Joe Corrales Jr. aka Yppah, is back. The young Mexican-American from Texas debuted on Ninja Tune in 2006 with his album, You Are Beautiful At All Times, and now releases his sophomore effort, They Know What Ghost Know. Fashioning a rockier sound than last time out, the album draws on a cultural heritage that took in My Bloody Valentine alongside hip hop and which is heavily influenced by various forms of electronic music, psychedelic soul and rock.
Suicide / Cheree This is a song I could listen to on repeat for hours. I love the atmospheric drone mixed with Alan Vega’s pleading vocals. There’s not much to the structure, and the melodies are pretty simple, but something about the way it all works together keeps me eternally interested, as if I’m going to hear something that I hadn’t heard before. This is definitely in my Top 5 heartbreak songs. The haunting vocals, the minimal spacey melodies, the driving drums, it’s perfect.
The Drones are a noisy but very interesting group from Melbourne, Australia. They’ve put out four albums. They tour a lot. Some say too much. Well, they say too much, anyway.
The Tammys / Egyptian Shumba When this came out in the late fifties, it must have sounded completely insane, chiefly because it does to this day, still. Three young (presumably innocent) girls screaming, screaming and SCREAMING through this hundred-mile-an-hour freak out about Egyptians or something.
Enon is a band from Brooklyn and Philadelphia. John Schmersal, Toko Yasuda, and Matt Schulz, have all been in a bunch of bands, and are still in a bunch of bands. But all that doesn’t really matter, right? What does matter is that these three, together, are Enon, always, and they’re always amazing. Some bands are content to develop a ‘trademark sound’. Enon continuously expands on every aspect of their music, managing to bring something new to the table with each release while still weaving a common thread through all of them.
Brigitte Fontaine / Brigitte It makes me feel calm when I put this song on.
So, we have a wickedly talented and creative producer and DJ laying down what’s good and what’s, well, not so good. Yes it’s, wait for it, just a little longer, nearly there. Ok, it’s Moby, from some otherworldly universe.
John Lee Hooker / I Hated The Day I Was Born ‘If I could sing, I’d love to sing like John Lee Hooker. Him or David Bowie. I don’t have a beautiful singing voice, so I really appreciate the deep and gravelly voice that Hooker possesses. I really like everything about John Lee Hooker’s music. I’m a big fan of old blues anyway, especially music from the pre-war era. It was so much simpler back in the day. You plugged in and you played. Studios are like instruments now. This song is one of my all-time favorites. “I love depressing music”: that was a quote in my high school yearbook’.
My Secret Playlist is a music discovery website and weekly email publication. We invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. These are their words on the music that inspires them.
