Ryan’s Music Picks ✈️ 20 February 2017

It’s been a while, huh? A lot of stuff happened since my last one of these: Trump became president, my youngest daughter turned one, I turned 34. I’ve been listening to a ton of music and making lots of mental notes and aspirational playlists for this email, but nothing has been actually written down until right now. I just got off a plane not too long ago during which I read (more Cryptonomicon–I’m nowhere near the end still) and so I thought I’d just give you what I listened to in the air and the train ride to my hotel. It’s mostly instrumental and relatively chill because I have travel anxiety and can’t listen to music with words while I read. I’ll also throw in a few albums I can’t help but mention because how much I like them.

Plane Inst:

Balmorhea – Stranger (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)Less “epic” than some other Texas-based sweeping instrumental music, Balmorhea (say bal-mor-ayy) is syncopated and soothing with interesting instrumentation like piano and cello. It hasn’t been commodified and added to commercials or movie soundtracks yet, but it’s certainly ripe for that kind of exploitation.

Frankie Rose – Interstellar (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)My take-off music. Having travel anxiety but also a working understanding of aerodynamics (not a useful one, just enough to make me annoying), I’m cool with airplanes and takeoffs and landings, but I still get kind of worked up during a take off. Having good launch music does help with that, and Interstellar is amazing, driving dream rock, with a good balance of a killer rhythm section and floaty vocals/guitars/synths. Highly recommended. I own this album on vinyl!

This Will Destroy You – Another Language (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)I’m just getting into these guys. They have that loud/quiet dynamic like Explosions in the Sky, but it’s darker and broodier when quiet, and has way more of the slams when loud. Killer.

The Mercury Program – New Myths EP (Bandcamp, Apple Music)One my favorite and first instrumental rock bands, which led me to telling people that I was “way into post-rock” for a few years, which, uh, I don’t even know what that means at this point. Their trademark is delayed guitars and overactive drums and this EP, their first recording since 2009, is right on par with their classics from the early 2000s (which I recommend you also get into).

Teen Daze – Themes for Dying Earth (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)I’m a huge fan of Teen Daze, in spite of their (his, really) pretty kinda played-out name. It’s like a sea of warm waves and boops with icebergs of perfect pop floating by you occasionally. Super soothing but not boring or too spa-music-like.

Nanook of the North – The Täby Tapes (Apple Music, Spotify)Adorable early-2000s indie pop that’s lushly produced and has back and forth boy/girl vocals. Opus recently tweeted his 13-year-old review of this album and I’m so glad he did, it’s still great.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow – Sea When Absent (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)This is one of those albums that sounds totally different depending on if it’s being played loudly or quietly. If you crank it up, it’s punishing guitars and stadium synthesizers but, if you turn it down, it’s hushed vocals adrift in a sea of noise and tamborine. Don’t ask me how it works.

Other Cool Stuff that I Wanted to Tell You About (quick shots)

Sinkane – Life & Livin’ It (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)Sinkane makes music that triangulates a ton of music I love and then turns it into something astonishingly new. There’s elements of so much good stuff here, but it’s the heart that wins out and really holds everything together. The grooves are unstoppable, no question, but the real humanity in this music grabs you and doesn’t let go.

Delicate Steve – This Is Steve (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)Instrumental guitar-fronted rock where the guitar functions as much as the lead singer as the main instrument. Delicate Steve plays the most lyrical guitar in the galaxy, and he rocks harder on this album than on any of his (spectacular) previous releases.

Neil Cicierega – Mouth Moods (Download/Stream)On one level, this is a mixtape of funny, “bad” mashups of songs that are so popular that you probably know the words even if you haven’t heard them in a decade and never made any effort to learn the words. On another level, this is a brilliant, brain-destroying lesson in recontextualization and post-post-modernism. If you have not, definitely check out the two previous releases in this series: Mouth Sounds and Mouth Silence.

I tried a thing:

• Apple Music Playlist

• Spotify Playlist