Dinner Music: The weekly lineup
japanese jazz, metallophonic sounds, forest bathing in argentina
This week is about experimenting with gentle sounds. We begin with the Brazilian concept of saudade, a feeling of melancholy or longing, which Bola Sete captures in his album Ocean. The guitar runs away with our bodies and as we listen, we acquiesce to the mood. With Birds of Venezuela, there is no pretense. It’s thirty-six minutes of arranged bird sounds and the songs they sing, an audio forest bathing at the very tip of South America. We’ll continue with the thread of auditory versions of perceiving experiences. There is no experimentation without talking about Jenny Hval and Classic Objects acts as performance art through the unification of confession and sound. It’s an experience more than a message, but the message is there if you want it. A concept is a brick / It can be used to build a courthouse of reason / Or it can be thrown through the window. Or simply, how can we break free of consciousness? Once you do, I recommend putting on Gia Margaret’s Romantic Piano. Don’t let the title fool you. The sounds are strange and subtle. There is only one song with lyrics in the middle of an otherwise instrumental album. It’s a meditation. It’s hazy meditation from the comfort of distance. We end with an experimental album that follows the descent into dementia. It begins beautifully, wistfully, before it takes those gentle sounds and makes them something hard to recognize, much like life will some day become for us all.
Enjoy.
The playlist is here.
Monday
Ocean Memories - Bola Sete (1999)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Tuesday
Birds Of Venezuela - Jean C. Roché (2018)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
Classic Objects - Jenny Hval (2022)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
Romantic Piano - Gia Margaret (2023)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Friday
Everywhere At the End of Time - The Caretaker (2016)
Pair with:
LebNab Pet Nat Rosé. This Lebanese rosé is stone fruit, cranberry, earth, a dash of lime zest. The sparkle brings out a brightness to match the unforgiving summer sun and it’s got the color of fresh flowers to boot.
Pasta salad. It’s too damn hot to eat anything else. (Okay you could eat regular salad, but that’s not as fun).
Lauren’s all purpose salve. A tender, gentle salve to soothe your body. It’s not just a jar of cream, “it’s a ritual of caring for yourself so you can be there for others.”
Essays against travel. “It turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best,” from the New Yorker. And, The lost art of staying put, from The Baffler. Both are a great meditation on what it means to be stationary and why that isn’t a bad thing.
Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.