POTW (2019/30): Mellow Indietronica

I found this week’s playlist of the week, Mellow Indietronica, randomly via Reddit. I can’t tell you anything about the curator, other than that they make a lot of electronica playlists.

Mellow Electronica

Not to worry, let’s talk about the music! This is mostly mellow electronica from artists with labels regarded as ‘independent’ (as if you couldn’t guess from the title). Guitars are not absent, but are secondary to the synths. The beats propel these tracks along and I’m feeling quite motivated listening. (Yes folks, I have even, finally, defrosted the freezer between listens. Don’t fall off your chair!) Without actually counting, I’d guess that 80% to 90% of the artists on this list were unfamiliar to me; the ones I already know fall mainly under the triphop banner, with the odd exception like Aphex Twin. (I’m probably showing my ignorance of the club scene here; there are some well-followed artists amongst the ones I don’t recognise.)

Goldilocks Zone

This playlist has found something of a Goldilocks zone, with music that’s not too fast or too slow, not too heavy or light, not too energetic or sleepy. Music that boosts your mood and helps you get things done. Or that you could play at a party where you want to be able to talk to your guests above the noise. Many of the tracks are danceable: Digitalism’s Utopia, Soulwax’s Close to Paradise and This Mystic Morning (Dub) by The Darkside with its Madchester-style vibes being just a few examples. Another remarkable thing about this list is that, while only a handful of artists appear more than once, it sounds very coherent. (I have my suspicions that the curator is some sort of DJ).

Warp Factor 5

There’s an audible early ’90s ‘Warp factor’ – the influence of Warp Records, that is. A certain quirkiness and originality gives their presence away. It’s hardly surprising when you consider that a number of the artists represented have been through Warp or a subsidiary label. And let’s face it, what electronic artist isn’t to some extent influenced by the iconic label’s back-catalogue?

Duration: 14h 28min, 163 songs

Rating: PG. The curator has produced a playlist that’s almost completely clear of ‘explicit’ labelled tracks. There were lyrics I didn’t catch, though, and not all artists and labels label their tracks accurately.

Perfect for: study or work, if you don’t find the tempo a little too fast. Otherwise, this playlist is a good all-rounder that you could use to motivate you or as background noise for your party.

POTW (2019/22): Instrumental imaginaries and Atmospheric Architects

This week’s playlist of the week is Instrumental imaginaries and Atmospheric Architects. It’s a wonderfully varied relaxing playlist that journeys across genres and is all instrumental, as the title indicates. It takes in classic rock, disco, funk, classical, folk, psychedelic, epic and ambient styles – amongst others! A constant is the high quality of the tracks selected and how they conjure up images in your imagination. Artists featured range from household names like Jamiroquai and Jean-Michel Jarre to the relatively obscure and label-free.

Mat Champney of The Mighty Fallen is the curator; he also curated another recent POTW: Silent River. (There’s a little about the band in that article, and you can also hear one of their tracks in this playlist).

I found this particular playlist rather immersive. It’s one you might prefer to actively listen to, without attempting to concentrate on something else at the same time. (It works quite well for that, too, though.) I did find myself just disappearing into the music at times and floating off somewhere remote in my mind.

Duration: 3h 56min ; 57 songs

Rating: U, fit for all listeners. Whilst I wouldn’t expect that to change, this being a relaxing instrumental playlist and all, if you are at all concerned about explicit content, put the filter on. Then you won’t need to worry about dubious lyrics appearing while eg your mum is within earshot!

POTW (2019/21): Electronic Independent

Electronic Independent, this week’s Playlist of the Week, is more upbeat than what I’ve brought you the last couple of times. It’s another playlist that features independent artists, but it has a different focus. This one centres around tracks with pumping beats for the gym or the dancefloor (without ending up in hardcore EDM territory). It could help keep you alert on a long drive, or motivate you to keep going while cleaning the house. (I’m thinking of a few jobs I should be doing).

As with most playlists, there is the odd curveball; you might notice an 80s-style throwback with a busy, funky bass-line (e.g. Toy Shoulders’ Eternull), or a blues-swing jazz track (Hey Buffalo!’s Duele). Generally, the sound is fairly chart-orientated, though.

Electronica Independent features several tracks from Ce Ce Hemmings, the playlist’s curator, a.k.a. Hemmingway, who I’ve mentioned before. There’s also an abundance of energetic tracks from other fab electronic artists like Lyia Meta, Fans of Jimmy Century, Bufinjer, etc. And Flavolous, who I had the pleasure of meeting and hearing live at Sonophilia last year, is also present with Favela Flair.

