here we go.
i’ve long envied those who have narrowed down their musical tastes and areas of expertise. i come at this with too much love in my heart, a fucking musical dilettante: too many genres and areas to cover. i love everything, and most importantly I fucking love all the spaces in between. i’ll probably do this two or three times, just because the 25 can change hour by hour.
i won’t go into it here, but I’m going through some shit right now, so I’m going to list a bunch of stuff that I consider “pop”, which is to say that this is stuff that is constructed to create musical changes that elicit feelings – not so much texture, but clever math. unfortunately, at the moment i’m full of big feelings and super susceptible to emotional pop songs. Let’s talk about a few!
#1 – josh one “contemplation (king britt funke mix)” (electromatrix) – 2001
doc martin played this at flammable off a CDR. he knew I was high and gave me that great doc smile and “check this one out” knowing look. It built so slowly and it had THAT BEAT (it also showed up in kenny hawke’s “play the game”). It had everything I needed then and now – and then it keeps giving me new things. The samples. The bassline. The strings. And then the turn – all of a sudden it does one better and starts to lift you. It’s 10 minutes long and it would have been fine with me if it was an hour long. I never get tired of hearing it – or playing it. A fucking journey.
#2 - herbert & dani siciliano “leave me now” (soundslike) - 2001
i could have gone with a number of herbert tracks from this era but there’s something so thin and delicate about this. don’t get me wrong, i love a banger but i adore tracks like this that, well, i suppose you could play in a club but it’s so fragile and you really have to build down to it. it stands so well on it’s own though and it’s perfectly ok to never hear on a dancefloor. i do love house music for headphones.
#3 - hird “moving on” (DNM) 2004 - you’ll see a recurring theme here, thanks to my current state of mental health - i’m a sucker for breathy female vocals. i loved this whole album (and could have easily included the i’m-high-and-i-don’t-care anthem “i love you my hope”) but i’m going with this album closer that fucking aches. points awarded for the odd mid-section when it breaks into a different tempo and groove entirely, then seemingly abandons the detour to get back to it’s original thought.
#4 - martin venetjoki “really don’t stop (lawnchair generals remix)” (dust traxx) - 2005
LCG was my best friend’s project - we were roommates for a long time and almost all of the LCG records and remixes were made in my living room or spare bedroom. they way they worked, you’d hear a track or loop for days on end as it was all built up then pared down. i loved them all, but this remix was something special for me - the chords and the filtered vocal made it much moodier than anything they did before and after. and hearing it loud - i don’t like to go on about “drops”, but right around the 5 minute mark when it breaks down and then comes back 0 the vocal just melts and you can feel it roll down your spine. for the week or so that this was assembled in my house, i never got tired of it.
#5 - colder “to the music” (output) - 2005
a lot of post-punk and darker synth stuff in my background, so this felt perfect at the time. i’m a sucker for a musical real-time bio of women losing control (see also: the talking heads “and she was”) but more to the point, the drums and the bass guitar are perfect and the flat, disaffected vocal balance perfectly for a pop jam that should have blown up. insistent and pulsating. fucking loved it.
#6 - sebastian tellier “la ritournelle” (record makers) - 2005
nice to see we all agree on this one. i don’t even know what this song is - unclassifiable. it’s the lovechild of “maiden voyage” and “unfinished sympathy”. anyone with two ears and a heart loves this song. it’s the sound of hope.
#7 - escort “all through the night” (escort records) - 2007
a shambolic disco sex song? absolutely welcome at almost any time. also, the video is cute as hell - i used to play it for my lil’ kiddo at bedtime and really hoped they weren’t paying close attention to the lyrics. DJ connector tracks for different eras can be hard to find, especially ones that have as much bubble and energy as this - this can get you from loose and funky 70’s era disco jams up to modern house bangers with ease. a burst of wild feminine energy.
