Eighty-Five is interested in time and place/space, collecting music over the past year that engaged notions of memory, fleeting moments, and faraway destinations. The mix moves in loose parts — from piano to strings, guitar, synth, and voice — and is less intentionally linked by powerful return records, longtime-favorite artists arriving at defining statements in their stories. On a more personal note, I got to live with a few of them as a writer of bios (Benoît Pioulard, Braids, M. Sage) and in my capacity at Ghostly (Khotin, Julie Byrne, Mary Lattimore). If S&S is predestined to be lost at sea, on occasion a project pulls this practice back into range and leaves me breathless; to see several in a season, well that’s perhaps a moment divine.
Ani Zakareishvili unearthed and collaged haunting new context from cuts of Eartha Kit’s cadence on the topic of love. Khotin rode warbling keys as a means of transcontinental computer screen daydream. Celia Hollander allowed the winds of spontaneity to dance across her improvised piano free-writes.
Yu Su drew from landscapes, tracing the climates, contours, and rhythms of the planet. ML Buch conjured distant, shimmering, elemental scenes on her seven-stringed guitar. M. Sage imagined a conceptual campground, straddling the synthetic and natural world.
Yasuhiko Fukuzono, aka aus, accessed the vibrations of memory through hyper-detailed electro-acoustic sound, while MIZU deployed the vastness of the cello. Mary Lattimore said goodbye to the charms of an old hotel and by extension, life’s ephemeral beauty. Mutual Benefit sought “to make music that could simultaneously mourn versions of the past but still find hope in the seedlings which could, perhaps, bloom into better futures.” Which feels like an appropriate place to sign off and thank you for drifting. Tracklist and broader playlist below.
E85 illustration by Matthew Sage (pastel and colored pencil)
Ani Zakareishvili – Answer (Warm Winters Ltd)
Khotin – Sound Gathering Trip (Ghostly International)
ann annie – Three Chords (Nettwerk Music Group)
Gia Margaret – Hinoki Wood (Jagjaguwar)
Celia Hollander – In Plain Sight (Leaving Records)
Braids – Apple (Secret City Records)
Yu Su – Pardon (Pinchy & friends)
Laurel Halo – Belleville (Awe)
Lonnie Holly – Testing (Jagjaguwar)
mui zyu – Sore Bear (Lucy Liyou remix) (Father/Daughter Records)
waterbaby – Wishing well (Sub Pop Records)
aus – Swim / Memories / Further (all my thoughts / Flau Records)
Mary Lattimore – And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me (feat. Meg Baird and Walt McClements) (Ghostly International)
Nina Keith – Blow Up Yr Life (U Need To) [feat. Barrie & Qur’an Shaheed]
M. Sage – Crick Dynamo (RVNG Intl.)
Masahiro Takahashi – Sweltering Drive (Telephone Explosion Records)
Benoît Pioulard – Where To (Morr Music)
MIZU – Aveu (The Beginning Is a Farewell) [feat. Maria BC] (NNA Tapes)
Freak Heat Waves – In a Moment Divine (feat. Cindy Lee) (Mood Hut Records)
Nighttime – The Sea (Ba Da Bing!)
Peel Dream Magazine – Mary, Johnny and Me (Slumberland Records)
ML Buch – Working it out (15 love)
Mutual Benefit – Remembering a Dream (Transgressive Records)
Yussef Dayes – Crystal Palace Park (feat. Elijah Fox) (Nonesuch Records)
Avalon Emerson – The Stone (Another Dove / One House)
Romance – I Hear A Symphony (Ecstatic Recordings)
Julie Byrne – Summer Glass (Ghostly International)
Rather than cover every color of the past year, episode eighty-four concentrates on the warmer and slower shades, the fine pink mist, as lifted from Chicago downtempo dub trio Purelink. But within the mist — favorites, in no particular order, selected from a more extensive set — mood and texture vary; the natural world, viewed through various prisms. Malibu’s engulfing deep sea synth work, the rustling neighborhood trees and chirps of Duval Timothy’s piano-led reflections, and the dust vibrating from the rafters of Rachika Nayar’s cathartic, rave-shaped drone music, to name a few.
Hinako Omori – A Journey (a journey…, Houndstooth)
Duval Timothy – Up (Meeting with a Judas Tree, Carrying Colour)
Cole Pulice – City in a City (Scry, Moon Glyph)
Purelink – Fine Pink Mist (Purelink, UwU Dust Bath)
Salamanda – Kiddo Caterpillar (ashbalkum, Human Pitch)
Dylan Henner – Today I Learned What Makes Bugs Sick And How To Tie My Shoelaces (You Always Will Be, AD 93)
Voice Actor – Badman (Sent From My Telephone, Stroom)
Anna Butterss – Doo Wop (Activities, Colorfield Records)
Isik Kural – Pillow of a Thought (in february, RVNG Intl.)
