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Archive for the ‘Playlists for Emotional Occasions’ Category

West Coast Best Coast Playlist: “one of those days when the sky is California blue”

Posted by Larissa on April 22nd, 2010

click on player to the right to listen

1. Absofacto “Synthesocietal” 2010

2. Toro Y Moi Remix “Alligator” 2010

3. Snowden “Anemone Arms” 2010

4. Kid A “Trampled Youth” 2009

5. Portugal. The Man “All My People” 2010

6. Best Coast “Moody” 2009

7. Radiohead “Palo Alto” 1998  - you know it’s good when it still sounds novel 12 years later

Oh West Coast Best Coast – I’m not sure if I’ll ever seriously embrace your granola ways. I’m not gonna lie, I love sipping on kambucha and smelling soy candles, but it’s too much to offer me flaxseed pancakes and locally grown organic eggs for breakfast. I kid you not, this stuff is on our hotel breakfast menu.

George and I are excited, however, to sneak away from family obligations in granola-town to check out the San Fran Indie scene. I’m hoping that a few Coachella leftovers wandered up to the North. Having done some research, I found we’re lucky to be there on the same days that Yo La Tengo is playing… but I’m thinking we’ll try some smaller venues such as Amnesia. Who knows, this is my first time doing San Fran Indie.

Get Away: the playlist that takes you places

Posted by Larissa on April 4th, 2010

I feel like songs are almost like smells in that they can elicit memories otherwise rarely recalled. You know that summer fresh cut grass smell that, when present, calls forth images of running around outside, picking dandelions, or waking up early for elementary school? At least that’s what I see.

Songs have a similarly powerful effect for me . Play Dan Black’s

“U + Me =”

and I’m transported to South Beach Miami. Brett and I are leaving our hotel room, overly happy, and refusing to turn off the music. So, we decide to listen to Dan Black through my iPhone’s speakers, holding it up to our ears and laughing as we walk down the street to Bambinas, then Mansion, a pizza joint and a club respectively. I’m sure we looked ridiculous.

Play Death Cab’s

“Bixby Canyon Bridge”

and I’m in California staring out the window of my family’s rented minivan. This was during my obsession with Jack Kerouac. When I found out that “Bixby Canyon Bridge” was a tribute to Kerouac I decided it was only appropriate that I make it my theme song for our trip to California that summer.

Klaxons

“Golden Skans”

puts me on a commuter train from my Grandparents’ place to my work in downtown Philadelphia. I’m tired because it’s eight in the morning and I play “Golden Skans” to wake myself up while I read the newspaper.

Andrew Bird brings me back to last spring when I spent every spare moment studying, often in my room, playing

“Not a Robot, but a Ghost”

with the window open. The humid Baltimore air blows through my room while I stared at psychopharmocology power points.

Play playlist

Hey that was My Idea! and the Spring Break Playlist

Posted by George on March 16th, 2010

:) Respect booyakasha.

Respect booyakasha :)

Well it seems somewhat that Pitchfork has stolen our idea for a playlist. No hard feelings; in fact I’m honored (or am I giving the Aphera Team too much credit here? *cheeky laugh*). Regardless of our ability to influence the indie powerhouse, their new feature at the very least inspired me to update our playlist. My sister is away on her spring break and she’s traditionally the one who’s really on top of the new music of today so I won’t attempt to fulfill where I know I can’t; thus, I present a spring time mix with the average age of the songs being 10 years old (jeeeeez I really need to get with the times).

ENJOY (click here to open player)

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse (RIP) – Little Girl (featuring Julian Casablancas)

Beck – Tropicalia

Battles – Rainbow

Lole Y Manuel – Bulerías De La Pena

Devendra Banhart – Carmencita

Sunday Afternoon Playlist: ‘The present now will later be past’

Posted by Larissa on March 7th, 2010

The best lyrics state the obvious. It’s the fact that artists can express in words what barely reaches our own consciousness. Bob Dylan profoundly sings in ‘The Times They Are A-changin” a simple law about the passage of time (in the title above), that when brought to light, can bring one comfort or distress. Similarly profound yet obvious is Benjamin Gibbard’s lyric, ‘The glove compartment is inaccurately named,’ in Death Cab’s ‘Title and Registration’. And finally, my favorite lyric of all time, from Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’, ‘Yes, they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness, But it’s better than drinkin’ alone.’

I’m not saying anything about the lyrics below, in fact, I don’t know these songs well enough to have dissected their lyrics. However, I am saying that music can console. It can tell us that, ‘the present now will later be past’ when the immediate is not looking so good, it can be upbeat when we are happy, it can be somber when we are sad. In other words, it makes good company. Enjoy the tracks below on this Sunday afternoon.

Click on player to listen to tracks- since the Broken Bell’s track is so new and hyped we did not add it to our player but linked below

Ok Go ‘Skyscrapers’

Here We Go Magic –  ’Fangela’

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Heads Will Roll’

Bon Iver – ‘Blood Bank’

Broken Bells – ‘The High Road’

Sunday Afternoon Playlist: Baby Voices and Dance

Posted by Larissa on February 28th, 2010

These are songs I’ve been listening to recently – I always have a playlist on my laptop and iphone titled ‘The playlist’. It’s not as specific as the one titled ‘chill’ and the one titled ‘nostalgia.’ However, ‘The playlist’ is a very selective collection of songs – you’ve got to be pretty special to make in on there. So here it is – it’s a little dance mix inspired largely due to the fact that this weekend’s and last weekend’s Baltimore DJs have been horrendous; the music was stale. I highly recommend they get some David Guetta in their program. Or as my friend, Brett, would say, ‘Baby voices please!’ Come on.

