Coming up with a music mix can sometimes feel like a nebulous thing. For me, it often takes a while to land on a particular focus. However, when I feel the spirit move me, as it did on my latest LYL Radio mix, all it takes is a track or two to hone my vision and part the clouds to reveal where one’s aim is truly set.
With April’s showers giving way to May’s flowers, I really wanted to capture a certain microclimate induced by this fleeting microseason and particular to those who live near an ocean, sea, lake, or other body of water, that invites a peculiar feeling this time of year one might call a “haze.” As I listened to Andy Davis’s exceptional Clevedon Pier, I kept thinking of how his track “Jabe” captured its nebulous affectation quite clearly: that of longing.
Why do we yearn for someone or something? What does it mean to situate yourself in that powerful but fleeting feeling – when you want to get close but are left in stasis, stuck on land, as figuratively the ship sails out to sea?
Many a famous work — “Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Southampton Water” by James McNeill Whistler, “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich, Monet’s whole Waterloo Bridge series — attempted to capture on canvas just how something so elemental could translate its etymological meaning of being “at a loss what to do, in a state of mental obscurity” so clearly. So, without further ado, rather than run away from exploring this in song, I thought: “let’s linger on this idea for a while” before this inspiration gets swept away.
Music Box On The Seashore (海辺のオルゴール)
Tracklist:
Andy Davis – Jabe
Lois Crayon (ロイス・クレヨン) – Musicbox On The Seashore
Julio Saínz – Ann Afghan (Ana Afgana)
Kazuhisa Yamaguchi & Ichirou Imai (山口ー久＆今井一郎) – Delicious
Robert Wyatt – Last Straw
Yukarie (ユカリーヌ フォンテーヌ) – Still Miss You Babe
Hard Romantic (ハード・ロマンティック) – パラディ (Paradise)
Schönherz & Scott – One Night In Vienna
Mark Jefferis – Hand Of God
Electric Circus – Opal
Lluís Llach – Maremar
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