The Pine Walk Collection

I had some ideas this morning of some projects that i could be writing about. But i wasn’t really feeling any of them, so i started to go through in my mind what i’ve been listening to lately, that i could write about from heart. And hence this post about The Pine Walk Collection on Mixcloud.

The first time i heard about his project was serveral months ago when it was brought up in the swedish speaking podcast called P3 Klubben, and one of the hosts introduced this musical project to us listeners – and i got hooked immediately.

The Mixcloud page of this project describes itself as:
”DJ Sets from Fire Island Pines & New York City (1979-1999). These tapes were found in a recently purchased house on Pine Walk. There are over 200 tapes in total and they have been carefully digitized and remastered and offered to stream for free here on Mixcloud with permission from all of the living DJs we were able to contact.” and it also links to this The New York Times article about it.

There’s so much pure joy in these sets, and you get introduced to so much new and fun music – however, sometimes it’s rather frustrating since some of the tracks never got officially released – so it’s impossible to find them outside of the sets from The Pine Walk Collection. This musical collection is a sort of a time capsule. I have listened to far from all of the sets from the collection, but i’m working myself through them. My favourite so far is this set: Michael Jorba . Heaven Must Be There . May 1985 .

I hope you give this collection a listen! I recommend it! Only unfortunate thing is that you can only listen to it on Mixcloud, either on the website or in the app. And while it’s free, some ease of life features are behind paywalls.

Until next time, take care.
SLQT.

Best of Release Radar – Week 34 – 2022.

Spotify features this thing called Release Radar, which consists of 30 songs that are newly released. The description of the playlist is, rougly translated from swedish to english, as follows: ”Listen to the newest music from artists that you follow, and also new singles that has been chosen for you. Updated every friday.”.

And i figured that this could be a fun part of the Laces Shoes & Funky Tunes website could be a consistent update. Every week, i pick my three favourite tracks from my Release Radar Playlist. I will however preface that many tracks on my Release Radar Playlist is remixes of older songs, that has been released a long time ago, and already has been remixed several times – but sometimes, these mixes are golden. An example of this would be that i this week have gotten a remix of Avicii’s track Malo, a track that was released back in 2011. So, it’s always rather fun to go through and see what’s been released lately. I assume that these remixes mostly connects to the artists that i follow, and the rest of the tracks on Release Radar can be whatever Spotify imagines that i would enjoy. I do want to preface this list with, that some weeks you get 10 absolute bangers that go into your regular rotation on Spotify, but some weeks it’s a struggle to even find one track that sticks out.

I will list the three songs that i pick, without any special order. If they’ve been picked, i enjoyed them.

The first track that i will mention on this weeks Best of Release Radar is the track called Let It Breathe by the rapper Joey Bada$$. This track was released as a single that features on his new album called 2000. I must admit that i have a somewhat of a soft spot for Joey, i’ve been listening to him for a long time and i think that most of his releases are very good. I was bumping his 2017 album ALL-AMERIKKKAN BADA$$ so much when it was released, and i still come back to it regularly.
I enjoy the sound of Let It Breathe, it’s hard to describe closer what it is, but there’s something in it that speaks to me. And i’m always fascinated by the flow and lyrics of Joey and his tracks.

The second track that i will mention on this weeks Best of Release Radar is a track called Before You and its by BCee, Charlotte Haining and Emba. This is some sort of electronic, possibly a liquid house track – let’s say that it is. I always find these kinds of songs hard to put in a genre of sorts. The track is rather soothing and it has this strong female lead voice, that a lot of songs in this genre has. However i feel like the singer, who i assume is Charlotte Haining, complements the track in a good way. I believe that Before You will go into my regular rotation of songs.

The last track that i will mention on this weeks Best of Release Radar is a track called ‘Til Dawn by Rebecca & Fiona, Chinaski. I’ve been a fan of Rebecca & Fiona for years, and i do enjoy the path and direction that they’re taking with their new music. I get the feeling that they’re not afraid to try something new and different from what they’ve done before. I have no prior knowledge of Chinaski, however i am going to dwell deeper into Chinaski and see what kinds of music has been produced by them before. ‘Til dawn gives me a feeling that i am driving in Miami in the mid 1980’s on your way to a cool party, and i enjoy it. It sounds nice and comforting. Like the world lies before your feet.

Honorable mention as the worst track that i got on this weeks Release Radar is You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween by Muse. This is, i don’t even really know how to describe it. Give it a listen. I feel like there are no redeeming qualities to this track. Which had me rather surprised as i do enjoy Muse a lot, and i’ve seen them live in concert once. However, this time they are completely off the rails

It seems as this was one of those weeks when the tracks on the playlist is rather weak. I had some trouble picking the three tracks that i enjoyed the most. I hope that you have an easier time picking out your favourites from this weeks Release Radar playlist.

Until next time, take care.
SLQT

Anatolian Rock Revival Project

A couple of years ago a friend of mine linked me a playlist on Spotify that’s called Anatolian Rock Revival Project and the description of the playlist is as follows: ”An art project dedicated to bringing non-mainstream pieces from Turkish Rock History (1964-1980) into the light with unique artworks.”. Neither my friend or i speak any turkish, but you don’t need to speak turkish or understand the lyrics to be able to enjoy the purity of the music. However it sure would be fun to understand the lyrics to the songs, alas i’m not sure if i would enjoy the tracks in the same capacity – since rock music from this era in the western world, with lyrics that i understand, sometimes are quite cheesy.

There’s something so wild and excellent about the music, since i can’t comment on the lyrics, the statement before connects to the instrumental parts of the songs, aswell as the singing – because you can get a feel for the lyrics from the voice and emotion of the singer.
However, the instrumentals are so good, there’s just something about that old, raw rock music that really connects back to the time when it was produced. Most of the other rock music that most of us westeners has enjoyed stems from the western part of the world, yet somehow some of the songs in this playlist sounds so similiar to the western counterparts. However, the Anatolian Rock Music from this era also brings in instruments that wasn’t being used in the western counterparts of the music from the same era, since it connects to the more classical and ”folky” music from the Anatolian region, aswell as other elements, of course.

You somehow always fall back into what you’ve grown up listening to, and i assume that the same applies to the rock music in this playlist. You see that in a lot of music, that you implement sounds that comes from the folk music from the region that your roots stem from.

As i’ve been listening through several of these Anatolian rock-playlists during the years i’ve noticed that a few of the songs has been sampled in new and modern music, which is rather fun! I think that speaks volumes for atleast the instrumentals from this region during this era – that rock music from the 60s to the 80s, in the Anatolian region gets sampled into newly produced music. One of the artists that i’ve been listening to a lot before i discovered the Anatolian Rock Revival Project is the rapper Action Bronson – so, figure my surprise when i recognized some instrumentals and some hooks from the Anatolian music, as it turns out that Action Bronson seems to rather heavily sample from these old Anatolian Rock songs. I really enjoy that, it gives people the chance and possibility to broaden whatever music they listen to, as they subconsciously gets introduced to other sorts of music, as they get sampled into different kind of genres of music.

This playlist is something i often find myself wander back into, and i feel that i both listen to it actively, but also keep it in the backround sometimes as it’s so very easy to listen to, in my opinion. I hope that you’ll give the Anatolian Rock Revival Project a chance. I give it my stamp of approval.

Until next time, take care.
SLQT