Freetown Sound is one of the biggest surprises of 2016, and I’ve felt tongue-tied every time I listen. This album is a violent rush of pop mastery, the kind of cultural explosion that’s rarely matched with such slick and catchy production. It’s difficult to talk about.
What I do know is that Blood Orange has somehow conjured the urgency of Kendrick Lamar’s American dystopia and the defiant fantasia of Beyoncé’s Lemonade while sounding like no one but himself.
As I was mixing tracks tonight, I felt like writing down a bit of what was happening in my head. It’s a brief glimpse but it’s real. What follows is written chronologically.
This is what I said about the mix in question: “I’m trying to contextualize some of the jazz that leads me into modern stuff like techno, balearic, and vaporwave.”
Randomer’s Running Dry is a brand new EP from a label I’ve come to love over the past couple months, Dekmantel. Not only have they released a pair of the best progressive techno 12″s from Danish producer Central; they’re sending out some of the most innovative short-form music I’ve heard all year in the form of their new UFO series. This little release is the best so far.
I only mention current events in these weekly posts to give context to the words I write and the music I share. The circumstances in which we listen are important. Music might help buffer the hardness of the world, but he world informs it all the same.
That being said, I don’t even know what to say about what’s happening in America lately. Everyone seems to have lost hope. I know it’s not true, but dark attitudes are in the wind. I’m doing my part to remind those around me that things can and do get better. The fact that there’s always beautiful new music is enough proof for me.
This week I’ve only got two things to talk about, but they’re really important to me: Sade and the new Miles Davis biopic, Miles Ahead.
Wolf Müller and Cass created a hybrid that I never knew I needed: the perfect meeting point between new age and balearic synth music. Sure, it takes off from sounds that I’m familiar with, but the result is an otherworldly journey that lasts far longer than its slim 39 minute run time suggests.
Before today, I never realized that literary hero Hunter S. Thompson and my own mother shared a birthday. Not the exact same day, mind; they were born 13 years apart. Although both of these wonderful people are gone, their presences loom large in my life every single day.
Optimistic Underground 