How to listen to Spotify actually!
RK Recommends - 5 Things from the World of Music
Apple Music recently brought Spatial Audio through its partnership with Dolby Atmos and will be bringing Lossless Audio to its entire catalogue. While this has already come to iPhone in their primary regions, a good number of users (especially Android users) are yet to see this coming into effect. While this no doubt is a crucial differentiator and places Apple Music back in relevance among audio streaming platforms, what sets Spotify apart from the rest is the convenience with which users can curate playlists that are more accessible than other streaming platforms.
While there are gaps that still remain in terms of how streaming platforms are curating their own playlists or in terms of how they are paying artists (Spotify’s algorithms work against indie artists in need of a wider@ audience), the platform, if used wisely, can be a great tool to discover great music. No, I am not even advising to choose the song’s radio that lets Spotify algorithm show you similar songs. You just have to dig a bit through their gold mine of playlists curated by fantastic users. Trust me, there are wonderful curators out there who don’t quite often get the credit for the amazing work they do in what they are passionate about!
In this episode, I am bringing the focus to 5 such wonderful playlists that made me discover wonderful music (and yes, there is mine too <humbly brags> but it is an addition to the five I am recommending).
1) African rock, funk, psychedelic, highlife, beat, blues, cuban, funana zamrock and more
I have been following all the brilliant playlists of Miles-Lee Pattiselanno for more than a year. Her playlists are thoughtfully curated, and they offer a passport to a wider world of music that Spotify algorithms won’t pay much attention too. This was the playlist that made me hooked to her playlists. Nearly 31 hours, it covers some fine music to have come out from Africa from the 60s and 70s. It is quite interesting to see how African artists have taken the western music and spiced it up with their own musical traditions to offer an interesting fusion that’s nigh impossible to keep down once you have started listening. Quite addictive!
2) Jasper V Bollywood and Pakistani filmscores
Jasper Verhulst is the founder and bassist of Amsterdam-based Turkish band, Altın Gün. While you should definitely check out his more famous Altın Gün's Turkish Delights to understand the band’s influences, the reason I picked this interesting playlist out is that sometimes, we see the unknown facets of our own music when curated by a person outside our culture. Jasper has picked songs primarily from Bollywood and Pakistani Cinema from the 60s to the 80s that reflect the soundscape of that time. The songs are mostly either sensuous or bordering on psychedelic, disco, and retro. Suddenly, the songs that we would often dismiss paying attention to, hold you by the collar here. I was pleasantly surprised to find the music of Ilaiyaraaja (of course, who cannot love him?! I just wish Spotify had a wider catalogue that Jasper would be compelled to add more of his songs) and quite unsurprisingly, Asha Bhosle features a good number of times. We all know the Alisha Chinai tracks after ‘Made in India’ but do you remember her ‘Zooby Zooby’ from Bappi Lahiri’s 1987 ‘Dance Dance’ film? Check out this playlist to find such interesting tracks. This is such a treasure trove!
3) Synthwave | Retro 80’s Electronic
Synthwave or Retrowave is one of my favourite genres in music. It is a sub-genre of electronic music and first came into use dominantly in the action, sci-fi, and horror films of 1980s (does Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner, John Carpenter’s scores or recently, Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s score for Stranger Things series ring a bell to you?). They are great to listen to while writing, doing focused non-calling work, and obviously, gaming. But, the artists are so many and even Spotify’s playlists are not that quite exhaustive or does justice to the genre. Patrick Spence’s playlist that he keeps constantly updating is nearly 197 hours as of date and you can never ever get tired of this playlist. It is one of the most exhaustive playlists I have come across. If you are wanting to check out more about the Synthwave or Retrowave artists, this is the definitive playlist that you should totally check out!
4) Haruki Murakami’s vinyl collection
Anyone who has ever read the famous Japanese writer Haruki Murakami would love his taste in music, especially jazz and classical western music. Be it naming his book 'Norwegian Wood' after the famous song by The Beatles or his intimate conversations with music conductor Seiji Ozawa in 'Absolutely on Music', the Japanese writer’s love for music has been well captured. After all, before turning into a writer, he and his wife ran a jazz club for seven years. There are a number of playlists linked to Murakami including one of the first ones that captured the imagination of Spotify playlist curators world around - The Music of Haruki Murakami, that featured the music mentioned in Murakami’s works across the years but that playlist has not been updated since 2015. On the other hand, we have this gem of a playlist, curated by Masamaro Fujiki, that makes one experience the private vinyl collection of the author. At 3,500 songs and over 250 hours, I doubt I have seen anything quite like this. Featuring everything from Soviet composers like Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich to Jazz legends like Thelonious Monk and Sarah Vaughan, the playlist is the closest to feeling connected with the reclusive Japanese writer in his private world.
It has been 50 years since 1971. It is the year music redefined itself, according to American writer David Hepworth who penned ‘1971 - Never a Dull Moment: Rock's Golden Year’ back in 2016, capturing all that happened in an eventful year that followed the post-Beatles era that dominated the Sixties. It is the year Led Zeppelin would release their band-defining album ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ and Jim Morrison would sign off from life as an immortal star with ‘Riders on the Storm’, Bill Withers would croon the soulful ‘Ain’t no sunshine’, the year the Eagles was formed, John Lennon would release his peace anthem ‘Imagine’, and David Bowie would go on to record his career-defining ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ that would eventually come out in 1972. In essence, it was the most creative year according to David Hepworth. Not many would agree to that. 1973 rears its head and questions its exclusion in being considered. Debates aside, Asif Kapadia, the British documentary filmmaker who earlier gave us terrific portraits of the legendary F1 racer Ayrton Senna (2010), singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse (2015), and the great footballer Diego Maradona (2019) has directed a mini-documentary series based on this book, that was launched in the US on Apple TV+ recently. While I am yet to see that as it is not available in India legally, if you are looking to explore more about the music and the artists who made them, you should definitely check out David Hepworth’s own curated playlist on Spotify. Would work better if you read the book along. Fascinating music from a bygone era that is now preserved into eternity through this playlist.
Bonus - CineMadness (Film Scores)
One of my favourite hobbies is curating playlists on Spotify. And among all the playlists I have ever curated, this is the one I am quite proud of. It is a hand-picked selection of my favourite background scores from Hollywood and World Cinema. It is nearly 25 hours and I will be updating this frequently. From Ennio Morricone to Hans Zimmer, from Howard Shore to Jóhann Jóhannsson, I have covered all the major works of film composers so far. Background scores enhance the impact of the story and more often than not, the film composers have added a lot more thought to it than even the film makers in bringing the story on screen. I have, as a result, been fascinated and quite obsessed by film music. Not a day goes by without listening to background scores to some degree. This playlist is a labour of love just like the others featured in this list and I hope you love it too!
Spotify’s algorithm ensures that their own playlists leave out a good number of tracks that are not a ‘hit’ among the public. That doesn’t mean that music that falls outside their playlists are not worth paying attention too. This is where the curators play a major role in widening the tastes of the music lovers, through their carefully curated playlists. If you find a terrific playlist curated by someone, the least you can do to thank them in return, is to share it with a wider audience, who will love it as much as you do.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter. Just a word before I leave: please add mdrwrites@substack.com to your contact list as all posts will be sent from this address.
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