Genres

What’s This Playlist All About? The author behind such modern-day classics as Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a well-known music fanatic. In fact, he recently announced he would be donating his entire vinyl collection of some 10,000 records to Tokyo’s Waseda University. To showcase his voracious musical appetite, one of Murakami’s faithful followers has taken on the task of compiling songs that the writer has mentioned in various interviews and Q&As, as well as on a website no longer available called, Murakami San No Tokoro.What You Get: Murakami’s collection is almost exclusively jazz; he did, after all, open a jazz bar in Tokyo well before he began writing novels. So, here, you can dive into nearly 250 hours (and counting) worth of jazz titans like Sonny Rollins, Oscar Peterson, Billie Holiday, and Thelonious Monk, alongside classical masterpieces from great minds like Mozart, Bach, and Chopin.Best Surprise: Hearing a few Beach Boys gems (from 1965’s The Beach Boys Today!) between all that heavy-hitting jazz and classical is a nice little distraction. But this also makes us wonder: Where are The Beatles?Where Does One Even Start With This Playlist? Since there seems to be no organization to this mix, it’s probably best to just press play and let it shuffle. And if you’re looking to write your own novel, this may be your perfect writing companion.

The hot weather has melted our otherwise highly analytical, somewhat elitist brains, leaving us lounging on rooftops with a cold beer and humming the latest Future jam. Please join us in this blissful state of non-sentience with this handpicked selection of summery jams from SZA, GoldLink, Kendrick, Chronixx (pictured), Kamaiyah, and more.

Jim James’ angelic falsetto floats above his soulful jams like that of a mezzo-soprano in an operatic aria, flowing to and fro through the grooves and harmonies. A heavy sense of chill exudes from nearly every track, from the hard-hitting bangers to the tender ballads. It isn’t just his voice, but his whole attitude that makes his songs great. He rides the slow build of My Morning Jacket’s “Smokin’ from Shootin’” like a focused surfer, while “Golden” sees him glide over its percussive shuffle like a leaf in the wind. Singing and guitar are far from his only strengths—the Monsters of Folk album featured his work on guitar, bass, keyboard, drums, percussion, and electronics. All these talents come together cohesively and effectively in his solo work, such as 2013’s celestial Regions of Light and Sound of God, whose tracks saw him moving into more vulnerable thematic territory (“A New Life”) while still maintaining his trademark chill vibes and occasional funkiness (“Know Til Now”). Eternally Even’s “Here in Spirit” continues the trajectory, acting as a masterclass in James’ eternally solid vibes. Whether shredding on guitar, vocals, or other, the man is in a class of his own when it comes to contemporary jam theory.

Psychedelic/folk/synthpop hybrid Well Well Well are asking the bigger questions. Namely "Is Here & Now always better than There & Then?" While the San Diego, CA band celebrates their dual EP release of Poptimism and Ships as well as a zine concept tour across their home state, were jumping down the rabbit hole with them on this hand-crafted playlist for The Dowsers. Says the band: "This playlist is a journey down the inspiration highway. Vocal harmonies, dance rhythms, clever lyrics and some of the finest production our ears have ever heard. You want to be a musician? This playlist is Step 3. Not quite for the amateur listener but not too deep down the musicians rabbit hole of hyper-complexity. If you carry a bit of rhythm with you, you will be rewarded. If you enjoy singing in your car or shower, you will also be rewarded. Let the music do what it was created to do. The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things seem strange."

