Finally I've got a job. Before then, in the grip of anxiety and growing hopelessness, I started composing this portentous atmosphere of a list.
Miles Davis - Tout de Suite (alternate take)
I'm not generally prone to having songs on repeat, but with the preposterous care I put into compiling these lists I do end up listening to the top 5 candidates quite a few times in a short period. Sometimes, like with this track, they're even on the waiting list for a couple of weeks before getting included, and through getting to know them over time they suddenly reveal their full splendour. This might at first listen strike one as a decent but longish outtake. Give it time though, and there's a magisterial austerity that creeps under your skin. The moment Miles comes in on the second beat at 3:17 for example; it's just so... clean. Restrained and perfectly balanced, like a gleaming ore running through granite.
Kaada + Patton - Viens, Les Gazons Sont Verts
Old favourite obscure record. Mike Patton teams up with Norwegian soundtrack composer John Erik Kaada to create ghostly non-verbal incantations.
Mercury Rev - Love Is Pure
More cinematic music, here from a band that started out improvising unofficial scores to nature documentaries. But this piece is darker than the most harrowing scenes from Planet Earth (racer snakes!!!!).
Alev Lenz - Fall Into Me
Finished watching the latest season of Black Mirror. Surely one of the most poignantly scary/dystopic TV shows ever created. Painfully good. And at the darkest moment of all, this amazing combination of frail gorgeous vocals and ominous drones fades in and chills. me. to. the. bone.
Daniel Johnston - Poor You
A song that works on two levels. As a sincere and beautiful admission of depression, and as an ironically send-up of self-pity. Both can be needed at times.
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