Dntel - (This is) The dream of Evan and Chan
Life is full of possibilities (Plug Research / 2001)

With Ben Giddard’s penchant for pop hooks and Tamborello’s ear for crafting intricately accessible and credible pop songs from the most abstract of electronic music soups, ‘evan and chan’ was ripe to be magnificent. The result is a gorgeous, kaleidoscopic dream, all textured sound washes, and electronic dynamics at the service of Giddard’s keen lyrical edge. One of the most refreshing and fascinating pop songs, turn of the century.

TV on the Radio - Staring at the sun
Young Liars Ep (Touch & Go / 2003)

This song is all about the sexual tension. Tunde filling up space with sex metaphors while an expanding wall of sound keeps building up as a promise of a trembling, suffocating orgasm, and just when you think it’s finally at the door, the actual climax never arrives. It’s all dry sex, oscillating on a plateau. I find it exquisitely frustrating, and oddly enough, satisfying.

Mazzy Star - Fade into you
So tonight that I might see (1993)

Fade into you is arguably one of the most gorgeous and affecting musical portraits of 90’s youth, driven by Hope Sandoval’s sublime laconic delivery, the song is a sort of passive response to teenage angst of a vainly introspective generation and their very often illogicaly confused relationships. Personally speaking, I like it because I find it extremely sexy, I think it makes an ideal soundtrack for languid, passionate fully clothed make-out sessions on snug couches.

Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees
The Bends (1995)

Such a well adressed-ache. Fake Plastic Trees is a song that perfectly captures the opposing traits of radiohead’s music: maudlin lyricism spiralling around modern society’s decay and impotence countered by an uplifting melodic structure and textural arrangement. I don’t think Thom’s voice has ever sounded as good and straight as it does on this particular song, played in a certain mood, it pierces right to the bone. The way he sings “it wears me out” never fails to have an impact upon me.

The MFA - The difference it makes
The difference it makes (Border Community / 2001)

Fueled by a heavily compressed pentatonic synth and an unstoppable groove, I really can’t even begin to describe the immense delight that I get when lost into its musical sehnsucht with a good pair of headphones. Like beer being poured over a 100-proof hangover, this feels so warm and soothing.

Red House Painters - All Mixed Up
Songs for a Blue Guitar (1996)

When I was around 7 years old I used to accompany my father to his work and he’d play his ‘the Cars’ tapes while I layed on the floor drawing pyramids and animals. Later on I discovered Mark Kozelek’s sullen voice and his rendition of ‘all mixed up’ and fell in love. Whereas the Cars original was one of the least memorable singles on their catalogue, Kozelek works unbelievable beauty out of it. A song that triggers memories both from my childhood and my highschool years, what more could I possibly ask for?

Chavela Vargas - Paloma Negra
Con el cuarteto Lara Foster (1961)

Born in Costa Rica, Chavela escaped to Mexico when she was 14 and spent the following 15 years singing on the streets dressed like a man, carrying a gun, smoking constantly and drinking till the last drop. When she recorded this song at 30, her voice, cracked and mournful, by the persistent corrosion of tequila and tobacco is nonetheless dripped in fiery passion. She sings from the entrails. His rendition of this traditional mexican composition stands as one of the most well-known performances in latinamerican grounds.

Lhasa de Sela - De cara a la pared
La llorona (1998)

I first heard Lhasa in a hotel room in New York. The city had left me exhausted and I felt extremely lonely during that particular season in my life. I felt I was suffering from Stendhal’s syndrome when I first heard her voice. I left my room and went to every record store that I could find open at that time of the night looking for the album. When I finally found it, I came back to the hotel, and I think I must have repeated this opening track at least 7 times before listening to the rest of the album. That was 4 years ago, and to date I still turn back to this album whenever I feel soulburnt. It soothes like no other.

Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Pink Moon (1972)

I’ll admit I fail to make any sense of the lyrics to this particular song yet, Drake voice transmits such a unique warmth and human emotion on this one, it could be sung in finnish for all I care.

Claude Debussy - Clair de Lune
This particular rendition by Peter Schmalfuss.

Out of every song on this list, this is the first one I’d save from the fire. Clair de Lune sums up afterglow,  its beautiful melody lifting its sleepy head to the silent piano notes soaring over it all, imbued with sublimely romantic melancholia.  When played at the right time and the right moment this song is magic.

Paintings: Henri Matisse.

And with this I conclude this exposition on my favorite songs. I apologize for any ortographical or contextual mistakes. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2.

