POTW (2019/18): Instrumental Chill Out Gems

This week, our Playlist of the Week is Jon Magnusson’s Instrumental Chill Out Gems.

I’ve featured some of Jon Magnusson’s playlists in the past, as he is the artist who started the ‘Monster Thread’ movement which started with The Monster Thread playlist and developed into a platform for indie artists to support each other, collaborate and share knowledge of the industry so we can all benefit from each other’s experience. (For more about Jon, read post on The Monster Thread).

This is another playlist that does what it says. Instrumental Chill Out Gems starts out with Chet Atkins’s Maybelle, a folky guitar piece with a hill-billy ragtime flavour, then moves into modern classical piano territory with Yiruma’s River Flows in You, before featuring independent artists like Tommy Berre, Kip LaVie and some of Jon Magnusson’s own guitar-based pieces.

This collection of pieces frequently features solo acoustic guitars and pianos, and would be perfect for waiting rooms or reading, as it is very calm, without being particularly sleep-inducing. (It’s probably still too calm for playing behind the wheel, though). There are also laid back rock pieces, jazz, downtempo electronica and ambient tracks, plus an occasional foray into epic orchestral music.

Duration: 87 songs, 5h 10min. (Subject to change, of course).

Rating: PG. I would have rated this as U, were it not for the inclusion of Alessandros Kilias’s piece ‘My Idea’, which has some spoken samples from the film The Indestructible Man, including the threat ‘I’m going to kill you’, which I imagine may not be suitable for very small children.

Playlist of the Week (2018/47)

Playlist of the Week No 47, 2018: Instrumental Awesome by Bruce Forst
This week’s POTW comes from Bruce Forst, the person behind the artist Brusalan. There isn’t a lot of information available about Brusalan online, but what is there seems to suggest that he is trying to make music from ‘happy accidents’, making music experimentally and choosing the parts that turn out to be pleasing to his ears.

The playlist is ‘what it says on the tin’!

 

Playlist of the Week (2018/40)

POTW-2018-40-NickTempest 600x900

Our POTW this Monday, Relax Soul, comes from Mirko Consoli, otherwise known as the singer Nick Tempest.

Nick’s from Sicily, Italy, and takes the second half of his stage name from the lead singer of the 80s rock group “Europe”. (Incidentally, that singer’s name, Joey Tempest, is also a pseudonym – he’s really Rolf Larsson). 

Nick says his love of music stems from his childhood, when he was particularly struck by Power Metal and West Coast AOR, which he loves for their sense of melodic power. But  these are not the only genres that he says have made an impact on his own musical direction – he also cites Celtic and Italian influences, particularly the popular Italian singer-songwriter Amedeo Minghi

Nick’s self taught on the guitar and keyboard and can sing in six different European languages. His music is pop; the best description I can manage is that it’s a kind of cross between 80s-inspired Euro-synthpop and that easy-listening – almost crooning – style of classical music. Kind of Julio Iglesias crossed with Pet Shop Boys with a bit of light opera thrown in, very loosely speaking. I can certainly hear Minghi’s influence on his style, having checked out a selection of his music for the purposes of writing this article.

Back to the playlist: it’s a collection of soundtrack, filmscore-esque and instrumental music, with the aim of being relaxing to listen to. (Obviously – the clue is in the title.)  Piano features quite often and Nick’s included a generous sprinkling of lesser-known artists in the mix, too. The overall result of his work putting this together is a great playlist for listening to when you have tasks that you need to really focus on without being distracted by lyrics. Equally, it makes a great late-night playlist for de-stressing before sleep.