27/18 - When The Snow Had Melted

Well, it's Christmas eve, and that's when us Swedes open our presents, so you're allowed to open this present too; five mood-setting, somehow seasonal songs that don't turn sickly like most Christmas music.

And if it ends too soon, Nils Frahm's xmas mix is, as every year, a top notch, peaceful choice for staving off Absolute Christmas.

Hannah Peel - Archid Orange Dwarf

Predictably I'm putting songs from a newly discovered album on two lists in a row, but this one actually has jingle bells, doesn't it? Plus, it's called Archid Orange Dwarf, and that's a reason all by itself.

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter - Winter Hunter

Old moody favourite, that I put on a xmas mix cd for my parents many years ago and thereby get reminded of each year.

Yngve Stoor - Sjömansjul på Hawaii

A lonely sailor celebrating the holiday on Hawaii and feeling homesick. Perfect recipe for an evergreen. Thanks Ankan, for the discovery.

Ariel Ramirez - Agnus Dei (Estilo Pampeano)

If you gotta go all religious to celebrate the birth of Christ, it's best to do so Latino-style. Hello Argentina!

Ravi Shankar & Philip Glass - Prashanti

Peace on earth! War is over if you want it! Shanti, shanti, shanti...

26/18 - I'll Comfort All Of You

Back in Sweden. Dad's hoovering, mum's baking christmas treats, and I'm contributing to the holiday feels by blasting experimental music from all around the world.

Hannah Peel - The Planet of Passed Souls

Only days before this year's best of-lists started to drop I finished trawling through last year's album list from the Quietus, and there, undeservedly hidden down at place #91, I found a new favourite. This record is unabashedly bombastic, ambitious, sentimental, and very very beautiful. It's the soundtrack for a future we could start building.

Laraaji - Enthusiasm

A noodling, doodling five minutes of warmth for embracing the domesticity of Christmas preparations to.

Mario Batkovic - Restrictus

One of the things I enjoy about doggedly keeping on with this silly blog is to sometimes put the archive on random and be reminded of stuff I discovered a while ago and have since forgotten about again. Saw Mario at Le Guess Who? in 2017. It was a fantastic gig, and revisiting his album now it almost sounds even more powerful. One instrument, extending and comprising the world.

serpentwithfeet - seedless

...And this guy I saw at Le Guess Who? this year. Didn't fit on the list dedicated to the festival a couple of weeks back, but sits very neatly here. How good are the backing vocals at 1:50? Just cute enough to prick the tense earnest membrane of this emotional drama and let something even more poignant seep out.

Bargou 08 - Wazzaa

Tunisian madness! Take a slightly annoying instrument, and then push it, push it, push it, down the throat of the listener, until he/she can't but capitulate, starts to groove, and eventually proclaims their love for that bloody relentless flute-thing!

25/18 - Just Lean Into The Crack

When the weather is at its worse, it's always a good idea to seek out long-time musical favourites and indulge in nostalgia. So here are five classics that I've lived with for decades now.

Sunset Rubdown - They Took A Vote And Said No

...as I'm posting this on the day that Teresa May got cold feet and cancelled tomorrow's vote, because she's an absolute embarrassment on every level. Corbyn for PM NOW!

Bright Eyes - Nothing Gets Crossed Out

On a particularly rainy and windy day out in North Clapham, I decided to revisit the magnum opus of teenage angst and misanthropy. This, its inertia-mapping crown jewel, can still lure me both in to, and then out of, self pity.

Pulp - I Spy

The best ever pop album about class politics.

It's more a case of haves against haven'ts

PJ Harvey - A Place Called Home

I think I could listen to this a hundred times in a row and the 1:20 falsetto "with love comes the day" would still give me tingles.

Björk - It's Not Up To You

What can you say? Absolute masterpiece. If you don't think this is a masterpiece, we are not kindred spirits. Wisdom, love, and exquisite craftmanship woven into a pick-me-up-composition for the ages. I love this album more than one or two of my limbs.

Unthinkable surprises
about to happen...

24/18 - Suddenly Now I Know Where I Belong

Here's a belated summing up list of the wondrous Le Guess Who? festival I attended a couple of weeks ago. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

The Comet Is Coming - Slammin'

The last night of the festival I found myself on a streak of concerts that synched perfectly with my mood, escalated it, and found me at an apex flailing my aching neck and arms wildly about to the relentless sax riffs of King Shabaka and his cohorts in The Comet Is Coming. After that I was spent. The few remaining gigs I remember nothing of, and at the after party I genuinely struggled to lift my feet.

Tirzah - Do You Know

I actually only caught the final two songs of Tirzah's set, and they were ever so delicately performed; maybe even too delicate for the more frenetic mood I was in at the time. But then I came home and heard this on the radio, and dug it like an old favourite, realising only afterwards that it was her, and that I'd just heard it for the first time a few days before. This whole album is a grower, the production is lush like an installation by Helen Marten.

