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!