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Drawing from the well of conclusions…

“The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act.”John Berger

A sack of tunes including GHEIST, Gia Margaret, Aikon, Audion, Leaving Laurel, Hudson Mohawke, Clark and more.

Track List

  1. GHEIST – Impala (Original Mix)
  2. Greg Spero – Rising
  3. Gia Margaret – Ways of Seeing
  4. Little Dragon – Gold
  5. Aikon – Come Together
  6. Trilucid – Cheyenne
  7. Kastis Torrau – Menace
  8. Leaving Laurel – better days will come
  9. Audion – The Return of Losing It
  10. Dominik Eulberg – Grauspecht (Acid Pauli Remix)
  11. Hudson Mohawke – Demuro
  12. Clark – Alyosha

A pattern that continuously changes…

A sack of tunes, mostly new releases, including Aja Monet, Big Hands, Alex Lahey, Leaving Laurel, Genesis Owusu, KAYTRAMINÉ, YBU and Morpheus.

Track List

  1. Aja Monet – Why My Love
  2. Thought Trails – With U
  3. Big Hands – A square, a circle
  4. dodie – Special Girl
  5. Alex Lahey – Good Time
  6. Tanlines – New Reality
  7. Sir Chloe – Salivate
  8. Kieran Hebden – Darkness, Darkness
  9. Leaving Laurel – and those guardian angels carried you away
  10. Clemente – Now I’m Fucked Up
  11. Morpheus – No Hustle
  12. James Harcourt – Refraction
  13. Ke$ha – Only Love Can Save Us Now
  14. Genesis Owusu – Leaving The Light
  15. KAYTRAMINÉ – Who He Iz
  16. Roisin Murphy – The Universe
  17. YBU – Alma de Bruja

United by music…

United by music, a shared experience and a selection of tunes that includes Michna, Beta Librae, Ghost of Vroom, Guy J, Innellea, Overmono, Plaid, Alison Goldfrapp, Sofia Kourtesis, Amtrac, Bdrmm and more.

Track List

  1. Gabríel Ólafs – Bambaló
  2. BVG – Sunday Morning
  3. Alex Kassian – Strings of Eden
  4. Guy J – 94 Blossom
  5. Midwife – Hounds of Heaven
  6. Ane Brun – Hand In The Fire
  7. Rahill – I Smile for E
  8. Michna – Lunchbox
  9. Ghost of Vroom – Pay the Man
  10. Plaid – Shackbu
  11. Alison Goldfrapp – Digging Deeper Now
  12. Karl Biscuit – Hierophone (Avalon Remix)
  13. Snowedin – Rabbit Valley (Chris IDH & Söhns Remix)
  14. Innellea – Red Thread 
  15. Hector Zazou – The Light Gave Us Away (Deep Mix by Herbert)
  16. Cptn Jay – Almost Home
  17. Sofia Kourtesis – Madres
  18. Amtrac – Little Tokyo
  19. Beta Librae – Penny Universities
  20. Auto Repeat – Mad Cow (Carl Craig Remix)
  21. salute – Peach
  22. Overmono – Calling Out
  23. Bdrmm – (The Silence)
  24. Snowedin – Rabbit Valley (Reprise)
  25. Tim Green – Time Doesn’t Have to Heal

The place that you are now…

A selection of tunes to see in a bounteous, flowery May including Avalon Emerson, Innellea, Talaboman, Jessie Ware, Baby Rose, Skinny Pelembe, Joy Oladokun, Indigo de Souza, Wallice, Dove City, Klur and more.

Track List

  1. Elle King – Little Bit Of Lovin’
  2. Avalon Emerson – Dreamliner
  3. Innellea – The Conclusion – Five Phases Project
  4. Talaboman – Discodrums
  5. Jessie Ware – Beautiful People
  6. New Breed Brass Band – Drop It How You Feel It (feat. Trombone Shorty, 5th Ward Weebie & Wild Wayne)
  7. Baby Rose – I Won’t Tell
  8. Skinny Pelembe – Hardly the Same Snake
  9. Joy Oladokun – We’re All Gonna Die
  10. JFDR – Life Man
  11. Labrinth – Everything
  12. Indigo De Souza – Always
  13. Wallice – Rich Wallice
  14. Dove City – Coal In My Chest (Frankey & Sandrino Remix)
  15. Klur – Heart To Heart (Polar Inc. Extended Remix)

Magnolia Trees and Flexi Sex…

A selection of tunes including Alfa Mist, Charles Oliver, Overmono, Lindstrøm, Easy Star All-Stars, Lael Neale, Esther Rose, Zombie Juice, St. Paul & The Broken Bones and more, along with some salacious excerpts from Jonny Trunk’s Flexi Sex compilation.