The Scorpios - Saparna

What a motley crew of loveable characters this band is! Sudanese funk psychedelia at its most joyous! And that's a tough field to compete in!

BCUC - Yinde (short edit)

Definite highlight of the whole festival. Relentless, explosive dance party. The lead vocalist is an agitator supreme and the rhythm section is downright deadly.

Vashti Bunyan - Train Song

I didn't know how much I loved this song until the tears were streaming down my face upon hearing it performed in a gorgeously lit church by a 72-year-old Vashti...

23/18 - There Are Worlds of Things Within Me

I'm on a high. Giddy with excitement. Dancing in the kitchen, grooving with life's riches.

Curtis Mayfield - (Don't Worry) If There's Hell Below, We're All Going To Go

What a way to start an album! Not the bible-thumping of course. No, the callout, and the fuzzzzzzzz!

Bill Withers - Use Me

Follow the fuzz, follow the fuzz! Furthermore, the pauses in this grooviest of grumbles are a thing of absolute beauty.

Little Simz - Offence

3rd time fuzz! Errmahgaahd I love this tune. The beat! The swag! The flutes!

I said it with my chest and I don't care who I offend!

Kate Tempest - We Die

It bears repeating: this album is the full experience. Each time: knots in stomach, clenched fists, heart swells. This track in particular has had my eyes well up in public more than once in recent weeks. As fictional as it is, it hits so true.

Björk ft. Kelis - Oceania

Lest we forget that once Kelis sang with Björk and they enacted the continents and the seas respectively. What a glorious vision of what the world could be!

22/18 - I Wanna Soak Up The Sight Of You

After last week's sonic onslaught, I here offer you pure solace:

Mike Oldfield - Weightless

We start off on some dad-music with a perfectionist studio nerd production to make you feel like everything is being taken care of.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - ubi

Next, a sentimental piano and electronics composition by a white haired Japanese man to build the illusion that the future smoothly overlaps with the past.

 

The Cinematic Orchestra - Everyday

In place of a bedtime story, a melting pot of soothing exotic sounds, painting a picture of a big and beautiful world that somehow hangs together despite all.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - To Feel Your Best

Now, a multitude of voices undressing you, carressing your naked body, ruffling your hair, scratching your back and tucking you into bed with utter devotion.

Samaris - Gó∂a Tungl

And now you're sleeping. And now you're dreaming. And now fluffy animals circle around you in the woods, following every moss-embraced step you take with their gentle eyes. And now they speak to you... in Icelandic!
Thanks go out to my mate Phoebe, AKA Penniless Cove, for turning me on to this track.

21/18 - We Dance To All The Wrong Songs

The world is obscene. Donald Trump is POTUS. The Saudis are dismembering journalists inside embassies and getting away with it. The Tories are somehow still in power. European politicians of all ilks are tackling fascists by adopting their premises. And the planet is on a fast track to become uninhabitable within the next century. I'm good though. Almost obscenely so. So the following tunes are not a cry of anguish, rather a sort of happy anger. I just remembered I really love heavy music, too.

Refused - New Noise

Righteous explosions in your chest.

Rage Against The Machine - Roll Right

Clenched fists, open hearts.

Mastodon - Circle of Cysquatch

A disorientating storm clearing a path through tangled thoughts. With one-eyed monsters.

Slayer - Payback

Not that I would ever condone revenge as a reasonable reaction to anything, but if we're talking triple-digit-million-bonus-receiving CEOs of corrupt government-contracted building companies, racist teenager-harrassing police thugs, empathy-devoid multi-billionaire misogynist hypocrites, or any of the other worthless slugs and slimeballs that monopolise the news, then I'll look between my fingers if you choose to simply sing along to this catchy chorus.

Besides all that.... SLAYER!!! \m/ (ò.ó) \m/

You know who else loves Slayer? Audrey and Kate. You don't want to argue with Audrey and Kate now, do you?

Ennio the Little Brother - Bunk Beds

https://youtu.be/z-dPrOdSYHg?t=428

20/18 - I Could Avoid Wasting My Life

Crispy cold autumn nights. Then infinitely high blue skies. I've felt conspicuously happy this week.

Leonard Cohen - Love Calls You By Your Name

Perhaps I'm between the peanuts and the cage.

James Blake - Don't Miss It

A respite from the cyclical thoughts James sings about. A calm eye on the afternoon sun's play with the litter on the street. A few seconds pause to take in the smell of home before entering the house. A coffee in the garden surrounded by titmice. Perhaps I'm getting old. Don't miss it.

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears - Sugarfoot

And now for one, two, three shots of caffeine straight into your bloodstream.

Gal Costa - Vou Recomeçar

Ok, so it's only two lists since the last Gal Costa tune. But I sure can't get enough. So catchy it almost trips you up.

