diSKOAver weekly: week of February 15, 2023
OMG hi! ✨👋🏻
I did it! Two playlits in a a week! I know this isn’t wednesday but I was tryna give you some space to sit with all of those lovely love songs. Isn’t that just a vibe point five? ✨💖
(Yes, as in a vibe and a half. Just let me have this okay?)
ANYWAY!
I had planned on gushing to you about something else but in the last 24 hours I have just been ravenously reading that new Rick Rubin book The Creative Act: A Way Of Being that came out last month.
oh my fucking god. This book has me so excited to be alive. Mostly because I am so relieved that I am not alone in treating music and overall creativity this sacredly. It’s made me reflect a lot on how sacred I treat the act of sharing music with people. This shit just lights me up so much. GOT ME THINKING ABOUT ALL THESE OTHER DRAMATIC THINGS I COULD EXPERIMENT WITH HERE NOW THAT I REALIZE JUST HOW FEW FUCKS I GIVE ABOUT BEING COOL. 🤩 But yeah, that book is really good. According to the data on the Kindle app, I’ve got about an hour left to go before I have completely absorbed the wonders of that book.
I was going to share a sweet lil rando anecdote, but in an attempt to keep my promise to myself (and you) that I’d keep DW fresh on a weekly basis while also making time for this thing that’s got me all inspired I’d like to share an excerpt that I really needed to hear this week in hopes that it helps someone else (and demonstrates how good this fucking book is so you’ll go get it, too!)
FORMATTING AND FLAIR ALL MINE BC WE KNOW I LOVE BEING DRAMATIC WHEN I’M REALLY INSPIRED :
“Patience is required for the nuanced development of your craft.
Patience is required for taking in information in the most faithful way possible.
Patience is required for crafting a work that resonates and contains all that we have to offer.
Every phase of an artist's work and life benefits from cultivating this achievable habit.
Patience is developed much like awareness. Through an acceptance of what is.
Impatience is an argument with reality.
The desire for something to be different from what we are experiencing in the here and now. A wish for time to speed up, tomorrow to come sooner, to relive yesterday, or to close your eyes then open them and find yourself in another place.
Time is something that we have no control over.
So patience begins with acceptance of natural rhythms.
The implied benefit of impatience is to save time by speeding up and skipping ahead of those rhythms. Paradoxically, this ends up taking more time and using more energy. It's wasted effort. When it comes to the creative process, patience is accepting that the majority of the work we do is out of our control.
We can't force greatness to happen.
All we can do is invite it in and await it actively. Not anxiously, as this might scare it off. 😑
Simply in a state of continual welcoming. 👋🏻
If we remove time from the equation of a work's development, what we're left with is patience. Not just for the development of the work, but for the development of the artist as a whole.
Even the masterpieces that have been produced on tight timelines are the sum of decades spent patiently laboring on other works.
If there is a rule to creativity that's less breakable than the others, it's that the need for patience is ever-present.”
😮💨
I’m telling you, there’s so much good stuff in there!!!
There’s so much good stuff in this week’s update too! Left you lil notes bc ilysm.
You know you’re always welcome to HMU if you wanna talk more about any of these sweeties right? My DMs are always open.
also: Briefly thought about actually making discord happen on an ✨official SKOA basis✨ so people could come hang and find people to talk to that are into the bands I cover on here. Would that interest anyone? 🤔 Anyway it’s an idea and I wrote it down so we’re still doing better than usual.
Talk soon bestie!
💖
1. Purple Disco Machine x Bosq- “Wake Up! (feat. Kaleta)”
I didn’t realize that Purple Disco Machine won a Grammy for his Lizzo remix of “About Damn Time”! Those categories should get more screen love. NARS still has… a lot more room for growth with The Grammys.😅
2. Kinder - “Bus Stop”
Speaking of remixes, one of my favorite Aussie angels Mickey Kojak did a really sick remix of this Kinder track. But you deserve to hear the original first!!! This shit s l a p s ⚡️. Think it’s been awhile since I found a new baby band that were sisters! Anyway I am adding Briony and Savannah to the list of dope women in Australia that I hope wanna be my friend one day.
3. Amtrac - “Last Chance”
There is something in the new Amtrac record that is like I got reunited with a part of my soul or something.🥺 Yes I know how dramatic that sounds. I really can’t get enough of it. There’s something I’ve been putting it on to journal in the mornings. I need to spend an evening obsessing over all the little details of it. So fucking good! 🤩
4. Nilüfer Yanya - “the dealer”
Still in the ✨getting to know you✨ phase with Nilüfer but I really love this quote about “The Dealer”:
“When I was writing this song I was thinking about the transient nature of life and the cyclical nature of the seasons. I find it interesting how we attach certain memories and feelings to different seasons and tend to revisit them time and time again, yet our lives move in a more linear motion and even when we feel like we are going back we never really get to go back anywhere. Musically speaking it’s a bit more playful and relaxed.”
