#20 Other people's music

Some music recommendations for you across two playlists: one full of new music I love, one full of calm music to help you get through. Also I talk about Portishead, a lot, for reasons.

Today’s newsletter will be about other people’s music, but before I get to that, a couple of points of order regarding me’s music.

ME’S MUSIC

My new EP Duet x is out now. Six tracks of agile, rubbery, wonder-full (I hope) electronic music that also form a new annex built onto the existing sonic universe of iconic mobile game Duet. Listen on Spotify and Apple Music (and everywhere) and/or get it from Bandcamp.

I am also celebrating Duet’s 10th anniversary (and, somehow, 25 million downloads of the game?!?!) by bringing the game’s original soundtrack to vinyl for the first time. You can order that here.

A quick update on the Duet vinyl: manufacturing took about a month longer than I expected but .. they are done! The boxes are being sent from NZ as I type this and I should have them in my hands and ready to ship from next week.

How cute is this message that came with the test pressings last month:

“Please enjoy this special experience.” So sweet.

If you’d like to order Duet: Original Soundtrack on vinyl, do it here on Bandcamp.

OTHER PEOPLE’S MUSIC

Listening to new music has been a passion of mine, a hobby of mine, since I first got hooked in music’s tendrils as a teenager. As busy as my life now is, I always make time to go looking for something new to listen to. Seeking out new music, the thrill and wonder of discovering something new, is a dependable, inexhaustible and pure source of joy of my life.

Don’t get me wrong, I look backwards too. I’m a little bleary-eyed today because just before bed last night, on a whim triggered by some half-forgotten memory, I found myself watching the entirety of Portishead’s Roseland NYC Live concert from 1998. Was just going to watch “Roads” - do you know it has over 70 million views on YouTube?? - but once I started I couldn’t stop. How could I?

Portishead is 1998. Portishead is Norton (first name forgotten) leaning over our adjacent class lockers in high school and lending me his copy of Dummy, which I don’t think I ever gave back. Portishead is staying up to 2am as a teen watching RAGE from my bed enthralled / wonderfully creeped out by the “All Mine” film clip. Portishead is Beth Gibbon lurching over a mic stand cig in hand, channeling somehow all of the world’s pain and beauty into her voice via the deeply human curve of her frowned brow. Portishead is 2008. Portishead is machine gun jagged rhythms and minimalism but still .. that beauty, that pain, but I’m older now, it gets in deeper. Portishead is feeling myself torn apart and put back together every time I hear “The Rip”. Portishead is 2018. Portishead is I’ve managed to get Geoff Barrow on the phone for an interview on my radio show, listening to his voice, his humour and laugh, and thinking to myself, this is him, this is HIM, keep it cool, do your job Tim. Bring all those Tim’s together in a row, synthesise them, co-ordinate them, ignore them, navigate, internalise, synthesise the past, present, future you, then ignore them and just be here, and just do your job. Portishead is 2023. Last night lost in a rabbit hole watching a Canadian TV interview from 1995. “People are saying Dummy is the greatest shagging record of 1994, what do you make of that?”

obviously, for me, Portishead is a lot. Layers of meaning and memories and mes refracting and bumping up against each other, all these different times and different energies reflecting and refracting and multiplying. It gets fractal. It is a lot. You can get so lost in nostalgia, and why wouldn’t you when it feels so rich and complicated.

Now that I am quote-unquote old, and now that everything is a lot, I find myself engaged in a tug-of-war with nostalgia, not sure whether to give in to its pull or to push it away and try and remain present, and/or remain forward-looking. I get it. I get why “people my age” (shudder) lose themselves in the cosy safe embrace of their memories, the music they used to love, the movies they used to watch, the ideas they used to have. The gravitational pull of the past is increasingly hard to resist now that my past is increasingly so big. Plus - my past is present, only a click away, every song, every interview, every hot take, all archived somewhere and icnreasingly algorithmically navigatable. Do I want to lose myself totally in my past, surrender to the embrace of everything that happened, everything I loved, not to mention everything I missed? It’s never been easier. So many songs, albums, artists, chords, drum sounds, beats, from my past, all resonating with deep complexity and the warm allure of memory, all begging for me to return and recontextualise them, reexperience them, relitigate them. Could be a life’s work, or at least a whole stage of life - once you are at the middle bit, flip back on yourself and spend the rest of your time raking over the coals of fires lit inside you decades passt.

