia. Cinematic headbanging.

Busta Rhymes & Q-Tip - Thank You

See the real hip hop shit is returning

Aesop Rock - Shrunk

Danny Brown - Radio Song

XXX is the dirtiest, funniest mixtape of the 2010s, and this is an irony masterpiece.

Kanye West - Gone

I miss the old Kanye.
Anyone on the Kanye backlash who spices up their lament with 'he has no talent', should listen to stuff like this. He's a megalomaniac, a buffoon and an egotist. He's not the greatest rock star alive. But he is one of the best producers around.

30/16 - I Feel So Close To Everything That We Lost

Last week was too heavy for top 5. One of my favourite persons in the world, ever, died. One of my least favourite persons in the world, ever, was elected US president. Now the first reaction of 'fuck this world' has resided enough for me to put up some kind of defiant celebration of Leonard. Leonard who's been with me since my teens. Leonard who's one of the very very few artists that never ever mis-stepped as far as I'm concerned. Leonard who's the one out of all my idols whom I would've most liked to meet, talk to, confide in, joke with...

Leonard Cohen - Recitation w/ N.L.

Leonard Cohen - The Future

Sums up the feeling quite well, doesn't it?

Things are going to slide in all directions 
Won't be nothing you can measure anymore 
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold 
And it has overturned the order of the soul

Leonard Cohen - Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On

For all his mastery of gorgeous songs about love and death, the man did quite well with tongue-in-cheek romps about squalid sex as well. Having Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg on backup vocals can't hurt.

Leonard Cohen - Sisters of Mercy

Like he said, earlier: Love's the only engine of survival...

If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem

Leonard Cohen - Sing Another Song, Boys

Yes. Let's. Let's not grow old and bitter. Sadness and anger, sure. But no fucking wallowing!

Leonard Cohen - Tower of Song

;)

Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, so I can sigh eternally...

29/16 - Now, Quick The Night Draws Near

These are totems against an upsetting political world.

Susanne Sundfør - White Foxes

This week's real obsession is those last seconds, when she jumps up an octave to repeat the final line:

My eye
is my
sanctuary

The eye of the storm. Crystal clear. Blissful.

Dirty Projectors - Gun Has No Trigger

The tension. The tension is almost unbearable. But so perfectly orchestrated and harmonised, building to that final dreadful moment when even suicide is impossible.

Solange - Cranes In The Sky

So beautiful. So sensual. So sorrowful. Who else does music like this today?

Moondog - Marimba Mondo 2

Love how this starts out sounding like an almost quaint bit of exotica, but then it just persists and persists, and then those weird beats and fills start interjecting and bringing it to something more akin to a folktronica/minimalism fusion.

Jess Sah Bi & Peter One - Our Garden Needs Its Flowers

Never a bad idea to round up with some laconic, Ivorian country music melodies.

28/16 - We Kill The Flame

I turned a year older, we got the radio back in the kitchen, and the Freak Zone has never been so good.

Mala ft. Asociacion Juvenil Puno - Kotos

I love it when it happens. The radio is on, a book is in my lap, music drifts by – good music, great music even – and then suddenly there is a sound that goes straight to my spine. The book drops, the ears perk, the mind goes yyeeEEES. A brand new discovery, and that first swooshing of actual peruvian pan flutes at 30 seconds in remains absolutely fucking amazing after any number of listens.

Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater

Chillout lounge music with killer basslines – a genre Yo La Tengo basically made up.

CAN - Sunday Jam

CAN can be so lush and groovy when they want to. If you focus on the hi hat throughout this track you may start to feel really weird. In a good way.

Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker

What. A. Fucking. Album! Leonard you've done it again! You're the greatest Leonard. The greatest. And this might be your greatest late career record. And that is no easy spot to claim.

Mica Levi - Love

Spooky glissandos to round off in halloween fashion. Strings almost as spine-tingling as the flutes that began the list.