Elvis Presley - If I Can Dream

I learnt this week that Elvis insisted on and fought for closing his 'Comeback Special' with this performance as a tribute to Martin Luther King only a few weeks after MLK was murdered. And damn, was he right to.

19/18 - Taking Time To Walk Down All The Aisles

I'm fairly well and relaxed.

José González - Fold

A hand on my neck. September sun in splotches all over the lawn. Everything touches everything. Inappropriately. Wine and warmth enfold my waking dreams. Apprehensively I sink into a web of comfort and small pleasures this month.

Christine and the Queens - Tilted

When a radio hit wears your resistance down, it is always, it seems, with one of those peculiar little details in the mix. One of those "weep-woops". And then you learn to wait for it each time you hear those suctioning introductory notes, like a slavish pet of Pavlov's, with an expectant smile on your face. weep-woop... There it is! I am actually good!

bob hund - bob hund 2020

Don't talk to me about the Swedish election. Don't talk to me about badly camouflaged proto-fascism and dishonestly argued defences of ignorant xenophobia and a futile clinging to a centre that's sliding to the right. Talk to me about how we care. How the weak are still weak and worthy of support. How we are always, at long last, capable of unquantifiable generosity and humanity.

Sizzy Rocket - Girls to the Front

The signature music to the Hysteria podcast provides weekly tiny fist-pumping moments at work.

Led Zeppelin - Trampled Underfoot

A memory of our local library when I was 16. The special collections section at one end where you'd enter a narrow corridor between the short ends of rolling archival shelves. To get to the shelves at the back you'd have to turn one heavy large wheel after another, shifting years of old magazines in progression, until finally there was an opening just wide enough to squeeze in between the sections you'd scouted out, with your nose right up to that seductive odour of old paper, leather binders and dust. And there, the treasure trove: an odd assortment of vinyl records, available to borrow for those who knew where to find them. Worn, dog-eared sleeves sometimes held together with tape, containing heavy black LPs. One of them, a double gatefold, 70s brown toned, with die cut window slots through which different historical icons peered out. I took it home, renewed the loan again and again, hypnotised by the swampiest, head banging groove I had ever heard. Digitally, it's lacking some of that full experiential heft, but under the right circumstances I can still catch a shiver of the visceral delight of listening to Physical Graffiti on borrowed vinyl, in my parents living room as a teenager.

18/18 - Things Should Start To Get Interesting Right About Now

13 days in Sweden are coming to a close, and with it the season. Here are the traces of sun, the tastes of home, and the wafts of fresh winds in the air. 

Gal Costa - Sebastiana

I think the summer might be over here. But it's always summer somewhere, and there, Gal Costa buzzes around making mischief like a sweet-voiced poltergeist.

Buena Vista Social Club - El Cuarto De Tula

What is happening in Tula's room? Sounds wild! It would seem the heat of the summer that was is not so soon put out!

Georg Riedel, Arne Domnérus, Rune Gustafsson - Här kommer Pippi Långstrump

Been singing the theme tune to Pippi Longstocking with my nephew Sigge. It was written by legendary Swedish jazz pianist Jan Johansson and here it is performed by his musical collaborators as a homage soon after his death.

Looptroop - Fever

A Swedish hip hop classic. I have no idea how it holds up to new ears, as I can't unhear how it sounded in my youth. Is the rhyme 'hearings' and 'appearance' ingenious or awful? Alls I know is that I can't help rapping along every time I hear it.

Bob Dylan - Mississippi (outtake)

This has been my favourite song in the world for the past couple of weeks. It started in those early morning hours when sleep lingers and you're an easy prey for sentimental onslaught: I thought of my grandad, who passed away 19 years ago and who was a lovely man. I thought of other parts of my life swallowed up by time. Meanwhile I was making my way through London town, listening to Bob Dylan, looking forward to going back home the next day, but not knowing exactly where I wanted to go after that. And these deceptively simple verses seemed to sum everything and more up; all things lost, some of the things to come, the love tying the former to the latter...

You can always come back
but you can't come back all the way

17/18 - Mass Panic On A Not Too Distant Future Colony

So, we need a counterweight to last week's rather morose, nostalgic sausage-fest. Here are some futuristic, surreal tunes and some wonderfully venomous women.

Arctic Monkeys - Science Fiction

Been reading quite a bit of great sci-fi this summer. Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, Philip K. Dick...  And then Arctic Monkeys came out with a superb science fiction album, on which you can find this meta-track, which is almost too clever for its own good, but in the end completely pulls it off. Like some science fiction does.

Lily Allen - Knock 'Em Out

Lily is a comrade, and sharp as cactus thorns.

Nicki Minaj - Barbie Dreams

Nicki, Nicki, Nicki. Finally released her rap album, and when she uses her wit in this manner, she's just irresistible. She even brings out her Monster-voice in the final 40 second victory-lap. And if that wasn't enough to make me finally adore her unreservedly, there's the extra verse for Stephen Colbert, with its wisdom-filled accompanying interview.