Track List

  1. Folky Fenella & Jonny Trunk – Folky Fenella From Dorset
  2. Alfa Mist – Variables
  3. Charles Oliver – A Glimpse From The Other Side
  4. Overmono – Is U
  5. Worldtown Soundsystem – Another One (feat. Zeek Burse)
  6. Alphawezen – Into The Stars (Firebirds Remix)
  7. Vitalic – My Friend Dario
  8. Rodrigo y Gabriela – True Nature
  9. The Fall – Theme From Sparta F.C.
  10. Pearl & The Oysters – Fireflies
  11. Lindstrøm – Lovesick
  12. Easy Star All-Stars – Hang on to Yourself (feat. Fishbone and JonnyGO Figure)
  13. George Kranz – Din daa daa (Original Version 1983)
  14. Lael Neale – I Am The River
  15. Esther Rose – Spider
  16. Jonny Trunk & Rosie & Nobbie – Rosie & Nobbie
  17. Zombie Juice – Mindful
  18. St. Paul & The Broken Bones – Magnolia Trees

Connecting Points…

“The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time…since time sets its own tempo, like a heartbeat or an ebb tide, time pieces don’t really keep time. They just keep up with it, if they’re able.” – Dava Sobel, Longitude.

A selection of tunes to navigate our way through time, including Fruit Bats, El Michels Affair, Abraham Alexander, Dave Okumu, Temples, The Tallest Man on Earth, Fenne Lily, Bonobo, Kyson, Thylacine, Shlohmo, Hypnagog, Rich Aucoin, Rone and more.

Track List

  1. Boogie Belgique – Fabrica
  2. El Michels Affair – Protocol
  3. Abraham Alexander – Déjà Vu (ft. Mavis Staples)
  4. dj poolboi – don’t be so hard on yourself
  5. Fruit Bats – Meridian
  6. Thylacine – Duduk
  7. Shlohmo – Rained the Whole Time (Nicolas Jaar Remix)
  8. Kyson – No Such Thing As Me
  9. Weval – Day After Day
  10. Dave Okumu – Streets
  11. The Tallest Man on Earth – Bless You
  12. Fenne Lily – Pick
  13. Temples – Liquid Air
  14. Hypnagog – Just Breathe
  15. Grennels – Reverberate
  16. Fila Brazillia – Room ’96
  17. Genius of Time – Tuffa Trummor Med Synt
  18. Grand Soleil – Horizon
  19. Rich Aucoin – Space
  20. Bonobo – Fold
  21. Max Cooper – Solace In Structure
  22. Rone – Flamenco Vibes
  23. Boogie Belgique – Mercury
  24. L.B. One – Origin, Pt. 1
  25. Temples – Movements of Time

REVIEW: Late to the Feel Good party

As an eater of stand-up comedy on Netflix, I finally encountered Mae Martin for the first time recently watching Sap, their post-lockdown stand-up special filmed in Canada on a set that may well have been nicked out of a skip containing leftover bits of a production of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem (they emerge, David Bellamy-like, through real trees, probably some real bugs crawling on their skin). Martin is a motormouth who has no problem sharing their addiction, emotional and relationship troubles in the most self-deprecating, rapidly vacillating (pessimistic one minute, optimistic the next) but always quirkily charming manner.

Having been blown away by that engaging hour of television and drawn to their likeable character, I naturally did a google and realised that two series of a sit-com written by Martin and collaborator Joe Hampson had completely passed me by. The first series of Feel Good aired on Channel 4 in March 2020, while the second and final series was commissioned by Netflix, who released it in June 2021. Proper Covid-era TV, for a locked-down audience. I must’ve been busy coughing my insides up or something. The totality of Feel Good comprises 12 half-hour episodes so I made up for the absence of it in my previous life by consuming all of it over four days.

