My newest mix for NTS Radio is exactly what I want during the coldest part of the year: cozy, warm-toned folk and blues, with a few leans towards classical, and lots of room tone and vinyl crackle. I hope you like it and that you’re staying warm, wherever you are. You can download an mp3 version here if you’re so inclined.
Tracklist:
1. All In One – In A Long White Room
2. Lee Hazlewood – Your Sweet Love
3. Emitt Rhodes – Somebody Made For Me
4. Arthur Russell – Instrumentals 1974 Volume 1 Part 02
5. Ted Lucas – It Is So Nice To Get Stoned
6. Rosa Ponselle & Carmela Ponselle – Where My Caravan Has Rested
7. Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight
8. The Durutti Column – Madeleine
9. John Jacob Niles – Go ‘Way From My Window
10. Nino Rota – Sarabande
11. Fred Neil – Little Bit Of Rain
12. Linda Cohen – The Dust
13. Patti Page – Confess
14. Unknown Artist – IV
15. John Cage – In A Landscape (excerpt)
16. Dan Reeder – Nobody Wants To Be You
17. Washington Philips – Train Your Child
18. The Roches – Runs In the Family
19. Mother Nature – Orange Days And Purple Nights
20. Elizabeth Cotten – Mama, Nobody’s Here But The Baby
21. Mark Fry – Song For Wilde
My latest mix for NTS Radio is a chilly, moody descent into winter: minimalist avant-garde, icy synths, a David Sylvian sandwich, echoey whistles, and another surprise Bono cameo. I hope you like it–and if you do, you can download an mp3 version here.
Tracklist:
1. David Sylvian – Preparations For A Journey
2. Dory Previn – Mama Mama Comfort Me
3. Muslimgauze – Sapere Aude
4. Viola Renea – Chariot of Palace
5. Mabe Fratti ft. Claire Rousay – Hacia el Vacío
6. Edson Natale – Nina Maika
7. Lucille Starr – Wooden Heart
8. Larry Chernicoff – Woodstock, New York
9. Svitlana Nianio & Alexander Yurchencko – Prologue
10. Unknown Artist – Siciliana (comp. Ottorino Respighi)
11. Daniel Lentz – Midnight White
12. Uakti – Montanha
13. John Cale – Please
14. Chas Smith – October ’68
15. Osnabrücker Jugendchor – Tibi Soli (comp. Gregorio Allegri)
16. Passengers – A Different Kind of Blue / Beach Sequence
17. David Sylvian – Silver Moon Over Sleeping Steeples
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
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!
