A kind of sequel to last month’s mix, this month’s episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is more deeply autumnal sounds: private press folk, psych, early Fleetwood Mac, a very good and strange Bono cameo, Bridget St. John covering Buddy Holly, and many more great things. I think of it, very loosely, as a “70s meltdown,” even though there are plenty of non-70s things in here–it feels very 70s in spirit. I hope you like it! If you do, you can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. Hudson Brothers – So You Are A Star
2. Wool – If They Left Us Alone Now
3. Virginia Tree – Make Believe Girl
4. Gavin Bryars – Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (Tramp With Orchestra III, No Strings)
5. Dave Van Ronk – Hang Me, Oh Hang Me
6. Fleetwood Mac – Man Of The World
7. Durutti Column – William B
8. The Fleetwoods – Truly Do
9. John Martyn – Don’t Want To Know
10. Emitt Rhodes – Lullabye
11. Bill Fay – I Hear You Calling
12. Fairport Convention – Who Knows Where The Time Goes
13. The Feelies – On The Roof
14. Karen James – The Morning Dew (James McHree)
15. Bridget St. John – Every Day
16. Daniel Lanois – Falling At Your Feet
17. Lou Reed – Satellite Of Love
18. Judee Sill – The Kiss
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is meant to evoke the mania that I feel every fall, though this year it feels even moreso. I tend not to listen to as much music in the summer, but as soon as the temperature starts to drop music feels much more compelling to me, much more intense and moving and somehow adjacent to my impulse to “burrow.” Lots of things in here that I really love, so I hope you do too–and you can download an mp3 version here. Flyer photo by Georgia Hilmer.
Tracklist:
1. Frank Sinatra – Nature Boy
2. Travesía – En Este Momento
3. Yo La Tengo – You Can Have It All
4. Faye Wong – 天使
5. Barbara Lewis – Hello Stranger
6. Holger Czukay – Persian Love
7. Aretha Franklin – Bridge Over Troubled Water (Long Version)
8. Penguin Cafe Orchestra – Perpetuum Mobile
9. Jane Siberry – The Lobby
10. Beat Happening – Godsend
11. John Prine – Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)
12. The Roches – Losing True
13. Brian Eno & John Cale – Spinning Away
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a mix of some of my favorite high-drama extra slinky synth pop, and proof positive that my musical brain will perhaps always be trapped in the late 80s. I hope you like it! You can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. Alexander O’Neal – Hearsay ’89 (Remix)
2. Cliff Richard – Lean On You
3. Icehouse – Paradise
4. Lauren Wood – Fallen
5. Freur – Doot-Doot
6. Billy Mackenzie – In Windows All
7. Level 42 – Children Say
8. Peter Cetera – Body Language (There in the Dark)
9. Vanessa Paradis – Joe Le Taxi
10. Martin Page – In the House of Stone and Light
11. Pet Shop Boys – Being Boring
12. Phil Collins – One More Night
13. Boy George – The Crying Game
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a continuation of the late summer ambient series. It’s also an extra-luxurious two hours long, so I hope it’s helpful in soundtracking a lazy picnic or an afternoon nap. I went slightly off-script this year, incorporating some tracks that aren’t as strictly minimal or classically ambient, and I included more folk, more vocals, and more guitars. Pretty pleased with how it turned out, so I hope you enjoy it. If you do, you can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. Brian Eno & Robert Fripp – Wind On Water
2. Yoshio Ojima – Sealed
3. Contraviento – Desencanto
4. Yas-Kaz – The Gate of Breathing
5. Mark Pollard – Quinque II
6. Klaus Wiese – Dunya (Excerpt)
7. lovesliescrushing – Butterfly
8. Oscilation Circuit – Homme
9. Takashi Kokubo – Quiet Inlet
10. Julianna Barwick – Wishing Well
11. Al Gromer Khan – Mumtaz
12. Not Drowning, Waving – Frogs
13. ironomi ft. Coupie – 楓