Duration: 4h 12min / 61 songs

NB: I listen to Spotify with ‘explicit’ songs filtered out. There is one such track on this list at the time of writing, and I haven’t heard it! If you think this may be an issue, please apply the filter on your account before listening.

POTW (2019/20): Soft Calm

This week, we have Soft Calm, curated by singer-songwriter Barry McLoughlin as our Playlist of the Week. I’ve featured two of Barry’s playlists before – his Acoustic Treasures and Winter Wanderer playlists, and there’s a bit more about him in the first of those two articles.

Soft calm is a collection of songs that are gentle on the ears. Moving between jazzy, cool, spacey and just plain beautiful sounds, this is a really lovely relaxing listening experience that can just as easily be used as background music for all-day work, creativity or reading.

Duration: 11h / 179 songs.

NB: I listen with Spotify’s ‘explicit’ song filter switched on. There are a few tracks labelled explicit on this list, but I haven’t heard them! If those tracks are likely to bother you, please make sure you have the filter switched on in your own account before listening.

POTW (2019/19): Making Waves

This week’s playlist of the week is Making Waves, courtesy of Skyline Tigers, a fab singer, songwriter and producer who also features in the playlist. Making Waves has been on my schedule of playlists to review for quite a while – I must have first heard it late last year.

A moody, grey sea and a grey-blue sky. Waves are crashing towards you, one of the Farne Islands is in the distance behind the last wave.

POTW is a few days late this week as I got ‘kidnapped’ to some beautiful places on the Northumbria coast by some lovely people from my church for the Bank Holiday weekend. I returned to a backlog of stuff-to-do, some of it related to taking excessive numbers of photos while away. (Also see my post on Overwhelm – I still haven’t got anywhere near being through everything I was trying to do that week!). Yeah, I know, excuses, excuses. Will try to do better next week.

Anyway, the playlist has been my companion today for a serious clear-up of my kitchen (it needed it, believe you me). The tone is chilled, but not the sleepy kind, as there are driving beats at times, and there are songs peppered throughout, which provide more focus. There are 80s overtones at times, but not overdone. A couple of favourite tracks from today’s listen: Skyway Meadows from Nicky Havey, a drum and bass piece that’s gentle for the genre, and Skyline Tigers’ own track Home (Wane of Summer Remix). Or her track Moonlight Sea, which has hip hop tendencies, eastern overtones and almost demands you start dancing around in time to it. (Or is that just me? The comments section is there for a reason…)

Do please show Skyline Tigers lots of love as she’s been going through a rough time lately with a major illness and is now recovering. She was still supporting other indie artists while she was in the thick of it, which is pretty hardcore in my book. Major respect!

POTW (2019/15): Electronic Kaleidoscope Lounge

This week’s Playlist of the Week is one I’ve been meaning to cover for ages, but somehow didn’t get round to. (I had to triple-check I hadn’t already written about it and still can’t quite believe I hadn’t already made it a POTW, it’s that good.)

The playlist in question is Electronic Kaleidoscope Lounge, from New Element Music, aka Manu Salamanca, an independent musician originally from France, who has also trained in Cuba. Manu works as a professional drummer and percussionist, but since 2017 he has been releasing classically influenced electronica under the name of New Element Music and gathering a steadily growing audience for this project. You can hear a couple of his tracks, The Crossing and Duo Apart in this list.

If I had to use one word to describe this playlist, it would be ‘cool’: it’s full of quirky, jazzy electronica with a club vibe. It’s reasonably uptempo, and the tracks tend to be rhythmically strong, but the playlist could still be used as a background to working or in a waiting room, because of its chilled-out loungy flavour. The ‘kaleidoscope’ in the title seems to be a reference to how the playlist gathers together music with influences from anywhere and everywhere in the world. It’s also almost exclusively comprised of tracks from independent musicians.

There’s really not a great deal more to say about this list, apart from pointing out Manu Salamanca’s great taste in the track selection, how well it flows and how current it sounds. This one really is a must-listen, so I’ll shut up now and let you get on with it!

NB: One or two tracks in this list are labelled ‘explicit’. To avoid these, you can set your Spotify account preferences via a mobile device. (You can’t set this on the desktop app, but contrary to the published advice from Spotify, my experience is that the setting applies to your account when you use other devices after it’s set on the mobile app).

