WILT_2021-08

A playlist of songs that intrigued me from Sunday to Saturday. Week of 21 Feb 2021 to 27 Feb 2021.

1. Lament I, “Birds Lament” (Instrumental) – Louis Hardin, Moondog
2. Glad – Andrew Bird
3. Abide – Minco Eggersman, Theodoor Borger, Óskar Guðjónsson
4. Offering – Ravi Shankar
5. Weeping Birch – Dan Deacon
6. THEEM AND VARIATIONS – Sam Gendel, Sam Wilkes
7. The Roots – Long Arms
8. Sunrise in Beijing – Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah
9. La Plus Belle Africaine (Live at Cote D’Azur, France, 28 July 1966) – Duke Ellington

Hyperlink to Spotify playlist: WILT_2021-08

Notes

I’ve been very bored of rock music recently. It’s slightly alarming because the genre has been a staple of my listening preferences for over two decades, but this past week I could barely stomach it. Whether it contained complex time signatures of progressive rock, or intensely brutal riffs signature of heavy metal, the idiotic frenzy of punk, or the stoner grooves of desert rock, everything in between sounded flat and tiresome as I tried listening to my old favourites or exploring new recommendations from various playlists.

Somehow I keep coming back to music featuring orchestral arrangements or classical instruments, to beats that come in the shape of jazz, afrobeat, or broken beat. I’m not turning my nose up at rock music and it’s probably just a phase or season. But with the right songs, I find myself drwoned in the melancholia of a consumed cellist, or lost in the forest of a marathon percussion solo. It’s difficult to visualise this sort of imagery in most rock music arrangements or instrumentation, and I suspect that’s one aspect of why I’m bored of rock music. Rock music relies on electric instruments to convey their energy and message, but in these other forms of music, the electricity is bio-electric. There is a certain electricity in the myriad of tones that comes in measured, self-contained instruments, but explode in a universe of creative chaos, ultimately settling on a particular order. Something I’ve been missing out on for a very long time.