Off topic
Music I like
Nothing to do with specs. Just songs I keep coming back to. The list grows whenever something gets stuck in my head.
Discovered this week
- Jazz
- Vocals
- Standard
'Nature Boy' was written by eden ahbez and was a number one for Nat King Cole in 1948, so it has been sung a thousand ways since. Kurt Elling's version is from The Messenger, his 1997 album for Blue Note, the record where it first joined his repertoire.
Also worth your time
Artists to watch
Not one track but a whole person: people doing something I have not heard anyone else do.
Maddie Ashman
UK
A microtonal, experimental and genuinely exceptional musician. She writes pop through a microtonal lens, using just intonation and modified instruments including a microtonal guitar, so the intervals are smaller than the twelve notes the rest of us are stuck with. It does something odd and rather wonderful to what you expect a chord to do next.
The other half of it is hocketing, where a melody is broken up and shared between parts so no single line is playing the tune. It's a medieval idea, and close to nobody's notion of a pop technique.
Songs
- Downtempo
- Vibe
- Vibe
- Lush female vocals
- Lush female vocals
- Songmaster
- Hypnotic
Cover discovery
Half the records I like turn out to be made of an older one. A sampled chorus, a re-sung verse, a melody borrowed outright. Here is what is underneath, so you can go and hear the source.
No. 1
The track
covers
The source
The Becoming X trip-hop classic slowed into a hazy, woozy soul loop. Same melancholy, completely different room.
No. 2
The track
samples
The source
The whole record is one loop of the Toto ballad's chorus, pitched up and cut so the phrase never quite lands where you expect. A 1982 soft-rock album track, turned into a house single nineteen years later.