14/24 - The Bad Times Stayed The Same

Let’s blow out 2024 with one final Top 5!

 

 

Allman Brothers Band - Whipping Post        

A salty starter from this year’s best TV show: Fargo season 5.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Big Rig

2024: the year when the Western establishment gave up all pretense of caring about international law or human rights and ignored/supported/cheered on a genocide. New Year’s resolution: to keep boycotting anything Israeli/Zionist and not accept media’s blatant racism. Free Palestine!

There is a sphere of burning tar, it's all around
everyone in this god forsaken English town
I wash away it's filthy residue each day
but like a mould it grows ensuring our decay
I plant a seed and wait to see what will become
of routine watering and the magic of the sun
This is how we survive
There stands a tree as tall as me but twice as old
At times it withers but come spring it soldiers on
A kindly soul started its journey before me
I guess this shows the importance of legacy
Still everyday I feel bad energies are here
but little signs of life make matters easier
This is how we survive
Before we go, here we will leave fragments of hope

 

Sleaford Mods - Tory Kong   

2024: the year when Tory Kong was defeated. Unfortunately by Tory Kong Junior, but hey, at least we got some schadenfreude out of it!

 

Sofia Kourtesis ft. Manu Chao - Estación Esperanza  

Hard to feel hopeful consider what’s incoming, but on New Years Eve you’ve got to try haven’t you?  

Kali Uchis - Dame Beso // Muévete

¡Hasta la próxima: *mwah*! 

HNY! Over and out! 

13/24 - It's A Strange Day

Alternative Christmas tunes! Nothing to do with Christmas. But the right vibe, if you ask me.

 

 

Garth Stevenson - Snow        

Not an inkling of snow in Gothenburg this Christmas, but let's pretend, with the help of Garth's muted piano and swirling crystals.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Aqua

As sentimental as I'll allow, this season.

 

 

Goldfrapp - Utopia   

I've been rediscovering Felt Mountain during the past month, listening to it on the bus from work. A near flawless debut, and its sci fi-fairytale atmosphere somehow mixes well with the holidays too, if one doesn't focus too much on the lyrics.

 

Janet Kay - Silly Games   

No Christmas without some Christmas reggae. Although this one isn't about Christmas, Christmas can be about silly games, right? A favourite game for the whole family: trying to sing along to Janet Key as she hits the chorus. Sounds terrible but it's great fun!

Purelink ft. J - 4k Murmurs

Music for post-Christmas meal food coma.

12/24 - Perfect Timing As New Petals In November

My november songs, slightly too late. Skewing towards safe cards:

 

 

Tindersticks - New World        

More than three decades into a faultless career and they're still putting out excellent tracks like this. Tindersticks - my eternal autumn companions.

Caroline Polachek ft. Weyes Blood - Butterfly Net

Dreamy blend of voices, and an amazing outro, just what you'd like on your first frost morning of the winter.

Oh, if only
The umbrella of the sky
Could wrap us up and up
That's where I'd zoom in close
Dilated as your eyes
Until then, I'll keep it brief

 

 

Sharon van Etten - Anything   

Love how Sharon van Etten is just getting more and more epic with every album. For every new listen, this song seems to grow even bigger.

 

 

Angel Olsen - Go Home   

Speaking of epic. As the gale winds force the boat masts to bow down and the sea leaves its foamy residues high up on the cliffs, so Angel Olsen's voice rips through my internal landscape and brings up old emotional flotsam.

Sigur Rós - Gold

Wrap me in blankets and leave me staring at the horizon while Jónsi tells me about the ephemerality of this season as well as our lives.

11/24 - On The Other Side Of Hyper Focus

Hof playlist! I've made an art, and this is how it sounded

 

 

Tarta Relena - Si veriash a la rana        

This is my current tune obsession. Sephardic folk song that rocks so hard. Eagerly awaiting these two women's new album!

Marina Herlop - shaolin mantis

Going back over Tarta Relena's discography I also remembered to revisit their compatriot and collaborator Marina Herlop. Might require a few repeat listens, but then it smacks right into place and haunts your brain.

 

 

Fever Ray - Carbon Dioxide   

I'm on a real Karin Dreijer-bender lately. This is the season to listen to all the Fever Ray-albums. But I'm also blastin The Knife's live albums. And why? This was the best gig of the summer. And this tune was one of many absolute killers on the Way Out West-stage.

 

 

Anjimale - Animal   

The list needed a it of anger too.

Alessi Brothers - Seabird

Props to Our Flag Means Death for managing to mix the most enjoyable sheer silliness with genuinely emotional moments. This song in the fourth episode of the second season is just a perfect match. People do change!

