"Colorways" - Left Tracks

Yesterday Kabir Kumar, who plays guitar in Guppy and has a solo project Sun Kin (I interviewed him about it for The Alternative), announced a new project called Left Tracks. It's a collaboration with his friend DI LEO and the first song, "Colorways," has awakened my long-dormant desire for heady, relaxed...chillwave?? I actually have no idea if chillwave is or is not a chill thing to invoke in a music blog post anymore. What is the legacy of chillwave? Are we all good with it? I want to be good with it.

Anyway, let's say "Colorways" is chillwave-infused or chillwave-adjacent, with some extra-delicious keyboards thrown in there for a sophisticated touch. So dreamy, I almost didn't notice the lyrics about early pandemic confusion ("I still think of that room where we practiced / Passing bottles of Purell / No one knew what to do") until the second listen.

Plugging Kabir's Substack while I'm at it — I loved this encouragement to think outside the bun of algorithm-chasing and cheap virality.

Molly Mary O'Brien runs I Enjoy Music and tweets here.

a tour recap with On The Cinder

Maybe it's my early-and-often consumption of the movie Almost Famous but I really romanticize the idea of "going on tour." The ultimate road trip, playing tunes across the land, getting weird and making friends as you go...doesn't that sound nice? I know the

an argument for listening to new music and not worrying about getting old

I was doing my horrid morning scroll on Twitter and came across a chunk of text that displeased me (this happens often on Twitter...it's what keeps me coming back, the displeasure...): As it turns out, this chunk of text came from a long Freddie deBoer newsletter about

Three Music Thingz with Noo Jii

Cowabunga, it's another rendition of Three Music Thingz, the blogseries where I ask musicians for three thingz that are essential to their music-making. Today we have Noo Jii! Noo Jii is the musical identity of Paul Hannouche, who put out a beautiful experimental pop album called Vision Virgo

In the zorb with Sycco

It's one of those June days in Los Angeles that features weather so pleasant it's almost boring, and I'm in the bar area of the downtown music venue The Moroccan Lounge, talking to Sasha McLeod, the musician known as Sycco, about the LSD trip

Read more

a tour recap with On The Cinder

an argument for listening to new music and not worrying about getting old

Three Music Thingz with Noo Jii

In the zorb with Sycco