WILT_2023-03

A playlist of songs that intrigued me from Sunday to Saturday. Week of 15 Jan 2023 to 21 Jan 2023.

1. Plasma – Perfume
2. Us Ephemeral – Vitesse X
3. Time Goes By – Take Van
4. 999 – Prince Innocence, Harrison
5. Nothing Left To Lose – Everything But The Girl
6. Makes Me Feel Good – R Plus, Faithless, Amelia Fox
7. Love Will Tear Us Apart (Tensnake Extended Remix) – R Plus, Amelia Fox, Tensnake
8. My Boy (Rollo & Sister Bliss Remix) – R Plus, Dido, Rollo, Sister Bliss
9. This Girl Is Gone – R Plus, Faithless, Amelia Fox
10. Reverence – Faithless, Rollo Armstrong, Sister Bliss

Hyperlink to Spotify playlist: WILT_2023-03

Notes

I’m typing this entry from a room in my Father-in-law’s childhood home in Penang, Malaysia. Every year, we visit my Father-in-law’s mother for the Lunar New Year, global pandemics aside.

I’m not quite sure how to approach this yet, but I figure I’ll just start typing and see what happens. I had initially started putting this playlist together last Sunday, but by the Wednesday of the week, I don’t think there’ll be any more new music to add because we are rather busy with travel preparations, familial duties and activities.

If I were think back, I did have a small inclination to continue exploring the sounds of electronic dance music. Hikaru Utaka’s One Last Kiss remains a ghost for me this week as I am haunted by the blend of musicality and melody that permeates that song. It is a brilliant vocal performance that could exist on its own, yet it’s also arguable that the electronic flourishes also enhance it.

I suppose I’ve been chasing that sound this past week. A marriage between organic and synthetic.

Plasma by Perfume sort of came up on Sunday evening and there was something about the vapourware sounds that guided me to add it as the first song on the playlist. Perhaps more would follow.

Us Ephemeral by Vitesse X did stand out with its 90’s vibe electronica and dance.

Time Goes By by Take Van is catchy, and a worthy listen with its drum and bass inspired beats and cocktail summer lyrics and vocal performance.

When the Fender Rhodes comes on, you almost think it’s Praise You by Fatboy Slim, but 999 takes you on a different journey, one that meanders or hovers in between vibes rather than the typical arrangements of contemporary mainstream music.

Nothing Left To Lose by Everything But The Girl came on. I had seen a few friends talk about this on social media, who had also shared the music video. I was distracted by the video because it reminded me too much of Jungle’s creative vision, but the song itself is an achievement. There’s a maturity in the music that manifests itself as confidence and taste. Whether it’s through vocal performances, lyrical content, or musicality and arrangement, this is the special sauce that makes some more experienced musicians extremely captivating, and indelibly exciting too, because they are still pushing boundaries, quite possibly at a pace where they’re the only ones in the race.

From there, the music of R Plus or Rollo Armstrong of Faithless started to dominate my musical explorations and thus this week’s playlist. The techno and trance arrangements are nostalgic and warm, but still contain the pulsing energy that inspires movement, liberation, and freedom. 

Everything caps off to where I think it could have started. I decided to put on Faithless’s (RIP Maxi Jazz) first album, Reverence (1996) and from its very first song, Reverence takes you to church with prolific poetry, a perfect mix of electronic dance music elements like trance, techno, and combined with a heady mix of dub, reggae, and Indian classical. It’s amazing the ideas that were coming out of this group and they deserve every celebration and rightfully so.