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“Do the Astral Plane” is just so cool, y’know? I often listen to the second I get in the car, when I’m in an upbeat sorta mood. Great example of the type of track I wish DJs would play, one I’d regularly play if I ever followed through with my grade six dream of being a DJ.
“Someone Great” is another one – though if you dropped more than 30 or so seconds of it at a club there’d be a mass walkout. That’s what I don’t like about the people my age. I like a dirty beat as much as the next bloke, but that’s no substitute for great music. Shame there’s no clubs where they really play good music. I think “All My Friends” is still my #1 LCD song, but there’s no point debating really because they’re both such great tracks. Heart-warming and heartbreaking at the same time. They’re really worth getting into, if you aren’t already.
Deadmau5 got popular by producing the sort of hard bangers that fuel your Jersey Shore types, but Joel Zimmerman is just a computer nerd at heart and capable of much more – like “HR 8938 Cephei”, a great piece of trance. James Blake is 21. I’m the same age! What I wouldn’t give to be doing what he’s doing now. Dubstep to my mates is taking an ordinary song and that dropping a ridiculous dirty beat into it, one that does sound awesome but throws off the track.
They’d probably hate “The Wilhelm Scream” – an affecting bit of melancholy dubstep. Blake has a similar voice to either Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip, who sings half of “So Glad To See You”, another affecting piece of dance music from one of my favourite bands of the past five to ten years. Like LCD, I can’t recommend their music highly enough, particularly this song’s home, The Warning.
I say U2 are my favourite band ever, but David Bowie is probably my favourite artist. I’ve got I think nine or ten of his albums and the array of talent and scope he has shown over his recording career is nothing short of mesmerising – and yet my favourite song of his remains “A New Career in a New Town”, an instrumental from his astonishing Low masterpiece, which makes me want to turn my life upside down and move to Vancouver, or Rome, or Berlin, or anywhere, really. As positive a song as you’re ever likely to hear. I think the best songs are the ones that affect – most here do.
One that does in a weird sort of way is “Drop” – a song I’ve known only for a few months. Foals were guest programmers on Rage one Saturday night and they played this track, and I was captivated – not only by the film clip, which portrays an Asian boy experimenting with the power of water, but by the ambient nature of the track. His album Point is very much worth a listen.
Once you’ve listened to this playlist you’ll see why I placed “Mainstream” after it, but aside from that it’s one of my favourite Outkast tracks. Gorgeous production, skilled, measured rapping (from Andre and Big Boi, at least) and a thoughtful message – lyrics that people never think about when they label hip-hop as trash about guns, bitches, money and drugs.
Kid Cudi sang a lot about drugs and bitches and money on Man on the Moon II – that’s why I hated it. But “The E.N.D.” was one of the few salvageables, with its hypnotic old-school beat, and quickly became one of my favourite hip-hop tracks of the past few years. There are plenty of sides to hip-hop which go underappreciated, one of them being the focus and mastery of craft required to produce real good shit, something DJ Shadow has (or had) in spades.
“What Does Your Soul Look Like (pt. 1 – Blue Sky Revisit)” samples forgotten songs by Shawn Phillips, David Young, The Alan Parsons Project and The Heath Brothers and creates a touching, desultory landscape that will transport you elsewhere for six minutes.
Similarly desultory is Destroyer’s “Bay of Pigs (Detail)”, an 11-minute epic which as been aptly called “ambient disco for one”. That’s why I love it so much – I’d have the time of my life, drinking, alone, in the dark, at the bar or somewhere near, acting out every instrumental turn or vocal lilt. Pitchfork’s review of Kaputt admitted this track was something of an anomaly on the album, and that’s true, but as they correctly pointed out, it’s there because “as many people as possible need to hear it”. Be patient, and let Bejar’s vocals and the band’s music wash over you.
Now, I’m on record as disliking Amnesiac, and I still do as a whole. But “Life in a Glasshouse”, along with the majestic “Pyramid Song” and “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box”, is one of the better tracks. I love its drunken brass, its non-sequiturs, it’s hazy, laid-back vibe.
And it leads into two instrumental tracks dominated by jazz, Miles’ “Blue in Green” and Tom Waits’ “Closing Time”. The former is my favourite of all the tracks I’ve heard by the great man, and it portrays melancholy as well as any song released before or since. I still haven’t moved past Closing Time, in part because I haven’t given it anywhere enough listens as it deserves, in part because I can’t. It’s such a staggering record emotionally, and I can hardly believe that he went on to top it numerous times in his career with albums I’ve yet to hear. Like much of the album, it’s tinged in deep despair and sadness, but not without just the slightest glimmer of hope, like a man who is a little down on life but won’t ever give up for life is worth living. And so that is my playlist. Best listened to at night I reckon. I hope you all enjoy it, or parts of it, as much as I did putting it together and then writing this.