matthewmcvickar

[matthewmcvickar]

This is the ninth year running that I have collected my favorite sounds.

 🔊 Click here for the full post, with the list of songs, on my website.

All year long I make a note when something sticks out to me as I’m listening to music, and at the end of year I isolate the sounds from their songs, string them all together as one audio file, organize the descriptions, and share.

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To kick off a few lists collecting my journey in music in 2019, here’s a mix I made over the last few days. It’s exactly an hour long and features 27 songs I really liked from this year. It starts out measured, gets super dancey in the middle, and closes out quiet.

Tracklist:

Yu Su — The Ultimate Which Manages the World [Music from Memory]

Y La Bamba — Boca Llena [Tender Loving Empire]

MIKE — Memorial [10K]

Yuk. — Palawan [Leaving Records]

Body Meat — 2 Again [Self-released]

Koffee — Toast [Promised Land]

Blood Orange — Benzo [Domino]

Sudan Archives — Confessions [Stones Throw]

Brittany Howard — 13th Century Metal [ATO]

Mohammad Reza Mortazavi — Sudden Inspiration [Latency]

Benoît Pioulard — Meristem [Morr Music]

George Cory Todd — Icon (Amy Reid Remix) [Atlantic Rhythms]

박혜진 park hye jin — ABC [clipp.art]

Bella Boo — Tuesday [Studio Barnhus]

Robyn — Beach2k20 (Yaeji Remix) [Konichiwa]

Logic1000 — Precision [Sumac]

Tristan Arp — Facelift [Human Pitch]

Karima F — Two Eggs in a Hammock [Schloss]

DJ Plead — Salt and Pepper [Nervous Horizon]

Anz — Helps Your Two Hips Move [2 B Real]

India Jordan — Through Lacuna [Local Action]

Malibu — Camargue [UNO NYC]

Teen Daze — Spring [Flora]

Lightning Bug — October Song, Pt. II [Marbled Arm]

Helado Negro — Pais Nublado [RVNG Intl.]

James Place — Names [Umor Rex]

Sofie Birch — Begin Sync End [Seil]

Downloadable here.

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‘Glide Control’ from the Tempest 2000 video game soundtrack (1994). (Produced by Alastair Lindsay, Ian Howe, Julian Hodgson, and Kevin Saville at Imagitec Design, Inc. for Atari)

I don’t remember how I got this CD, and I never played the game itself, but I must have listened to this soundtrack hundreds of times as a kid. I would have been around 10 years old when I got this CD, and it was the first electronic music I had ever heard.

I would put this particular song on repeat for hours while doing homework or reading, and I like to think this CD is a big reason why I ended up getting so into electronic music.

Listening today, as soon as the first song ‘Thermal Resolution’ started, I remembered I used it as the backing track when I did a devil sticks performance at a middle school talent show.

I still have the CD, and just noticed on the inside cover that the fine print says “No llamas were mistreated or injured during the making of this compact disc.”

[matthewmcvickar]

This mix from Seattle’s CCL is just so, so good. The selection and rhythmic complexity and transitions are all brilliant.

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Duval Timothy — Blue Borough

A brief, beautiful thing.

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Phil Collins — I’m Not Moving (Idjut Boys Edit)

This is so wonderful.

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Remember Born Gold? ‘Lawn Knives’ maybe, back when he was Gobble Gobble?

Cecil Frena put out a record last year called The Gridlock under his own name, and it’s very good. It’s loud and weird and busy and sad and joyful and obliquely personal, a song cycle about family and failure and growing up that makes room for songs about holding up a dog beauty salon and dancing in the aisle of an airplane.

I am a sucker for this stuff, these prolix, earnest, yelping ballads made with 47 instruments and twice that many Ableton tracks, theatrical and personal but not disturbing, loud but not too noisy, celebrations of life and its love and chaos.

See also Hooray for Earth and Doldrums and Braids and The Mae Shi and Ramona Falls…

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I really enjoy the new Clairo album, but I couldn’t help but notice Rostam used the same sample at the beginning of this song (‘White Flag’) as he did at the beginning of Vampire Weekend’s ‘Hannah Hunt’ (from 2013).

(A commenter on the Clairo video claims it also appears in ‘My Mistake,’ from this year’s Vampire Weekend album, but I’m not sure about that—it sounds like a different ‘water and voices’ sample, and Rostam didn’t work on ‘My Mistake.’ Ariel Rechtshaid didn’t work on this Clairo album either, so it’s not his. Or who knows.)

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Roza Terenzi — Rare High

This EP is absolutely great.

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This is such a great concept for a video, interweaving actual show footage from fans and a semi-constructed narrative to document the experience of the audience.

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Let’s hope so.

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Kelela’s contribution to last week’s Warp Records 30th anniversary takeover of NTS Radio is a mix of ambient tracks with her singing over them. It’s wonderful and I hope she makes it downloadable eventually.

A few great discoveries from listening to this mix, for which she thoughtfully provided a time-stamped track-list:

the beautifully textural ‘Underwater’ from Leila’s 1998 debut Like Weather

the soothing, huge-night-sky ‘Digital Dreams’ from Cliffdiver’s Slow Decline

the lush percussion and pads of ‘Barreras’ from Iury Lech’s 1990 rarity Musica Para el Fin de Los Cantos

Susumu Yokota’s landmark ambient album Sakura, which I’d never gotten around to listening to.

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Eris Drew’s new mixtape Raving Disco Breaks Vol. I is absolutely incredible, an hour and twelve minutes of nonstop joyful energy celebrating the marginalized voices that brought us dance music.

Get it on Bandcamp for cheap!

All profits go to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SLRP), which works to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine their gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination, or violence.

For Eris’s mixtape “Raving Disco Breaks Vol. 1”, she uses old records to create a new style out of fragments. Many of the selections have been featured heavily in her live DJ sets, including her b2b sets with Octo Octa. Eris accumulated these records slowly, over decades, but it wasn’t until touring last year that she realized a “sound” coalesced in her bag. What does a rave at the disco sound like? Kinda like everyone took ecstasy at the roller rink. On her ecstatic mix, Eris colleges together a genre by scratching-in breaks with horn samples, mixing Disco House with broken beats, dropping Miami Bass jams with Boogie keys and blending Rave tunes with disco vocals. On the mix Eris utilizes turntable techniques such as “doubles” tricks and “hot mixing”—a fast-paced mixing style inspired by her beloved B96 Mixmasters, Chicago’s most popular 1990’s radio DJs. Like all of Eris’s mixes, she weaves strong narratives of embodiment, defiance, cultural transcendence and personal triumph (a classic disco emotion) into a flow of body rockin’ beats, scratches, drops, and sweet melodies. The result is a bass heavy summertime house mix for the psychedelic bad girls, boys and enbys.

[matthewmcvickar]

All of the Songs That Popped into My Head During My Bike Ride on Saturday

Otis Redding — (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay

Drake — Come Through (James Blake Remix)

Beastie Boys — Brass Monkey

KH — Question

Logic 1000 — Logic 1000 Please Forgive Me

Frank Ocean — Thinkin Bout You

TR/ST — Gone

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Kelis’ 2010 pop-house record Flesh Tone is seriously underrated.

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I first heard ‘Wish I Could Create’ in 2007 on Julianna Barwick’s Má Fama session (sadly no longer downloadable), and I listened to it endlessly. It’s a pity it was never formally recorded and released.

I thought of the song this morning, went to see if there are any other recordings of it, and discovered one from a live WFMU performance three years later. It’s also very good!

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This song is weird and catchy as hell, some IDM-inflected indie bedroom pop collage with a dozen-and-a-half great, bizarre sounds in it.