{"id":2742,"date":"2015-09-17T18:41:10","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T01:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/?p=2742"},"modified":"2015-09-17T18:42:08","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T01:42:08","slug":"the-return-of-the-monthly-playlist-august-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/2015\/09\/the-return-of-the-monthly-playlist-august-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"The Return of the Monthly Playlist: August 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yeah, I seem to have been remiss in updating the monthly playlists, so here&#8217;s a double-dose of music for the last two months. I did create the playlists, but somehow\u00a0did not get around to\u00a0creating a post.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/videoseries?list=PLg4giSOV_afJfwRNUwRuBonHKo-oFCXLf\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Commentary below:<\/p>\n<p>Chvrches is one of those bands that I like the sound of, but kind of feel that their first album got lost in the wave of similar-sounding synthpop albums that came out around the same time, with female vocalists. Or maybe it&#8217;s because there are way too many such bands in my ambit.\u00a0This is the first single from their new album, due to release end of September, and to say I am obsessed by the song\u00a0<em>and\u00a0<\/em>the video is understating it. The sound and themes are linked to Purity Ring&#8217;s &#8216;Another Eternity&#8217;, an album that has captured my heart since it released early this year. It is the three-note sawtooth riff that got my attention, but the pulsating chorus is what really drew me in. And holy shit, Lauren Mayberry (singer, song-writer, drummer girl and\u00a0<em>journalist?\u00a0<\/em>Talk about over-achieving!) is so SHINY\u00a0in that video, in the Whedonian sense of the term.<\/p>\n<p>I stumbled on\u00a0&#8216;Hanging On&#8217;, and it took me a few anguished days of confusion to figure out\u00a0why it sounded so maddeningly familiar &#8211; Ellie Goulding had\u00a0covered it. The original version runs circles around the cover, Pat Grossi&#8217;s voice and arrangements are just\u00a0heartbreakingly beautiful. It always struck me as a water song, for some reason, and it&#8217;s gratifying to see the video.<\/p>\n<p>I have no idea how Hot Chip manages to make every single one of their albums sound so fresh and intriguing. This track is from their newest album\u00a0<em>Why Make Sense?, <\/em>and it&#8217;s dancey as fuck.<\/p>\n<p>I heard Trifonic&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Emergence\u00a0<\/em>around the same time as BT&#8217;s\u00a0<em>This Binary Universe<\/em>, mostly because the latter got me searching for albums with a similar sound. I was listening to BT&#8217;s pseudo-follow-up to <em>TBU<\/em>, called\u00a0<em>If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I<\/em>, and obviously revisited\u00a0<em>Emergence.\u00a0<\/em>Much like the\u00a0revisiting old haunts, this took me down a different head-space. &#8216;Good Enough&#8217; is the last song in the album, and the acoustic guitar strum is what gets me every time. (1:52, wait for it)<\/p>\n<p>Kyla LaGrange is an English singer with South African\/Zimbabwean roots and the kind of voice that feels like a delicious scoop of ice-cream on a warm summer day. The steel drum loop gives it a bouncy calypso vibe. Love it.<\/p>\n<p>Pretty fucking genius to use\u00a0GTAV (that&#8217;s the iconic\u00a0game from Rockstar Studios, for those who came in late) game-play and cut-scenes to make the video for this song. Reminds me of Com Truise. I would try and describe their sound but the official description works just fine &#8211; &#8220;a neon soaked, late night, sonic getaway drive, dripping with analog synthesizers, cinematic vocals and cyberpunk values, all exploding from the front cover of a dusty plastic VHS case which has lain forgotten since 1984&#8221;. Like a Nicholas Wending Refn wet dream.<\/p>\n<p>Israeli band Garden City Movement&#8217;s &#8216;Move On&#8217; is the kind of track you want to get high and make out to. &#8216;Nuff said. Oh, and kinda NSFW video. So&#8217;s M83&#8217;s &#8216;Wait&#8217;, that comes along a few tracks later and Alpine&#8217;s &#8216;Gasoline&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Jazz and electronic music come together in BadBadNotGood&#8217;s works, and &#8216;Can&#8217;t Leave The Night&#8217; definitely goes places. I love how the drum and bassline takes over around 1:00, after the dreampop beginning. Breakestra&#8217;s &#8216;Come On Over&#8217; is more funk than jazz, and I love the ever-loving shit out of it.<\/p>\n<p>Trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf pays haunting tribute to the place of his birth in a trippy 11 minute track. The lead instrument, at times, sounds like it&#8217;s talking to you; at times a whisper, at times raucously laughing along to a joke it knows and wants you to hear, and sometimes, it just wants you to give in. I gave in.<\/p>\n<p>Sir Sly&#8217;s &#8216;You Haunt Me&#8217; sounds way better in the AMTRAC remix. Seriously, try listening to the original after you have heard this, no comparison at all. Wonderful when a song&#8217;s\u00a0texture and feel changes completely in a different mix.<\/p>\n<p>Kate Boy makes the dirtiest, illest riffs ever.\u00a0Such a distinctive sound this song has, with just the right kind of thematic connection to their earlier &#8216;Northern Lights&#8217;, which blew my mind a few years ago. A song like this needs to be followed by something as dreamy as &#8216;Technicolor Beat&#8217;, just so your heart calms down. An aural relaxant, let&#8217;s say.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t you love the name &#8216;Whilk and Misky&#8217;? The flamenco guitars and claps, the voice, and especially the moment when the bass drums jump in &#8211; this feels like the perfect summer song.<\/p>\n<p>Laura Welsh&#8217;s moment of fame came this year with the\u00a0<em>50 Shades of Grey\u00a0<\/em>soundtrack, but it is this song that made\u00a0me\u00a0fall for her.\u00a0Reminds me of the likes of Modern Talking and Laura Brannigan.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, you just want a song like &#8216;Cheerleader&#8217; playing in your life. No pretension, no deep lyrics, just something you can bop your head &#8211; and body &#8211; to.<\/p>\n<p>The saddest thing about listening to Burial&#8217;s &#8216;Archangel&#8217; for the first time is wondering why I hadn&#8217;t it heard it so far, and the crippling thought that there is\u00a0<em>so\u00a0<\/em>much great music that I haven&#8217;t heard yet. This song (and album) came out in 2007, can you believe it?<\/p>\n<p><em>Did you like this? Which track did you like\/hate the most? Do you know\u00a0music that you think I may\u00a0like? Did you think my commentary is annoying? Does my taste suck? Talk to me at beatzo@gmail.com, or leave a comment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yeah, I seem to have been remiss in updating the monthly playlists, so here&#8217;s a double-dose of music for the last two months. I did create the playlists, but somehow\u00a0did not get around to\u00a0creating a post. Commentary below: Chvrches is one of those bands that I like the sound of, but kind of feel that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[327,9],"tags":[545,540,548,549,533,535,546,541,542,544,538,537,547,534,550,122,87,536,543,539],"class_list":["post-2742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mixtapes","category-music","tag-active-child","tag-alpine","tag-badbadnotgood","tag-breakestra","tag-burial","tag-chvrches","tag-ellie-goulding","tag-garden-city-movement","tag-gunship","tag-hot-chip","tag-ibrahim-maalouf","tag-kate-boy","tag-kyle-lagrange","tag-laura-welsh","tag-m83","tag-mixtape","tag-music-2","tag-sir-sly","tag-trifonic","tag-whilk-and-misky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2747,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions\/2747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}