Playlists

A significant portion of the music I hold dear was recommended to me by other people. Sharing music with others is a crucial reason Negative White exists—a platform to share great artists and their work.

However, it currently is a one-way stream. We publish, you consume. It's an old-school, somewhat dusty concept that doesn't hold up in the age of digital communication.

That's why we introduce a new, collaborative format: Community Essentials.

The idea is simple: We provide a topic—for example, a specific decade—and you can share your favourite song that relates to said topic. Your contribution will then be published in a playlist and an accompanying article.

We plan to create a fresh Community Essentials playlist monthly, with the call for songs coming on the first Friday of each month.

Community Essentials #1: The 1990s

With the introduction out of the way, we can get down to business now. In the September edition of Community Essentials, we travel back in time to the age of bad taste: The 1990s.

But are the 90s actually that bad? Musically, the decade brought us Grunge, then the advent of techno, Britpop, fun punk, and last but not least, the rise of rap and hip-hop to global domination.

Which song should without a doubt be in this Community Essentials playlist? Fill out this short form below to enter your contribution. Thank you for participating.

Teenage years will eventually influence the rest of your life—and it's especially true for one's taste in music. Starting around 2004, I began to explore the vast archive of rock's most significant era, discovering the all-time greats.

In this edition of reLISTEN, I will be revisiting five classic songs that I used to listen to repeatedly during my teenage years. I'm curious to explore why these songs, which are now decades old, used to captivate me.

Bob Dylan – Hurricane

Obviously, my first contact with Bob Dylan was Blowin' In The Wind; however, it was Hurricane from the 1976 album Desire that drew me entirely into Dylan's kaleidoscopic universe. The song's urgency and anger—represented by the, for the artist, unusual pace—are fascinating.

As one of his few protest songs in the 1970s, Hurricane examines the racist trial of Afro-American boxer Rubin «Hurricane» Carter while entailing all of Dylan's traits: powerful storytelling, wild rock music, the signature harmonica, accompanied by a whirling violin. Yet, it's a far cry from Dylan's early folk roots.

While nothing comes close to the actual experience of live performed music, recordings—if done well—offer a glimpse of the magic and power.

In a long-gone era, amateur recordings of concerts, the so-called bootlegs, were a big thing—despite their abysmal quality. Today, however, people use social media and videos to satisfy their urge to create a lasting token of live music.

And not only the amateur's quality has significantly improved, but also professional endeavours have benefitted from technical advancements. Therefore, live recordings aren't as shoddy as they used to be.

While dusty pieces of live recordings may have a nostalgic value, modern attempts certainly better capture the feeling of live performances.

The landscape is dipped into a forest green and purple twilight—an astounding sight, somewhere between surreal and fantastic. Is it a dream or some kind of alternative reality?

Music's capability to teleport your mind to far-away places—even such completely made-up—is a continuous wonder. While some songs are sonically profoundly rooted in our world, others conjure up whole universes that spring from the endless creativity of human imagination.

In today's edition of reLISTEN, I collect five of these fantastical songs that could very well be the soundtrack to a fairy tale—although not necessarily happy ones.

They're coined by evocative melodies, similarly alien and familiar, uncanny soundscapes, and ethereal voices. Songs that could haunt your nightmares or spark images of imaginative worlds. Sounds that are flowing and cradling but only occasionally rise to epic proportions.

Hilary Woods – Black Rainbow

The song's title already gives it away: it's a sinister atmosphere, created by Dublin-born artist Hilary Woods, that awaits the listeners. Black Rainbow drags and writhes itself in darkness, spreads a velvety blanket across the mind like the night.

Woods' voice, half preaching, half whispering, seems almost detached from the composition. The instruments blend into a vast and pulling field, with only the short piano notes providing an oscillating relief.

Black Rainbow, by Hilary Woods

from the album Colt

Hilary WoodsMyke

Midas Fall – Evaporate

It starts melancholic, with the swelling strings slowly mutating into a constant melody. But then, a sharp e-guitar sneaks in, and as soon as the buzzing synthesisers appear, Midas Fall's Evaporate gains a haunting quality.

The Scottish duo unites Elizabeth Heaton's pleading voice and Rowan Burn's post-rock guitars with captivating, electronically driven soundscapes into a Janus-faced song with a goth-like quality that simultaneously feels almost violent.

Weekly5 is taking a quick holiday break. So, instead of new tunes, I open my chest of shame and present you with five of my guilty pleasure songs.

But what is actually the definition of guilty pleasure? Wikipedia states:

«A guilty pleasure is something, such as a film, a television program, a piece of music, or an activity, that one enjoys despite understanding that it is not generally held in high regard, or is seen as unusual or weird.»

We could argue for days and nights about whether there's something like «bad taste» or bad music. All my guilty pleasure songs have racked up millions of streams on Spotify alone. They definitely struck a chord with the mass audience; however, they might be considered trashy by more music-affine people.

In the end, it doesn't matter that much. If you enjoy a particular song more than you feel you should, don't worry. Simply enjoy!

Gigi D’Agostino – L’Amour Toujours

Trash or classic? It's always a tricky question with Gigi D'Agostino, a staple boy of Italo-Dance around the millennium. L'Amour Toujours, only one of his megahits, is oddly two-sided: There's the annoying altered female voice, but nobody can refrain from humming the undying synth melody.

In August 2022, I started a new job at the software agency Zeilenwerk in Bern, Switzerland. One of the first Slack channels I was invited to was #music_n_stuff, where we mainly post random songs or albums.

The channel has been a great source of inspiration, especially in the electronic music department. So I decided to give some of my work colleague's recommendations a bigger platform.

Do you remember when it was a hassle to figure out which song you hear right now? However, when smartphones rose to the all-encompassing devices, the app Shazam also came into our lives and empowered us to research a track with the push of a button.

Although I’m not a regular Shazam user, the app comes in handy here and there. So I thought I share five songs I discovered thanks to “shazamming” them.