Feel Good is a semi-autobiographical romantic tragi-comedy starring Martin as a fictionalised version of themself, alongside a TV crush of mine – English rose Charlotte Ritchie – as Mae’s girlfriend George.

The fictional Mae Martin’s life is pretty well aligned to the IRL version – they are both from Toronto, both did stand-up as young teenagers, both got kicked out of the family home and both explore gender identity, gender dysphoria, sexual orientation, sexual fluidity, sexual abuse, addiction, rehab, trauma and romance (and the impact of all of the former on the latter). Which, when you look at the list, doesn’t look like the stuff of too much laughter but it is very funny. It is also a moving and heart-warming love story that takes highly complex topics and issues and approaches them with sophisticated levels of intelligence.

Whatever gender and sexuality, Feel Good will resonate with any romantic human that has lived a life and experienced the dualities of pleasure and pain before finding someone that they’d happily spend the rest of their days with, while also battling inner demons and internal and external conflict. Feel Good is a masterpiece of a show that is emotionally mature, emotionally realistic, occasionally painful to watch and packed full of empathy. It will most definitely make you feel something and, more often than not, that feeling will be very, very good.

Watch Feel Good on Netflix

Mae Martin has written about  their own, often humiliating, adventures in sex, dating and identity in their guide to 21st Century sexuality Can Everyone Please Calm Down?, which you can buy at the link below (which will take you to my virtual bookshop on bookshop.org)

The uncertain glory of an April day…

“O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day”
Shakespeare.

Track List

  1. The Watersons – Three Day Millionaire
  2. Martin HERRS – Do We Love Each Other
  3. Everything But The Girl – Nothing Left To Lose (Four Tet Remix)
  4. TIBASKO – Isolate
  5. Young Fathers – Shame
  6. Pottery – Smooth Operator
  7. Steve Mason – Brothers & Sisters
  8. Steve Cobby – The World and Your Place In It
  9. KUF – Patterns
  10. KAYTRANADA – Bus Ride
  11. Leif Vollebekk – Transatlantic Flight
  12. Half Moon Run – Then Again
  13. Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness
  14. Leaving Laurel – you need to be there for them
  15. The Range – Bicameral (Tourist Remix)

Play, play and play…

Something to eat your eggs to at Easter. With tracks from Lou Rawls, Yaeji, Daughter, Yaya Bey, Quantic, Ben Lamar Gay, Blondshell, ĠENN, Wednesday and more.

Track List

  1. Lou Rawls – Lifetime Monologue
  2. Cannonball Adderley – Fun In The Church
  3. Bobbi Humphrey – Jasper Country Man
  4. Metrophonics – Latin Racer
  5. The Three Sounds – Repeat After Me
  6. Quantic – Time Is the Enemy
  7. Ben Lamar Gay – Bang Melodically Bang
  8. Yaeji – Fever
  9. Blondshell – Joiner
  10. Daughter – Party
  11. Wednesday – TV in the Gas Pump
  12. ĠENN – Duda Dance
  13. El Michels Affair – Reasons
  14. Yaya Bey – blessings

Thinking about what music is…

“I have been thinking about what music is for a long time. Maybe half a century. And I’m still thinking and asking myself what music is. Of course, nobody has an answer.” Ryuichi Sakamoto, 1952-2023.

Track List

  1. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
  2. Ryuichi Sakamoto – A Pile Of Time
  3. Alva Noto – Trioon I
  4. Yellow Magic Orchestra – Firecracker
  5. Steven Perri – Street Scene
  6. Soulful Torino Orchestra – Soul Burger
  7. Milano Jazz Dance Combo – Turn Up The Heat
  8. 6ix Toys – Do Your Thing
  9. B. Cool-Aid – ChalkRoundIt
  10. Pursuit Grooves – Brave Soul: Precious Observation
  11. Rebelski – Unlikely Tale
  12. Coi Leray – Players
  13. Catey Shaw – Revolution
  14. Camille – Ta Douleur
  15. morgxn – home
  16. boygenius – Satanist
  17. The Wave Pictures – I Love You Like A Madman
  18. Joy Division – Atmosphere
  19. Marianne Faithfull – Dear God Please Help Me
  20. Leonard Cohen – Closing Time
  21. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Thousand Knives