It is hard to resist. And maybe shouldn’t be resisted? There is so much to learn and so much joy to be had in going back to explore previously trodden territory with new nuance and new perspective. Watching this Portishead set last night at 1am, in bed in a dark room on a laptop screen, as an echo of the 17 year old version of myself in bed in a dark room watching RAGE. Discovering so much more in that concert, now, that wasn’t visible to me when I was 17, entering into some kind of wordless conversation with that boy across time. “Boy, you have no idea what’s coming. But your instinct that this concert is important, that you should connect to it emotionally and intellectually, even though you don’t know why … that instinct will bear so much fruit and serve you so well.”

Let us say: all things in moderation. I prescribe for myself: nostalgia in moderation.

Ok - where was I ? I actually didn’t come here to talk about Portishead .. haha.

Ah.

NEW MUSIC.

I maintain a few music playlists, not heaps but a few. Many of them are just for me and my family but I have two that I put together intending for other people to make us of them. That’s you.

I’d like to offer these playlists to you, in case you can find a place for them in your life. I know how hard it is to find new music, somehow, despite it being easier than ever before?

Maybe I can help…

PLAYLIST: AS HEARD ON THE RESET

Believe it or not, I host a radio show! How about that.

During COVID, I started a daily segment on my show called The Reset. Every day at around 5:15pm, I play a song that I think might help you take a time out and get your head straight, if that’s what you need. In our 21st century enlightenened modern lives, we are all more anxious, disconnected, lonely, stressed out & burned out than ever before. You know I am haha.

I use music to help with all that, all the time. Even just a few minutes focused in on ‘the right song’ can do a lot of help disintegrate a bit of anxiety and quiet the unhelpful voices and thoughts in your head.

Here is “as heard on the reset” on Spotify - you can also find it at Buy Music Club.

For anyone who has struggled to take meditation and mindfulness in as a daily practice (it me) - incorporating regular doses of ambient music in your life can be a cheat way to do it. When I say ambient, I don’t just mean long endless sonic plains of drone and synth pads (though I do love that) - The Reset is open to anything that for me feelings like it does the job of clearing space in my head. That can include folk musics, balearic beats, soothing pulsating minimal dance, desert guitar. All kinds of things.

As someone who spends a decent amount of time swinging into the up and down peaks of mood, I can say that being at equilibrium is not boring. Being high on life is overrated, and being depressed sucks. When I can center myself, my experience of life and of other people becomes clearer and infinitely richer. If music can help me get there, what a precious thing.

PLAYLIST: SHIEL FM

The other playlist I have for you today is simply a collection of my fave new releases.

It’s called “shiel fm” which seems really dumb but I can’t think of anything better.

These are the songs that trigger that spark in me, that unquantifiable zing, an experience I still can’t quite describe or perhaps would just rather not find the words for? That zing of when you hear something new, and not only does it hold your attention, not only does it invite you in, but you can feel the new pathways opening int your brain. Neurons firing, exploring, branching out to make new connections in your mind tank and/or your heart or soul or whatever.

This is why I’d rather not find the words, because they sound cheap. But yeah. Finding a new song that hits like that, reminds me of how important it is to keep exploring your life, explore new ideas, eat new food, go new places, read new books, meet new people. Keep opening doors, let that fresh air in to your brain. Looking backwards is warm and can be fascinating but its rare that there is fresh air there, its more like knocking the old books of the shelf and being fascinated by the way the dust settles into new patterns. I want fresh air.

Maybe I should call the playlist “fresh air” ?? Shit.

This one is also available on Buy Music Club. In case you don’t know what that is, its a service that a few very kind people started a couple years back where you can basically build Bandcamp playlists and share them. It means you can listen to music via Bandcamp’s platform but importantly, you can directly click through and support those artists by buying their music. I know a lot of people now use Bandcamp as an efficient way to tip artists, its not even about the “download” any more - if you want someone to keep doing what they are doing, flinging them a few dollars might help them hang in there or at least signal to them that someone has got their back.

There’s been a few hundred people following this playlist on Spotify for a few years which is nice, though I have no way of knowing if anyone is really listening. Why is that important to me? That’s a whole other conversation, and probably a boring indulgent one haha.

Let’s leave it here - but I do sincerely hope one or both of these playlists (as heard on the reset / shiel fm) makes its way into your life, or even simply gets you reflecting on the ways in which music is important to you. And if you discover a new favourite through this process, that’s an incredibly fulfilling thing for me and a win-win for everyone. Consider using my Buy Music Club playlists to directly support the artists you love most.

If you do get something out of this, I’d love to hear from you - the more I know that people are actually using these playlists, the more likely it is that I will keep them updated.

Share them with your friends / groupchats / social feeds ? Nice one.

And if you’d love me to keep talking about other people’s music - about new music, about ambient music, about Portishead, anything - let me know. I’d love to do it more.

Til next time - here is a great photo I found of myself on my phone:

Byyee

Tim