Squarepusher - Hello Meow

My room is full of insects, bouncing and bumping against lamps and screens. Because my window to the late summer night and to all the irreverent twists and turns of life is wide open. Boing, boing, boing...

Anna Meredith & The Scottish Ensemble - Anno / Four Seasons: Stoop - Spring

Vivaldi's seasons updated for climate change. Give yourself a treat and listen to the whole suite. 

16/18 - Won't Stop Now, Won't Slack Off

This here melancholy list is wildly delayed, as it was supposed to be my farewell list to Athens. But as, two weeks later, I'm still on a little bit of a comedown (you don't shake that city that easily), here goes:

Allan Edwall - Den lilla bäcken

I know I say this quite often – it's kind of built in to the concept of this blog – but this really is one of the finest songs ever written. I pity you poor non-Swedish-speakers for never being able to appreciate the full beauty of a line like

sanningen av ångrad lögn består

Kjell Höglund - Gennesarets Sjö

Another one hard to explain. As a teenager I listened to Kjell Höglund mainly because anything as weird and idiosyncratic as his early songs was automatically cool to me. But twenty or so years later he suddenly lunges for a sincere stab at my heart and all my defences are down. Unhip, unabashed poetry of the bestest kind:

Dina kyssar smakar smultron och mjölk  

Drömmen ska brinna om ett annat liv  

Låt ditt hjärta slå ett extra slag  

Låt oss hoppas att det snart blir dag 

Mina minnen är som körsbär i punsch  

Och det rinner som en flod i min inre värld  

Låt mig gråta, låt mig vara i fred  

Och bränna mina böcker som ved

Radiohead - Present Tense

Trust Thom Yorke to take bossanova and make it as sad (and beautiful) as it can possibly get. 

Weezer - The Good Life

The lesson from two months in Athens: It's time I got back to the good life. I'm not stone dead inside yet. I want sugar in my tea.

Tim Buckley - Song To The Siren

I performed live again! Although it was Dan's performance work. But I sang this from a balcony in Athens. And it was ever so apropos...

15/18 - The Company I Keep Is Not Corporate Enough

Video-based list to save what words I've got left for my creative work.

James Yorkston and The Athletes - St. Patrick

Three weeks deep into this Athens residency, the afternoon siesta is an indispensable part of each day. For it, I turn my old 'Sleep' playlist on random, and thus I refamiliarise myself with many an old melancholy singer-songwriter favourite. Like this tune, that feels like it's been in my music library forever and ever.

Kamasi Washington - Street Fighter Mas

St. Vincent - Fast Slow Disco

The Carters - APESHIT

Pusha T - If You Know You Know

14/18 - It's Raining In Athens

I am in Greece for two months and find precious little time for blogging. However, this accumulation of songs and moods must find an outlet:

Azure Ray - Raining In Athens

It is. And while it is a relief in this heat, it also happens to coincide with my heart breaking over news from Glasgow. So, rarely has the exquisite sadness of Azure Ray fitted so painfully perfect.

Slipping away
without falling apart

Angelique Kidjo - Listening Wind

So, the always excellent queen from Benin (check out her classic cover of Summertime if you aren't already familiar) has recorded an album, covering the entire Remain In Light by Talking Heads. And this, the best track, is an absolute killer cover by any standard. And again, it also seems to capture some of the sorrow, tinged with impotent anger, I feel as I see pictures of The Mack burning.

Attarazat Addahabia - Unknown

Speaking of excellent covers: the old Ludwig Van never sounded more funky. I've been obsessed with Moroccan Für Elise since Markus played it in his radio show a month ago.

Frank Sinatra - Fly Me To The Moon

Seriously. Athenian women...

Al Massrieen - Sah

And just as I was writing this up, a moped smashed into a car with a bang just outside the studio window. No one was hurt. Sah!

13/18 - I Think Everything Counts A Little More Than We Think

Summer comes bowling down the road over oozing fresh asphalt and shorn alkanet stalks.

Damien Jurado - Over Rainbows and Rainier

With the warmth: a softening of the insides, a seeping through of sentiments, a rediscovery in gusts of fragrance of mislaid memories.

The National - Ada

I saw girls in their summertime dresses. Saw them putting make up on during their morning commute. Saw sun-speckled skin and spellbinder dimples. I saw a video of my nephew running naked across my parents' lawn. Saw excitement and enthralment. And none of it could be translated. None quite reached through social media or a rational mindset.         

Kent - Mannen I Den Vita Hatten (16 År Senare)

What's missing, then, is this: the country of youth; a direct line of contact with naïve ambitions; a stepping stone between floating sheets of relations drifting apart; an antidote to atrophying anxiety. The next swift that whirs past on low height I'll grab the legs of and let carry me across the gulf.