14. Margaret Gay – Prelude No. 1 in C Major from the Well-Tempered Klavier (Bach)
15. Bobbie Gentry – Courtyard
16. Meitei – Ike
17. Priscilla Ermel – Folia Do Divino
18. William Barklow / Loons – Wail Duet
19. Harold Budd – Afar
20. Bill Douglas – Lake Isle Of Innisfree
21. Nuno Canavarro – Antica/Burun
22. Edson Natale – A Flor
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a harp special, featuring some of my favorite harp moments from across a slew of different genres. I realized while I was putting it together that if I ever do a follow up harp episode it should probably be focused on harp-heavy Russian classical moments, as there are so many exceptional ones, but for now please enjoy this mix featuring Harold Budd, Alice Coltrane, and the melodic origin of one of my favorite songs, “Stranger In Paradise” from the opera Prince Igor. You can download an mp3 version here. Cheers, and happy harping :}
Tracklist:
1. Joel Andrews – Introduction
2. Raul Lovisoni – Hula Om (Excerpt)
3. Philippa Davies & Thelma Owen – Bugeilio’r Gwenith Gwyn (comp. John Thomas)
4. Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy – White Nile (Excerpt)
5. Unknown Artist – In A Landscape (comp. John Cage)
6. Erica Goodman – Nocturne No. 2, Op. 9 in E Flat (comp. Frederic Chopin)
7. Daniel Kobialka – Magnetic Unity (Excerpt)
8. Joanna Newsom – On A Good Day (Live)
9. Erica Goodman – Polovtsian Dance No. 17 (comp. Alexander Borodin)
10. Leya – Flow
11. Unknown Artist – Harp Sonata, Op. 68 III (comp. Alfredo Casella)
12. Alice Coltrane – Turiya
13. Harold Budd – Madrigals of the Rose Angel (Excerpt)
My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a summer disco special, in the vein of previous years. It also marks my five year anniversary of NTS residency, which has easily been one of the most cool and rewarding experiences of my life, so I’m really appreciative of everyone who has listened.
To me disco is the perennially perfect soundtrack to sweaty season: great for car rides, barbecues, beach trips, rooftops, and anywhere there might be dancing. It is also probably my favorite genre, a drug in music form–just pure euphoria, which I think is something many of us in the states are feeling something adjacent to at the moment. Whatever your life looks like these days, I hope this helps provide a moment of joy. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version here. Flyer photo by Eric Epstein.
Previous summer disco specials: 2020 | 2019 | 2018
Tracklist:
1. The Jones Girls – You Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else
2. B.T. (Brenda Taylor) – You Can’t Have Your Cake And Eat It Too (Remix)
3. A Taste of Honey – Boogie Oogie Oogie
4. Scotch – Take Me Up
5. Charles Mann – Do It Again
6. Colors – Am I Gonna Be The One
7. Jackie Moore – This Time Baby
8. Stephanie Mills – What Cha Gonna Do With My Lovin’ (12″ Version)
9. Lemelle – You Got Something Special (Club Mix)
10. Firefly – Love (Is Gonna Be On Your Side) (12″ Version)
11. Geraldine Hunt – Can’t Fake The Feeling
12. Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes – Don’t Leave Me This Way
After learning on Tuesday afternoon about Franco Battiato’s death at the age of 76, I spent a lot of the past two days trying, for the first time, to take in his body of work as a whole, to whatever extent that’s possible. It’s not possible, really, as he did and made too much. Even comparisons to Brian Eno’s trajectory fall short. Although Battiato began his almost five decade long career as an avant-garde experimental musician, he went on to not just infiltrate the mainstream, as Eno has done to great effect; rather, he’s been a dominant force in defining the Italian pop world. As a non-Italian it’s difficult for me to fully appreciate the extent of his belovedness and omnipresence, but nevertheless he achieved a level of household name recognition to which the outpouring of love and grief on social media is a firm testament.