PLAY TRACKS

Miike Snow – ‘Black & Blue’

Chiddy Bang – ‘All Things Go’

Local Natives – ‘Wide Eyes’

Hot Chip (Marvin Gaye) – ‘Sexual Healing’

David Guetta – ‘Memories (Feat. Kid CuDi)’

Simian Mobile Disco – ‘I Believe’

Holy Ghost! (Friendly Fires) – ‘On Board’

Love Songs

Posted by Blank Page on February 14th, 2010

blankp

Winter Madness, SAD, The Blues and Music as Therapy

Posted by Larissa on January 31st, 2010

I was in a bad mood a couple nights ago and texted a few people to have them suggest a cure. My favorite response came from Paloma. Half of her texts made me feel worse; for example, she texted something about how every hour you spend in front of the television increases your risk of dying by something like 10 percent. Doubtful, maybe, but since I had just watched HP6 the night before, this assertion was really no help. But the effects of such texts were completely washed by others revealing her idiosyncrasies, ‘I also watched the Matrix every night it’s been on in the last 2 weeks. Now vying w Howl for my most-watched movie of all time.’ Only for Paloma and maybe my youngest brother, Alexander, would Howl’s Moving Castle, be their most-watched movie of all time. Somewhere between learning about polar bears being left-handed and reading Salinger’s alternate obituary in The Onion, I started to feel better.

Anyway, here is my stab at a cure for the winter blues. This is also a response to Paloma’s request for some ‘this-is-no-time-for-lethargy music.’ I am pretty sure I’m not the only one feeling this slump. The most recent episode of 30 Rock was titled ‘Winter Madness’; in other words, Tina Fey’s take on Seasonal Affective Disorder. Apparently February is the last month during which individuals in the Northern Hemisphere will usually experience symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder – so I learned when writing two papers on SAD last semester.

Here are some excellent tunes so cheer up. This is especially for the guy at work who said he’d gone through our playlist twice already and needed more. This is also for the girl who I sent one of these tracks to – you told me that you ’LOOVED!’ it. I promise, you’ll feel the same way about the rest of these.

photo by Ravi Bhalla

photo by Ravi Bhalla

PLAY TRACKS

‘The Sun’  Portugal. The Man

‘Dog Days are Over’  Florence + The Machine

‘O.N.E’  Yeasayer

‘Take Care’  Beach House


The tracks of 2009 that changed the way I listen to music.

Posted by George on January 15th, 2010

Consider this list my “favorite new tracks of 2009” list.

Click here to listen to the selected tracks

Imagine this.

Leaning backwards in your chair to the point where it tips over, but instead of you hitting the ground with a hard thud, you go right through the ground and you get swallowed up and dropped into a dark cushiony endless abyss. What, this has never happened to you? Well it did to me, the first time I listened to Radiohead’s “These Are My Twisted Words.” From a purely tonal standpoint, the guitars present a smear of notes down a descending line that exist outside the realm of conventional tonality. From a more textural standpoint, the guitars layer the smear on thick with heavy delay and other time based effects.

To break down the instrumentation, it’s nothing out of the ordinary -especially for Radiohead: guitars, drums, thom’s voice, bass. The difference is what Radiohead manages to do with these instruments. We’re not talking about virtuoso technique or any truly incredible display of musicianship. The magic here is in the composition and the recording. Like I said, “These Are My Twisted Words” really delivered me to a place I’ve never been. Radiohead showed, through this song, that there are still sonic realms where standard rock instrumentation hasn’t been yet.

This is what listening to these songs looks like (taken from the inside of my car during a carwash).

This is what listening to these songs looks like (taken from the inside of my car during a carwash).

There are hardly any recognizable instruments or components in Animal Collective’s “Guys Eyes” from their latest album Merriweather Post Pavilion. Regardless the song is something that Brian Williams Wilson (nice catch) would have been happy to have produced if he was still with the Beach Boys today. My sister said it perfectly when she that it was like Animal Collective created a new color. It was that groundbreaking for me when I finally figured out what the hell Animal Collective was. “Guys Eyes” has these beautiful vocal harmonies that swarm around like well choreographed bees. Any singular bee is hardly distinguishable from the rest but the result is a spinning pattern of thick vocal counterpoint. In this way, the only recognizable component of the song, the singing, becomes a mess in itself. This is the kind of mess that will make me listen to a song a hundred times over without ever deciphering the mess.

I’m going to throw Grizzly Bear’s “Slow Life” featuring Victoria Legrand into this list because it had a similar affect on me as the previous two songs. The moral of the story I guess is auditory experience. However, there have been some songs in the past that have had life changing effects for me in terms of how I listen to music. First is Beck’s 2002 song “Paper Tiger” form his album Sea Change. The song perfectly melts together the timbres of a guitar and an orchestra so that their interplay and “counterplay” creates a conversational effect that makes the song so bold. Lastly is the song “Oceania” from Björk’s 2004 album Medúlla. The album is an almost purely vocal album and this song is composed of a combination of Björk’s live vocals, and a professional beatboxer. Additionally, an indiscernible combination of sampled voices and a female choir take the part that a synthesizer would normally have. This kind of seamless mix is a strange sensation.

Well I hope that by sharing these tracks with you, you too can expand your musical palette.

Thanks and with love,

George

Songs for the Days: Aphera’s Picks

Posted by Larissa on January 5th, 2010

Costa Rica may not have offered insight into a new music craze – at least not after one week. But pairing some kids from LA with a few tediously long bus rides resulted in a new repertoire of tunes to begin the year. Whatever the source, here is Aphera bringing you quality noise. Also, circumaural headsets seem to be all the rage.

Best Shot of Costa Rica

best shot taken in Costa Rica

PLAY TRACKS

Freshly Baked

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros: 40 Day Dream

Miike Snow: Animal

Blasts From the Recent Past

Yeasayer : 2080

Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver : Hazelton

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