5. Celebrity - “Disconnected”
This song randomly comes back to me about once a year since I first heard it when I was living in Nasvhille for college. I feel like once you hear this chorus it will never leave you for as long as you live. It’s just so well made. I always feel like I’ve gotta pay extra close attention to my relationships when it suddenly comes roaring into my brain.
Side Note: Does that kinda stuff happen to you with music?
6. I Know Leopard - “Nothing Is Real”
Oh I just realized how many Australian baby bands are in this update 😂. Anyway ICYMI I Know Leopard dropped such a beautifully earnest EP last year. This bleak lil upbeat ditty is the title track. I love energetic sad songs. It seems like you can process feelings faster the more forcefully you are able to sing along to something.
7. MID CITY - “Compromise”
More Aussie babies!!! I’m so excited to see MID CITY is back at it! Allegedly there’s an arsenal of more music on the way. 2023 really is going to be the fucking best year, isn’t it?
8. We Are Scientists - “Operator Error”
Okay I don’t have time to explain everything you need to know about what lobes is and why it’s the name of their new album, but I thought the story behind this song was cool and thought I’d share. Here’s the story from vocalist/guitarist Keith Murray:
"I have a tendency to deliver hot takes and to get extraordinarily overheated about utterly inconsequential things. I got into a multi-hour argument over whether Top Gun: Maverick is a halfway decent movie. Maybe it’s weird, then, that I also tend to be pretty sanguine over big issues. It’s fairly hard to drag me into a heated fight, or to get me to say something that I’ll later come to regret," continues Murray. "On important matters, I like to keep quiet, to listen to everyone else’s take, and to silently build my own bullet-proof argument, which nobody else will ever hear. I operate in dual modes – one where I’m apt to deliver my dumb opinion with little provocation, and one in which it’s almost impossible to get me to say what I’m really thinking. It’s probably a pretty frustrating character trait for the people who are trying to engage me in consequential conversation, and I apologize to my friends and my enemies, alike."
9. Oliver Tree - “Miss You (feat. Robin Schulz)”
I really appreciate all of the chaos that is Oliver tree. That said, I never ever want to beef with Oliver Tree ever. 😳
10. Clive From Accounts - “You Understand”
I really gotta spend an evening going down the rabbit hole on this corner of the internet. THere are so many little nooks and crannies full of these fun dance projects with punny names that are all about that vaporwave windows 95 aesthetic. For the most part I’ve never had any complaints about what I’ve come into contact with. These kinds of artists make me feel like I have more friends to find out in the world, you know?
11. Marxist Love Disco Ensemble - “Engineers”
I think if I hadn’t found this record so late in the year it would’ve been my album of the year. Seriously. This is the blurb from the label that put out this record. I am so fucking obsessed with this vibe:
“The format and message of pop and disco are commonly viewed just to entertain and move bodies around a dancefloor; however, lyrically, the subjects range from dialectical and historical materialism, class struggle, Marxist theory and praxis, as well as the concept of Marxist disco music. In the words of band member Paolo, "MLDE was written in response to hearing 'I love America' by Patrick Juvet. The song prompted the question: why does disco, a genre originally created by oppressed minorities, eventually become synonymous with Western capitalist excess?" MLDE seeks to break this connection.”
12. Benoît Pioulard - “Tet”
I would like to have Thomas Meluch (dba Benoît) on call to lull me to sleep on command. His voice is so enchanting. I came to know him from a feature he did on this Lusine record. Proof that his voice is a versatile and really incredible instrument. Swoooooon 🥰
13. Thomas Azier - “Invisible”
Speaking of epic voices, Thomas Azier really has one of the most elegant and debonair voices in recent memory. The precision in his delivery can really kick up a multitude of feels in any given moment. He definitely knows how to weild his powers.
14. Kings Of Convenience - “Love Is A Lonely Thing”
So so so so so happy to have discovered that Kings of Convenience put out a record in 2021!! I have been enamoured with these guys since college! 😍
15. Lola Young - “Stream Of Consciousness”
I’m really excited to have tumbled into Lola Young. I watched this video the other day that was essentially an overview of Lily Allen’s career and how she really ushered this new era for British women in music with her experimentation and vulnerability while building off of the kind of storytelling that Mike Skinner was doing with The Streets. Since then when I’ve put on this song I’ve thought about how a song like “Stream Of Consciousness” is such a beautiful evolution of that work and how much a song like this would mean to me if I were in my 20s. Happy for the zoomers that they get to have her. 🥹
16. Flavien Berger - “Les yeux, le reste”
I have watched his performance of this song on Colors a few times now and still can’t figure out why you can see his breath in this. I don’t know enough about how they film these but for the sake of my sanity I’m gonna assume he’s just so chill as fuck that when he sings you always see his breath. Doesn’t matter either way, still think he’s smoochable as hell 😘