Battiato began making music with a series of excellent and challenging records which shifted between leftfield electronic experimentation and pure acoustic minimalism, before trying his hand at post-prog, new wave, modern classical, and eventually Europop stardom (highly recommend his performance at the 1984 Eurovision contest with longtime collaborator Alice). Up until recently, I had only ever experienced his work in small pieces: his singular 1974 Clic, which places his avant-garde tendencies firmly in conversation with his Krautrock contemporaries; his 1977 self-titled record of dogmatically minimalist piano; his 1992 opera Gilgamesh; his 1994 choral mass Messa Arcaica, which made its live debut in Saint Francis Basilica in Assisi; fragments of his decades-long collaboration with Giusto Pio; his contributions to personal favorites like Prati Bagnati del Monte Analogo and Medio Occidente. In trying to look at his catalog from the top down–202 releases, 358 appearances, 758 credits, according to Discogs–I thought a lot about which record readers of this blog might like to hear if they were unfamiliar with his catalogue, but also about which records of his I enjoy listening to over and over, which are the warmest and most accessible. I’ll be honest, a lot of his pop work feels somewhat alienating to me as an American–not just because his notoriously brilliant lyrics, ranging from wry social commentary to more esoteric and occasionally religious themes, are mostly in Italian and so are lost on me. Tonally, too, many of his pop modes feel extremely European in a way that my pop sensibility just isn’t attuned to.
But La Voce del Padrone is an exception, and as the first Italian LP to sell more than a million copies, it also marks a huge turning point in Battiato’s career. It was his third foray into the pop world, after L’era del Cinghiale Bianco and Patriots, and of the three it feels, to me, like the one in which he most virtuosically stuck the landing. Though there are still some gentle post-prog inflections around the edges, Padrone is a new wavey synth pop record through and through, and it’s dotted with the spacious and euphoric tracks that feel destined for scoring movie credits. (Every time I hear the driving guitarpop of “Cuccurucucu” I fantasize about a version of Flashdance in which Jennifer Beals’s iconic dance training montage is scored by Battiato instead of Michael Sembello’s “Maniac.”) And though Padrone is irrefutably Italian, Battiato remains in dedicated dialogue with extra-national influences: he quotes Dylan in both “Bandiera Bianca” and “Cuccurucucu,” the latter of which is a riff on huapango classic “Cucurrucucú Paloma” and includes some funny nods to the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Chubby Checker. I also can’t help but hear the dry, rolling cheekiness of Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain all over closer “Sentimiento Nuevo.” There is, in short, plenty here for American ears.
The music world has lost a visionary in the true sense of the world, an oddball genius who managed the rare feat of being unabashedly himself while achieving megastardom. Thank you for everything, Franco–you will be dearly missed.
Here’s my most recent episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. It’s a mix that, to me, feels very adjacent to this particularly weird moment we in the states are going through: euphoric, uncertain, sweet, stumbling. Lots of psychy folky moments with a couple shots of adrenaline and some new age haze for good measure. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version here. Thanks as always for listening.
