What I Listened To: WILT_2022-48

WILT_2022-48

A playlist of songs that intrigued me from Sunday to Saturday. Week of 27 Nov 2022 to 3 Dec 2022.

  1. Time, Being – Jonny Nash, Suzanne Kraft
  2. Claudi – Laurence Guy
  3. I Eet – Bremer/McCoy
  4. Berlin 1 (Rework) – Oscar Jerome, Louis VI
  5. Cirklen – Bremer/McCoy
  6. The Difference (Jon Hopkins Remix) – Flume, Toro y Moi, Jon Hopkins
  7. Falaise – Floating Points
  8. Emerald Rush – Jon Hopkins
  9. As Long as You Follow – Fleetwood Mac
  10. You Make Loving Fun – Fleetwood Mac

Hyperlink to Spotify playlist: WILT_2022-48

Notes

Time, Being by Johnny Nash and Suzanne Kraft, Claudi by Laurence Guy, and I Eet by Bremer/McCoy all came out from a generated playlist radio based on WILT_2022-47.

I Eet in particular stood out the moment the double bass came on, and it continued to surge ahead as the piano came on. The interplay between the two musicians is incredible intimate, and full of note and technique choices that stem from wanting to give the listener aural pleasure. I think they play to please, and this comes off very strongly in this song in particular.

I’m not exactly sure how Berlin 1 and Cirklen came about, but the groove on Berlin 1 is excellent and also a wonderful accompaniment to day drinking, even though it probably entered my orbit while I was commuting to work, come to think of it. I vaguely remember the 16th notes on the double bass in Cirklen being one reason I was intrigued enough to add the song to this week’s playlist.

From there, I remember being fascinated with revisiting the work of Jon Hopkins. This arose because I found some old videos of myself attending some of the producer’s live DJ sets, and I remember always being blown away by the beats presented at his sessions. I wanted to see if I could find something similar and present them to the listeners of this playlist series.

In the end, I found The Difference (Jon Hopkins Remix) which is a fairly appropriate representation of what I think I remember. The beats are organic in that they feel like they respond according to the dynamics of the song. More than anything, they induce movement, which is one of the joys I always have on those big nights.

I tried to find more but I couldn’t. Still, in the process Falaise by Floating Points came on, and it was just brilliant. Staccatos and legatos lace this gorgeous soundscape, going nowhere till the trills surface and the promise of more erupts into silence and stillness.

Emerald Rush by Jon Hopkins enters the fray without hesitation. A poor mix and clunky follow-up at worst, but potentially what I was searching for in the complex beats that I lost my senses to. It sounds better when you are slightly inebriated.

Thursday morning, 1 December 2022, Robin informs me that Christine McVie of Fleetwwod Mac has passed on.

He shares As Long as You Follow as being one of his favourite tracks written and performed by Christine, with guitar work by Rick Vito instead of Lindsey Buckingham. An erstwhile anecdote, but it demonstrates the magic of McVie’s songwriting, in that it is almost universally brilliant songwriting, and arrangements find their way to well-written songs. The colours are always richer when the scaffold is sturdy enough for painters to paint on. And it’s true, the guitar work by Vito is brilliant, in that accompanies McVie’s perfectly understated vocal delivery with an equally impassioned yet underrated guitar performance. The recording is so held back that it almost burst from it’s own anticipation.

Or as I shared in my own lame tribute on Facebook. There was magic because you wrote the spells.

I select You Make Loving Fun as my frame of remembrance to Christine McVie. While it is also one of my favourite bass performances from John McVie, perhaps the honour goes to Christine for also crafting such a beautifully simple song that allows fellow musicians and band mates to interpret and arrange one of the most dynamically astounding pop-rock songs every written. From it’s half-time chorus, to minor to major coda section, it was probably the one of first songs to make me realise that simplicity was distilled complexity.