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Duppy Conqueror

Because upheaval is within my power. Next week I'll be in a new place. "The world takes its form hourly by a weighing of things at hand", but there is time yet to tip the scales. Yes me friend, we are the street again.

bob hund - Det skulle vara lätt för mig att säga att jag inte hittar hem men det gör jag; tror jag

The best song title in music history. One of the most cathartic outros in the same. Sweden in my heart, clouds at my back, and a future thrillingly unknown.

12/18 - As We Blow Through The Square

The theme of this week is not compromises. 

Childish Gambino - This Is America

Not that anyone internet-savvy enough to check this blog isn't already aware of this little bit of galvanising zeitgeist, but I just wanted to underline that even without it's astounding video, it's a really, really great bit of music. That bass, and the zig-zagging stop-and-start, soft-and-hard structure of it all...

Sudan Archives - Nont For Sale

This my life, don't block the sun
This is my seat, can't you tell
This my time, don't waste it up
This is my land, not for sale

The Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band - Kwang Noi Chaolay

Threw caution to the wind. Got caution slapped across my face. Threw it the other way. It blew off. A bounce came in my step. Jangly, wobbling, but a bounce nevertheless. With it, an insistence, pumping through every limb. Some strange, exotic feeling of nowness, of farawayness, of beckoning new rhythms of life.

Jlin - Hatshepsut

The bees, the mice, the woodlice, the badgers, the ants, the pigeons, the parakeets, the service robots, the arachnids, the knotweed, the hermits, the rats, the feral cats, the prisoners, the foxes, the hybrids, the mould-creatures, the hackers; they all came marching out of the wreckage of the city. This was their parade music.

BNNT - God Is Nothing More Than An Acoustic Hallucination

"Hello, I've found a drumbeat that it's impossible to get sick of."
"Great, just keep playing it then. For a long time."

11/18 - The Random Minor Note You Hear In Major Songs

It has been a while. The while was spent on delightful weekends in Norway and Glasgow. Now I can finally sum the while up in music:

Damien Jurado - Ohio

With the full length windows open. Waterfalls cascading down the cliffs behind the house. Bergen spread out below us. Robin put on a classic. We had what's considered a good view. A view of the landscape. A view of time. A view on friendship and longing and places where one could potentially live. It's been a long time. A real long time.

Vampire Weekend - M79

Kelvingrove Park when it's sunny in Glasgow makes me warm and gooey inside. And if spring paints a pretty picture, Vampire Weekend's M79 is the perfect instagram filter to boost its warm tones.

Charm your way across the Khyber Pass

Janelle Monáe - I Like That

As if it wasn't already clear what the album of the year was gonna be...

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Ballad of Robert Moore and Betty Coltrane

Compelling and propelling badassery.

Cosmo Sheldrake - Come Along

Alright, the scene has been set. Now, summer. Now, adventures. Now, take me away from the humdrum!

10/18 - I Dreamed A Dream And I Thought It True

As rain. Streams down. My playlist. It smudges. The outline. Of genres. And sentences.

Gregorio Allegri - Miserere Mei Deus

Soggy trousers. Soggy gloves. Soggy eyes. Soggy brains. Soggy world politics. Place them in front of the radiator. Dry them off. At a particular temperature they will all start to sing in unison. And at 8:07 exactly, all the soggy stuff will start vibrating and burn bright as phosphor and by then it will be too late. In a good way.

Man Forever ft. Laurie Anderson - Twin Torches

We are now in the studio. The pens are over there. The little bits found outside are on the window sill. On the second desk is dust. The live stuff is on a shelf. Green components in the drawer. At 5:16 the drawing paper jumps up and slaps me in the face for being too slow. It's good to be confused.

Justin Walter - It's Not What You Think

A house I saw this week looked like this sounds. Or sounded like this looks. I forget which. At 1:15 is the weeds growing out of its cornices. 2:17 the cracked panes on the first floor. At 4:15 its cemented up ground floor windows. At 5:32 is what the large silver graffiti said. It was beautiful.

Pentangle - Lord Franklin

For some reason I started thinking about John Steinbeck as I listened to this on the bus. How he is dead now, and how, perhaps, before he died he looked back on his life, like one of his characters would, and realised how much he would miss it and all the people within it. Life's like that.
After that I thought of how clear the traces of this song are in Bob Dylan's Dream. Turns out Bob heard it when he was in London 56 years ago. Life's like that too.

Fred Åkerström - Jag ger dig min morgon

A song I've heard my entire life, that still rubs some warmth into my soggy heart as I sit in my bed, looking out the soggy soggy window, and its strings lift towards the sun at 3:10.

09/18 - Help Us Lose Our Minds

Happy Easter. Here are the tunes Jesus would have wanted you to boogie to:

The Kinks - This Time Tomorrow

In the midst of March's monotony I glance ahead and remember that I've got no idea where I'm going or what I'll be doing in even a year's time. Unpredictable is the course I set myself. Sometimes, with the right music at the right volume, it is exhilarating.