During the summer of 1991, I began making mixtapes. These were pretty simple: a catalog of the songs I had heard and liked, with each side of the tape separated by month. Most importantly, these were songs I had access to, whether through my modest yet growing record and cassette collection, or my sister and mom’s stuff. In the pre-Internet days, just because I heard a song on the radio didn’t mean I could switch on a computer and download or stream it — besides, I didn’t even have a computer, and I only interacted with them sparingly at my high school in Sacramento. Trying to borrow cassettes and records from flaky friends and acquaintances was another can of worms. So my first tape, “Songs from May-June 1991,” cataloged my introverted obsessions: Morrissey’s early solo career, the Housemartins, and R.E.M. Elvis Costello was a constant, thanks to my goal of purchasing his entire catalog. He was a natural shit-talker who took gleeful aim at the world around him, and who seemed adept at encapsulating his thoughts into a pithy, memorable phrase. Yet he seemed aware that his verbal aggression couldn’t mask his bruised sensitivity, that he was just “another fool,” as he often put it. I imagined him as an idealization of the cynical and uncompromising writer I wanted to be. Eventually, my abiding passion turned to the music I heard on 120 Minutes, the Dave Kendall-hosted MTV show that brought alternative music to a nation of jaded suburbanites. It was awash in the sounds of British rock, from the Madchester jangle rock of the Stones Roses and the Charlatans; to the shoegaze trippery of Lush, Ride and My Bloody Valentine. Hearing these songs felt like being told a secret. I didn’t get the irony that I thought music being played on a nationally televised video show was worthy of cult affection. In my stifling Sacramento reality, I only knew a handful of classmates who bothered watching 120 Minutes, or went to see Ride and Lush when they played at the local all-ages venue Cattle Club. (I’m still bitter that I missed out on that show.) My absorption of Britpop coincided with my first, tentative efforts to break out of my hermetic shell, open that aforementioned “can of worms,” and befriend people who might have similar tastes. A girl in debate class offered to make copies of her Cocteau Twins collection, and soon my tape deck was dominated by the alluring and cryptic voice of Elizabeth Fraser. I became best buds with a high school dropout who collected manga from the San Francisco emporium Japantown, had a subscription to Sub Pop’s legendary “Singles Club,” and turned me on to the blissful miseries of Joy Division. (He later earned renown as an Asian pop culture expert with his own Wikipedia page.) I cataloged my newfound likes on my bi-monthly tapes. As for hip-hop? Sure, I watched BET’s Rap City and, occasionally, Yo! MTV Raps. (I thought Yo! hosts Ed Lover and Doctor Dre were annoying.) Like most kids during the late ‘80s and early early ‘90s, I zombie-d out to afternoon video shows simply to kill time and boredom. But MC Hammer, Digital Underground, and Heavy D & the Boyz were just part of the oppressive pop Zeitgeist. I liked Public Enemy, but that was like supporting a remote political figurehead that had little to do with my daily struggles at school, and my daily struggles to communicate — or not communicate — with the people around me. Britpop seemed like a more exotic world, and I interpreted its relative obscurity as proof of its superior quality. Eventually, however, I grew out of my Britpop phase and embraced the golden age of hip-hop. I arrived at college just as the “weed rap” craze was taking off, and it was more fun to smoke, drink and party to the Pharcyde’s “Pack the Pipe” and Gang Starr’s “Take Two and Pass” than Morrissey’s mopey arias. When I went to Moz’s Your Arsenal concert at the Concord Pavilion, I paid a proper farewell to that chapter of my difficult youth. -- Mosi Reeves

Unless you’re the prom queen or the captain of the football team, high school is generally filled with way more embarrassing moments than it is triumphant ones. Hell, even my triumphs — winning a couple debate conferences, being elected to the school senate — are pretty embarrassing. It’s fitting, then, that this playlist of 3rd wave ska and loser punk served as my soundtrack for those years. I got into ska for the same reason you get into all kinds of stupid crap in high school: because of a girl. I’d had a crush on her since freshman year, and when she started singing lead vocals for our high school’s ska band, I gleefully hopped on the bandwagon. My first real show, i.e. not Starship at the county fair, was a ska show: The Goodwin Club (my crush’s band), Nuckle Brothers, Skankin Pickle, Voodoo Glow Skulls. I stage dove for the first time at that show, which resulted in my pair of thrift-store-purchased corduroy pants being ripped from crotch to cuff. Because this was a ska show, however, there was an abundance of safety pins holding various patches to various kids’ backpacks, and a very kind random girl helped me pin my pants back together. In hindsight, I probably should have asked her out instead. Oh well. Not surprisingly, I was far from alone in obsessing over my crush. Half the guys in the ska scene wanted to date her and/or write a song about her. There are two such songs on this mix, “Martian Girl” by The Aquabats and “I Want Your Girlfriend to Be My Girlfriend” by Reel Big Fish, both written specifically about the girl in question. Said girl’s band played shows with many of the bands included here. I saw them open for No Doubt, Sublime, and Dance Hall Crashers (all favorites of mine), and I have vivid memories of driving around in the passenger seat of my crush object’s Jeep — her parents spoiled her rotten — listening to tapes by Propoghandi, The Descendents, The Skatalites, etc. Indeed, we became close friends, a situation that delighted her (who doesn’t want an obsequious fanboy at their beck and call), but destroyed me. I’ll spare you the details, which quickly reach Lifetime-movie levels of maudlin and depressing. Suffice it to say: I made it out alive. Once we got to college, my friends, my crush, and I all bailed on ska, swapping it out for various strains of trip-hop, indie rock, and, uh, jungle. There are plenty of songs from those genres that are near and dear to my heart, but nothing brings the memories back quite like a silly horn line and some offbeat guitar chords. I mean, listen to Skankin Pickle’s “I Missed the Bus.” That song is completely stupid and totally embarrassing, and I love it.

