I love and hate house music most. With anything taken mainstream, we’re all bombarded with bloodsuckers making a buck off of it, but beneath all that is an underground of creators making something fresh. My favorite, like all other things in life, is with soul.
And even in this soulful house playlist, there are many different styles. From horizontal disco to deep house, there are so many shades of sexuality, and it’s only gettin better.
Not only do I listen to music actively more than passively, but it’s usually for a purpose. I constantly think about how the song playing fits in with the rest of the music I collect. And how I conceptualize it as a whole.
I’ve created about a half dozen playlists for relaxing. They’re all primarily beat-driven, but I think they’re even more jazz inspired. Quite a few people have taken issue with me classifying these playlists as jazz, but I hear the inspiration more than ever.
I’d go as far to say many jazz legends would appreciate it, if not be actively involved in creating this beat culture if they were here today. The variance and experimentation these beats makers play around with deserves respect.
I love to dance, but rarely do so at live shows. If any of these tracks are playing though, it’s a different story. Loose Control is the collection of music I love to dance to most. At least contemporarily speaking.
Most of this list is funk-inspired, but we’ve got the best in all of dance here: disco, house, electro, and hip hop. Anything that grooves. And Anderson .Paak and Kaytranada groove most. They’re over-represented here. I just can’t help myself.
Between trap and future bass is something special. Not only is it some of the sexiest music out right now, but pushes the edges of music more than any other. Pop is catching up to it, hip hop is there, but its depth still goes unrecognized. And that’s where the problem with playlisting it comes in.
More than any other, this Up to Nogood playlist is reliant on YouTube Music & SoundCloud. Apple Music and Spotify just don’t have the catalog. Not even half.
One thing Spotify does do best is discovery. Digging through music has changed from listening to thousands of songs on my SoundCloud stream to find something fresh down to hundreds with what Spotify recommends. Automation has a long way to go in really helping me out, but Spotify is leading it.
One thing none of them have are analytics for playlisters. One of the most crucial things in making a better playlist. 8tracks is actually the only one I know that does.
A lot of producers try to create a signature sound, but not many pull it off, let alone keep it up. I usually criticize producers for sticking with what originally made them popular, but Galimatias changes it up enough in his latest round of releases. Plus the vocalists are always well picked.
His ‘Ocean Floor Kisses’ came out at the end of 2014 and I’ve been going back to it since. It’s one of the most relaxing beats – on the top list of all time – and best sums up his beautiful & laid back, off the beat music. Fun and quirky at times.
His work with Alina Baraz just before that is even more interesting to talk about. How he mixes her voice in ‘Pretty Thoughts’ with what I’m assuming is her pitched down vocals is one of the best plays between two voices. It finishes sentences better than most couples in love.
He hasn’t made much in the last few years, but some new stuff has sprouted up. ‘Blowback’ isn’t the redefining sound I heard with ‘Ocean Floor Kisses,’ but it’s as different enough as it is good. Taking on that 50’s doo wop (shoo bop) throwback.
I see a lot of producers go through three stages of music production: beat making, remixing, and collaborating. It takes time gaining expertise and forming relationships to work with talented vocalists, but there is no beat that can top a great song.
I was first introduced to Moods from his beat, “Love is Real,” but it took a few years later to find my obsession of his. His remix of “Homie. Lover. Friend.” takes some of the sexiest vocals & lyrics and puts it together better to sing and dance to. It was one of my favorite dance tracks of 2016, but his latest collaboration is topping that, titled Truth.
I don’t take many lyrics to heart, but I love how and what Beau Nox sings on Truth. He sounds like Anderson .Paak, but not as a cheap knockoff. It’s well produced, well spoken, and well sung. It’s teetering on perfection. It might be my favorite song of the year.
Mura Masa has plenty of hits with pop stars. From A$AP Rocky to Damon Albarn, these collaborations have made him more well known than most of his trap producer counterparts. He may not be as consistent as others in the future/trap scene, but his songs are some of most well produced and range far more than most.
From independent to mainstream, what I don’t see enough is trying new things and making it work. Mura Masa’s range in future & trap could give any mumble rapper a fresh sound. And his kick is almost as signature as Kayatrana’s.
Yung Bae’s remix of Gassed by Weslee is worth writing about alone. I haven’t featured a single since the start of the year and this would’ve been next if Yung Bae didn’t have a catalogue of good tracks.
His name sucks, but I guess it goes well with his aesthetic. His music doesn’t suck and grooves with either old soul samples or some kind of Japanese singing. He’s expanded his sound even more with the Gassed remix and worked with other top producers, including Mura Masa, Brasstracks, and Flamingosis.
If his Gassed remix is any indication of his trajectory, see him producing for singers soon to be stars in the next few years.
I love house music. I also hate it. It’s some of my favorite music to dance to, but a lot of it sounds like shit (made for drug use).
Over the eight years this blog recently turned, we’ve tried to break up house into sub-genres. It’s tough, on the verge of impossible, but it’s important. Genres are more of a shade of something than a hard line, but it’s how we discover music, tie it into a pretty bow, and call it a playlist.
My annual disco mix is probably my favorite. I don’t get enough of the harder bass out, but one’s coming soon. The softer, sexier stuff is probably put out most often, but this one right here is what I would define as straight house.
Even though some of it’s called g-house or tech house. Where the beat sounds slightly stepped back.
GlobulDub hasn’t gotten every sound perfect, but he has more melodies than just about any other beat maker. It’s not just the melodies, but his counter melodies. How the two play off each other, and how it progresses. Something important to any beat, and any song.
His music has a different texture of beauty each track. Something made for the beach, the country road, or a midnight stroll. –For the #keywords–