Dinner Music 61: The weekly lineup
80s dreamscape, Japanese synthpop, experimental easy listening
This week, the music is about sensory feeling. The albums and songs on the playlist are a warm bath of sounds — the songs feel the way walking into a familiar room feels. A living room, a dinner party, a honky tonk, a dive bar.
We begin with William Aura’s Half Moon Bay, an instrumental album recorded at the height of California new age in the eighties. Aura considered his music to be a healing art, sounds that could reach the core of what it means to be human. On the other side of this, we get Delusional by Tombus, a musician from Austin whose primary groove is vintage pop synth. The album is the new to Aura’s old, full of crisp and sensual synth sounds. It’s music for dancing. After dancing, we move to Shining the Money Ball which is solidly “after party” music. The sounds, which is perhaps more appropriate than “songs,” sound the way that watching wine fill a glass looks. It’s transient and buoyant; delicious to receive. We stay in a similar place, sipping wine, with Scott Gilmore’s Subtle Vertigo. The album reinvigorates the idea of “easy listening,” with Balearic predilection and jazzy guitar that manages to be complex, yet uncomplicated. We end with a reissued album from Japan, first recorded in the 80s. Utakata No Hibi couples East Asian and Middle Eastern sounds with quintessential Japanese pop, making it a listening room classic. For an album that will impress you and soothe you, start here.
Enjoy.
Monday
Half Moon Bay - William Aura (1987)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Tuesday
Delusional - Tombus (2023)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
Shining The Money Ball - Body-San (2016)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
Subtle Vertigo - Scott Gilmore (2017)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Friday
Utakata No Hibi - Mariah (1983)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Pair with:
Zucchini and corn salad. Pair this salad with cold-pan chicken thighs. This method for making chicken has forever changed my cooking.
This Sicilian sparkling rosato. Sparkling rosé is a perfect Thanksgiving wine that will pair well with turkey, cranberry and stiff (or drunken) family dynamics.
Fennel and fig focaccia. It’s bread week in the Dinner Music household. We have focaccia here, which is probably #1 on the impressive to effort scale.
Pecan pie cheesecake. A twist on a classic. I’m a bad southern and I don’t love pie, but I do love a cheesecake. A very good friendsgiving option.
These overly indulgent scrunchies. I have this idea that I don’t have to put any effort into my outfit if I have a nice, silk scrunchy holding up my hair. It’s a theory.
This frilly red bag. Again, indulgent! It’s fall, it’s time to be indulgent!
156. Why is the sky blue? -A fair enough question, and one I have learned the answer to several times. Yet every time I try to explain it to someone or remember it to myself, it eludes me. Now I like to remember the question alone, as it reminds me that my mind is essentially a sieve, that I am mortal.
- Maggie Nelson, Bluets
Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.