Oktoberklubben - Varekil

Thursday nights during my late teens / early twenties I used to hang out at Sticky Fingers in Gothenburg. Often Fransisco would be there, and in a corner of the bar we would geek out about the latest albums we'd been listening to. Now I'm geeking out about his latest album with whoever might read this blog. It is bouncing.

Talking Heads - Slippery People (live)

Turn like a wheel inside a wheel!

Fever Ray - To The Moon And Back

It's already a week and a bit since I saw Fever Ray at the Troxy, but the intersectional party vibes still simmer in me, and bubble up every time I hear this tune of tunes. I try to restrain myself from singing along to the best bit, because it sounds creepy in a male voice...

Visible Cloaks - Wheel

Easter Sunday comedown, lifted from the very end of Four Tet's recent fantastic Essential Mix:

08/18 - There's Still A Coat And There's Still A Hat

Can a playlist be art? Because I'm definitely more pleased with my top 5 selections than with anything else I have produced lately. Take this genre-defining quintet of tracks: it's like a heaving wave, gradually building to break in a crescendo of foam, and then withdrawing gently, leaving ripples in the sand.
Yes, I can be pretentious about them too; just like art!

The Knife - Rock Classics

Tomorrow I'm seeing Karin! As Fever Ray! Today, I'll freak out and play the techno louder.

Four Tet - You Were There With Me

We are staying in. Beds and blankets caught us in serpentine embraces. Breath paints ephemeral clouds on the windows. The kitchen is full of bread. The potting season has begun.

Toumani Diabaté's Symmetric Orchestra - Tapha Niang

Io, ioo! IO, IOO! Io, ioo. Io, ioooo, and then the beat quickens, brass blows the house down and everything is awesome.

Mastodon - Iron Tusk

Some days. Some days, I decline the homeward transport nap, and secretly listen to metal instead. I headbang with minuscule neck-movements. I scream with the tiniest, tiniest voice: "Engage monster!" Imaginary fists fly before me as I walk the last bit home from the station. Sail on!!!, the cats probably growl to me, from behind the garden walls.

Lambchop - There's Still Time

Hey, man. What's up with all the pressure, man. Let it slide, man. The ripples will precede and succeed you man. There's time, man. It is still.

07/18 - Enough Combined Slang To Bang All Year

Oh hai March! Got ya a list of men trading verses and women soaring supreme:

Janelle Monáe - Make Me Feel

Undeniably the hottest thing happening in 2018. How this is not already the only thing played on radio, I do not know. Just take that cheek plopping beat, for starters! And the video... Oh, the video...

Kendrick Lamar ft. Vince Staples & Yugen Blakrok - Opps

An impossible feat: start with King Kendrick, then accelerate with Vince Staples, and then fucking surpass both of them with an MC I've never heard until now. Definitely checking her album out after being stopped in my tracks by this track, and definitely want to go see Black Panther now.

BOOTS ft. Run The Jewels & Cristin Milioti - Delete Delete

Speaking of surpassing. Normally I love El-P and Killer Mike equally, but on this track, there's no comparison. Michael Render – the Bukowski of rhyme – popped out of the box and smashed the box to pieces. Also, please note: vocals from Fargo-Betsy/Nanette-in-that-uncharacteristically-kooky-but-good-Star-Trek-episode-of-Black-Mirror/Wolf-of-Wall-Street's-wife. She rules.

Hell Razah ft. Talib Kweli & MF DOOM - Project Jazz

Again, a thing that rap does so well: a track that starts out great and then hits some kind of next level overdrive when one particular verse starts. No one does it like DOOM, here bursting forth at 2:06, sprinkling tongue-twisters like manna.

Kanye West ft. Jay-Z - Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)

And to round up, a hit where the album artist almost catches up to the feature: Kanye on a politically self-reflective tour de force for once. But yet it is Jay-Z's capitalist braggadocio that in the end, against all better knowing, steals the show:

I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man!

06/18 - Who The Hell Can See Forever

February in my parents’ home. -10°C outside

Iron & Wine - The Trapeze Swinger

In the morning, the sun fleets into the room on a gust of memories. The sheets, cool on top of the body, absorb the light, but let the past seep through. Every object around the bed gives off an echo of childhood. I remember my friends. I remember us as teenagers, when we used to listen to this song. It resounds now as a guarantor of indestructible ports, solid moorings, stalwarts in snow storms. 

Kings of Convenience - Sorry Or Please

At breakfast, the blue tits swirl around the kitchen window while a squirrel stares me square in the face. We switch place. I am it, clinging to a seed-tray, momentarily transfixed, in the tension between remaining in place and escaping. The stage of my old life meets the cast of the new… 

Fairuz - Talj Talj

Strange vistas beckon from a laptop screen. Dreams of new experiences, unburdened by nostalgia. Lebanese sounds, South American art residencies.

Call Super - Arpo Sunk

It’s 11 am, everything is in harmony again. Black coffee, winter light, books and parents. No speaking, just reclining in the moment, nest-like and doted. A father’s clarinet slips and slides on a son’s electronic ice rink.