1. Kristine Sparkle – Gonna Get Along Without You Now
2. 包美聖 – 小茉莉 (Little Jasmine)
3. Daniel Lentz – Slow Motion Mirror
4. The Association – Never My Love
5. Jeannie Piersol – Your Sweet Inner Self
6. Frank Harris & Maria Marquez – Loveroom
7. XTC – Earn Enough For Us
8. Pyewackett – Reynardine
9. Clannad – Ocean of Light
10. The Fleetwoods – Mr. Blue
11. Joan Armatrading – Willow
12. Bluebyrd – In The Morning Light
13. Steve Kindler – Song of the Seabird
14. Collage – Mets Neiude Vahel (Forest In Between The Maidens)
15. Gigi – Guramayle
16. Tina Turner – River Deep Mountain High
Here’s my most recent episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. I wanted it to be an over-the-top shot of dopamine, songs that make me feel euphoric and credits-rolling optimistic. I’ve been trying to be a little bit more adventurous in combining genres and decades, so there are some odd transitions in here–hopefully they make you feel good as they do for me. I’m very pleased to say that this episode gave Jessica Simpson her first ever airtime on NTS. Happy spring–I hope you and your loved ones have all gotten vaccinated and that the world feels a little brighter. You can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. Jun Miyake – Relaxn’
2. Jessica Simpson – I Think I’m In Love With You
3. Ahmed Fakroun – Nisyan (Edit)
4. Renée Geyer – Be There In The Morning
5. Blondie – Sunday Girl
6. Throwing Muses – Not Too Soon
7. Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons – C’mon Marianne
8. Bananarama – Shy Boy
9. The Three Degrees – When Will I See You Again
10. Forrest – Rock The Boat
11. Plustwo – Melody
12. Brandy – Top of the World ft. Mase
13. Pet Shop Boys – What Have I Done To Deserve This ft. Dusty Springfield
14. Ryuichi Sakamoto – You Do Me
15. Mr. Twin Sister – Expressions
16. George McCrae – Rock Your Baby
17. Jon Secada – Just Another Day
Convenient that I realized that I hadn’t yet posted Virginia Astley’s debut full-length, From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, on Easter Sunday, of all days (though I did share her very important Hope in a Darkened Heart a few years back). While From Gardens is a squarely summer record–suggesting from all angles the soporific heat of peak July–it is about as pastoral as music can possibly be, which means it’s a record that I start reaching for at the first signs of spring. Alongside Claire Hamill’s Voices, it paints a picture of a heavily romanticized ideal of the British countryside, refracted through childhood memories and the heavy lethargy of summer. Both the album title and the track title for “Out On The Lawn I Lie in Bed” are taken from W.H. Auden’s 1933 poem “A Summer Night,” and fittingly From Gardens recreates the experience of a summer day in its entirety in chronological sequence, with the A side titled “Morning” and the B side “Afternoon.”
It’s languorous, unhurried, and arguably a true ambient record in how well-suited it is as background music, something which Astley herself pointed out in a radio interview: “Whoever’s listening could lie down and put it on, and not really listen to it that much. Just have it on in the background.” Songs aren’t structured like songs so much as curiosity-driven variations on motifs–it’s easy to imagine Astley arriving at a piano refrain that she found particularly pretty, and playing with it until organically arriving at the next “song”–all of which flow seamlessly into one another uninterrupted, just like the experience of a particularly hot day.
More specifically, in addition to being a true ambient record, it’s a freak outlier in how nakedly beautiful and fully realized it is, especially for its time. As Simon Reynolds details here, there was no culture for music like this in 1983. Britain was in the thralls of post-punk and post-post-punk, with sounds going in thousands of different and gritty directions but certainly not backwards, and it’s easy to imagine detractors calling From Gardens just that–regressive, anti-avant-garde. There was something very brave about structuring an entire record around nostalgia and what is very legibly a deep love for bucolic Britain, referencing romanticism and Auden and a lifestyle that it’s difficult for me to imagine as anything other than aristocratic. Yet while Astley was classically trained, From Gardens was clearly informed by a vision that was very novel and fully her own: her personal field recordings made in the village of Moulsford-on-Thames, spun together with luminous piano, flute, and xylophone melodies, with small and elegant hints of electronic manipulation: church bells that chime forever, glitchy manipulation in “When The Fields Were On Fire,” the looping sound of a creaky swing swing gate* forming a pseudo-percussive backbone in “Out On the Lawn I Lie In Bed.” Astley is honest in her nostalgia for something which no longer exists, and she knowingly depicts it in an overly-perfect, hyperreal way that suggests it may have actually never existed at all. But it’s all hers, from start to finish: Astley wrote, recorded, and co-produced From Gardens herself, but moreover she saw the gardens, remembered them, and reimagined them in a way that no one else could. Happy spring–I hope you enjoy.
*I incorrectly heard that sample as a swing, but since Astley very considerately labeled and time/location-stamped all her samples, I’m happy to report that it’s a gate!
