Deep Voices - Playlist #7
Weird mix here. Antsy week. Couldn’t quite nail down a specific vibe for the mix, as I couldn’t nail one down for myself. I did most of this in small bursts while my baby was napping or bouncing in his chair. He’s happy most of the time, but so much of the music I like is sad. It’s strange to square the difficulty of the isolation of quarantine with the radiating bliss that comes beaming out of this guy. Since Renzo was born in February, I’ve experienced just about every emotion on the spectrum, oftentimes all at once. My wife will tell me she knows how I feel based on what I’m listening to (“I know you’re sad when you put on Wicca Phase,” she said to me recently.) Usually I try to mimic my feelings with music, but sometimes I try to have the music act as a sort of change agent. There always a positive feeling in the house when I play Jeanette’s “In the Morning.” It’s pure pop, but it has that tinge of longing that I love, too, like like the morning is a time of celebration because she got through the night. For sadder times, Movietone’s “Blank Like Snow” (which is not on Apple Music is barely there and appropriate for the recent days where I am grasping for purpose, where I have felt like I didn’t exist. “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” is a classic, but also a message I have recently learned only gets you so far. There are some shoes you just can’t wear.
Playlist notes:
Apple Music is back. Thanks to everyone who let me know they were missing that.
Luis is a one-time pseudonym of DJ Python. The four songs he put on this EP are more nervous than the music he has released since. They feel about struggling to find happiness, whereas his music as Python feels about celebrating getting there.
The Jean Binta Breeze album is downright astonishing. Produced by Dennis Bovell. Give that a listen if you have the time.
If you like the Wally Badarou song, perhaps you’d like to own this press photo I’ve had on my eBay watch list for the better part of a year.
I reviewed Cybe’s album for Pitchfork back in 2017. It got a 7.8. I complained on Twitter recently that my upstairs neighbor’s saxophone playing in quarantine has not gotten better over the course of the five months we’ve been subjected to it leaking through the ceiling. Someone asked me, jokingly, what I would rate it. I said that was no longer my job. But it would definitely get like a 2.0. A for effort though.