Against All Logic - I Never Dream

And after the coffee, a solid block of sunshine smashes through the living room window, and engulfs the body. The garden lies blistering white beyond. Snow and ice crystals shoot beams in all directions. Blinded, heated on one side, I stumble into ecstasy. Endorphins pump through me flanked by an army of fotons. I dissolve, blissfully, into the crisp winter air, mixed with shredded Nicolas Jaar-beats, and sprinkled with sampled vocals, in a delicious February sorbet. Let me melt on your tongue.

05/18 - You're Not Going Backwards

Aye, it was freezing that week. We wrapped a house in plastic and correx, so to create a shell within a shell, an infinitesimally smaller house within the house, which might then grow, and molt into a home. Breaking out of its chrysalis it would turn its insides into outsides and radiate warmth into the streets and backyards circumventing it. Or so we hoped, before the plumbing broke...

Baby Huey & The Babysitters - California Dreamin'

Aye, it was freezing that week. Twas the week when the sun shone further and further away, with a brighter and brighter light. At last it was such an intense pinlight scream, that the sky around it turned all white, like an empty slot in a slide projector. And on that empty screen, black spots started to appear, dancing, promising imminent tales of faraway countries and fast-paced romance. But just as fantasies of warmer seasons started to form in the blank, the hail hit. 

James Blake - If The Car Besides You Moves Ahead

Aye, it was freezing that week. Twas the week of traffic stuck in crystallised smog. A sickly grey-white, stiff mousse, where cars' headlights fractured in a thousand tiny beams in their attempts to break through. Where the roofs of double-deckers floated like abandoned surfboards on top of a frozen exhaust-sea. Where the green lights at the crossing lured you into a face on collision with a solid cloud of brittle vehicle parts mixed with the crunchy stool of pollution. If at last you managed to make your way around the icy ridge of solidified smoke – which stretched almost uninterrupted along the entire Lewisham Way – and down to the overground, you found the train stuck permanently to its track, nothing but a temporary shelter for a mute and shivering collection of foiled commuters, their faces scratched red from the abrasions of the morning air.

Princess Nokia - Brick City

Damn, it was freezing that week. I stayed in bed most of the weekend. Fevers and a splitting headache, what else could I do. I made up excuses for why most things in my life had come to a halt. I made up unlikely scenarios for a week that had gone by with nothing much happening. I listened to this strange eclectic hip hop record again to try and punch a small hole in the air through which I might slip out into real life again.

Adriano Celentano - Prisencolinensinainciusol

I propose that you may judge a TV drama by its bad guy. Deadwood and Justified being two cases in point – the former with its Al Swearengen, the latter with Boyd Crowder; two of the most amazing and complex villains I've ever seen, and two of the best TV shows ever created. Now, Fargo is just lining excellent baddies up. I mean, they had Billy Bob Thornton in the first season. Hard to top. Second season there was a whole slew of multifaceted cold-blooded types. Now, with its third season, they're bringing David Thewlis. David. Thewlis. And it is, of course, fantastic. Plus of course Ewan McGregor in double roles, a razor sharp female detective duo, and the most delicious combinations of music and image imaginable. This tune here being just one of many a good example.

Jenny Wilson - RAPIN* 

Jenny Wilson - RAPIN* (Official video) from Gustaf Holtenäs on Vimeo.

04/18 - Some Days I Think I'd Feel Better If I Tried Harder

Here, then, are the sad songs I promised last week. Hope you're happy now!

Mountain Goats - Wild Sage

At the bus stop on the Strand outside Somerset House. A sparse and random rain falling. It's a dark Thursday evening after the cinema. Even the drops dripping on my dust streaked work hoodie seem isolated, lonesome.

Joan Baez - Once I Knew A Pretty Girl

A gibbous moon hung low over the city. It dwarfed and outshone the lights from the financial district at Canary Wharf. Got obscured behind dark profiles of buildings closer to the train. Was ignored by most of the other passengers in preference to their smartphones. Tiredness seeped in through my limbs and up to the cerebellum. My head slumped forward, and I dreamed.

Eric Chenaux - Summer & Time

Skypecalls and WhatsApp messages. Scribbles and to do lists. Almost getting transfixed by twitter feuds and music news, but managing at last to break away and squeeze in a chapter of rural prose before sleep. And suddenly a childhood memory appears. 

Nancy Wilson - Guess Who I Saw Today

I was in the garden. I composted the compost. Weeded the weeds. Surveyed my domains. Stood still. The robin appeared. Then a blue tit. Wood pigeons. A cat. Two blue tits. One great tit. No coal tits today. Three feral pigeons. Parakeets swooped through. I subdued myself. Put my self into brackets. Attempted to forget who I was amongst this uproar of life. Tried to stop worrying and doubting for just a little while. But it came back later.

