59 - With Abandon

On the various ways of arriving and departing the City of Refuge, and what keeps us there

With Abandon

We arrive here by various circumstances. You are waiting for a bus, lost in one of several infinite scrolls, and the bus you board takes you here. You enter an elevator, your head aswim with data and strategies and risks and mitigations, and your ride exits upon a city sidewalk aglow in the golden hour. You fall asleep in your car waiting to pick up your kid from her evening karate class and you wake with the sun in your eyes next to a meter that never expires. You are climbing the last flight of stairs to your six story walkup, four sacks of groceries in your arms, fumbling for your keys, when you find your door is unlocked and the building has changed around you. You are here with us, a population innumerable, another citizen of the City of Refuge.

We are arrows suspended in flight. The initial panic of displacement gives way to the feeling that here we are safe. There is no deadline chasing us, no bill collector hounding us, plenty of food and kindness. Understanding and sympathy abound. No aging parents, no strange secret cancer buried in our skins. No desire, no ambition, no politics. Here we are suspended in a calm bath of crepuscular light, detached and distant from the army of worries that besieged us.

After a time, we wake up. You will press your palms to your eyes one day and experience a reprieve from the everpresent amber. You will remember someone you left behind or some forgotten aspiration. You will get up from your bed and cross the threshold to your kitchen and all the noise of your past life will come rushing at you all at once. You have left the City of Refuge, which clings to you slipping like a dream. You will not remember the years that you were here, healing and unharmed, but you will find yourself replete with strength, your soul fully armed and armored against the challenges it needs to face.

Tasting Notes

also on: TIDAL | APPLE

If this seems out of tone with the way of the world right now, my only explanation is that this is a hanger on from 2024. I think there is a lot of the current pathos here: conflict and disbelief and a fierce burning hope.

Still, the flavor on this one is mostly chill, laid back, suitable for an evening kicking back in front of the roaring fire of our democracy burning to the ground.

Here’s a taste of the highlights:

I really adore how this chill bossa gets ripped apart by tendrils of insanity threaded throughout. Top marks for spicy, smoky production.

Aussie soul wasn’t ever on my radar, but it is now. What isn’t so shocking is that members of Surprise Chef and Karate Boogaloo are backing up Ella’s rich vocals. Definite notes of Daptone here, in homage to and continuation of the legacy left by Sharon Jones.

A dream narrative adrift atop laidback lo-fi breakbeat. Earnest, witty, smirking wordplay. I know Joshua Idehen from his prior collaborations with The Comet is Coming, but now I’m paying attention.

∑tella is very much a spell weaver, but a different kind of magic is at work here than on Up & Away, her 2022 release. This feels a little more forward reaching than retro/nostalgic, but still just as dreamy.

Can you make a song that’s all pocket? The production here is tight, pulsing but never dominating the vicious & vital narrative it supports.

meta digression

see spot run

somewhere between experiencing some collective throat bile reading the smarmy pseudogenres (“mallgoth grandmother pilates cowgirl“ or whatever) in our last Spotify Wrapped and slowly becoming aware that Daniel Ek won’t be happy until he has achieved his dream of destroying all musicians everywhere, it became very hip to abandon the service post-haste. it also became equally hip to knock on everyone’s door to tell them why you were leaving and chastise any stragglers as capitalist bootlickers who want to crush artistic souls.

i have been a little more quiet, self-examining, contemplative. i thought a lot about my journey as a listener and lover of music, about how i spent so much money on CDs in high school, how i gleefully embraced piracy throughout the ‘00s with the justification that this was the future and something better would come along, how i hopped on Spotify as soon it came to the US because it felt like what i was waiting for, how much i love flipping through my physical records now even though they punch my wallet pretty hard. i thought about my intense relationship with my physical music, how that cooled as i entered the world of streaming and my listening became more passive, and how it’s been reignited since i started collecting records again.

it’s obvious by now that streaming is not a great way for musicians to earn money. all music streaming services pay artists a pittance, and, of the most popular services, only Deezer doesn’t use a complex pro-rata model that doesn’t directly correlate what users pay to how much the artists they listen to earn. an interesting number sticks out to me: a $10 digital purchase of a record is worth about 15,000 streams to an artist.

the tradeoff, however, is access. there are so many musicians and cultures that i would never be exposed to without these services. this is exactly what i want: i, a white guy who grew up in Nowhere, America, have unfettered access to psychedelic cumbia and norse folk metal and arab acid funk and all of that is an amazing drug for me. it’s an amazing toe into all the best parts of human culture, and it feels insane to turn away from that.

it’s also important to remember that, even though one can’t eat exposure, it’s still vital to emerging artists to have their feet on the ground in an arena of accessibility like streaming services. well established artists on major labels aren’t going to feel the impact of an exodus from streaming. acts who are just finding their footing and hovering around that vital threshold of 10k monthly listeners need all the ears they can get.

the only thing we can do in a terrifying world where everything feels just out of our control is change ourselves. there’s no way i can convince Mr. Ek that the way he runs his business is inherently damaging to the creatives that power it. i need to leverage the power of that system into something that benefits the amazing world the i’m accessing. it feels kind of fucked, like there should be something that supports an artist’s independence and livelihood without paying into systems that feel exploitative. i’m very very open to suggestions about how to support people who make art that fills my life in the way that music does.

this is how i am changing my behavior:

• in the car, I am only listening to what I’ve bought off Bandcamp. albums, like all i have is a cassette player, but with a much much lower likelihood that they’ll melt if i park in the sun.

• i’m buying a lot more music. for digital albums, i’m never paying less than $10. if i listen to an album more than 3 times on Spotify, i’m buying it on Bandcamp.

• i’ve hooked myself up with a Soundiiz account so i can sync playlists across services and give readers a little more choice here.

• i’m featuring more direct links to Bandcamp in the Tasting Notes section to hopefully point people more towards where an artist receives maximum support.

• playlists this year are going to rotate through the following three rules:

  • new discoveries and moods from Spotify

  • concoctions of things i’ve purchased on Bandcamp

  • an assembly of curios from my physical collection, which will get me finally digging through the boxes of CDs that have haunted me through several moves and maybe get me to catalog everything a little more thoughtfully

so, yeah, i’m sticking with streaming for now. discovery is important to me, artists need to keep their numbers up there, and i think i can still make meaningful contributions to artists i enjoy. i might not stick on Spotify forever… it honestly depends if they stop dicking around with the Like button and keep leaning into goofy AI-powered features i’m really not interested in (like chatterbox radio ick). there’s more options out there and they’re all worth exploring. but streaming is just a supplement. i want to build a collection again, one that’s meaningful to me, that i build a connection with.