He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. - The Great Gatsby

A contagious and cascading spiral of credit disintermediation, credit contraction, sharp fall in asset prices and sharp widening in credit spreads will then be transmitted to most parts of the financial system. This massive credit crunch will make the economic contraction more severe and lead to further financial losses. Total losses in the financial system will add up to more than $1 trillion and the economic recession will become deeper, more protracted and severe. A near global economic recession will ensue as the financial and credit losses and the credit crunch spread around the world. Panic, fire sales, cascading fall in asset prices will exacerbate the financial and real economic distress as a number of large and systemically important financial institutions go bankrupt. The Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown. - Nouriel Roubini, The Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown: The Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster.

” Ska, Lunch, Embrace ”

01. The Skatalites - Meet To Come
Return of The Big Guns (1984)
02. Jacqueline Taïeb - Le Coeur Au Bout Des Doigts
Lolita Chick ‘68 (Mad French, 2000)
03. The Skatalites Meet King Tubby - Herb Man Dub
Heroes Of Reggae In Dub (Guava Jelly, 1975)
04. Thievery Corporation - Sound The Alarm
Radio Retaliation (Eighteenth Street, 2008)
05. Nightmares on wax - 195Lbs
Thought So… (Warp Records, 2008)
06. Skatalites & Stranger & Patsy - Yea Yea Yea Baby
Hog in a Cocoa (Orange Street, 1993)

note: A small lunch time list. This one is actually quite potent, in minor keys island texture sort of way. Sort of romantic tragedy in dance-lounge beat. If you are in the mood for some gloom and doom lunch list. this will be for you. But make no mistake, it is lovely at the same time.

see also: Acadian Purple, Moka’s favorites No. 1
image: Hollywood Studios by Jacques Olivar

The Undertones - Teenage kicks
The Undertones (1978)

A charmful ode to young lust and according to John Peel, the most perfect three minutes of music ever pressed into vinyl. While I beg to differ with him, truth is the man was right, nothing can be subtracted from this to make it any less perfect.

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood - Some Velvet Morning
Nancy & Lee (1968)

A nightmarish, ambitious masterpiece about drug addiction. With its startling juxtaposition of Hazlewood’s wry, haunting delivery and Nancy’s dizzying chorus all drenched up in flowery, childlike experimentalism, ‘Some velvet morning’ distances itself far away from all the summer-of-love idealism and naiveté, coming up as one of the most strange and unnerving pop hits in the history of music.

Can - I’m so green
Ege Bamyasi (1972)

The contagious bounciness on this song underpinned by Jaki Liebezeit’s hypnotic, milimetrically precise drumming style and Damo Suzuki’s often unintelligible, playful vocalization catchs me off-guard all the time and sucks me deep into its spiral before I can even think of reaching for the skip button. Hard for me to choose for a favorite Can composition, but I’ll leave the high mark in between this one and ‘Bel Air’.

Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band - Her eyes are a blue million miles
Clear Spot (1972)

An oddly beautiful love song with a little jagged edge. The Magic Band stomp out a delightful rocker with a disjointed feel to it, while the Captain’s vocal tics are put in the service of a pleading emotionality, like a drunk just barely keeping it together but pouring out his heart nonetheless.

The Beatles - Lovely Rita
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

What appeals me the most about Lovely Rita it its strong transitive sense of kinetic, physical action being expended. Set to a rhytmic backbone that keeps chugging its way through a brilliant piano solo and an awkward climax, the composition menaces with falling apart at any moment as the vocal parts get increasingly complex and sound effects come and go. I always feel the urge to turn the volume up when this comes up on my stereo.

Belle and Sebastian - Dog on wheels
Dog on Wheels Ep (Jeepster / 1997)

Musically emulating Love’s Forever Changes with it’s vaguely hispanic rhythm, dark chord voicings and a gorgeous trumpet break halfway through, Stuart Murdoch sings a soft-voiced ode, both intelligent and humorous to one of his childhood toys. One of the band’s finest moments.

Devendra Banhart - Mama Wolf
Cripple Crow (XL / 2005)

Mama Wolf echoes the sinister dichotomy that lies at the heart of Devendra’s music, an uneven mixture of jocular humour and fey mysticism that places Devendra’s lyrics somewhere in between childlike innocence and sinisterly demented storytelling. At any rate, Mama Wolf, presents us Devendra at one of his shinier moments, a deceptively simple and effusive lullaby delivered with such phatos and a couple of wolf’s howls that makes it almost impossible not to fall hard for it.