Miles Davis - All Blues 

Work makes sense. Going running makes sense. Drawing makes sense despite all. Words literally make sense. John Coltrane's saxophone makes no sense and therefor all sense. Miles transcends. Like Joanna Newsom sang in the song that shall be played at the end of all of this: transmit. transcend.  

03/18 - Hail The Pages Turning

This past week I've been listening to a lot of my random iTunes, since I've been doing a lot of house stuff, plus been watching birds through my window as part of RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch. Hence, the list is made up by old favourites that have popped up.

Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Child (Slight Return) [live at the Fillmore East]

Been waiting to fit this into a list for a while. Such an insanely good live version, of such an insanely good tune ("The Black Panthers' national anthem"?).

Serge Gainsbourg - Requiem pour un con

An exceedingly elaborate and ingeniously produced insult.

Fiona Apple - On The Bound

Just another little life lesson from Fiona the wise and witty.

It's true, I do imbue my blue unto myself, I make it bitter

Hugh Masekela - U, Dwi

Last week obviously saw the passing of one of the best, fiercest and most inspirational persons in the world; Ursula Le Guin. Also of one of the oddest, most abrasive of indie heroes; Mark E Smith. Due to the cultural heft of those two in the northern hemisphere, I heard almost nothing about the sad loss of Hugh Masekela. Trumpet player extraordinaire, South African jazz ambassador, writer of anti-apartheid anthems, political activist, and husband of Mama Africa – here is a hero not deserving of being forgotten about. I do my little bit by including this, the opening track of his delicious sophomore album Grrr. Rest in power.

Shigeru Umebayashi - Yumeji's Theme 

Next week I think there are going to be sad songs on the list. Here's a transition for that. Also, I saw just now that Prince Charles Cinema are showing In The Mood For Love on Valentine's Day. Might go along to that, for a perfect meeting of sound and image.

02/18 - The Missing Thing Called Love

In the second list of 2018 I have embarked on the delightful and long task of checking out all the music I missed last year. Plus I've been settled right in with my BBC6 listening habits again.

Grizzly Bear - Sky Took Hold

Details I especially love about this standout from last year's best album: • The drum intro • The subtle flutes • The razor wire guitars • The deep harmonies on "Your heart is racing..." • The odd cymbal crashes • The background guitar (?) melodies at 3:02 • The fragmented lyrics of the outro ("None of this seems fair") • The clicks and the distortion in the end.
And pretty much everything in between. I'll say it again: it's such a deliciously arranged album, it's almost too much to take in at once.

A Certain Ratio - The Fox

I think this was a Freak Zone discovery. Excellent drum sounds throughout, and the bit at 0:48 - 1:02 reminds me a lot of this remix of Björk - I Miss You.

Zimpel/Ziołek - Wrens

Ah yes, this is where I'm at. Potential soundtrack to all my research. The potentially harmonic cacophony of a multi-species polity where digital loops meet avian vocals.

Fever Ray - Mama's Hand

Top of the list of gigs I look forward to this year. The new album is a grower.

Unit 4 + 2 - Concrete and Clay 

A reminder that, as usual, I really need to start to get back to my materials in the studio. What bigger joy than mixing up a batch of cement and sand?

01/18 - Time's Fickle Card Game With You And I

Alright, let's get another year of concise, brilliant playlists off on its merry way. Five tunes for the starting blocks:

Battles - Race: In

Ironic, as it took me almost two weeks to start the year fully. Hardly a race in. But from here on we'll gather speed, and build to enormous heights, just like this sublime album does.

Atoms For Peace - Before Your Very Eyes

Songs got lost on this album because of its slightly underwhelming non-organic overall impression, but taken on its own, this is a banger, about grabbing life by the balls.

Run The Jewels ft. BOOTS - 2100

A year on from its release, this is still one of the supreme albums in the universe. El-P's first verse is such a dark head banging bit of defiance. And Killer Mike's chaser is pure rap wisdom:

I'm here to tell you don't let em tell you what's right wrong
Make love, smoke kush, try to laugh hard, and live long
That's the antidote
You defeat the devil when you hold onto hope
'Cause kinfolk life is beautiful
And we ain't gotta die for them other men
And I refuse to kill another human being
In the name of a government
'Cause I don't study war no more
I don't hate the poor no more
Gettin' more ain't what's more
Only thing more is the love
So when you see me
Please greet me with a heart full
And a pound and a hug

Silent Strike - It's Not Safe To Turn Off Your Computer

Yas to the beats at 2:50. Romania brought the electronic goodness in 2017.

The Red Star Singers - Still Ain't Satisfied 

I did a little job researching feminist music before christmas, and this is one of the obscure goodies I found. Let's keep the ground rumbling and power structures crumbling in 2018. Halfway won't do!

Oh and for tradition's sake. These were my top 5 albums of 2017. Still loads that I haven't listened enough to yet (I keep forgetting there's a new Fever Ray album to dig into!!).