10/24 - Sometimes Life Bends In The Middle

I am so sorry, my dear, forsaken music blog! The second half of the summer got swallowed up in mental health issues, art insecurities and ambitions, work, and other distractions. But I did listen to music too, and I will come back to making playlists, because it grounds me. Here, some rhymes to inspire, as I make preparations to return to Germany in a week, to set up an exhibition.

 

 

MF DOOM ft. MF Grimm & The Herbaliser - It Ain't Nutthin'        

When losing your footing, always go back to DOOM. Good rule for life.

Aesop Rock - Bracket Basher

Another classic from way back when by the MC with the largest vocabulary of them all.

 

 

Noname ft. Jay Electronica & Eryn Allen Kane - balloons   

This album is so good. Noname does everything right. Good politics, good poetics, good music.

 

 

Danny Brown ft. Bruiser Wolf - Y.B.P.   

Danny Brown is maturing like a fine wine.

Beyoncé ft. Dolly Parton - TYRANT

Features on every track this time around, but as usual Beyoncé takes it to an extreme by a 'ft. Dolly Parton'. I'm not totally wooed by Cowboy Carter yet, but some tracks pop.

09/24 - Fly And Be Not Ashamed

Posting from Bavaria, this is my distilling down of the magnificent Clandestino Festival of a little over a week ago. There were many more acts that could have been on the list – Sahra Halgan, Amadou & Mariam, Slauson Malone 1, La Sonora Mazurén, Flammer Dance Band, Brighde Chaimbeul, The Zawose Queens and Sami Galbi all offered amazing concerts. But these, in the end, were my highlights:

 

 

BITOI - FLY, FLY        

Two nights in a row we got to enjoy a gorgeous set by BITOI, which both nights began with this number, that gives me the absolute shivers. Bass guitar + three female voices = magic.

Selvhenter - Connoisseur

Purely musically, Selvhenter's gig was my favourite of the whole festival. Unfortunately an early concert, so the audience was a bit sparse and disengaged, but me, I was my own moshpit. There is something about this band that hits me right in the nerve centre; as though it was tailor made just for me. The noisiest  saxophone, the most pummeling trombone, and the most aweinspiring drummer duet in the world. Best thing to ever come out of Denmark!

 

 

WaqWaq Kingdom - Doggy Bag   

Saturday night was an absolute five star lineup all the way, with one gut punch of a concert following another, all deserving a place on Top 5. But it would be impossible for me to not include the absolute genius madness of WaqWaq Kingdom, that I'd been looking forward to since I first discovered their latest album. Dance mania and chaos, and Kiki Hitomi served us in the front row sake from backstage! Such much fun was had. KANPAIIII!!

 

 

Kabeaushé - IF IT'S FLYING, FLY!    

If you want to have a party, invite Kabeaushé! I've never seen anyone single-handedly induce this much energy into an audience. By the end of the gig we were reduced to one sweaty, heaving organism, obeying their every instruction. Which most of the time was just DANCE!

José González - En stund på jorden

Final gig of the festival, in a church, and what a sublime ending it was. Despite forgetting the lyrics and having to start over twice, José persevered, because, as he said, this song by Laleh is too beautiful to fuck up. By the third, perfect time, my eyes, and surely those of many others', were welling up. 

This summer so far has been filled with moments I want to live in forever. Here's to more of them!

08/24 - With A Taste Of A Poison Paradise

A third and final Mustarinda list. As behoofs a playlist for the tail end of a long wonderful residency, it is composed of odd leftovers and melancholic farewells.

Polobi & the Gwo Ka Masters - Mendémélé   

Consider this the transition from last list's repetitive international folk and forest madness soundtrack. Last night I waded through woods submersed by a beaver dam til 2am. Mendémélé...

Marko Haavisto & Poutahaukat - Paha vaanii

We've been having Kaurismäki nights. No place it makes more sense to watch these brilliant, moving movies. Man, I love this country.

 

 

Jeff Russo ft. Lisa Hannigan - Toxic   

This cover is from the soundtrack to the latest (and best) season of Fargo, that I finished just before I arrived at Mustarinda. But Toxic has also been a bit of a recurring melody in the house.

 

 

North Sea Gas - Carrickfergus    

Final days of packing and finishing projects are always tinged with an undercurrent of emotional hurt. The correct time to listen to melodramatic Irish/Scottish ballads. 