Whatever The Weather – 36°C (Whatever The Weather, Ghostly International)
Florist – Sci-fi Silence (Florist, Double Double Whammy)
Trance Farmers – Purple Hay (Queen Of Nowhere, IKKI)
Sage Martens – Riding Fences (Riding Fences, Edições CN)
Spencer Zahn – In The Days Of Slowness (Pale Horizon, Cascine)
Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer – On the Other Sea (Recordings from the Åland Islands, International Anthem)
Malibu – Atlantic Diva (Palaces of Pity, UNO NYC)
Dania – Anomaly (Voz, Geographic North)
More Eaze – Your Call (Strawberry Season, Leaving Records)
Ulla Straus – For Your Love (Foam, 3XL)
Time Wharp – Mixo World (Spiro World, Leaving Records)
Lynn Avery/Cole Pulice – Plantwood (Day) (To Live & Die In Space & Time, Moon Glyph)
Raum – Daughter (Daughter, YellowElectric)
marine eyes – cedarwood (chamomile, Past Inside The Present)
Courtesy – Night Journeys III (Night Journeys, Kulør)
Kareem Ali – Solace (His Pain) (The Ballad of Mister Shine, CosmoFlux)
Rachika Nayar – Heaven Come Crashing (feat. Maria BC) (Heaven Come Crashing, NNA Tapes)
As always, Bandcamps are linked and sites like Merch Table and Buy Music Club make it easy to support the artists and labels behind each release.
“This is my comfy place,” sings Shoko Igarashi, as if touring listeners through the charming hybrid-styled utopia of her full-length debut. Simple Sentences, released last spring on Tigersushi Records and among the year’s most underrated albums, forms a remarkably refreshing paragraph from the fragmented influences of the Tsuruoka-born, Brussels-based musician and composer.
Japanese city pop sheen and the playful wonder of anime meet the pulse of Brussels, where she plays saxophone and keys in the electronic trio Maniac Maison, and the jazzy flair she picked up studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Bold, unpretentious, and open-minded songcraft; the general feeling is that she’s having fun.
Over the bubbling synth lines of “Comfy Place,” she details the interior life she’s grown to appreciate in recent years, like watering plants, drinking tea, and other micro-joys. On “CASH OK,” a softly askew dream funk number, she nods to her time playing jazz gigs in New York City. The flute-led “Happy Kid” (the meaning of her name, Shoko) sweetly flashes back to her childhood in Japan; with a blissful psych-kitsch evoking Yellow Magic Orchestra, it could easily double as a golden era sitcom theme song.
Igarashi’s mix for S&S echoes this sense of movement and discovery, traversing vibrant sounds familiar and new to her, from spacey folk and new age to prog rock, electro-funk, beat music, and beyond.
“I made this mix with the idea I got when I was hanging out with my friends in Japan (I was in Japan for 1 month from May to June), we played each other’s favorite tracks or recent discoveries. It’s like, one play and when it’s done, the next person plays what they like and rotate. It was amazing to know what my friends were listening to and it was totally fresh music for me because they live in Japan and I live in Brussels. The usual taste of what music we listen to is different, I felt. Also, I got to know them more deeply from knowing their musical tastes. So I took some of the tracks from my friends, and I put my favorites as well.”
J Todd – Aaaa
空中泥棒 – なぜ？/ Mid-Air Thief – Why?
Suzanne Ciani – Prince with Orange Feet
Juana Molina – Cálculos y oráculos
Kobeta Piano – Itodo
The Tuss – Shiz Ko E M
Bruno Pernadas – Lafeta Uti
Suzanne Ciani – Tenth Voice-Sound of a Lighted Window
The SOS band – Finest
Toulouse Low Trax – Geo Scan
King Crimson – Thela Hun Ginjeet
Shoko Igarashi – AppleBanana
RX-101 – Saiph
Casimir Liberski – Chill New Year’s Eve (unreleased)
Simple Sentences is out now on Tigersushi Records.
Episode eighty-two came together in the morning hours of New Year’s Day, 2022. The set runs softy through favorites of the last year, like an excerpt from the larger playlist. Artwork by our daughter, Bowie.
Salamanda – Offertorio (Sphere, Métron Records)
Rosie Lowe & Duval Timothy – Son (Son, Carrying Colour)
Li Yilei – CHU / 處 (之 / OF, Métron Records)
KMRU – Und (Logue, Injazero Records)
M. Sage With The Spinnaker Ensemble – Zephyr Ponderosa Pollen (The Wind of Things, Geographic North)
Nala Sinephro – Space 4 (Space 1.8, Warp)
John Glacier – Some Other Thing (SHILOH: Lost For Words, PLZ Make It Ruins)
Lael Neale – Every Star Shivers in the Dark (Acquainted with Night, Sub Pop)
Jeff Parker – Four Folks (Forfolks, International Anthem)
Wau Wau Collectif – Mouhamodou Lo and His Children (Yaral Sa Doom, Sahel Sounds)
L’Rain – Blame Me (Fatigue, Mexican Summer)
Elori Saxl – Wave I (The Blue of Distance, Western Vinyl)
HTRK – Kiss Kiss and Rhinestones (Rhinestones, N & J Blueberries)
Arooj Aftab – Inayaat (Vulture Prince, New Amsterdam)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri – Moon In Your Eye (I Could Be Your Dog (Prequel), Ghostly International)
Tonstartssbandht – What Has Happened (Petunia, Mexican Summer)
Myriam Gendron – Le tueur de femmes (Ma délire – Songs of love, lost & found, Feeding Tube)
Grouper – Promise (Shade, Kranky)
Thanks for being here and moving slowly with this site (halfway through its second decade). As always, support artists by buying their music — Merch Table and Buy Music Club make it easier than ever to do that via Bandcamp.