Summer Somethin'

Finally time to get around to putting this up now that things are warming up for those in the Northern Hemisphere. Some cuts that didn't make it onto the Cosy Collection of last time, spun off into their own thing. A little more eclectic in terms of selection, there were plenty that didn't make it in that I will hang onto for next time - I hope you enjoy the selection. As usual, tracklist in plain text and a full rundown of the selections below: (Both players above are the same, but the picture one doesn't show the tracklist like the compact player so I included both!)







Tracklist:
Maria Yamamoto - Venus to Chiisana Kamisama (Instrumental)
Lina Ohta - Puzzle-Riddle
Boom Bip - Last Walk Around Mirror Lake (Boards Of Canada Remix)
Kensuke Ushio - Flare
Kensuke Ushio - Speed Of Youth
Ghostlight - Fantasy Complex
Susumu Yokota - Nothing Time
Sugar Plant - Simple Dub


Pretty happy with how this one turned out for the most part, some of my intended selections didn't make the cut (Röyksopp and Air to name a few) which was disappointing, but I think I've been guilty in the past of forcing tunes in, so I tried to be a little more loose this time. Kicking off with a semi-obscure but of J-Pop from Maria Yamamoto - this is exactly the type of song I had in mind making this mix and I chose the instrumental to highlight that, Maria's vocal is fine but I just had to let that fantastic instrumentation by Tsuneo Imahori shine, it's just gorgeous. From there we keep things in a similar vein, with Lina Ohta's very brief and only foray into music - it's a similar story here as with the last one - produced by Haruomi Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra fame, he has an incredible talent and an incredibly vast discography, his pop productions like this one are always a treat.

Moving more into traditional territory next with the sublime Last Walk Around Mirror Lake Remix from Boards Of Canada. Very much in the Campfire Headphase style, that whole album could easily have made up the entire tracklist here. It was a different spin on the typical nostalgic BoC sound, trading analog weirdness for more acoustic elements (though still very firmly retro in style), but that makes a perfect match for Boom Bip around this time. Wonderful stuff, and one of the best tracks in the BoC archives.

A double feature from Kensuke Ushio next - he's made plenty of appearances in my recent mixy posts, both under his real name and the Agraph alias. I fell in love hard with his stuff a few years ago now, his brand of IDM on the Agraph albums is a lovely balance between the glitchy and melodic that I instantly clicked with - more recently he's been doing a bunch of soundtrack work, and with it exploring whole other genres. From full on synthwave for Devilman Crybaby to his more usual Ambient / IDM for Boogiepop wa Warawanai, I have loved it all. His work for A Silent Voice is no exception, it's a beautiful movie with an equally beautiful OST. I couldn't pick just one so I went with the sparkling duo of Flare and Speed Of Youth - the former showing off the ambient side while the latter gets just a touch of that IDM influence on it. Fantastic works.

Rounding out we have Fantasy Complex from Ghostlight, a tune I was randomly recommended one day, and it wouldn't stop recommeding me it. So I stubbornly gave in one day and gave it a spin. It's very nice, all of Ghostlight's work has this real nice lo-fi feel to it that I don't have a ton of in my library, though I wish I knew what was the content that made the algorithm decide to send them my way. From there we have a little more Susumu Yokota, this time from the Sound Of Sky album that I opened one of my winter mixes with. I've yet to hear the man's full discography - there is a lot of stuff to get through and that's before you look at his many aliases - but even so, Sky is up there as one of my favourite offerings from the man. Chill lounge house tracks like this are the order of the day, so Nothing Time was right at home here.

And finally, Sugar Plant. Another recent love of mine that has been sadly relegated to thse mixes due to them noth being readily avalable on streaming that isn't Spotify. They're sort of difficult to pin down, on paper they are an indie / alternative rock band, but that label feels like sort of a disservice - their works feel quite electronic, sort of like Seefeel in that respect - creating these lovely loops with actual instruments - though Sugar Plant is much more downtempo that Seefeel's droney shoegaze. Highly recommended for fans of the Trip Hop stuff I've posted in the past, they feel very much like Morcheeba to me. I've chosen the Dub version of Simple to play out, it's not massively changed from the orignal, just with lots of lovely dub delay and other elements added for good measure, a fitting finale I thought.

And that'll do for today, pretty fast turnaround on this one, thanks mainly to me having a draft tracklist to hand for a few months now! I'm going to drop by with more Final Bandcamp Friday stuff throgh the week hopefully, but I hope until then you can find plenty in this selection to tide you over - and of course, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF