250+ Subscribers
The newsletter continues to grow, and that’s pretty cool! Appreciate everyone who subscribes, reads, listens, shares, and even those who subscribe to bump this number up but delete the emails immediately. You play a valuable role in boosting my ego enough to keep this project firing away, even when life becomes way too busy to reasonably expect me to.
I have spent the past few months planning a wedding, which is a lot of work in addition to normal work, which is a lot, and normal life, which is a lot. Incredibly grateful to all of my collaborators for putting in an enormous amount of thought, care, and heart into these mixtapes. I, especially these past few months, could not have done this without them.
Got an incredible one for you this month with my buddy and former manager Julian Ramirez. Julian and I immediately hit it off, because we fell in love with music and menswear at the same time in the same way. He would leave for lunch and come back with a record he bought at the closest record store, and I’d have to take a look and then download it on Spotify to listen on the way home. He, of course, has introduced me to a whole new world of music with this month’s mixtape, and I really think you’ll enjoy it here in the deep end of discovery.
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Music From Memory
Created in collaboration with Julian Ramirez for devotion to sound.
A few words from Julian:
*****
The New Yorker recently ran an article in their summer fiction issue about the publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions, known for Yves Klein blue text-only covers and a reputation for publishing Nobel Prize winning authors. An extremely small operation, the success of which can be attributed to the commercially-ruinous-on-paper taste of Jacques Testard. The label, Music from Memory, operates similarly. Three crate diggers from Amsterdam started the label in 2013 to reissue records from artists they felt were underappreciated and relatively unknown. Every one of Music from Memory’s releases carries a deep sense of discovery, a feeling that the chasm is deeper than expected and the world is actually more strange and beautiful and difficult than previously conceived.
I never had much money to spend at the record store. I still don’t. So, when I used to walk into my local shop (Vintage Vinyl of Woodbridge, NJ RIP) every two weeks or so in middle school and high school, I was always plagued with the difficult decision of how I would spend the ~ $25 I’d manage to scrounge together. Often, I’d look to the label. Depending on the era - SST, Dischord, WARP, Ecstatic Peace, Rough Trade, Jade Tree, Drag City, 4AD, etc. The best record labels have diverse rosters that still feel like they make sense together.
The unfortunate thing about being an enthusiast is that you’re an addict. You’re wading through mediocrity, consuming as much as you can to recapture the feeling of listening to Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 or watching Paris, Texas for the first time. Recommendation culture. Algorithms. Music Magazines. No one seems like they’re writing for the joy of sharing something felt intensely. The way you felt compelled to scribble a crush’s name in the margins of a middle school notebook. Music from Memory is one of the few stamps of approval I trust wholeheartedly.
Let’s discuss the playlist. Global left field pop and ambient music made with analogue instruments that sound of their time and yet somehow predictive. There’s two tracks from an amazing compilation called Outro Tempo: Electronic and Contemporary Music from Brazil 1978-1992 that feel alien and familiar at once, the way someone like Arthur Russell does. There are examples of the label’s ambient releases from Gaussian Curve and Kuniyuki Takahashi and distinct electronic music from Vito Ricci and Giuseppe Leonardi. Flea Market finds and home made pop music from the compilation Uneven Paths: Deviant Pop from Europe 1980-1991 sit comfortably next to slicker recordings from The System and The Zenmen. Together, it asks the question: what if this was all pop music? What if this was the soundtrack to getting drunk for the first time and wishing we had the courage to kiss each other?
*****
Love you all. Hope you enjoy!
Join Me: Marcos Valle @ Metro Chicago, Monday, Sep. 30th, 8:00 PM.
Kristin and I are getting married on October 5th and will be heading to Ireland the very next night, October 6th. Marcos Valle, one of our favorite artists in the world, is playing Brooklyn on October 8th at a damn roller rink venue called Xanadu as a part of his 80th birthday world tour. Welp. I have had Google alerts set up for years to try and catch him, so…
I guess I might fly to Chicago for 24 hours to see him perform? This might be my last chance? Does anyone live in Chicago? Does anyone want to meet in Chicago? Do they still have deep dish pizza there?
RIYL: MPB, Brazil, jazz, funk, international disco
Check out the incredible music video for Marcos Valle’s biggest hit “Estrelar.”
Some Other Things Julian Loves
(that you might love too!)
The Rockaway Ferry - I don’t think I can get to the beach any other way. Use the reserve on busy weekend days to time an hour long sunset cruise for ten bucks.
Troubled Sleep and Blue Sun Records - Troubled Sleep is a used bookstore in Park Slope where, I shit you not, you can think of any critically lauded book from the last century and it will be there. My friend Kathy and I discussed the Times recent 100 Best Books of the 21st Century and ended up shooting unlisted recommendations back and forth. Every one of her recommendations was there, organized alphabetically.
Blue Sun is another such gem. Tucked away inconspicuously on a side street in south Williamsburg. I spend at least one weekday afternoon a month taking dozens of records to the listening stations and finding fairly priced gems.
Nightshade and East River Bar - Best Dives in this cursed city.
The Door by Magda Szabo - Easy to find now thanks to the NYRB classics reissue series. It’s my favorite book of all time. The relationship of a writer to her housekeeper of several decades. The book is an attempt to assuage the writer’s guilt over her belief that she, in fact, is responsible for her housekeeper’s death. Utterly hypnotic and thoroughly surprising.