Dinner Music 122: The weekly lineup
avant-pop, cosmic disco, experimental jazz
This week we’re listening to after dark music. Albums for dancing, for riding around a city’s center at midnight, for drinking cocktails in a lounge with no windows. The first signs of warmth and sun are showing, instantly putting me in a hopeful mood. We’re having fun, we’re grooving.
We begin with António Joaquim Rodrigues Ribeiro, better known by his stage name of António Variações, a pioneering Portuguese musician subject, even now, to academic study (in 2024, a university on Portugal organized a colloquium entitled ‘Looking back, thinking forward' – Variations around António’) for his influence and cultural impact as one of the first openly queer figures in Portuguese society (like Bibi Andersen in Spain, featured in 112). Anjo da guarda crossed fado, a traditional Portuguese musical style which translates to “destiny,” and contemporary pop-rock sounds and newly emerging electronic styles (note the synths on “…O corpo é que paga”), making it one of the first albums from the region to experiment with electronic music. The sound of “Visões-ficções (Nostradamus)” calls to mind Patrick Cowley (featured in 100 and in 2023) and the legacy of queer musicians that have pushed (and continue to push) innovation in music. Both died in their thirties from HIV/AIDS complications. From António on why he changed his name: Variações is a word that suggests elasticity, freedom. And that is exactly what I am and what I do in the field of music. What I sing is heterogeneous. I don't want to follow one style. I am not limited. I am concerned with doing things in different styles.
We move into Şatellites and their self-titled debut album, whose sound also pulls from traditional sound—Turkish in their case—in songs that both pay homage and modernize the Anatolian folk and psych legacy. The six-person group came together around the saz, or bağlama, a long-necked stringed instrument native to rural areas of Turkey (you can see it in this video of the band performing live for Worldwide FM), that carries a twangy, yet down-to-earth resonance, you’ll recognize the sound from other groups influenced by Anatolian psych, like Altın Gün or Khruangbin (like on the track Maria También).
Next, we have classic glam disco from Frenchman Patrick Juvet. This is squarely located in the tradition of Studio 54 disco — hot, sweaty, immanent. It calls to mind a passage from Dancer From the Dance by Andrew Holleran (there is no novel that describes dancing and clubbing better): “There was a sweet moment when their faces blossomed into the sweetest happiness…when everyone came together in a single, lovely communion that occurred around six-thirty in the morning, when they took off their sweat-soaked T-shirts and screamed because Patty Jo had begun to sing: ‘Make me believe in you, show me that love can be true.’” If you’re looking for some transcendental disco, start here.
With Shotnez’s Dose A Nova, we enter into a velvet lounge wherein you listen to something like jazz as it unfolds, slowly and with precision, the influences accumulating like rain as it falls, a soft sprinkle, then a deluge. The record interweaves chord structures and scales from the east and west, calls into its arms the sounds of “tuareg desert blues, Ethiopian-jazz, 1950's Afro Cuban recordings, surf- rock and folk from across the East Mediterranean basin.”1 Interestingly, however, the group cites Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly as a source for endless inspiration.
We end with an album with a personal story attached. My pals Charlotte and Ian returned from Japan a few weeks ago and came by Howards while I DJed (as 1/2 of Horse Opera) and surprised me with Carla Bley’s Dinner Music, which I’d never come across before and was absolutely shocked and ecstatic to receive. From a review: “First excursion on a funky trail, executed immaculately. Near essential.”
Enjoy.
The playlist: Spotify / Apple Music
Paid subscribers have access to the full Dinner Music archive (via Spotify and Apple Music), an after hours playlist, a “New York Grooves” playlist and more — hundreds of hours of groove, soul, jazz, folk, samba, hi-life, disco, electro, post-punk, funk and more, lovingly selected.
Monday
Anjo da guarda - António Variações (1983)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Tuesday
Şatellites - Şatellites (2022)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
Paris by Night - Patrick Juvet (1978)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
Dose A Nova - Shotnez (2022)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Friday
Dinner Music - Carla Bley (1977)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Pair with
Bright green spring pasta. Sneaky vegetables! This is sort of like pesto but a bit more green-tasting, with kale, leeks and parsley as sauce base.
Sparkling Chenin Blanc in a can. I enjoy the way many things of the past are being reconsidered and made great, like the box wine and frozen foods. Here’s a sparking Chenin Blanc (famously my favorite varietal) in a can!
Enthousiasmos magazine. A french arts and culture mag. In their second issue, they talk to the band Phoenix about how to design the perfect playlist.
“Thirty lonely but beautiful actions you can take right now.” via
Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.
If you’ll be in town for SXSW, I’ve got some Horse Opera gigs on March 8, March 13 and March 15, with a few more in the works. I’ll send out details next week. Come say hi!
Love the mix this week! Thank you.