Dinner Music 98: The weekly lineup
downtempo dreams, persian psychedelic rock, blues and soul
This week we’re listening to downtempo tracks that span era, genre and region, with a bit of a focus on Persian pop and pysch-rock and cosmic folk and soul. I started this week by revisiting Linda Perhacs, who was first featured in Dinner Music in early 2023. I say there is a focus this week, and those songs and albums are there, but I’d say the selection this week is defined more by the lack of intentional focus. Everything flows together, going wide and deep in every direction, coming together to form a diverse cultural and emotional sonic experience. So much these days is defined in hyper-specific, rigid ways, what does it mean to break away from where things should go? Who says freak folk can’t be followed by neo-soul by organ jazz by zydeco by Queen?
We begin with newly formed Norwegian soul group, Sūn Byrd, whose sonic commitment is rooted in energy and character, with a deep focus on “sonic aesthetics.” The tracks go wide and make space for meditative, yet immersive, sound that sweeps across the ears and draw deeply from tradition — funk, soul, jazz — while putting a modern spin on things, with cosmic synth and smooth, indie-rock vocals. We move into a compilation of tracks from Marjan, an Iranian singer whose career was cut short by the Islamic Revolution in the late seventies. There’s a sense of promise in the tracks, like the best was yet to come, a pan-cultural sound and experience that never came to pass that draws from the sugar-pop of the early seventies and threads traditional mid-east sound throughout. We get a similar feeling from Parallelograms, a sense that something greater was coming in America, an era or feeling or way of living that was swallowed in the years after. The white space of this album draws deep from a well of desire, much left unsaid, much left to be interpreted. If you like Weyes Blood, start here. We go the opposite direction with Mandingo, an album full of sound and instrumentation that is encompassing, filling a room and space, leaving no room for thinking, only an embodied experience. This is music for the end of the day. We end with Morphine, one of those American bands that is really popular everywhere except America. If you like creeping, smokey jazz, like the music in David Lynch dream sequences, you’ll like this.
Enjoy.
Monday
Sūn Byrd - Sūn Byrd (2024)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Tuesday
Kavire Del - Marjan (1970s)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
Parallelograms - Linda Perhacs (1970)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
Watto Sitta - Mandingo (1984)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Friday
Good - Morphine (1994)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Pair with:
Tomato curry. Quick! Use your end-of-summer tomatoes for something utterly delicious!
Coferment from Virginia. Ruby Red crab apples and a blend of hybrid grapes from Midland Wine. “Aromatic, playful, and sort of like an idealized cross between the best parts of rosé and skin-contact wine.”
This event tonight at Book People in Austin. Come celebrate James Wade, an incredibly gifted author whose prose describes the hope and desolation of Texas better than any other contemporary writer that I’ve read. Bonus: He’s Dinner Music’s best hype-man.
This great read from T Mag on body culture for gay men. “From now on, we, primarily through our influence in style, photography, journalism and the star-making apparatus, would decide what constituted a hot man.”
This easy listening/downtempo/breaks set from Rubi. Live, from the famous berlin bathroom.
Thank you, thank you.
Have a great week.
You’ve inspired me. One of my hobbies is pairing albums with video games and movies on mute. I always thought it was so oddly specific but you’re theme is just brilliant!