Tunes heard on KCRW PART FOUR

Not Garth Trinidad this time, this was the Metropolis show on KCRW, but still some big groovy tunes being played and heard over the airwaves. Honestly this radio station helps me to appreciate being in LA and SoCal more. Often when friends from NY are in town, they remark that the radio in LA is so much better, as NY is all Clear Channel'd out...

Here's what I heard tonight much to my joy and surprise, once again. I make youtube playlists for my films and scripts and often I add songs that I heard on KCRW - so thank you to those folks in Santa Monica, for enlightening and entertaining me - and influencing me - so much.

(I love the graphic on this one)

Tunes heard on KCRW PART THREE

My oh my oh my - yet more absolute and extreme deliciousness from KCRW. Who is the DJ again who is guilty of playing such gems that play over the airwaves as I wind my gari through the streets of Los Angeles? His name is Garth Trinidad. Thank you sir, thank you. 

THIS TUNE IS SUCH A DELICIOUS AND SMOOTH PLEASURE FOR YOUR EARS. WOW!

mind-twisting tune by...Steven Spielberg's daughter, produced by Nicolas Jaar

yah, more good shit

I actually have about 10 more tunes from my listening session tonight so there's gonna be a PART FOUR of this series! Yes yes yes

Orbital were one of the first electronic acts I got into as a spotty young'n.  I'm pretty sure the first tune of their's I heard was off of a free tape that came with Select magazine -- a live version of "Impact (the Earth is Burning)" that was recorded at Glastonbury.  I'm happy to say they're back and recording again and I do like the current single "Tiny Foldable Cities" -- it's got a pleasing weirdness to it that helps it stand out bit over the many, many electronic tracks out there.





I've blogged about Roisin Murphy before -- another dance music survivor who happily puts out off-kilter tunes.  She's appeared on DJ Koze's latest album, another one which Alexis Petridis persuaded me to buy, and one of her tunes is the one I keep going back to again and again.  "Illumination" is pretty great:

 

Tunes heard on KCRW PART TWO

So these are tunes I heard on KCRW just last night and this morning, probably a combined total of 20 minutes, that's it. I "shazam" all the time when I listen to this fantastic radio station. I wanted to keep listening both last night and this morning, but I was listening in the car enroute to things I'm actually supposed to be doing.

In my opinion they're the best radio station in Yankland. Just the fact that I found so many fantastic tunes from listening to them, even just for a few minutes, says a lot. Perhaps I also appreciate them more as radio stations are frequently appearing in the films I'm making...hehe.

Here's what I listened to and found!

Theme from

Mixed post today.  I watched all of 'Detectorists' on Netflix not too long ago and really enjoyed it.  It's a lovely, simple, gentle show about a couple of friends who are into metal detecting.  Great shots of the countryside and an easy, comforting, plot.  And I really liked the folky theme tune, which reminds me of some other theme tunes, so here we go -- a theme for the post, hah.  This is by Johnny Flynn:



Next, the theme to 'Family Tree' by Ron Sexsmith.  The show was cancelled after one season.  It was also pretty nice to watch, like 'Detectorists', but had a bit more going on. And it lacked the lovely scenery. 



And another -- I watched this cartoon with the kids and the track stood out -- it's by George Ezra, from the film 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt':



All of these remind me of Bibio.  And the general theme reminds me of this :) :

Twenty Eighteen

Well, the festive season is over, but it was a good one, for me anyway.  Some nice time to chill and do nothing of consequence, and I had the added benefit of the family leaving town, which meant I was actually on a proper vacation!  I used my time well, I must say -- did some record shopping and listened to some albums that I hadn't got round to, for one.  Christmas and New Year's is also full of great radio programming on 6 music, as well as the best of lists and articles all over the place.  To be honest, so far nothing's really stood out to me on the end of year lists, but I do need to check out some end of year podcasts as those discussions are usually pretty interesting.  And I'll have to try and at least listen to Thundercat's album, Drunk, as 6 music picked it as their album of the year.  If  you're looking for something to check out I recommend the end of year stuff by Jarvis and Gilles Peterson, as well as Tom Robinson's last show of the year, which is where I heard the next track. 

I've not listened to any Can really, but will try to now.  I really like this track, Vitamin C, and was surprised it was by Can -- it seems pretty contemporary, and it doesn't have the sound that I associate with krautrock -- probably cos that term is meaningless, and probably cos all pop music has already been made, or something.  It's from 1972!  That's when Bowie was Ziggy Stardust, and it's not long after the Beatles fell apart.  But it sounds so clean and fresh!  Impressive.



I've recently been opening up to new forms of listening to, experiencing, and enjoying music.  There's lots of ways to do it out there now; I still like my CD's, vinyl, and tapes, but streaming is alright too, and it's easy -- much better than owning or getting MP3's, etc.  So nowadays I might buy something on Bandcamp but then just stream it instead of actually downloading it.  Or I'll do online radio, youtube, see what's streaming at NPR, amazon, itunes.  And now I have yet another option, through my local library -- a service by the name of Hoopla, which is what I've been using to finally listen to Drake's mixtape, More Life.  I don't know what it is about Drake... I don't really care that much for his harder-sounding rap stuff, which mostly leaves me a bit bored. But I really like his more clubby music, and he seems to be really good at a certain romantic nostalgic sound -- the softer pop side in other words.  I like that he's into that, and that he's into different sounds from different places -- so he'll have references to Toronto's Caribbean community on his album, as well as English rappers like Giggs and Skepta.  And he'll give them credit too -- I really like this story about how being sampled for the track One Dance made a huge impact on Kyla.  So here's a few Drake tracks that give me the feels, as well as an amusing cover version (I couldn't find a way put up Get it Together, but check it out -- features an 18 year old singer from the Midlands, Jorja Smith, and housey production from South Africa):

"I had good intentions"

So since 2013 we've been blogging about Disclosure. It's funny to see how massive these brothers have become - MASSIVE. They're part of the mainstream in America, which is really saying something I think, for a dance act from the UK. But it goes to show how much ground house music has broken here in Yankland in recent years...and yes even though house music has been American all along, being born in the gay black scenes of Chicago.

For the last week or so I've been listening to both of Disclosure's albums. Laugh at me for writing this way late, way past when these albums have been released - but I don't care. "Settle" from 2013 really seems to be just 24/7 house, while "Caracal" is more pop and r&b focused. I won't post up the links to the songs here, since they're so well-known and easy to find, but my favourites from "Caracal" are "Jaded" (even though I think it has too many lyrics), "Good Intentions" (I infuse some Sufism into it) and the closing track "Masterpiece", which is a real surprise.

Excerpt from a pitchfork interview (laugh, I don't care):
"The thing that got us into garage was dubstep. And once you’re into dubstep, you just start tracing it back. Because dubstep is obviously stemmed from grime, and grime is from garage, and garage from house. That’s the path we found.
 

In college, I had loads of friends who were into grime and I went to grime and dubstep raves. After a while, DJs just started playing old house and garage records again! We were going to watch Oneman, Jackmaster, and Ben UFO, back in 2009, and those guys were dropping old-school garage records—every third song would be an absolute classic. And we had no idea what some of those songs were. That’s when we decided to buy all that stuff and learn about it. Just because we were 10 years old the first time around doesn’t mean we can’t listen to it now; even though we got to it late, we still discovered it naturally, through buying records."

Man, 2009 both seems like yesterday and also a really long time ago. Time is elastic, I've thought for a while now.