I thought that in the spirit of openness I thought I would share some music choices that are on a continuous loop on my YouTube music app. I recently discovered Nasser Baker through FatBoy Slim’s Everybody Loves a Mixtape. Last week’s offering of the mixtape kind made me discover Phat and Small’s Turn Around, which is also epic. To tell you the truth, I used to discover new music like this when I used to listen to Tiesto’s Clublife and I guess FatBoy’s weekly musical offering is filling that role. There is something that speaks to me about the musical scene that originates from the United Kingdom. This year has been epic in terms of musical offerings from the United Kingdom, namely, Faithless’ new album All Blessed. While I preferred Disclosure’s Energy (Deluxe), this duo too has also had released its new album. For all those who need a couple more leads from the music scene in the United Kingdom – I hope you know about Mark Knight – The Return of Wolfy can still transport me back to some memories when I used to listen to it while completing my dissertation – good times!
New music
Piece of my heart and of my ears…
This is the year that African music has truly gone mainstream or so it seems. My ears first got attracted by the sound of Alane by Wes being re-released jointly by Robin Schulz as well as the song being remixed by Don Diablo. Then I came across the fact that Disclosure in their newest album features many collaborations with African artists. What really struck me was the sensation of being in a trance when I heard the song Etran on Disclosure’s latest album. It made me comb through my music collection when I had discovered Songhoy Blues. I realized upon some further research that the band that Discslore worked with on the song called Etran and the Songhoy Blues both originate from Mali. Needless, to say I am in the process of diving deeper into the discography of both the bands. However, even earlier than listening to Disclosure’s latest, it was amazing to see that Mumford and Sons had collaborated with some African artists. The sound of the collaboration with Baaba Maal was particularly intriguing. I have always loved music with my first exposure to African music in particular being Bob Marley and his music in hindsight transcends all race and country boundaries. Listening to Kanye West over the years has made me comb through the samples that he has chosen to feature in his songs and the song Famous which contains samples from Sister Nancy’s song Bam Bam was one such discovery. This one song opened me to the world of Dancehall as a music genre.
Needless to say the African music that I have been in the process of discovering has made me appreciate that while my musical tastes can be mainstream, it is music that is able to connect to the soul that can be re-visted continuously. Hence, closer home, music by Indian Ocean especially in Kandisa that features traditional songs as well as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s album based on Bulleh Shah is just some of the music that the soul is drawn to now and then.
What has been a treat to my ears over the years has been the sounds of Electronic music, which all began when I first listened to Moby for his music was ambient to the sense that it didn’t require too much attention on the lyrics. It made perfect sense then that I enjoy music from the Australian scene, namely Flume, whose sound in my opinion heavily integrates Electronic elements, namely his first album and Skin, which particulary come to my mind. I recently came across Bronson, which according to Apple Music is the result of the collaboration between Seattle duo ODESZA (Harry Mills alongside Clayton Knight) and Sydney producer Golden Features (Tom Stell). So, once again, spot the influence of Down Under.
nityachhiber 