Dinner Music 99: The weekly lineup
nyah-rock, cosmic funk, neo-tropicalia, boogie
You might notice that this is issue 99. Next week, I’m putting together a special issue for the 100th Dinner Music newsletter. If you have any favorites from past newsletters, comment or email me. Thanks for your ongoing enthusiam and support for this project.
On Saturday, I’ll be back at Howards Bar & Club in Austin, TX as 1/2 of Horse Opera spinning records and favorite tracks. Come say hi.
This week we’re listening to some experimental and pioneering sounds, albums that fuse influences, that focus on rhythm and groove at the expense of genre-purism. A few weeks ago, I went to Devon Turnbull’s HiFi listening room at SFMoMa and have been thinking about curation and sound in a different way. What does it mean to hear something HiFi? In your earbuds? The thing that kind of experience does best is bring forward sounds you couldn’t hear before, so you’re always listening to a new song, even if you’ve heard it a dozen times before. You’re listening, not listening + ??? (which I’m very guilty of). The albums this week would be great listening room selections, but they are just at home on your bluetooth speaker while cooking. If you get a chance, maybe stop for a second and listen in a new way.
We begin with “Nyah-rock” group Cymande, formed in London in the early seventies by a group of musicians who migrated to the UK primarily from the Caribbean. This blend of cultures is what created “nyah-rock,” a genre-signifier created by the group themselves to describe their sound: a blend of funk, soul, reggae, jazz and African rhythms characterized by deep, groovy bass lines, tight drum patterns and vibrant horn sections. We move into Silver Apples, an experimental (and modern-sounding) group from the late-sixties whose sound drew on early electronic instrumentation, building momentum from interstellar hums and drones and pulsing rhythms. If you took the bass up a few notches and stripped the vocals down, particularly on a track like “Seagreen Serenades,” much of the album would sound Berlin techno. If you like the band Suicide, start here. For the next album, a comment from YouTube describes it best: “the concept of music of yesterday and today has nothing to do with it, Napoli Centrale are a milestone, a rare mix, perfect enough, of energy, melancholy, light-heartedness, critical sense and hope, a true artistic heritage.” As funky and danceable as it is political, you get the sense that this album is a Neapolitan holy grail. And how very Italian — even when criticizing the world, they’re dancing. Though it may not be obvious right away, Billy Preston, a Texas-born musician, was known as the “fifth Beatle,” and if you listen closely, you can hear the likeness in the keys. Preston jammed with the Beatles in the midst of their Let It Be Sessions and is one of the few artists that’s been credited on a Beatles track other than a Beatle themselves (for Get Back). Though he was a long-time collaborator with George Harrison, Preston was great despite his association, not because of it. His ability to bridge the gap between rock and soul is apparent in I Wrote a Simple Song, an album that is a lot of things and simple is not one of them. Try: pioneering, boundary-pushing, infectious. From another Texas-born musician, we end with an album from Kolumbo that can only be describe as an absolute delight.
Enjoy.
The playlist:
Monday
Second Time Round - Cymande (1973)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Tuesday
Contact - Silver Apples (1969)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
Ngazzate nire - Napoli Centrale (1994)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
I Wrote a Simple Song - Billy Preston (1971)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Friday
Gung Ho - Kolumbo (2024)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Pair with
Homemade cavatelli, fried eggplant, buffalo mozzarella. Making your own pasta is easy, though time consuming, but always worth it if you’ve got the time. It’s one of those cooking things that is deeply meditative — it forces you away from screens for a long time.
Post Flirtation, Martha Stouman. I’m not a red wine drinker, but this is a great light, chill-able red. Perfect for the transition from summer to fall.
This oral history of ‘The Visitors.’ I was lucky enough to stumble across this at SFMoMa. It’s really an incredible piece. There is so much good sound art right now (maybe there always was, but I’m just now noticing?).
Why AI Isn’t Going to Make Art. “We are all products of what has come before us, but it’s by living our lives in interaction with others that we bring meaning into the world. That is something that an auto-complete algorithm can never do, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
This interview with Enrique Olvera, of Pujol, on his countryside home. “I believe a place can exert a kind of magnetism. It’s a subjective feeling that’s hard to explain. When I got here the first time, things like the way the sun rises, how I sleep and breathe here, and how it smells told me it was right for me, that I belong.”
Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.