Dinner Music 75: The weekly lineup
retro-futurism darkwave, new romantics synth-punk, global electro
This week the sound explores the interweaving of light and dark. We’re looking at darkwave, synth-pop, retro-futurism and electro, and, as always, the adjacent sounds that are natural juxtapositions. Much of the music is a journey through the shimmering landscape of New Romanticism, where pulsating beats intertwine with dreamy melodies. Sonically, it’s kaleidoscopic — familiar sounds through a new lens.
We begin adjacent to New Romantics with Book of Love, a pioneering synth-pop quartet whose melodies drifted adopt infectious beats and glittering synth vibration. Their sound captured something essential about the era — an optimism, or a dream, of our techno future. We move into a collaborative, session album between French experimental rock band Cheveu and West Saharan Group Doueh that is full of rich textures, genre-bending tracks and hypnotic rhythms. The sound fuses traditional Sahrawi with experimental and psych, building something that defies definition. What it represents is a feeling, or perhaps an act, that requires spontaneity and creativity to create something with sensation. We keep that hypnosis and turn off the lights for Boy Harsher’s Country Girl Uncut, a dark, atmospheric album with sparse percussion, ethereal vocals and warbling synths. The album plays with the natural and unnatural, asking us to consider the tension between the world we live in and art making. It also seems to ask, what is a natural sound? Especially nowadays, where technological and computer generated sound is natural to most of us. This album sits in that liminal space between raw and technological, though perhaps that space is smaller than we’d expect. We move away from the question of natural with La Mode, a French group that transcends earthly preoccupations and plants us firmly into new wave dreamland. El Eterno Femenino plays with language, literally mixing French and Spanish, to create something region-defying, yet distinctly French in attitude. We end with The Pale Fountain’s “quiet pop.” If you’re in need of something calm, like a sweet serenade in twilight, start here.
Enjoy.
The playlist:
Paid subscribers have access to the full Dinner Music archive, an after hours playlist, a “New York Grooves” playlist and more — hundreds of hours of groove, soul, samba, disco, electro, post-punk, funk and more, thoughtfully curated.
Monday
Book of Love - Book of Love (1986)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Tuesday
Dakhla Sahara Session - Group Doueh, Cheveu (2017)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
Country Girl Uncut - Boy Harsher (2019)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
El Eterno Femenino - La Mode (1982)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Friday
Something On My Mind - The Pale Fountains (1980s)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Pair with
Honey Butter Shrimp. And then pair that with this sesame noodle salad for something that is a little sweet and a little umami.
Tram-Cham-Bapple Virginia Coferment. This wine is basically like a rosé and an orange wine in one. Made from apples and grapes, it has a really nice sweetness like cider without the heaviness and combines that with the acidity you get from a typical rosé.
Petrichor candle. I’ll just list off the notes and you’ll know this is the best smelling candle right now: Lavender, Wild Thyme, Agave, Desert Rose, Sage Brush, Floral Pink Heather.
This interview with French writer Edouard Louis. Contradiction is part of truth and of what we are. So, I believe that people can trust something contradictory because their lives and their minds are also contradictory. The truth is those contradictions are all true. That’s the beauty of contradiction.
Searching ‘romantic vintage’ on Depop. It’s not all good, but I’m on a hunt to add at least a half-dozen cool, yet romantic floral and satin dresses from the nineties to my closet for summer.
Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.
Thank you for the list, awesome as usual!
Small correction about La Mode. They’re actually a Spanish band, one of the cult bands from the counterculture movement known as “la movida” from Madrid.