WILT_2023-19

A playlist of songs that intrigued me from Sunday to Saturday. Week of 7 May 2023 to 13 May 2023.

1. the ordinary is ordinary because it ordinarily repeats – Jonah Yano, BADBADNOTGOOD
2. Vanish, Memoria – Shuta Hasunuma, Greg Fox, 石塚 周太 (Shuta Ishizuka)
3. Kenneth – Little Dragon
4. (If You Don’t Leave) The City Will Kill You – High Pulp, Daedelus
5. I’m The President – KNOWER
6. Overtime – KNOWER
7. Thinking (Live Sesh) – Louis Cole
8. More – MAJULAH WEEKENDER, Fauxe, Shye
9. Junun – Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, The Rajasthan Express
10. Allah Elohim – Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, The Rajasthan Express
11. Hu – Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, The Rajasthan Express
12. Hyperballad (Live) – Björk
13. Talk to God – Goat
14. Words – Goat
15. Go Your Own Way (Live) – Fleetwood Mac
16. Tusk (Live) Fleetwood Mac
17. Utopia Reimagined: house – weish
18. Ai Cũng Làm Được – Puppy Ri0t
19. Backslider – Pigeon
20. Of Schlagenheim – black midi
21. bmbmbm – black midi

Hyperlink to Spotify playlist: WILT_2023-19

Notes

Part of the reason I keep these journals is to remember how I access music, and explore how that shapes my listening and exploratory biases. My hope is that this will allow me to have some sort of higher appreciation for the music I listen to, as well as the music I am exposed to, and also understand why I still enjoy the act of listening and experiencing music.

This past week has been quite an interesting journey because I get to share another way I access music with you the reader. When that happens I will let you know.

the ordinary is ordinary because it ordinarily repeats by Jonah Yano and BADBADNOTGOOD came on while I was driving. The saxophone and piano arrangements and solos were spellbinding and dissonant, as if uncomfortable with banality and struggling to break out. Whether they succeed or not depends on your interpretation. 

Vanish, Memoria by Shuta Hasunuma, Greg Fox, 石塚 周太 (Shuta Ishizuka) is a great electronic piece that evokes many spirits of early electronica. They synth arrangements and glitchy drum and bass beats, now paired with a novel guitar arrangement really elevate this music form. According to his bio, Shuta Hasamuna (b.1983) is a Japanese artist and composter. He is the founder of the contemporary philharmonic orchestra Shuta Hasunuma Philharmonic Orchestra, which has performed in numerous concert halls throughout Japan and released the album ANTHROPOCENE (2018).

Kenneth by Little Dragon came on as one of the recommended new releases. Hot dang, this is Little Dragon back to some kind of funky form and I am all for it. Whenever that baseline comes on, I have so much fun with how it swaggers forwards with a sort of cheerful exuberance, and then Yukimi Nagano’s vocals bathe any sort of happiness with sunshine.

‌(If You Don’t Leave) The City Will Kill You by High Pulp and Daedelus sounds like some kind of strange movie dream. There are scenes playing in your head, but they are also very random with no seeming meaning. Musically, the electronic arrangements by Daedelus add a layer of witchcraft in between the landscape that High Pulp have painted. The spores of this electronic genius permeate heavily and oppress the listener with a very uncomfortable dread that I am not sure could ever be replicated by non-electronic instruments.

Okay, this is the point where you the reader can choose how you want to journey the path I walked.

You can either continue listening, or perhaps watch some of the live performances that I fell into a rabbit hole watching. Sometimes on my weekly journeys I meander into videos of music. Sometimes I discover new music, sometimes I am nostalgic of my favourite performances or music videos, sometimes I immersed in the live performance. The takeaway is that music can also take other forms, or there are also other elements that can contribute to the enjoyment of music.

Tusk, Utopia Reimagined: house, Ai Cũng Làm Được, Backslider, and Of Schlagenheim were not watched initially and were added the the playlist in the traditional fashion.

If you choose to watch through the next section, this is the playlist: Hyperlink to WILT_2023-19 Watchlist. I will also be providing notes for the watchlist and then following it up with the rest of the notes for this playlist.

I’m The President by KNOWER came on as a thumbnail featuring Genevieve Artadi in an oversized t-shirt, presented in a somewhat low fidelity video setting. I had seen the name KNOWER somewhere before as well, so I was curious enough to click on it. As I watched, I was mesmerised by the visual treatment, scale of the performers involved, and humour injected into this live performance recording. It was not until the credits rolled that I realised I had heard of Louis Cole, Sam Gendel, and even Sam Wilkes.

This would be the start of a journey exploring music through recorded live performances. I watched through Overtime and Thinking, and by now I was on a high with Louis Cole’s music. I started to think of Singaporean parallels to this producer extraordinaire, and I decided to check out live performances of Fauxe and I came across this performance of More with Fauxe and Shye. After that, I wanted to check out more live performances of Shye, but what also ended up in my search results were the documentations of Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood and the Rajasthan Express. Here we would highlight Junun, Allah Elohim and Hu, all of which are spellbinding examples of the coalescing creativity between masters of their crafts.

The creativity of Lous Cole and Jonny Greenwood then set me on search for the creativity of Björk. I remembered that there was a live performance of Hyperballad that she performed at Coachella 2023 that I wanted to watch. However, brilliant as it was, I was actually nostalgic for an arrangement that was closer to what was originally recorded, so I sought that out. From Björk’s costumes, it set me on another nostalgic path to seek out the performances of Goat.

Watching Goat perform live has to be an incredible moment. The shamanistic energy evokes a primal surge to dance, chant, lose yourself in a swirl of consciousness. From the brilliance and free-flowing power of Goat’s music, I then pined for Fleetwood Mac’s music because it was a balance of tight song craft yet it could also derail itself at a moments notice to surge incessantly towards wonderful crescendos. Go Your Own Way and Tusk are wonderful examples of this.

There is a live performance of FOR HiM BiSH this is included here but not in the Spotify playlist because it was included a few weeks back. However, this is one of my favourite performances of the song. The performance is very flawed in that all the singers are quite pitchy, the guitar solo awkwardly finds it footing at the start, but ultimately, this performance is about artists trying their best to achieve something even if they do not. If you are not fussed about perfection, maybe you might understand what I mean.

At the end of this watchlist is bmbmbm by black midi. This discovery was made a few days later after my time in the rabbit hole. bmbmbm was a thumbnail for me, but watching the performance was quite transformative. The musicians and performers were visceral and pained, almost reaching out from the screens though their instruments.

We resume the playlist with Weish’s Utopia Reimagined: house. I had been meaning to check this track out this week ever since learning that she had a new single. Utopia Reimagined: house is a triumph with its bold vocal arrangements and imaginative beats. In fact, it probably is one of the most adventurous arrangements I have heard out of Singapore in a very long while. I am looking forward to more from Weish as she finds the space she occupies on the global music stage.

Listening to Weish made me long for more Southeast Asia representation in music. So I stumbled across a rEmPiT gOdDe$$ mix the NTS Radio Show, Eastern Margins. However, one track really stood out for me, and that was Puppy Ri0t’s Ai Cũng Làm Được. This is a huge gabber track and it is so brazenly obnoxious that it will have you foot stomping along with the beat.

Backslider by Pigeon is a new one. If you remember back when I discovered Pigeon I was in quite the awe. Listening to this, I still am. The groove is smooth but with enough grit to keep it funky. It really is the sensation of eating a creamy blue cheese where it is both refined and vulgar at the same time. Pair with that how you will.

And before we end off the playlist, Of Schlagenheim is really the perfect song to precede bmbmbm by black midi, so I thought to just add that in.