#19 Disassociation Dance Hall
or, creating your own club to get the thing done.
(Pandreo is a real one)
Hello friends,
Do you feel like you are a tamale husk just barely keeping it all together and ready to be discarded at any moment? Is the reality of whats just a really bleak moment we are in right now make you feel powerless and left struggling to prioritize and complete all the relatively meaningless tasks you have to complete everyday? Yeah, same.
I have this “problem” at the moment, written in quotes because it’s absolutely not a problem in any real sense of the world, where I’m feeling like just talking about whats going on in my life feels like just dream life humble bragging, and to suggest any of it has been exhausting is completely out of touch. Possibly the fact I feel this is a sign I’ve not slid in to complete nihilism, which I believe is a good thing. It’s ultimately not helping anyone directly, but being able to simultaneously hold the complexities of privilege, gratitude, opportunity, labor, and just the chaotic unfairness of it all I think is essential to possessing any kind of empathy for folks around you.
Lately, I’m basking in the gratitude of what several of my artist friends and I call “doing the thing”, the thing being, whatever this life we’ve said we wanted and somehow are cobbling together. The first few months of this year have completely been doing the thing, and feeling the effects of it. I’ve published 4 new books I’m extremely proud of with artists I deeply appreciate (Sara J Winston, tamara suarez porras, Erin McCluskey, and Anna Rotty), and hosted friends from Germany for us all to participate in a very successful Codex, the biggest Book Arts fair in the world. I’m fully in the weeds of curating a show for the San Francisco Center for the Book with my Chute Studio mate Amy Burek that will open in July, while also attempting to be something reflecting a decent instructor for my Spring class load. There are at least 10 more books on the way this year, even with whats going to be me spending 3+ months in Europe later this year, and have a group of folks I am fortunate to send things to every month because they support me on Patreon. This of course doesn’t even touch on my marriage and friendships (going great, I think!) and the existential dread about our election, and Gaza, and Ukraine, and auto-theft (all going extremely poorly, verifiably).
This is all going on and I’m feeling all these feelings (or, on the other end, being completely void of feelings), and The Thing needs to get done. My music habits have been very specific through this period: alot of classical music, the Northern Exposure soundtrack on repeat, SO MUCH Enya… But when I need to really dial in and get the work done, it’s been mostly dance music. So this time around, I present 3 hours of an admittedly idiosyncratic collection of dance music. It’s heavy on electronic beats, big fuzzy baselines, & glitchy bloops. It somehow marries post punk and European EDM & rave pop, ending up with some kind of visceral attitude that is equally appropriate for late night dancing and walking down the street with urgency wearing headphones with a completely stoic facial expression. Productive requires body movement
Once again, for those in to music videos, the Youtube music version of this list has a ton of videos including three of my all time favorite music videos ever made.
I hope this helps in someway.
#19 Disassociation Dance Hall
Listen here on Spotify | Listen/watch here on Youtube Music.
Porches - Goodbye
Carly Rae Jepsen - Real Love
LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk is Playing at My House
Shamir - On The Regular
RAC - This Song
Serpentwithfeet - Damn Gloves
Bonobo - Age of Phase
Hot Chip - I Feel Better
Ratatat - Wildcat
Jam City - Touch Me
Kanye West - Paranoid
The Go! Team - The Power Is On
Foals - In Degrees
Yard Act - We Make Hits
Justice - We Are Your Friends
Joywave - Tongues
Viagra Boys - Ain’t No Thief
Chai - (A song with a Japanese title I don’t know how to type)
Ra Ra Riot - Binary Mind
Deorro - Five More Hours
Self - Breakfast With Girls
Charli XCX - Boys
Young Thug - Kanye West
Francis and the Lights - Just For Us
Felix Da Housecat - Ready 2 Wear
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
Basement Jaxx - My Turn
Stars - No One Is Lost
The Faint - Get Seduced
Sylvan Esso - Echo Party
NOTD - So Close
Hardwell - Thinking About You
Grum - Can’t Shake This Feeling
Ookay - Thief
Martin Garrix -Don’t Look Down
The Streets - Without Thinking
Phoenix - Fleur De Lys
The Range -Bicameral
Fred Again - Hannah
Yelle - Completement fou
Audiobooks - Burnt Pictures
Classixx - Whatever I Want
For Those I Love - Leave Me No Love