POTW (2019/13): Ryan's Roadtrip

Ryan’s Roadtrip, this week’s Playlist of the Week, is the personal favourite tracks of Ryan Doherty, an independent artist who lives in Birmingham, England. Ryan is a fantastic guitarist and you can hear several of his recordings in the playlist, notably For Another Way with its haunting gravelly vocal and beautifully layered guitars.

Ryan’s Roadtrip mostly comprises classic tracks from the mainstream, however, and covers grunge, rock, blues, britpop, triphop, electronica and pop (with the odd curveball thrown in). The emphasis is firmly towards guitar-oriented rock music (noting that Marillion occupies approximately 10% of this playlist’s tracks) but there are also tracks from Enigma, Massive Attack and Gabrielle Aplin, which balance out the mix. It’s a good list for playing in the car, as the name suggests!

Rating: 15 (there are a couple of tracks designated ‘explicit’ in this list).

POTW (2019/12): The Four Seasons

This week’s Playlist of the Week is another one of those playlists that ‘does what it says on the label’. That is to say, that Dmitry Golubovsky has compiled a selection of tunes about weather and the seasons, which kicks off with three of his own minimal electronica pieces, which, if I’m not mistaken, are all variations on a theme.

Genre wise, the playlist leans mainly towards classical, neo-classical and gentle electronica instrumentals (as you might expect from an artist who produces this sort of music himself) but there are exceptions, including a few songs with lyrics. It’s the kind of playlist you could easily listen to in your office or while reading a book without the music distracting too much of your attention.

POTW (2019/10): Lo-fi Triphop / Chill / Dubstep

This week, we have this gem of a Trip-hop playlist by Leg Puppy for your listening pleasure. Leg Puppy are a subversive British punktronica band with a lot to say about current western culture, including smartphones, selfies and the closure of smaller music venues. (That last one might just be a UK thing?)

Leg Puppy’s superpower is nailing exactly what is wrong with the world, and not holding back from telling us how it is, whilst injecting the message with a shot of raw humour. Being rather direct, they won’t be to everyone’s taste, but, as Left Bank Mag have said, they are ‘fascinatingly entrancing’. This gift of lifting the covers on Pandora’s empty box and giving us a run down on what went wrong perhaps explains their love of the triphop genre, itself often a healthy source of social commentary. Some of Leg Puppy’s electronic tracks do lean in towards the triphop genre and probably my favourite of these, Black Light, is included here. Silence 23, their recent collaboration with Ceiling Demons, is reminiscent of some of the more menacing sounding tracks that Massive Attack and Tricky have produced over the years.

This playlist avoids the most obvious triphop choices, often picking edgier tracks that fit their own band’s sound and songs from obscurer artists. (There are exceptions: Massive Attack’s gorgeous collaboration with Hope Sandoval, The Spoils, made the cut). There’s a distinctly dystopian flavour pervading much of the selection and, as its name suggests, it has been spiked with some dub and chill, which vary the mood, helping to avoid it getting overly heavy.

Rating: PG (Some tracks are labelled ‘explicit’).

POTW (2019/8): Classic Electronic Music

This week’s selection for Playlist of the Week is ‘Classic Electronic Music’ by Spotify user ‘lodolf’. It focusses in on the more melodic and cinematic side of electronica, which has roots in classical and orchestral music. In fact, some of the pieces included are actually classical orchestral music being played on synths, e.g. Synclassica’s renditions of Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi and so on. Another notable piece is Arvo Pärt’s moving minimal work, Spiegel im Spiegel.

There is a lot to like here. This is a well thought out playlist of instrumental music, with selected pieces of electronica from the 1970s onwards. There were a few surprises – I didn’t expect to hear ABBA’s Arrival or, for that matter, any Bowie. (Benny Andersson of ABBA also snook in again with his cinematic Skallgång.)

That insistence on shying away from the obvious is one of the playlist’s major assets – it includes a generous smattering of emerging artists, examples being Easily Embarrassed, Bassic, Animobo, Firechild, Didymos, and the list goes on. This led me to discover at least a handful of artists who weren’t even near my radar, let alone on it.

If I’m going to be really picky, this playlist focusses a bit too heavily on certain artists, albeit with some heavy hitters fitting that category, such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis and Tangerine Dream. That has not taken away from this playlist being a thoroughly enjoyable listen, however, as the ‘over-represented’ artists are all fantastic.