Sometimes I wish I’d had a cooler childhood. Many of my friends have neat stories about discovering The Smiths at age 13 or getting drunk and listening to Springsteen (which I certainly do, but it’s for a different reason when you’re 30). My experiences were a little different. Sure, my dad used to play Electric Light Orchestra and Supertramp vinyls when we would clean the house and Paul Simon and B.B. King cassettes when we went on drives, which was awesome and formative, but most of my meaningful early experiences with music were with the classical music my grandparents and teachers would tell me about.A lot of my childhood was spent alone at the piano. After school, on weekends, when I would fake being sick so I could stay home alone with it, I revelled in the time I had with the instrument. I would play whatever I could get my hands on, as long as I liked it. My grandparents, who were very passionate about all kinds of music, would buy me CDs of famous works performed by illustrious pianists and conductors, and I would fall in love with certain sonatas or movements, sometimes buying the scores but usually printing them out from illegal sheet music sites in my high school library, daydreaming about them until I could go home and work on them. I loved Chopin’s nocturnes and Beethoven’s sonatas, Joplin’s rags and Ravel’s chamber music. I grew to love Serkin, Horowitz, Rubenstein, Bernstein, Goode, Abbado, Toscanini—so many great pianists and conductors.In addition to the piano I began playing saxophone when I was about 10. When I entered high school I decided to start taking lessons and I somehow made it into the studio of the St. Louis Symphony bass clarinet player James Meyer. Mr. Meyer taught me a tremendous amount about a whole range of cool things, such as zen meditation, martial arts defense moves, how to select and prepare reeds, and, most importantly, how to think about music. He exposed me to jazz, playing me my first real jazz record. It was Oliver Nelson’s 1961 Blues and the Abstract Truth, a hard bop masterpiece with unreal orchestration and elegant solos. I remember very clearly feeling like it was the dopest shit I’d ever heard. I bought the CD the following day at Borders. He also taught me about modern and postmodern music, from Debussy to John Adams. We played through everything we could.One summer Mr. Meyer was playing in the pit orchestra for a production of John Adams’ excellent 1987 opera Nixon in China. He showed me some of the sheet music and explained what post-minimalism was about. He said it was one of the hardest pieces he had ever played. I knew nothing about Adams or opera, but when I told my grandparents about it, they insisted that I have the opportunity to see it. My grandfather and I went to see Nixon in China a few weeks later—I found it exhilarating, new, and inspiring, but as a lifelong Puccini and Verdi fan, he did not like it very much at all. To this day I sing arias from that opera to myself when I am alone. Maybe it’s not as cool to some people as singing Springsteen, but I still think it’s pretty fuckin’ rad.

Tragic losses, grizzly murders, brutal tales of revenge — many hip-hop lyrics already have a lot in common with the plotlines of slasher flicks. This mix takes the correlation one step further, compiling a sweeping range of rap tracks featuring horror movie soundtrack samples. The drama of Cage’s “Weather People” is exponentially increased by his use of Goblin’s score to Suspiria, while Project Pat’s “Red Rum” makes use of the sinister music from The Shining. “See you in the club, now we walkin’ you out/ Shoulda thought twice ‘fo you went and opened your mouth,” raps Busta Rhymes in “Gimme Some More.” The lyrics are ominous, to be sure, but when heard over Bernard Herrmann’s music from Psycho, the circumstances seem decidedly more dire. While it’s a cheeky concept, the mix flows surprisingly well, with John Carpenter’s Halloween theme (sampled six times!) serving as a recurring motif to tie the whole thing together. -- Adam Rothbarth

Mary J. Blige burst on the scene in the early ‘90s as the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul.” She sung beautifully over gritty breakbeats and traded rhymes with Grand Puba on the title track to 1992’s What’s The 411? In the decades since, Blige has collaborated with dozens of rappers, including hits by Ludacris and Common. And 1995’s “I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By” with Method Man stands as one of the most beloved duets by a rapper and an R&B singer of all time. And she’s even created a rapping alter ego, Brook Lynn, to flow on remixes of tracks by Cassidy and Busta Rhymes.

He may be one of R&B’s smoothest crossover stars of the last two decades, but Usher has always kept a foot in hip hop. Whether he’s collaborating with his mentors Diddy and Jermaine Dupri, making a political statement with Nas, or providing hooks for hits by Wale and DJ Khaled, Usher has often rubbed elbows with rap’s elite, even earning the nickname “Ursher” from Ludacris. Guest verses by Nicki Minaj and Rick Ross have powered his later hits, and Atlanta rappers like Jeezy and Young Thug have often turned up to help Usher represent his hometown. And hip-hop producers like Lil Jon, Just Blaze and Polow Da Don have provided the beats for some of his greatest songs. -- Al Shipley