15/22 - I Swept The Marble Chambers

As promised, here's the second part of Petter's holiday Top 5(/10)! Christmassy non-Christmas songs, this time with a secular hymnal quality, as it's Christmas eve here.

 

 

Koreless - Strangers

Starting withh a wordless overture, setting a sparkly, crispy cold atmosphere. But turn up the volume and allow yourself to be enfolded, and you'll notice that here hides a whole carefully orchestrated symphony of glitchy chimes and vocal fragments.

 

 

Leonard Cohen - You Have Loved Enough

Christmas music has a tendency to descend into schmaltzy sentimentality, so why not take the opportunity to instead listen to Leonard, who in his early 00s output dug down into that schmaltz to again raise it up to the finest art. Great songwriting can remedy and purify the most overladen production...

 

 

Tarta Relena - Figues

Harking back to one of the best gigs of 2022: the moment these two women suddenly sung the first few lines of Björk's Lionsong I had goosebumps all over and tears in my eyes. And now, this track still works its magic, like pure winter light on my face.

Anouar Brahem - C'est Ailleurs

Been listening to this album on the early morning bus to work quite a few times and this searching, twinkling melody always gets me. "It is elsewhere", indeed!

 

Sigur Rós - Dauðalogn

Feeling sacred yet?

Inside I think
Forest lights reveal a fire
One with myself
Now I sit with steady land underfoot
The morning appears
With its calm against the storm
And now the surface ripples
And now we break the dead calm

 

Peace on earth and holiday presents to all, except the rightwingers!

14/22 - Harbor Myself Away From Everyone Else

Slowing down with everything, but speeding up with playlisting, here I provide thee with the first of a two-parter holiday collection! All in all ten christmassy non-christmas songs. The first five represent that very slowing down; cozying up; pottering about in preparation... The next five will be presented on Christmas eve!

 

 

Duke Ellington Orchestra ft. Ivie Anderson - There's a Lull in My Life

This song is on my morning playlist, so I actually listen to it all-year-round, quite often. But every christmas season shuld have a bit of old crackling jazz, and Ivie's voice has just the right timbre for this season. Even though it's really a sad, unrequited love, kind of song, it does make me feel somehow reassured about lulling: nothing much is happening, and that can be really enjoyable at times.

 

 

Damien Jurado - Over Rainbows and Rainier

No, this has nothing to do with rain; Mt. Rainier is a snow- and glacier-tipped mountain in the state of Washington, so perfectly suitable for a winter playlist. And with the achingly beautiful last two verses I think of this as the 'travelling home for christmas' candidate of this bunch:

Let your cries be of joy
May it always and forever fill the void
And allow my heart some room
May it be so that you'll one day need me soon

With my wheels in a turning and my back to the window
I collected every wave from the shore
I forgot I was human as I laid up my emotions
And I knocked them like dishes to the floor

 

 

Clairo - Harbor

I am home by myself on the island for the third day in a row, with a sore throat and a cough as my excuse to not make any errands into town. Through my window I am watching the birds at my feeding station, ice flakes and eiders floating in the sea, and the lights-garlanded ferries come and go in the strait. Coffee, home baked saffron buns, and Clairo's voice makes me feel perfectly harbored here on my lonesome.

Andrew Bird - Carrion Suite

I've been intending to put this piece on a Top 5 for a long time, and now I finally found the spot for it, in all its 10-minute glory. Of course, Andrew does actual Christmas tunes too, but his instrumental companion release to 2009s Noble Beast has been with me since then and brings a warm calming atmosphere like few other records. 

 

Shirley Collins - The Rose and the Briar

I am never not in the mood for another version of Barbara Allen – probably my favourite traditional tale of love and death – and when it's 86-year-old folk hero Shirley Collins singing it, complete with bird calls and what sounds like a foghorn in the background, I am transported beyond time and place. Which is a good place for the second part of Petter's season-playlist to pick it up in a week's time....

13/22 - Consciousness Is Synchronized And Crystal-clear

Another list, yeah? I'm trying to cram in a bunch of tunes before the year is over and I'm gonna start listening to this year's best-of-lists. So here are five tunes, drawn together by tone of voice and timbre of soundscape. It's winter and everything is crisp, dark, blistering, like so:

 

Tirzah - Tectonics

Tirzah keeps doing great things in the shadows, going from strength to strength since I first came across her at LGW a few years back. Last year's album is ominous, subtle, almost evasive... but also *chef's kiss* perfectly calibrated and sensuous.

 

 

Danger Mouse & Black Thought ft. MF DOOM - Belize

A posthumous DOOM verse is a pretty sure way to end up on Top 5 (hope there are many more in the vaults) and his cadence and way with words thrills as always (Freeze! He came to seize the free cheese before he flees to Belize). But Black Thought manages to get the best line in:

Fuck a thick skin, I got me a exoskeleton

 

 

Ka - Sad To Say

Some beautifully moody, confessional rap set to another really delicate production, that I discovered through last year's best-of-lists.

 

 

The Bug ft. Nazamba - War

The Bug is another artist I discovered through a brilliant gig at LGW, and who, from what I heard, played another fantastic concert at this year's festival (big regrets for not getting a ticket to that in time). Would have loved to hear this nightmarish thrill in its full bass glory on a live sound system.

 

Kendrick Lamar - The Heart Part 5

I've listened to Kendrick's latest album a fair few times since its release now, and it's a staggering work. But even as it keeps growing and growing, by the end of every listen I arrive at the final track – the pre-album single – and it still undeniably overshadows and encapsulates all that came before it. What a goosebump-worthy track! A modern master at his very, very finest.