For I'm drunk today and I'm seldom sober
A handsome rover from town to town
Ah but I'm sick now my days are numbered
Come all ye young men and lay me down

Richard Dawson - The Tip of an Arrow

One of the stranger and more idiosyncratic songs to be released in the 2020s. But I've listend to it so many times now that it makes perfect sense. That epic ending is how we ride out from here!

07/24 - Let Go The Note And So Move Everything

I've been building. I've been eaten by mosquitos. I've been despairing and cursing myself. I've been quite impressed. Since Saturday's opening I am finally relaxed again. Relaxed and really quite, quite happy...

Mustarinda goes well with international folk:

ØXN - Cruel Mother   

I'm on a little obsession with Radie Peat's voice, whether in Lankum or in this astounding side project. The way she sings sounds so understated, almost defeated, but simultaneously intensely emotional. It creates a devastating tension, and the way the musical backdrop in this epic interpretation slowly builds to a noise breakdown can only add to this ghostly grisly drama.

Tarta Relena - Tou Votanikoú

It's coming up to Clandestino festival time, and what better way to prepare than harking back to previous festivals. Crappy iPhone videos of Tarta Relena's concert two summers ago still give me the shivers. One of the very most beautiful gigs of recent years!

 

 

Sutari - Lila gaski   

Another great act from that same year, this trio from Poland.

 

 

Lisa O'Neill - Old Note    

A newer discovery. This album was on The Quietus' list of best albums 2023, and it is indeed a brilliant album. A feeling of being connected to the immense beforetime.

Feathered friend, dig up and resurrect me
I long to live among the song of birdies
A lawless league of lonesome, lonesome beauty
Skies and skies and skies above duty

Eric Chenaux - There They Were

The repetitive voices of humans and non-humans that draw you into the wonder of it all.

Meanwhile I'm gonna love whatever I can...

06/24 - And It Felt Like Home With My Ear To The Ground

I am at Mustarinda, for the fourth time. Polishing off the last bit of admin left over from home and then immersing myself in the Finnish forest life. This here is music for shedding the quotidian and setting the mood:

Wojciech Rusin ft. Eden Girma - Glass Coil   

For some reason Mustarinda has come to be associated with all kinds of leftfield acapella music for me. Maybe I can blame the Levan Polkka...

Mariam Rezaei - HMMM

The metre-thick snow blanket slowly melting, moistifying, softening, then becoming topped up with new falling snow and freezing over with a hard carapace. To go here in May is to travel back in time and not quite know in which direction change goes anymore...

 

Cheri Knight - Tips On Filmmaking   

The sun breaks through. A hen harrier rises in concentric circles. The black grouse lek percolates out of sight. Singing goldcrests diligently wind up tree after tree with their tiny, squeaky cranks. The big wheel of the year will turn, this time too.

 

 

Easter - Full Bucket    

A leftover from last time I was here. Kati had this on her Mustis-playlist and it's been a staple ever since. Quintessential forest-living sentences abound.

On all four in a swamp named Maude might be where you find the true meaning of home

Aldous Harding - Fever

I started out the residency by being ill for a few days. It was alright, because a punchy Aldous exclamation kept bouncing around in my feverish head, declaiming the very temperature I had.

 

05/24 - The Love That Loves To Love

It's spring, can I have some romance please? 

Well, in music anything's possible:

Gino Paoli - Vivere Ancora   

I've been watching My Brilliant Friend and it's so good. Can't think of any other adaptation of a book that manages to get every character just as I imagined them while reading the books – or even better! There is a montage in episode 6 of season 2 of a doomed love affair between the two most beautiful characters and this song plays and it is peak romance.

John Zorn - Patience

Waiting. Waiting. Little moments trickle past.

 

Julie Byrne - Portrait of a Clear Day   

I get so nostalgic for you sometimes

What a devastating line in all its blunt simplicity.

 

 

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Far From Me    

Ah, memories of the sweet pain of long distance relationships back when!

 

Van Morrison - Madame George

No other album epitomizes the nostalgia for a world lost like Astral Weeks. There is something shimmering and hazy over every tune, like a scent in the air that suddenly transports you back years. And when those strings pick up the melodic crescendo in the end I can't help it if my eyes get a bit hazy too...

 

04/24 - A Dance Against Dying

Time to pick up the pace! A bit of riff and rhythm to get things going!

St. Vincent - Broken Man   

I am so ready for a heavier and crunchier new St. Vincent era! 

HOUSE OF ALL - Harlequin Duke

Vulgarity is life!
Good taste is death!

 

Nihiloxica - Asidi   

Ugandan drum madness is my jam.