David Bowie - Letter to Hermione
Space Oddity (1969)

Bowie’s gifts for building atmosphere are easily discerned in ‘letter to Hermione’, using nothing but a simplistic acoustic guitar strums and ocassional electric arpeggios as an accompanient, Bowie creates an unsettling, melancholic bubble inherent to the heartbreaking nature of the lyrics.

Images: Siggeir M. Hafsteinsson.
Also See: Moka’s Favorites No. 1

We came to California the same year as the ill-fated Donner party. It started about a month ahead of us, but it kept taking imaginary short cuts and hurrying until it met with frightful disaster. My father, who was captain of our train, led his party of about eighty people across trackless plains and mountains for five months, simply with the sun and the stars as guides, and came west almost as straight as the crow flies. He believed in moving every day, if only three miles and the result was that all our oxen were in better condition when they arrived in California than when they started. Several of the survivors of the Donner party, young George Donner and Mrs. Reed, came to our house in Napa after they were rescued. I heard the other day that Mrs. Reed’s daughter, ‘Patty’ Reed, who was then a very little girl, is living on Franklin street in Oakland. She is Mrs. Martha Lewis now. - Story from California Gold rush

.

” California Revisited ”

01. Takka Takka - Everybody Say
Migration (Ernest Jenning, 2008)
02. Tracy Shedd - Whatever It Takes
Cigarettes & Smoke Machines (Teenbeat Records, 2008)
03. Luke Doucet - Blood’s Too Rich
Blood’s Too Rich (Six Shooter Records, 2008)
04. Telepathique - Love And Lust
Last Time On Earth (Control Group / Tcg, 2008)
05. The Moondoggies - Changing
Don’t Be A Stranger (Hardly Art, 2008)
06. Human Highway - Sleep Talking
Moody Motorcycle (Suicide Squeeze, 2008)

note: Sunday mellow list. California theme in my mind. There is this mythical idea about California. That it’s the last place where civilization stops, hitting the big ocean. The western civilization ends and the east is on the other side. All on one needs to get there is a dream and certain push to get away from the establishment. Life will be different, the weather temperate and the people are happy. Thousand dreams to be made, start afresh without past. It is not the techniques, shape or difficulties to obtain the dream, but if the state of mind to reach the dream exists, sort of post existentialist struggle. It’s beautiful if one can get it to work.

image : sicoactiva , FelipeArte

Billie Holiday & Lester Young - When You’re Smiling
Billie Holiday and Lester Young Complete recordings 1937-1946

If I had to choose only one Billie Holiday song, without question it would be “When You’re Smiling.” Everyone plays like a genius on this one. Benny Morton’s gutsy and smooth trombone to kick it off, Buck Clayton’s impeccable obbligato behind the singer, and Lester Young’s magnificent solo that starts at 2:05 and sends the song into stratosphere.

Nina Simone - My baby just cares for me
Little Girl Blue (Bethlehem Records / 1968)

So simple and effective. There’s some sort of vocal stretch she does from 2:42 through 2:52 that showcases her incredible vocal range and makes me lose my breath everytime I hear it.

Jacqueline Taïeb - Le Cœur au bout des doigts
Lolita Chick 68 (Mad French / 2000)

60’s french pop with a stunning horn section and an undeniably funky and infectious rhythm. Incredibly fun and sexy.

Norman Greenbaum - Spirit in the sky
Spirit in the sky (1970)

One of my favorite radio hits from the 70’s. Classic guitar riff and best use of rattlesnake percussion ever.

Tommy Roe - Sweet Pea
Sweet pea (1966)

It’s all about that drum break. Sweet pop that never gets corrosive and that in my humble opinion, stands out above everything else done in the genre at the time.

Marshall Crenshaw - You’re my favorite waste of time
Marshall Crenshaw (1982)

A lo-fi masterpiece and one of those songs that always brings back a collection of idyllic childhood memories. I think a big part of the charm of this recording is how the whole thing sounds like a beautiful accident, a group of friends jamming in a home studio after smoking a few joints and setting up everything in one simple take. There’s genuine happiness spread all over it.
I was delighted to read Sean’s post a year ago where he tells this was his favorite song ever (He’s actually referring to Owen Paul’s cover, mind you, but I’m happy about the coincidence).

Tom Waits - Alice
Alice (Anti / 2002)

A sensuous nocturnal ballad with violently beautiful lyrics. It’s hard to top all the imagery and sounds Mr. Waits manages to evoke with such little space.

