The year started with me hunting for obscure jazz to sample, seeking as I was stronger material for the video EP I wanted to put out in the first half of the year. As Firefox was dying under the strain of a decade of browser history (I had to restore from a backup in 2014) I had to delete it, so we'll never know exactly how I came across the Jazz Orkestar album - but most likely it was on the We Are The Music Makers forum. Relatedly, I was seeking to expand my Pages From Ceefax music collection, as well as gather footage, and came across 'Body Moves' by Nick Haydn (previously featured in the 2011 playlist). It's a shame his stuff is languishing in stock music archives, though for all I know this is some crap he's churned out and he's sculpting truly brilliant work under another name somewhere else.
On a different mental track, I was watching a video demonstrating cassette wow and flutter which used a remix of 'Rhythm of the Night'. Rather than do a quotation search, I lazily typed in the Firefox search bar which returned a live version of Lee Ritenour's 'Night Rhythms' featuring some ultra-super-fly bass. I think that might be the very definition of serendipity. I recognised Ritenour's name from putting 'Early AM Attitude' on the playlist in 2012 and had meant to dig into his back catalogue at some point. Consequently I consulted All Music for their review of his discography and zoned in on the mid to late 80s, then previewed some tracks before buying three albums: Portrait (1987), Color Rit (1988), and Festival (1989). Picking a track from almost thirty was difficult, though in the end I settled on the aforementioned track. The live version didn't get left out, though. Usually I dislike live renditions as they sound really rough to the studio version I've grown used to. In this case I couldn't get that intro bass out of my mind to the point nine months later I was compelled to sample it at 4am one night with some saxophone pulled from Tears for Fears' 'The Working Hour' I'd been tinkering with the previous November.
In a decidedly anti avant-garde move, you might notice Beyoncé below. You will not believe me when I say I hadn't heard it. I now know it was huge some seven years ago, but I really hadn't heard it before. You still won't believe me tell you it was April 1st when I was stuck indoors in the office and it came on the radio. 2008 is very weird year for me - from what I can gather I underwent some kind of X-Files pilot episode time skip. Take the war in Georgia - I don't remember anything about that (though to be fair, no-one in Atlanta spotted the tanks either). I have to assume part of it was a difficult first year at work and, in terms of music, having given up on Radio 1 more than four years beforehand. I definitely remember 2014, yet somehow new Aphex Twin passed me by.
Generally, 2015 has turned out to be a very 2015 year. Contemporary even more so than the preceding one; there are several entries here that lead to Bandcamp pages, despite pledging last year I was done with the nebulous vaporwave genre. Not a day passes without someone declaring the genre dead as if it isn't like the word 'fascist', completely hollowed out semantically - everything and nothing, all that is solid melts into air. A vapour, if you will. Not unlike its punk antecedent, it branched off in a dozen plus directions and the fact the Sex Pistols broke-up is immaterial - The Clash were mixing reggae, Joy Division and many others were crafting post-punk, Siouxsie and the Banshees were further transforming that into goth music, Cabaret Voltaire and contemporaries were industrialising post-punk, and so on. So yes, punk was dead after 1978 if we're going to define it so narrowly. Besides, John Lydon (for that is his name) has since proven it was never alive.
With the music rising to indicate my opinions should vacate the stage, now to the awards that no-one is concerned about...
The Obscure Alternatives Award goes to that old song that's hard to track down and either too expensive an album to import or price-gouged online due to being out of print for a decade - oh, I have CDs in my wishlist going back to that forgotten era of 2008 that still have listed prices over £40. 'Promises for Spring' by Tom Browne was a strong contender here on that very basis as well as the fact not much of the album from the GRP stable has made it onto YouTube. It was happen-stance it was recently uploaded when I went to link to 'Throw Down' having enjoyed hearing that in GTAV once again. However, it's beaten out on the rarity stakes by Nick Haydn's 'Body Moves'. Anything of his really. I managed to dig deep in Google to uncover a Universal Music archive with low quality samples. Good luck getting a physical copy unless you work in graveyard television. If you do, that's what internet sharing is for.
The Roygbiv Eargasm Award is that most prestigious award for the track that races into my Top 100. Figuratively, as I've just noticed none of the contenders are in that iTunes playlist. Nevertheless, I've listened to them a bloody lot. 'Hologram Rose' by Eco Virtual is an earworm if ever there was one, especially being only 1:41 long it forces me to almost always listen to it in rounds of three. One of these days I'll figure out where that guitar line is sampled from. Les likely is figuring out the video. Alas, it is not the winner, pipped in the same month by Donovan Hikaru's 'Corporate Snorkelling'. The track made me download the free album, despite failing to get into the DH output I'd seen in the vaporwave thread on WATMM. A particular selling point is the original composition by 'Lane Visitor' when so much of the genre is ethically questionable in its approach to sampling (as I remarked last year). I love it in a genuine non-ironic fashion and I think there's real sentiment in creating that sound even if the premise of the artist mocks the corporate music style. If it were really a bland emotionless saxophone drifting through it I'd be able to tell. I hope - maybe all that stock Ceefax music has numbed me.
Playlist
Aretuza - Radio-Televizije Beograd ; Jazz Orkestar (1979)
Body Moves - Nick Haydn; American Dreams (1999)
Façades - Philip Glass Ensemble ; Glassworks (1982)
Night Rhythms - Lee Ritenour ; Festival (1988)
Extratropical Cyclone - Nxxxxxs ; Fujita Scale (2014)
Stop - BWH ; Living It Up/Stop [12"] (1983)
Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) - Beyoncé ; (2008)
Dream Ache - Lone ; [Soundcloud] (2015)
Foam Finger - Hudson Mohawke ; (2015?)
Perfect Systems - Michael Ozone ; Perfect Systems [12"] (2012)
produk 29 [101] - Aphex Twin ; Syro (2014)
Showtime (Gazella Remix) - Modfunk ; (2008)
Promises For Spring - Tom Browne ; Browne Sugar (1979)
Luddites and Lambs - Everything Everything ; Suffragette Suffragette [Single] (2008)
Corporate Snorkeling - Donovan Hikaru ; Business Travel Bonanza (2015)
S.W.A.K. - Luxury Elite ; World Class (2015)
No More - Will Smith ; Willennium (1999)
Hologram Rose - Eco Virtual ; Atmospheres 第4 (2015)
Angel Eyes (Album Version) - Roxy Music ; Manifesto (1978)
Floating on Air - Dām-Funk ; Invite the Light (2015)
Dear Skorpio Magazine - Neon Indian ; Vega Intl. Night School (2015)
Dial Up - Curb Cobain ; Nitelog Imaging (408) (2015)
¶
Prij will return in For Your Eyes Only, although who knows. I've really unintentionally neglected writing in this tenth anniversary year. I've been busy making music (out of other people's music; they are actual musicians) and spending a lot of time fulfilling demand in GTA Online for the popular series of offroad tracks I've designed. My custom tracks in Gran Turismo 5 might have taken off too if it weren't for the stupid online sharing system Polyphony Digital came up with.
[1282 ; 1.5]
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