A little closer – a mixtape of favourite songs from January 2015

ninja_january

I first thought of it as an ironic reply to the endless year’s end best of lists: To make the ultimate best of a year list by posting a countdown of one song a day for this whole year. Soon it turned out to be not so silly at all. I find it a nice way of putting landmarks on my listening maps. At the end of the first month I felt like turning it into a mix but it doesn’t really work for a dj mix. For dj mixes I have to leave out a lot of great music that just doesn’t fit. So instead of that I have just moved the 31 songs around until their order made sense: the sweet reverb guitars and melodies of Gurr and Ô Paon followed by the cutting electro clash coolness of C.A.R., the Morr Music-like Ryan Hemsworth cute’tronica, next to which the “youth is on fire” cosmic teen angst hiphop of Sirivs Black sounds even more emo as it is, the smooth hook of Nao’s R&B pop pushing up to Temi Odeyale’s great oily sister-nancy-ish vocals on the dubby goodness that the Sherwood & Pinch track is, the Zs’ taking their time to stomp their flirring dubjazznoise/post-punk out, and as contrast: the irresistable, slurring feelgood-rock of the Deers, the riot grrl-meets-britbubblegum of Joanna Gruesome, the queer/trans hardcore smack of G.L.O.S.S. (Girls Living Outside Society Shit), the rites-of-spring-but-darker energy of Pretty Hurts being picked up by the new Sleater-Kinney who really got me with that breakdown in the middle of this song, the so so good indie hiphop of Dessa, handclaps, yeah, so glad Erase Errata exist again (or still?), and Pollyester with their sweet coldblooded DFA-funkiness, Phantom Winter who blew my mind with their live show, Matana Roberts breaking my heart with her sad daring beauty, then a careful return from the abyss with Noveller’s album opener that moves so wonderfully from those single guitar tones to that wall of sound, and now it’s all calm and slow enough to bring up Htrk, who have this great guitar noise shifting around below the song (I recommend headphones), now it’s darksynthy enough for Ghost Culture who don’t even need the vocals in this song, and I’m late for the alison-moyet-gone-tomboy electro-pop of Nimmo & The Gauntletts, and that’s Theo Parrish asking if you’re okay, soul brother, and if you’re not, after this song you will be, the sexy confident swinging “be in yoself” broken up with Bottoms’ “i hate my body, don’t wanna live in this body” trans acid anthem, followed by ukrainian Vakula acid fluff, and of course: Burial’s timeless uptempo hunt, smearing into Huck Farper’s noise techno beast, A.G. Cook with a big thank you to 20jfg for understanding and explaining, now not so many songs left, what to do, hm, yes: DJ Octopus’ distorted garage house with a big heart for sunshine over the smog, now hit the breaks with Emile Haynie (who has produced some horrible music, Eminem, Linkin Park, I think buuuut this tune with Charlotte Ghainsbourgh, Sampha and Dev ‘Blood Orange’ Hynes… <3 … and last but not least Miguel feat. Kurupt: sexy slow-burning funk shit.

So. Now it feels like those mixtapes I used to make for friends to share my enthusiasm about new music I found. Hope you enjoy it like I do.

P.S.: If you want a download link, feel free to ask.