What's up everyone,
Thank you to Joseph for hosting last week!
For a while I've been listening to stuff that peps me up, but this week I'm gonna slow it down... a lot.
I've been into tracks that are a bit more calm and reflective, sometimes even melancholic. Before we dive into them, though, I
want to share something new with you!
I've finished many of the new
4trackfriday.com features!
However, I've applied them to a new project first. It's called
myquarantine5.com and
it's meant to be like MySpace's "my top 8."
It's Kelli's idea that Lauren shared with me and I decided would be a great little "hackathon style" project.
It allows me to test lots of stuff I've never done before with a more whimsical project. Go ahead, try and take the servers down!
(That's a joke, by the way. I know several of you on here are totally capable of ruining any system I stand up.)
On to four tracks this friday!
Underground beats | Here's What's Left by RJD2
I would bet that most of you have heard Ramble Jon Krohn's music before. His classic track, "Ghostwriter,"
has ever sixty-six million plays on Spotify and another of his tracks, "A Beautiful Mine," is the title
track on "Mad Men." This one, however, I bet you haven't heard.
Since quarantine started, RJ has been doing
livestream sessions on Wednesdays
and they have been super cool. RJ is a true master of his craft (which you dive into on this Song Exploder
episode) and
these streams have been a really exciting way to get a close up view of this expertise and experience.
On last week's stream, RJ dug up literal floppy disks of some of his oldest work and let us
pick random numbers to determine which ones he broke down for us. Well, this track was one of them!
It was originally released as its own record in 2001, which puts this in the earliest part of RJ's twenty-year career.
I also highly recommend all of you attend an RJD2 show if you get the chance. His performance at DC's
9:30 Club alongside Jordan Brown and others is still my favorite show I've seen.
Catch a glimpse of this from quarantine with
this recording
of him live at Milwaukee's "The Rave."
Indie rock | Tripoli by Pinback
We all know and love Clairo, right? Yes? Great. Well, she turned me on to the album from which this song comes
when she talked about a collaboration between Hella and Pinback on a
video Amoeba records discussing
her taste and influences.
After a full listen, I couldn't help but play this song on repeat. It's incredibly smooth and melodic, all the
while incredibly melancholic. It's easy to fall into this song and get totally swallowed up in its mood.
"Sad I'm gonna die. / Hope it's gonna happen later than I think." Somehow this line in the
lyrics is so fun to
sing along with yet simultaneously so shocking when you realize what you're saying.
If you're into this, you're lucky because the band, formed by Armistead Burwell Smith IV and Rob Crow, has
been making music since 1998 and they've released a ton of music. Dig in.
Australian funk | Smile by Winston Surfshirt
I've been waiting weeks to send out this song. I finally feel that it fits a week perfectly.
It's chill, but quite uplifting.
This group formed in New South Wales in 2015 when a solo act and hip hop band joined forces to create
a wickedly smooth six-piece surf rock, hip hop, funk act. To see them get straight into hip hop, I
recommend you check out their
cover of 50 Cent for triple j's "Like a Version."
Winston Surfshirt is something I can imagine myself playing on a late, sunny summer night at Golden Gardens. See you there!
Retrowave | Back to You by Timecop1983 (feat. The Bad Dreamers)
The year is 3050 and you head to your roof top pool to watch the double sunset after a long day of
studying ancient history. Today you read about how some long forgotten people once lived on a small blue planet and
invented something called "the internet." You struggle to understand how people lived so primitively.
"Well, at least some of their music was good," you think to yourself as you put on Timecop1983's "Back to You."
I enjoy that this genre is called "retrowave" (a.k.a. synthwave, futuresynth, or outrun) when it's most easy for me to imagine it comes from a distant,
synth-filled future. Sam sent me this track, saying it's his favorite track from Jordy Leenaert's 2018 album, Night Drive.
Perhaps you recognize the genre from Ryan Gosling's movie, "Drive." That's how Sam first got into it.
However, he pointed out to me that Timecop1983 is special because, while it fits into the genre, it's always fresh.
Hopefully you, too, can close your eyes and catch some outrun vibes on this one.
Of course, don’t forget to reply with what you liked, didn’t like, and what you’ve been listening
to.
And, as always, this week’s tracks are added to the collectors for all weeks' tracks on
Spotify
and
Apple Music.
Cheers,
Tanner