This week, the music is about coming back to something. In theory, we’re transitioning into Fall (it doesn’t feel like it in Texas), we’re starting new things, we’re shedding our summer skins and re-thinking ourselves for the second half of the year. The albums this week pull from folk traditions, Thai and Saharan, re-imagine New Wave and the exotic sides of R&B and caress us gently with harmonies that sound like lullabies. We begin in Thailand with 21st Century Molam from The Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band, a group of folks that began with a party, Paradise Bangkok, that explored international and rural sounds. The group took what they learned from crate digging and created something at once traditional, global, esoteric and psychedelic. It’s dance music, in the truest sense of the phrase. We slow it down, but keep dancing, with Stimulator Jones, a multi-instrumentalist and producer from Virginia. The album is easy listening, with the same velvet smooth feeling as the late 90s — fat bass lines, bright synth plugs, sultry vocals. It’s deliciously lofi, like listening to your friends track for the first time and realizing, “damn, this is good.” On the opposite end, we have the hi-fi sounds of Voices in Harmony that coat our ears with the soft blanket of pleasing sound. With this album, you’re getting what you’re told. An array of voices in harmony over neat, simple funk sounds that culminates into an album that is anything but simple. This is martini music. We stay with simple sounds, but go back to lofi with Mamman Sani’s album of unreleased tapes. Sani was an early pioneer of African electronic music and claims to have brought the very first organ into Niger (an Italian “orlo” organ). Unlike a lot of early electronic music, the sounds are dreamy and melodic, drawing from ancient folk traditions. He didn’t simply make something brand new, he re-made something old. We end with something hat also re-makes something old — a retrowave album from Belarus. I can’t find much about the album or artist in English except that it’s someone named Andrei who “loves rock and roll, cowboy hats, Jim Beam and bright dangerous beauties.” My twin flame.
Enjoy.
The playlist is here*.
*h/t to Hannah for the Ana Frango Eletrico track 💕
Monday
21st Century Molam - The Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band (2014)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Tuesday
Exotic Worlds and Masterful Treasures - Stimulator Jones (2018)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
Voices in Harmony - Keith Mansfield & John Cameron (1973)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
Unreleased Tapes 1981-1984 - Mamman Sani (1981-1984)
Spotify / Apple Music / Other streaming services
Friday
Когда рок на горе свиснет! - Блеск Бати (2017)
Spotify / Apple Music / Other streaming services
Pair with:
Honey BBQ peach caprese salad. Fresh and outdoorsy! Honey! BBQ! Peach! Really though, summer salad season is coming to an end when we never thought it would — grill all the peaches you can.
Skillet cornbread. I’m not sure if cornbread is a transitional food for anyone else except me, but it feels very summer-to-fall. Pair with miso butter. Throw some tarragon on there!
Picpoul box wine. I haven’t tried this, but a box of natural wine is my favorite way to drink wine nowadays. Easily shareable, more affordable than bottles. Of course it’s not as good as a bottle, but that’s not the point!
A visit to Austin’s new book store, First Light. I’ve been waiting a long time for a bookstore like this to open in town and went last Friday to buy books to add to my already quite long to-read list.
Bubble martini glasses. It would be a faux pas for me to mention martini’s and not bring it up again.
Thank you, thank you.
✨
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