#8 a mountain of one “people without love” (AMO) 2007
this one hit me in the right ways at the right time. the drums are fantastic, and the hard/soft rant is arresting. i’ve been a cynical fucker my whole life and this song honestly made me question my approach and vibe - i want to trust, i want to love, i want to feel part of all of this. naturally. without drugs. this is a bit hippyish to my ears now, but i still love it and it’s not a lie to say that it didn’t change me in a small way. i love the laughter and applause at the end too. i didn’t follow AMO1 too closely after this as i felt like the first two EPs would be tough to top.
#9 - the shins “phantom limb” (sub pop) 2007
we’ve talked about this one before. it’s perfect - there’s enough mystery and familiarity and complexity and then - out of nowhere there’s a wordless singalong chorus that hides until over halfway through the song. i could have probably picked a lot of shins songs, but this one earned hundreds of replays over the years. can you imagine being able to write like this? unfathomable.
#10 - quixote “before i started to dance (prins thomas diskomix)” (versatile) 2008
i love a record like this - it bangs, but with effortless restraint. epitome of cool. never tries to be more than it should be. krautrock-like pulse. more wispy vocals - don’t get me wrong, i love a power vocal screamer - but things like this are my natural resting heart rate. great lyric too. this threads a tough needle for me - i feel like it’s connective tissue between house, post-punk, indie and that weird west coast cosmic desert sunburnt hippie vibe.
#11 - little dragon “feather” (peacefrog) 2009
no idea what yukimi is talking about, but i find it comforting and inspirational. again, it’s that voice. the music is great too, i’d love it if it were an instrumental, but there’s a reason that voice was all over everything for a while. sounds amazing loud.
#12 - fuck buttons “the lisbon maru” (ATP) 2009
somewhat funny that this is the only weatherall-adjacent track on here, considering my love and respect for the guy, because from everything i read, he only produced this by doing nothing more than standing back and going “fucking brilliant, guys”. as a young me, i loved punk rock but got quickly swept into the noise and experimental world (there was a great scene for it in portland) and tracks like this are sort of reminders of what’s possible when you’re trying to make a noise so unpossible you can only find it through discovery, not intention. fuck buttons found those noises, and then turned it into an anthemic march.
#13 - cos/mes “i_bizan (build the progressive band)” (ESP institute) - 2009
i love all cos/mes stuff, but this was the one that i used to sort of evangelize them, because everyone knows the soft cell sounds. cos/mes records sound better than pretty much everyone else’s. they sound great loud, they sound great quiet, and to use them in a DJ mix is complicated because they make whatever comes next pale in comparison. also, i love a record that commits to the triplet-swing feel. a bitch to mix, but such a different vibe.
#14 - the phenomenal handclap band “you’ll disappear” (friendly fire recordings) - 2010
what a fucking fun track. what a fucking fun band. i could do without the corny guitar solo, but i’m usually out of it by then. another shambolic, sweaty brilliant groove. and i love the lyric - so bold and silly for a first single. “we’re really good and once we get to the top, we’ll start acting like we don’t know when to stop”. one of those records i play for my non-hip friends and before you know it, everyone is smiling.
#15 - begin “elate” (begin) - 2013
a great example of soul in the machines. i love the way it feels almost unfinished, or like it was recorded in one pass. you can let it wash over you and then - out come the bleeps. just a couple of chords, but they’re the right ones, and they have that amazing effect of lowering your shoulders and relaxing your spine.
#16 - die verboten “E40” (deewee) - 2015
i heard a snippet of this on an online mix and had to have it - i felt like i paid too much money for it at the time, but it was money well spent. when i got it home i was shocked to find that there was like 5 more minutes of it, and none of it’s duration was wasted. the last time i was super high i was with a couple of rawk n’ roll pals, and i played this for them at full volume as we sat in swivelly tub chairs in the dark - every time a new layer appeared i’d hear one of them say “whoa”, almost involuntarily. whoa indeed.
#17 - erik blood “chase the clouds” (home skillet records) 2016
erik’s a local producer and used to be somewhat friends with my wife. i didn’t really pay much attention to him until my wife ordered this record to support, and after one listen i was hooked. and the video - powerful stuff. black gay shoegaze hip hop swirliness? i suppose, but it’s also intricate pop music with complex patterns and heartbreaking vibes. the album’s title track “lost in slow motion” is a lovely heartbreaker as well, but i wanted to go with this track instead.
