Best of 2021 So Far
A retrospective of the first 6 months in 2021 with a 130 song, 10 hour playlist..
What can be better than swimming and drinking cocktails in the sweltering heat of July? Making a 10 hour playlist spanning tens of genres and hundreds of albums!
The end of year playlist generally poses problems, as technically you are a different person every 6 months, and it’s so easy to fall to some kind of recency bias or overcompensate against it. Hence this playlist, which will be used as a springboard for the December hustle.
A few notes:
There are 130 songs, and over 10 hours to sift through, and I admit it’s overwhelming to go at in one go. It’s supposed to be shuffled during the holiday season.
Most are taken from albums contrary to the Spotify singles dominance, so it’s rewarding to go through and check the albums.
As usual, jazz forms and “world music” are dominating the list, whereas metal finds are more or less omitted. Apart from metal, there are avantgarde, experimental and/or cutting edge stuff that might be taxing for some listeners, unlike other Undomondo Discover Weekly’s in which I try to find an “easy listen” denominator. Cope with it!
Here’s a quote from a New Yorker article that I featured in the articles part, this part applies to this songs to enjoy/songs to wander about dilemma very well.
Catherine Plenevaux said, that because you enjoy, it is just one of the many reasons why one could listen to music. When I listen to ‘Blusens Fasong’ I can’t really say I enjoy it, but I noticed I come back to it again and again. It fascinates me. It’s like: what the hell is going on here? What is this all about? Do you understand?
HIGHLIGHTS
Modern jazz from UK & USA Sons of Kemet, Alfa Mist, Anthony Joseph, Emanative, Here Lies Man, Nubiyan Twist, Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders & LSE..
Post-Brexit Post-Punk (coined by Fluxblog’s Matthew Perpetua), Black Country, New Road, Dry Cleaning, shame, Sleaford Mods, Billy Nomates, black midi and Pom Poko (Oslo)..
Ambient / Drone by Celer, Chuck Johnson, Fred Frith & Ikue Mori, Perila, Zaumne, Growing, Lawrence, Aria Rostami, Philip Jeck
Skronky jazz rock/fusion by Nels Cline, Fire!, Hedvig Mollestad Trio..
World Jazz by Bokani Dyer, Lwanda Gogwana (S. Africa), Arooj Aftab, Alder Ego, Ballake Sissoko, Hailu Mergia reissue, new collaborations with Joao Donato and Gary Bartz on the Jazz is Dead series..
Electronic hits by Lauer, Son Lux, Suzanne Kraft, Autechre’s remix of the late SOPHIE, upsammy, Arkan, Fatima Al Qadiri..
Progressive Northern Europe folk, jazz from Jordsjo, Merope..
Indie pomp from The Weather Station, Mega Bog, Chad VanGaalen..
Hip-hop by Madlib, Armand Hammer, Flying Lotus, Conway the Machine..
Enjoy and check back start of next month for new music!
The Supremes in Paris, 1965 Eric Alper
ARTICLES
♩AI song contest:
“Listen to Your Body Choir,” which won this year’s A.I. Song Contest, was produced by M.O.G.I.I.7.E.D., a California-based team of musicians, scholars and A.I. experts. They instructed machines to “continue” the melody and lyrics of “Daisy Bell,” Harry Dacre’s tune from 1892 that became, in 1961, commonly known as the first song to be sung using computer speech synthesis. The result in “Listen to Your Body Choir” is a track that sounds both human and machine-made, [AI Song Contest]
♩New York, New Music: How the city became a hotbed for music in the 80s.
♩Genre is disappearing, what comes next? [New Yorker]
♩Mecca is the representation of Capitalism:
First of all, Taqbir is the term for ‘Allahu Akbar,’ usually used as a battle cry, for those who wonder. For me the cover totally denounces the religious institutions. The Kabah is the representation of authority in Islam and mecca —for me—is the representation of capitalism. Saudi Arabia earns millions of dollars thanks to the pilgrims and we all know where this money goes. It goes to bomb Yemenis for example. Religious institutions are built up by hypocrisy and it’s my right to be against it, like white people have the right to be against their own religious institutions. Islam is not different from other religions. It is misogynistic, homophobic, retrograde, period. [Maximum RocknRoll]
PARTING THOUGHTS
I’ve become entranced with Azerbaijani tenor Alim Qasimov and her daughter Fergana Qasimova since a few days, all thanks to the algorithmic overlord.
There are unbelievable moments on this one with Kronos Quartet, this one with Kayhan Kalhor, this one with Hüsnü Şenlendirici on clarinet, but the one that made me cry with ecstasy -literally- was this one below, 25 mins of pure joy.
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Best!