As this bitch of a year comes to a close, there isn’t anything better than soulful singers to give it some grace. I haven’t put together a soul singers playlist for about a year, so there’s a lot of musicians to cover (72!)
In our last Lip Service playlist, it had soul, but no women. I think it’s as important as ever to show appreciation to the women you love, and I love these musician. Or I’m sure I would if I knew them.
This one’s for the woman I do, Lizzzz.
For the second year in a row at Symbiosis I wasn’t prepared.
With camping equipment, the right clothing and food. All the things you should prepare for when your off the grid for a few days. The one thing that makes those problems a lot easier is friends. It’s easy to survive in the city alone, but not out there. Plus, the more friends you have in your own camp, the more connections you have going around Symbiosis.
And isn’t that the point of the festival? Above music, learning, and even eating. Conversations with people is highest priority.
We’re starting to break our remix playlists into genres. Our first was relaxing hip hop remixes and now we’ve got soulful R&B, and some just soulful (we did have a tropical remix list in between).
The list of soul started off as general relaxing remixes, but it was pretty much all some sort of soul so we trimmed it down to that. Apparently I only like hip hop and soul now.
We anti-Valentined last year with our Hip Hop + Heartbreak, thanks to the help of mimb, and this year we’re covering everything but (hip hop).
Most of heartbroke (as fuck) is some sort of soul music along the electronic scale, leaning heavy on electronic near the end.
If you’re in for a lonely Valentine’s this year, I hope this makes for a good background soundtrack.
The great thing about running your own site is that you get to do whatever you want with it. The problem with it is you do whatever you want and that means you overlook somethings some of the time, letting stupid shit slip through without getting someone else’s opinion first.
JaFunk once again starts out our list of groove music, the first being Groovewit. We decided to call this one Groovetits because sometimes it feels like no one is reading these things. So I thought I’d try to get some kind of reaction. And it was refreshing to know I could post whatever the hell I want. Even though this’ll probably be one of those things that I should have gotten a second opinion on.
Fuck it, at least the music will last.
The first time I ran into Madelyn Grant’s name was on Odesza’s Sun Models. I had recently uploaded the track to SoundCloud and she had contacted me about including her name in the title. The only reason I hadn’t in the first place was because they really chopped and skewed her vocals, making her voice barely recognizable. But she was real nice about it and it seemed more than fair.
About two months later and I see Madelyn Grant on FKJ’s Waiting. I didn’t remember she was on Odesza’s track at first, but once I did I was all the more in love. Madelyn has a breathtaking voice, but even better she knows how to use it – a much bigger problem with most vocalists.
Since then Madelyn has collaborated with a favorite of mine, Emancipator. I asked her how she got to collaborate with all these legitimate producers and she said, I sent them my demos.
That’s it. In Odesza’s case they were requesting female vocalists, but the other two she just sent them a sample. That’s all it took. How the fuck does that happen? Oh wait, that doesn’t. Minus with Madelyn.
—
I’ve put together a playlist of my favorite songs of her’s as well as another list for producers she should also send her music to. Although, this time I think they should be doing the reaching out.
A great live show needs two things. The right friends and and the right music. And Friday at Folsom might just top any other show I’ve ever been to. Not only is Snakehips headlining, but FKJ is playing his debut live set!
I’ve only ever written about a show once before solely to get more people to go. This is my second attempt. And I’m MUCH more excited about this one.
Only a few people I go to the club with regularly would know how much I love to dance. But only if the right friends and music are there and the two usually don’t come together often.
Many great producers are not as great live. It’s a whole different game. Something I know FKJ excels at and I’m pretty damn confident Snakehips will too. Both are making the best dance music today, and I don’t say that lightly.
Just see for yourself.
– Make sure to dance
– Even if it’s on your seat
Our electro funk from last year grew so much we decided to break it up & section it into a few playlists. First up comes from the groovier side.
I wanted to call this Groovewit hits, but Lauren talked me out of it. Generally speaking it lies in the mid-range of electro music with heavy synth influence and a whole lotta funky bass.
Let us know how well the songs flowed together for you.
It’s important to us.
Our favorite female vocalists of 2014 had a part two and this was going to be it. But so many of them were downtempo electronic, so we decided to make something more specific out of it, and brought in some older tracks.
Our electro relaxations has been our most popular playlist to date, other than the beats to blaze to, and we always wanted to include female vocals over the relaxations. And here it finally is…
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I’ve listened to way too much music this year, probably around 12,000 new tracks (I tried calculating it). Most of the music was.. unfinished, to say the least, but we found a lot more songs worth keeping than any year before it.
A lot of new music emerged or reemerged over the year. Deep house was the big thing, but many discredit it because of the hype. It had its bad with its good. Our favorite new style goes to what doesn’t seem to have an official name yet. I’ve heard many call it kawaii, but I prefer vapor – this naming shit is more important than you’d think.
We’ve got 30 songs to show off, 11 artists and 20 playlists for you, but if that’s not enough… wait ’til next year.