Louis Armstrong - Hello Dolly!
Hello Dolly 7″ (1964)

I imagine that caught up in the political and cultural turmoil of the mid-sixties, ‘Hello dolly’ would have sounded a tad out of place: sappy, lighthearted lyrics and a simple acoustic jazz arrangement in a time when mainstream didn’t really care about jazz anymore. And yet, Armstrong presents this little piece of timeless ditty in such a charming and deliriously engaging way that it even managed to push the Beatles off their #1 perch on the charts when they were at the peak of their popularity.

Note: For the past weeks I’ve been spending a great deal of time doing a reinventory of every song in my collection. I tend to organize my music following mood rather than genre, so I’ve been spending full days categorizing, trashing and rekindling my love for some songs and albums that I haven’t heard in a while. Amidst all the nostalgia and surprises I made a 24 song playlist with songs that never fail to amuse me, some of which have been with me for more than 10 years, and which I’m splitting into 3 different parts to share with you. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I’d love to read recommendations if you have any and your very own list of favorite songs of all time if you wish to share.

Images: Matte Stephens

Photo: 蛙式大人

The sky is eating, is whispering and eating.
It roots in the straw that the asparagus may stay with its garbage sky of distant lands and of the hearth.
Now that the sky has stopped raining
joy, joy cries the pig and is an animal that grows fat in fair weather.

- Jerome Rothenberg. Of the doctor who Stopped the Pig by his Cleverness.

Antonio Zepeda - Aztlán
Retorno a Aztlán (Olinkan / 1989)
Shackleton - Death is not final
Death is not final (Skull Disco / 2008)
Stimming - Una Pena (Argy remix)
Una Pena Ep (Diynamic / 2008)
Shed - Slow Motion Replay
Shedding the past (Ostgut-ton / 2008)
Carl Orff - Gassenhauer
The trip curated by Jarvis Cocker (Family UK / 2006)

I do not wish to speak light statements this evening, at least not while the sky is eating. Life has taught me it is better to remain silent when the grass is burning. When the river fills up.

The District is an anomaly. Its many threads intertwine to create a diverse and colorful tapestry which reflects the nation it represents in ways that both inspire and infuriate. Music has perpetuated the soul of D.C. for decades now, and gives a voice to those who otherwise would remain under the foot of the suits that make this the land of “Taxation without Representation.” Many artists call D.C. home, regardless of birthplace. Below are three musicians from distinct eras that have embodied their epochs with the sheer sonic strength and soul. Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye, and Me’Shell Ndegeocello are a triad of D.C.’s finest children, born and/or bred. I continue this list in the vein of sounds native to the District. This particular one journeys across time to reflect the continuity of foundational sound and motive, but the evolution of the style as well. Hopefully something will strike a chord. For what it’s worth — enjoi.

Duke Ellington - Skin Deep
(Ellington Uptown/ 1953)
Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald - Mack the Knife
(Ella & Duke at The Côte D’Azur (Disc I)/ 1966)
Duke Ellington - Rhapsody in Blue
(Recollections of The Big Band Era/ 1976)
Marvin Gaye - Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)
(What’s Going On/ 1971)
Marvin Gaye - If I Should Die Tonight
(Let’s Get It On (Deluxe Edition)/ 1973)
Marvin Gaye - Trouble Man
(Gold/ 2005)
Me’Shell Ndegeocello - Soul Searchin’
(Higher Learning: Music From The Motion Picture/ 1994)
Me’Shell Ndegeocello - Fool of Me
(Bitter/ 1999)
Me’Shell Ndegeocello - Earth
(Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape/ 2002)

photo credit: Amber Wiley

Photo: Look Mom.

I couldn’t breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing. It’s not inconceivable that my eyes were open. It’s possible I fell facing the city.

– Wislawa Szymborska. Lot’s Wife.

1. Nite Jewel - What did he say?
   What did he say 12″ (Italians do it better / 2008)
2. Memory Cassette - Asleep at a party
   The hiss we missed (self released / 2008)
3. Thunderheist - Jerk It (Nacho Lovers remix)
   Jerk it Ep (Thunderheist / 2008)
4. Boy 8-bit - The Cricket Scores
   The suspense is killing me (Mad Decent / 2008)
5. Tennishero - Midnight Love
   Midnight Love (DNM / 2008)
6. The Whitest boy alive - Golden Cage (Fred Falke remix)
   Golden cage (Modular / 2008)
7. The Twelves - I feel fine
   Demo (self released / 2008)

Note: While some people enjoy spending friday nights on crowded, loud places, others prefer to chill out after a bad week. That would be me! Kick back and enjoy this assortment of upbeat and catchy weekend tunes selected especially for your listening pleasure. Have a nice weekend, peeps.