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- Prestige Format Picks /// 13 June 2025
Prestige Format Picks /// 13 June 2025
stone classics from tortured geniuses, punk rock catharsis, and literally perfect post-soviet disco
Ryan Ruppe
June 13, 2025 • Read this in about: 8 minutes
Absolutely too much happened this week
read to the end for some really good mixtapes
in my defense, how could I not
Sly and the Family Stone - There’s a Riot Goin’ On
Sly Stone passed away this week. He would be the epitome of tortured genius if not for the archetype himself also passing away. But given everything that’s happened in my home state this week, I couldn’t resist posting this.
Sly and the Family Stone is one of those bands that I’ve been vaguely aware of but haven’t done a lot of hard listening to before. Two things that struck me, as I worked my way through their essential singles, was (1) how many of their songs I knew, and (2) how much more complex and interesting their recordings are than, say, the Shrek in the Swamp Dance Party version of their songs are.
The album I’m featuring this week, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, was named at the last minute in response to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. Recorded with lots of overdubs by Sly Stone himself, and featuring some of the first commercial uses of drum machines, it’s muddy and dark and feels astonishingly modern for an album recorded in 1971. It’s so clear that not just Prince but so many artists were influenced by this album and by all of Sly and the Family Stone’s music.
I don’t know why I didn’t just take a picture of the cover tbh
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Brian Wilson, the architect of The Beach Boys, passed away this week. His passing was one of those things that I knew that was coming, but that I was unprepared for nevertheless. In reading some of the obituaries, I was surprised to learn that “Brian Wilson is a genius” was a PR campaign (from the Beatles’ publicist) that took on a life of its own and may have contributed to Wilson’s downfall.
I listened to The Beach Boys as a kid but got really into them around when Brian Wilson and Darian Sahanaja from the Wondermints rerecorded and released the mythical followup to Pet Sounds, Smile. Pet Sounds was recorded mostly by Brian Wilson with studio musicians and it’s incredibly dense with musical textures and truly incredible songwriting. Something of a reply to The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, it ended up partially inspiring the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The songs on this album rule. Wouldn’t It Be Nice and God Only Knows are two of, in my opinion, the best love songs in existence. It’s an album I have memorized to the point that just looking at the name of any given song starts it playing in my head. But a focused listen will pull out so many tiny touches and little musical quirks. The songs are so dense musically and so emotional, and I feel blessed to have lived on the same Earth at the same time as Brian Wilson.
had to get a shot of the rad clear red cassette
This guy, he gets it. It feels like every single song on this album of angry pop punk relationship songs breaks down into a part where Rosenstock shouts a bit about how terrible the current state of world is. I get the sense that it’s constantly wearing on him too. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one constantly stressed about everything. Rosenstock’s voice is pretty raw for most of this album, and a good chunk of the choruses are shouted group vocals, like he just cannot stop shouting.
The first handful of tracks stand out as cathartic singalongs, with the standouts being WILL U STILL U and I LIKED YOU BETTER. I dig the crunchy, Grandaddy-esque SOFT LIVING and its thesis of “To just stay strong is hard, when all you can think of is how did we go so wrong?”. And HEALMODE is exactly as therapeutic as the title implies, plus it nails something wonderfully specific about rain in Southern California. Careful singing along to this album, you might find yourself crying.
is it dorky or cool as hell?
I have no idea how this album ended up in my library or why it popped up on shuffle this week, but it was sorely needed. I can’t write four topical music reviews in a row! This album came out almost exactly 15 years ago, and it’s a perfect slab of Slovenian synth-heavy disco-house. There’s some wonderful touches of personality throughout, with some soviet kitsch spy vibes here, some motorik beat there, and bits of unexpected eastern-European instrumentation thrown in to these perfect jams. I could almost believe it if I found out this was actually the work of some well-known producer, but I love this album more as a totally unexpected piece of ace, and proof that the term “world music” doesn’t really mean a darn thing.
I believe you were promised some good mixtapes:
Philip Sherburne, who has a really good newsletter and who has written about music for Pitchfork (back in the “good old days”) and some other places, and who runs the excellent record label Balmat, recently released a really impressive four hour electronic mix that he put together for a live event. He says it’s full of “big” tracks that are well-known to him, but I recognized maybe three songs, so “big” is pretty subjective in this case. Anyway, it’s fantastic. (Tracklist in the comments on Soundcloud)
Scholastics is a DJ I’ve known for years, who started live-streaming his sets during 2020 as “Curricular” sets. He tends to touch ambient, gospel house, 80s mall electro, and deep cut pop remixes, and he just posted a set from last summer, one of the last before he went on hiatus. This has been absolutely soundtracking my walks this week.
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