My January Playlist

Thought I’d like to share my latest musical finds. For no real reason, I have been surfing up a lot of new music this month, and loving a lot of it.

1. Jazzanova

Heard about this Berlin-based nu-jazz DJ collective through my favourite online radio show, Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide, sometime last year. The radio show has their own annual music awards, and these guys won the John Peel ‘Play More Jazz’ award. I haven’t heard much of their music prior to this, but a quick wiki revealed that they do tonnes of remixes (jazz ones, presumably).

They’ve only had two albums out, and I checked out their most recent one, 2008’s “Of All the Things“. Needless to say, it was a great listen. The more publicized track of this album is the catchy track, “I Can See“, of which the video was surprisingly aired on one of Astro’s music channels (view video here). My personal favourite though, is the beautiful track called ‘Little Bird‘ which features the haunting vocals of Jose James (listen here). I am not sure what other music listeners might think, but I don’t think any jazz listeners would not feel the least bit moved by his rendition backed by a soulful strings section.

Their myspace page already shares a lot of their great music. The one that got all my senses a-tingling was the track called Behold These Days (Berlin ‘74) (video here). Apparently it’s a theme from a short-lived musical theatre show called “Belle et fou“.  It’s a great chillout track, can almost transport myself to a different world in a different time and place.

2. Vampire Weekend

This lovely Afro-inspired indie band has a new album out, “Contra“, recently released in the US on the 11th of January. Personally hadn’t had a listen of the album yet, but I am looking forward to some great new sounds, considering that Pitchfork just gave it a rating of 8.6 out of 10. Plus, the two tracks off this album, Cousins (video) and Horchata (mp3) are top notch.

..to be continued on part 2..