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Shuffle’s kind of been killing it lately.

Marvin Gaye, “Your Unchanging Love”

Marvin Gaye, here on a single from 1967. It’s impressive to listen to the difference between this and what he’d make a mere four years later with What’s Going On.

Mephiskapheles, “Plan B”

I went to go compare the hi-hat intro here to the bit in “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” (at 8:01), and then realized the bit I was thinking of wasn’t just on the hi-hat, and then I got caught up listening to that song. And then I kind of got lost for a bit.

Your periodic reminder that there’s an index to this nonsense. And here’s today’s music.

Ghostface Killah, “Be Easy”

From one of his best albums, Fishscale, and the best album he’s made that wasn’t produced by the RZA. This album finds Ghostface in top form, energetically spitting crazy nonsense, and he’s paired with some great production. On this track, Pete Rock is absolutely laying it down.

Paris Combo, “Moi, Mon Âme Et Ma Conscience (Live)”

This is the second time we’ve had Ghostface and the Paris Combo in the same playlist. This is Five Songs, baby!

Nice set today!

James Brown, “The Payback”

Sometimes on this blog, I talk about things that are cool. It’s hard to put your finger on what cool is. It’s the kind of thing that you can’t really define, but can only find the outlines of by looking at examples. Look at enough cool things, and you will finally get a sense of what’s cool. It also helps to have something to center things, a north star of cool to find your bearings.

Today’s music.

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, “Come On Do The Jerk”

Smokey Robinson here with the official anthem of red pillers everywhere.

Slick Rick, “The Ruler’s Back”

Slick Rick’s classic debut, The Great Adventures Of Slick Rick, was tremendously influential. While there’s nothing super special about the beats, Rick’s flow (complete with odd delivery) and storytelling were groundbreaking at the time. You can see his influence just by listening for how many great rappers pay homage to him, ranging from Ice Cube, to Snoop Dogg, to Black Star, among many, many others.

Today’s music.

μ-ziq, “Johnny Mastricht”

Electronic artist μ-ziq is the moniker of Michael Paradinas. Designed not for clubs but for headphones, μ-ziq had a great run of really interesting, inventive albums. The prize record is the fantastic Lunatic Harness, but the follow-up Royal Astronomy is great as well. This album, Bilious Paths, is very good but is a little off his peak.

Einstürzende Neubauten, “Mei Ro”

This track is from The Jewels, a compilation of a series of tracks that Neubauten posted on their site. The tracks themselves were the product of a series of formal experiments, with the band participating in games to generate constraints, and the songs were all put together very rapidly, a day or so. The results are interesting but not always super gripping.

Excellent set today.

Danger Doom, “Mince Meat”

This is a collaboration between Danger Mouse (Gorillaz, a bunch of his own work) and MF Doom. And, like basically all Doom projects, it’s a pleasure to hear him rhyming. His patterns are so fascinating, and Danger Mouse’s production is as solid as always. This is a really good album, is what I’m saying.

De La Soul, “Change In Speak”

Speaking of great production, Prince Paul did such an amazing job with Three Feet High And Rising. The album I’m maybe most looking forward to this year is Superblack’s album, as it’s a collaboration between Prince Paul and J-Zone. I’m fired up!

This playlist is rescued by the last two tracks.

Death From Above 1979, “Black History Month (Josh Homme Remix)”

Death From Above 1979 made only one proper album during their initial run, but there was also a remix album. Which is as inessential as basically every other remix album. There is something interesting about Josh Homme doing a remix of a dance punk band’s song, but eh.

Robustos, “Nigel Thornhill”

Totally forgotten third wave ska act the Robustos had even been basically forgotten by me up until this moment.

Excellent set today.

Recloose, “Permutations”

There’s something called “Detroit techno” that I only kind of vaguely understand, beyond knowing that Detroit is a city, and techno is a type of electronic music. I mean, there’s a Wikipedia page for it and all, but what does that tell you? Not much. Anyway, Recloose supposedly fits into this genre, for whatever that’s worth. To my ears, this combination of relatively minimalist beat, video game bloops, and slowly building melody is great fun.

Please listen to these songs. They need love. Or don’t, but if you don’t, I don’t know why you’re here.

Secrets of the Sky, “Eternal Wolves”

Obviously, this is metal. I mean, come on. “Eternal Wolves”? So corny. Anyway, this is doom metal, one of the more theatric branches of the metal family tree, which is all about long build ups. I’m pretty hit or miss on doom in general, as sometimes the payoff isn’t really there for me.

Here are today’s tunes.

Richie Hawtin, “Call of the Wild”

Last time this album came up, in one of the cutting bits of analysis that Five Songs is known for, I mostly bitched about the ID3 tags on this album. TRENCHANT! Anyway, I managed to say nothing about the album or the artist last time. I see no reason to change that today.

Wilco, “Ashes of American Flags”

In the first entry on Wilco, I ranked their albums, which remains the INDUSPUTABLE and DEFINITIVE rankings of their records. I am here to point out that despite the definitive nature of those rankings, the first three albums are very, very close. If you argued for a re-ordering of those three, you’d be wrong, but only barely. You’d also agree with various versions of Josh. That three album peak, from Being There to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is just an incredible stretch of songs. If Being There established that Wilco was going to be far more than an alt-country band, and Summerteeth established that the band was going to be a tremendous pop act, YHF showed that their palette would even expand to include some sonic experimentation around said pop songs.