#18 - lush “out of control” (4ad) 2016
a perfect chaser for the erik blood record. i fucking love lush and have since the first ep’s (i don’t love “lovelife”, but that’s ok). this is lush’s return after what, a 10 year hiatus? and it’s fucking lovely? amazing. i actually felt blessed by this album, it gave me faith that something once-loved and seemingly lost can reappear and be as beautiful as ever.
#20 - tornado wallace “voices” (running back) 2017
this track is everything. i was 7-17 in the 80’s and absorbed it all, and i hear elements of everything perfect in it. it’s dire straits, it’s peter gabriel, it’s wally badarou, it’s art of noise, it’s pat methany, and it just keeps morphing into new things. it’s relaxing and it’s sinister and it’s energetic and it can turn dark and it can return back to light. it’s one of those tracks that makes me want to give up on the possibility of making music because it’s already been done, the right way.
#21 - kelly lee owens “keep walking” (smalltown supersound) 2017
this album was a lovely discovery for me, as i had sort of forgotten about my love of non-organic music. in a sea of hand drum balearica and fender rhodes presets, this album sounded like cold glass and steel. and it was offset by kelly’s lovely breathy voice (i guess you could say i have a type). i played this a lot, and one day i caught my tiny kiddo (age 3) singing this to themselves in their room. i might have teared up a little bit.
#22 - mark barrott “point & figure” (running back) - 2018
i love mark and i especially loved this album, but this one track was one i often went back to, trying to figure out what it was and how he did it. i love the big warehouse drums. this is a little bit more abstract than the other tracks on this list, but after repeated listens i hear the structure and the hooks - another one i learn something from whenever i revisit it.
#23 - constantijn lange “elysian fields” (laut & luise) - 2019
house? minimal? tech house? fuck, i don’t know - i’m sure there’s a shitload of tracks that sound like this, but this one landed with me. it’s moody, it’s almost claustrophobic in the first half, and then it sort of let’s itself loose with little flourishes and an organ that holds it all together. the track that follows it on the album is a sort of ambient reprise, and i love the two of them together.
#24 - the zenmenn “salad bar” (music from memory) - 2021
like all of us, i love the MFM label, and for some reason decided to choose the least MFM-sounding record i know of. It’s lovely indie pop with hooks aplenty - and again, lyrics that dredge up all those teenage feelings. also, great track title.
#25 - mia doi todd “music life” (city zen records) - 2021
this was a big one for me - lyrically it said something i didn’t often see written about: how this thing that we all love can consume us (in one sense) and eat us up (in another sense). the love of music is a beautiful thing, and something that can easily be shared and help bond us, but the lifestyle will kill many of us, and the peace and thrill and comfort and community that we build and experience is often shared with pain and a sensitivity and vulnerability you don’t often see in other pursuits. mia’s “i loved you, i loved you” is a sort of mantra that i hear in my head more often than i should.
#26 - alex kassian “strings of eden” (pinchy & friends) - 2022
similar to begin’s “elate” this song feels like it’s going to do something that it never really does, but you find yourself fully at peace with it. one of those that we all listened to hundreds of times compulsively because there’s so much to learn from it - how to build a vibe without trying too hard, how to layer secrets in the sauce. i hear something new in it every time.
#27 - a.s.o. “rain down” (low lying records) - 2023
what a fucking song. a masterclass in how to build a vibe in the verses and then to knock them out in the chorus - throwing out a couple of bonus chords to add complexity. i was ready to pay any price for this, and then they luckily reissued it (and now it looks like the price has jumped again). amazing song, amazing production, so nice to hear someone make stuff like this in 2023. oh yeah, breathy vocals!
#28 - DOVs “vernal fall” (balmat) - 2005
another one where i love the whole album, but this track captures it all - and without drums. acid hooks, pulsing vibes. the 303 can sound so lonely, so mournful. for something so, uh, minimal, it packs so much melody into it’s sad little robot boops.
