I was made for the war
Mix 37: Octo Octa octad, hemlocke springs springs, PinkPantheress...pantheresses, and another baile funk song suite from DJ Arana
Each week I skim through about 2,000 songs mostly from Spotify's company-curated New Music Friday playlists. Whenever I find 80 minutes worth of music I like, I make a CD-length mix and write a newsletter about it.
Slammed with work this week and scrawling my newsletter content into the margins. If you need more words from me, I encourage you to stop putting off reading all of my posts about Taylor Swift before I finally get any time to write more of them.
Failing that, in honor of one of the last few People’s Pop polls on still-dying Twitter, find lots of songs where they make funny animal noises and bleat, honk, moo, cluck, or whinny along.
Oh, and speaking of being “made for the war,” per the title, my youngest learned about the Revolutionary War in school (his retelling of what he gleaned from this talk was…interesting) and has decided he wants to collect wars, starting with Revolutionary, Civil, and World (pt. 2). He is very Cold War curious but is not convinced it counts toward his collection. Will see how that goes.
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17 // Mix 18 // Mix 19 // Mix 20 // Mix 21 // Mix 22 // Mix 23 // Mix 24 // Mix 25 // Mix 26 // Mix 27 // Mix 28 // Mix 29 // Mix 30 // Mix 31 // Mix 32 // Mix 33 // Mix 34 // Mix 35 // Mix 36
MIX 37: I WAS MADE FOR THE WAR
1. Octo Octa: Come Here, Let’s Commune
A sublime Octo Octa octad (8 minutes!), started off toward the end of the mix and kept insinuating itself until eventually I relented and gave it the lead spot.
2. Lorenzo_BITW, Produkkt, Giorgi: Baciami
Italian DJ whose song I couldn’t even find on YouTube yet but appears to be distributed on Ninja Tune?
3. Samantha Urbani f. Rexy: Time Keeps Slipping
Brooklyn artist with connections to other indie hipsters — some sorta involvement with Blood Orange, e.g. — seems to have lucked into a banger.
4. hemlocke springs: pos
Have been cautiously optimistic about hemlocke springs, whom I’ve encountered a few times and wavered on without diving deeper. This one is probably the strongest I’ve heard after “Girlfriend,” a competitive Golden Beat in the People’s Pop 2022 poll. She’s funny; there are parts of this that remind me of Fefe Dobson.
5. PinkPantheress: Mosquito
Thought I might be imagining things that this is a bit hookier, and with a stronger melody than usual, only to find it’s a Greg Kurstin co-write. I also figured out that the thing really drawing me to it is that the chord progression in the chorus is the same as Usher’s “You Make Me Wanna.”
6. Girl Scout: Monster
More 90s alt-rock throwback that hits close enough to the mark to satisfy the craving. Veruca Salty.
7. HARU NEMURI: Flee from Sanctuary
Japanese rock with a bit of traction in the music press (such as it is). Predictably, I like the shouty parts best.
8. pataugeoire & Thierry Larose: Combien ça coûte
More solid down-the-middle Montreal indie pop, which I’ve gotten a ton of since finding the francophone Spotify list for Canadian releases. Incredibly, 2005 never died in Montreal, apparently?
9. Nihiloxica: Baganga
Bracing, noisy Ugandan techno that never manages to lose its momentum even as it keeps threatening to spasm completely out of sync.
10. Sa-Roc: Talk To Me Nice
Old school rapper flirts with debilitating tastefulness but stays just on the right— which is to say wrong—side of it.
11. TeeZandos: Artist
No concerns about tastefulness here from a UK drill rapper who went the extra mile to include sound effects from Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog just for old men like me. Thank you!
12. DJ Arana: MONTAGEM ANOS 2000
Another medley-of-sorts from DJ Arana, not up to the level of “ABCDário Da Guerra” but what else is? Strongest bit is the opening, which decisively ropes “My Humps” into baile funk, and now makes me wonder about what Fergie would sound like in Portuguese.
13. Armand Hammer, billy woods, & E L U C I D: The Gods Must Be Crazy
Armand Hammer et al. work extremely hard to sound half as abrasive and weird as DJ Arana with one arm tied behind his back, but all that hard work pays off, as that 50% success still gets them to [7], thus fulfilling my lone requirement for mix inclusion.
14. Dina Ögon: Glitter
Third appearance of Dina Ögon — or someone in the Dina Ögon orbit — across my mixes, and this might be my favorite song yet.
15. Nouran AbuTaleb & Zeyad Essam: Leila
Another strong Egyptian pop song that I have little to say about. Will probably break out favorite songs by country/region at the end of the year, and Egypt should be pretty well represented but might have the fewest words per entry.
16. Vector: Gbedu
…Not as well represented as Naija pop, though! And more words, too, except for this blurb. Sorry!
17. Chongo De Flavour: Tshwara Fase
Couldn’t find much on this South African artist and no time to dig any further. (Is this gqom? I don’t know that I can tell from ears alone yet.)
18. Cindy Pooch: Nyanga
French-Cameroonian singer has an almost classical affect in her singing while electropop burbles underneath.
19. Onipa & Dele Sosimi: Marching Over
Second appearance by the Afro futurist collective after their appearance on Mix 15.
20. ghost orchard: bruise (Billy Lemos flip)
Michigan-based artist gets an indie dancetronica upgrade from an artist that seems to be even less known. The difference between two people who email occasionally and two people who play festivals together is occasionally lost on me, I’ll admit.
21. Misha Panfilov: Rush Hour
Amazingly this is the second appearance by the Estonian composer (appeared on Mix 26), a fact that would have gone right past me if the name hadn’t rung a bell at the last second while typing up this barely-blurb for accounting purposes. I suppose my taste is consistent!
22. Julie Byrne: Summer Glass
Pitchfork-approved artist who’s framed as folk but on this one does the post-Lana Del Rey swoon-sing over a sequencer. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this one (or some of her other songs from this album) a few times this year without thinking much of it but it finally worked as a closer.
***
That’s it! Gotta get back to work! …Don’t start wars, but collect them if you must!
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from hemlocke springs’ “pos.”