 

 

Fever Ray - Kandy    

What will spring bring? What emotions? Desire has become strange and unfamiliar and Karin Dreijer makes sense. I revel in it. I've been alone forever.

 

WaqWaq Kingdom - Sjogyo Mujo

I was given this group to write a blurb about for this year's Clandestino festival. And at first I did not know what to think. But after a few listens, this bizarre, ecstatic whirlwind of genre collisions and Japanese shamanism started to make sense. And after a few more, songs like this crystallized into addictive pills of joy.

 

03/24 - Made The Valley For To Ring

Consider this the second half of the list I last posted. These wild, slightly ominous tracks just slotted in with each other perfectly, so I had to make another of these mostly instrumental studio-mood-lists.

Shovel Dance Collective - II: Lovely on the Water, lapping waters by Tower Hill   

A lovely moment on an immersive album that should be experienced in full. I've definitely had a weak spot for compositions containing field recordings lately.

The Stargazer's Assistant - Shango

Settle in, the folk is being swept up in a maelstrom. 

 

 

Colin Stetson - Behind the Sky   

This one I think requires good speakers or headphones to not become slightly grating, but with good sound: wow, what power! Also an excellent album, with contributions from Brighde Chaimbeul, whom I look forward to seeing at Clandestino festival this year.

 

 

Kevin Richard Martin - Camden Crawling    

Pushing on through the last few dark mornings of the winter to a slow but determined beat.

Lankum - Go Dig My Grave

Irish doom folk, now that's a genre!

 

02/24 - I'm There And I'm Also Not There

The wind is battling the sea and the house is creaking at the seams. I've been listening to a lot of instrumental music in the studio lately, so here is a largely wordless top 5 for hunkering down in February:

André 3000 - That Night In Hawaii When I Turned Into A Panther And Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn't Control... Shit Was Wild   

Trust Mr Ice Cold to make an on paper bizarre move and follow up a solid hip hop career with an ambient flute record, and then make it actually good! A true artist. Gorgeous sounds to discover gradually and one of my new favourite albums for slumbering on the bus to. And the live performance is a must watch:

 

Hedvig Mollestad - Kittiwakes in Gust

The perfect track for this weather. No kittiwakes in sight yet, but a couple of weeks I actually had them swooping by in the strait.

 

 

Kramer - Or Perhaps You Imagined It All   

This is the time of the year when I catch with last year's releases. This album's a standout with gorgeously produced, hard to place, dance music. Expect more tracks from this on future lists.

 

 

Emeka Ogboh - Verbal Drift    

Fantastic album of sound collages made up of field recordings from bus stations in Lagos set to beats. Transports me back to when I travelled in Ghana as a 20-something and spent hours waiting for departures in rural squares with tro-tro-stations. Good times.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Rings of Saturn

It took me a while to get round to Skeleton Tree. Back when it was released in 2016 I felt like it was almost overpowered by its tragic backstory, and I resisted listening to it for a long time as it felt almost unfair/exploitative that the death of Arthur Cave became interwoven with a music release. But lately I've found my own way into these looping elegies. This song especially awakens something gut-wrenchingly nostalgic to me, with old feelings just out of reach signalling back to me about what's lost with age.

 

01/24 - I Got The World, So I'll Be Fine

Welcome to the 15th year of Top 5!!! And apparently this year is GREEN! The world is still looking horrific, but I'm making an effort to start the year on an energetic, mostly positive note here:

Mina - Nessuno   

Social media is not always a hellscape. One day the instagram feed threw this fantastic video into my face, unbid for but welcome. Irresistible: the ompa-ompa-rhythm, Chet Baker in a bathtub for no reason at all, and the impossibly charming Mina. Fingersnapping is coming back, I'm telling you.

 

 

Sofia Kourtesis - Si Te Portas Bonito   

This is the time of the year when I catch with last year's releases. This album's a standout with gorgeously produced, hard to place, dance music. Expect more tracks from this on future lists.

 

 

Fever Ray - What They Call Us

Not sure what it is, but this song gives me the absolute shivers. Karin Dreijer never misses.

My plan was flexible
Don't get stuck anywhere

Youth Lagoon - Prizefighter

Every now and then, there's a perfect melody discovered in the ether. This chorus is like a gravitational centre that draws me in every time.

Jessie Ware - Begin Again

Followers of this blog (who am I kidding? I'm writing this for myself) will know that I am a sucker for crescendoing pop songs. And this banger from the latest Jessie Ware album is almost up there with Love On Top and Love Again. The ending is pure overindulgence in soaring strings, brass and backing vocals and it really, really works on me.