Kaytranada ditched out on me and the rest of the crowd in two different locations. Once opening for Disclosure at The Greek in Berkeley and the other this past year at Symbiosis. Finally, I got to see him live at Mamby, the festival’s second year on Lake Michigan in Chicago.
My expectations weren’t too high for Kay. My favorite producers DJing live haven’t been anything phenomenal at festivals in the past and going in with high expectations is a recipe for disaster (see Mayer Hawthorne). However, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well he kept the crowd bouncing.
Bass is what gets people moving. I’ve seen plenty of it, but Kaytranada live was the most stark example. When the bass wasn’t bumping the people weren’t bouncing. Get that signature kick in there and Kaytranda has the crowd in a jig. Guess this is why house music and its many iterations are what we love to dance to most. Except Bill Withers, of course (soul music) […]
Odesza’s Above the Middle was my first love of theirs and even though it starts off rocky, as I originally pointed out, once the vocals kick in it’s the sound that inspired this list. Especially hearing it live at Outside Lands in 2015. Ever since hearing it first back in 2013, I’ve found a set of songs just as inspiring.
The whole thing reminds me of a dream I had at least 10 years ago. It’s probably the most vivid dream I’ve ever had. It started off with me falling from the sky, but I wasn’t frightened of falling. More fascinated by how enormous the sky and ocean were around me. I remember there was a castle in the distance. It was like I was falling to get there. It’s the most beautiful dream I can remember.
My first recollection of Flamingosis is not a good one. For me his name is tied to the reshare scheme [trading reshares] I saw a bunch of decent and not-so decent producers doing on SoundCloud sometime back, even if I’m not 100% he was doing exactly that.
Recently, I caught his song Next To You and gradually fell in love. I love how he plays with the vocals on it. It always feels like a surprise.
So naturally, I went through all of his SoundCloud and found plenty more music to speak about. His music is like that Late Night vibe I love, but with good old soul singers on top.
In the over 100 tracks I listened to of his, the hardest thing to do was to cut some of the good ones. That’s always the hardest thing to do in making a mix. “Good is the enemy of great.” And Flamingosis has plenty of greats.
First off, these festivals with acronyms for names leave little to the imagination, which doesn’t make it easy to remember. I got BFD mixed up with TBD with the promoter and I feel like a dipshit. As I should. Always good to start off with a little humility.
BFD, or as I recently found out its full name, Big Fucking Day, leaves a lot more to the imagination and is Live 105’s annual summer festival at the Shoreline in Mountain View. The show had three stages this year: the main stage, one for local bands and a tent for the electronic acts. Of course I was there for The Offspring, not really, I was there to see TOKi. And Joywave.
Up until a few days ago, I knew starRo for his relaxing tunes, California & Seduction. I did like House Party when it came out, but the SoundCloud ad in front ruined it for me – and I annoyed the shit out of starRo about it.
Going through his entire SoundCloud catalogue and explore.fm, I see where he’s taking his sound and I love it, every which way. I don’t see many (hardly any) producers do as well with one sound as starRo has done with a few of his […]
Finding a name and cover art is the biggest pain in the ass putting these playlists together.
Our “Next to You” playlist is all sexy house beats, but naming it with some variation of Sex & House (ex: House Be Sexy) gets old fast. You do want those keywords for discoverability, but the name of a playlist is its second introduction, the artwork is its first. Both are important to catch the listeners eye initially.
I just fell in love with the Flamingosis track, Next to You. It may not have the same vibe as the rest of the list, but the name couldn’t match it more.
The popularity of mashups have been quickly dying off since 2012, mostly due to major label pressures on SoundCloud and other music services. I miss ’em, so I finally decided to put together a list of my most favorite ones.
I split mashups into two categories. The first takes samples from many pop songs all compiled into one. The first few on our playlist are good examples. The other is a vocal track mixed in with an instrumental. It might not have as many moving parts as the other, but I bet it’s just as difficult to make it sound right, if not more. Putting two sounds together and making them sound like one is hard for any producer, let alone one working with sounds people are so familiar with.
Judge for yourself, but it’s important to keep in mind that mashups are for fun and don’t always sound the most polished.
Late Night Jazz was going for new producers’ takes on jazz, but we got some criticism on if they were really jazz songs. I even questioned a few, but all had some form of jazz style in it.
I stretched the style a lot more this time around, so we decided on a word not as narrowly defined. Some beautiful guitar, sax and piano playing on these 20. This kind of music is not getting appreciated enough. Here’s mine.
I grew up listening to Prince mostly because of my pops. Living in a suburb south of St. Paul for all of my childhood, I didn’t appreciate the Minneapolis music scene until I got out of it and left for college out West.
There I started to appreciate hip-hop and R&B on a much more personal level. Getting in much deeper with Prince, Atmosphere and other Minnesota acts towards the end of college, including Solid Gold, GAYNGS and Mel Gibson & the Pants. Finally, in the Bay Area I found Polica, Tickle Torture, thestand4rd, and most recently, Morly. Well, kinda.
I stayed in Minneapolis for a few years after college and covered my first show, Theophilus London at The Loft, in early 2012. There I heard one of the openers and fell in love (with her voice). It belonged to Katy Morley, now known as Morly. I remember tracking Astronautalis and her down to see if they had any music released. She didn’t, but I remember her telling me something was in the works.
Four years later and I run into her music while researching a post on Minneapolis (this one). Her voice is even more touching and her piano playing stands out more.
It’s good to have such talent sprouting from the Twin Cities. A lot of which have Prince all over them. Here’s a dozen or so and their songs.
So many of Prince’s predecessors show a glimpse of his depth, only to keep sticking on the same track. It’s hard to get one sound down in this life, let alone two (don’t even get me started on three), but Prince did. So fuck the fans and go off on your own. It’s all yours until you make it theirs.
Here’s a good glimpse at Prince’s legacy from one of my favorite shows in music, Pharrell & Scott Vener’s OTHERtone on Beats 1.