A Collective Feeling 5: March Madness
Hard in the paint
Music discovery is a dying art between algorithm-based suggestions that run in circles, search engines that misfire and chug along to your eventual destination, and a dearth of crates in which to dig. The systems we once trusted to expose us to something new that could change our lives, to flip our wigs, are less capable than ever. We had a deluge of information at our fingertips for two decades, and now we get to see what’s formed as it dries, like the Grand Canyon or the Arches at their eponymous National Park.
A lot of our options suck, but as I find common throughout my life, the answer to my problem lies in other people. We can trust music discussion boards, our friends’ Instagram story posts, and the topic of today’s playlist: Music we hear out in the world.
Everything on this playlist is from my Shazam account. It’s all songs I’ve heard around me and tried to identify either because I recognized it or I didn’t recognize it and I wanted to know more. The full Shazam playlist is at least five times the length of this one, but I wanted to make some sense of the madness contained in that playlist. It’s house music played by sound guys in between sets at shows, songs I heard in the back of rideshares after late nights, background music from coffee shops in strange cities, sources of samples I heard in other songs, tracks from skate videos and DJ sets on youtube, and bangers heard from Bluetooth speakers played in small, enclosed spaces.
The playlist can be found below, along with some words about what’s contained within. By popular demand, I’ve added a link to a Tidal playlist for this entry and future entries.
Tidal (Missing "Gold on Red" by Crash of Rhinos)
Thingy - “This Isn’t Heat”
Rob Crow’s bands that aren’t Pinback are a bit of a blind spot for me, seemingly impenetrable due to just how much music this guy has put out. I heard this while sitting in the back of a coffee shop in LA and waiting for some friends. The big chord in the chorus grabbed me and I had to find out what I was listening to, and now I’m in love with this song and this record.
Crash of Rhinos - “Gold on Red”
Crash of Rhinos were an English emo band whose music landed stateside around 2011 thanks to the folks at Topshelf Records. I was 20 when I heard them for the first time and their ambition and skill really stuck out to me. As a college student into post-rock, I found a lot of appreciation for bands who effectively shifted their dynamics, and Crash of Rhinos did that better than almost all of their contemporaries. Anyway I forgot about them somewhere in the shift of life and heard this song played over the house speakers at a show, then got to reminisce with a couple friends about how great this record was.
Molina - “Scorpio”
More weirdo alternative timeline late ‘90s music in the vein of ML Buch, and I’m not exactly sure where this came from, but guessing from its proximity to the Klein song on the original playlist, I think it’s ML Buch’s DJ set from The Lot last year. Absolute heat.
The Gun Club - “The Breaking Hands” (Demo)
I guess this has been in a few skate videos, but I’m sure I heard this first in Quickstrike, last year’s Nike SB video. It’s not a great video but the soundtrack is great. Skate video soundtracks are hit-or-miss lately and whoever picked this one absolutely crushed it. The first three songs on the video are this, a Clan of Xymox track, and “Running Like Thieves” by Bold. Outstanding work.
Thanks for checking this out, I hope you enjoy it. I’ll be back next week.