Now This
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Music to Create To: Nicolas Jaar’s BBC Essential Mix 2012
As I spend more time practicing with oil pastels, I’ve been looking for good music to create to, typically going for something moody or something with a good flow. But this week I’ve been going back to something that has both, one of my favorite Nicolas Jaar mixes, the BBC Essential Mix from 2012. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone mix music as masterfully as Nicolas Jaar does, it’s done so well and the music is so good that it just sounds close to perfection. Hear the mix below or on SoundCloud here.
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Drive My Car (2021)
After Yūsuke Kafuku’s wife dies, he must navigate his way through a world without her. The movie starts two years prior to this, where we are introduced to the couple in the opening scene of Drive My Car, where actor and director Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a screenwriter who brainstorms story ideas with her husband during the afterglow of sex. At this time in his life, Yūsuke performs in a multilingual theater production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and the film switches between scenes in the play and the complications building in Yūsuke’s real life, touching on parallels between the two. Two years later,…
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“Morning Has Broken” by Cat Stevens and Eleanor Farjeon
The song “Morning Has Broken” was based on a traditional Scottish Gaelic tune called “Bunessan,” a song named for the village of Bunessan on the Isle of Mull. It was then set to lyrics by author Eleanor Farjeon, who was known for writing children’s stories, poetry, plays, and more. This version, with Farjeon’s lyrics, was first published as a hymn in 1931 in the second edition of the hymnal Songs of Praise. However, it was this cover by Cat Stevens, recorded in 1971, that brought much wider recognition to the song.
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‘OUÏ’ by Camille
Parisian singer-songwriter Camille’s 2017 release OUÏ blends vocals with instrumentation seamlessly, often experimentally as heard in the striking vocal arrangements in “Fontaine de lait,” and sometimes hauntingly, as in the song “Nuit debout,” with lyrics flowing with colorful language as she shifts between French and English. OUÏ is her fifth studio album, released by Because Music. Here is the fourth track on the album, “Seeds.”
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Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
When a young witch leaves home on a clear night with a full moon, as is customary for witches, she and her cat Jiji start a new life and find new possibilities in the city of Koriko, where Kiki starts a flying delivery service as she becomes independent. This delightful movie, created by Studio Ghibli (My Neighbor Totoro, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, Spirited Away, When Marnie Was There, Grave of the Fireflies, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, and more), is the fourth film in my year of watching 50 Japanese movies. Kiki’s Delivery Service (originally titled Majo no takkyûbin) was produced and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and based on the novel Kiki’s…
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‘I Need to Start a Garden’ by Haley Heynderickx
As we round out the spring, I don’t want it to end without mentioning what has been my spring anthem for the past two years, I Need to Start a Garden by Haley Heynderickx. Lively and playful like the season, I Need to Start a Garden also touches on many themes relating to this time of reawakening, like the song about the personalities of insects and moving them out of a house to please someone, “The Bug Collector,” and the title itself, as heard in the song “Oom Sha La La.” I Need to Start a Garden was Haley Heynderickx’s debut full-length album, released in 2018 by Mama Bird Recording Company.…
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My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
A Japanese movie marathon wouldn’t be right without delving into the wonderful world of Japanese animation, and I’m starting with my favorite out of the few that I’ve seen, the beautifully hand-illustrated film My Neighbor Totoro. Set in 1950s Japan, My Neighbor Totoro tells the story of a professor, Tatsuo Kusakabe, and his two daughters, Satsuki and Mei, who move to the countryside to be closer to their mother who is in the hospital recovering from a long-term illness. Once they arrive, the children start to explore the old house that they are moving into, and discover that it’s inhabited by dust bunny-like spirits called “susuwatari” or “soot sprites” that…
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‘city life’ by Birb
I love falling down rabbit holes of obscure piano music and city life is one of the best finds yet as far as obscure piano rabbit holes go. The four-song EP was released on August 31, 2021 by Birb and features short, simple but pensive instrumental piano songs. You know with titles like “falling in love with a new york pigeon,” “a cat gets stuck in traffic,” “the same cat gets stuck in the infinite time loop of life,” and “small fish drowns in the big city,” it’s got to be good. Other singles, albums, and EPs by Birb include 2025’s the cat collection, daydreaming in an empty parking lot…
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‘The Lonesome Crowded West’ by Modest Mouse
This week finds me going back to one of my favorite times in music, 1997, an absolutely incredibly good year for music which saw releases like Björk’s Homogenic, Elliott Smith’s Either/Or, Built to Spill’s Perfect from Now On, Daft Punk’s Homework, Ween’s The Mollusk, Pavement’s Brighten the Corners, Buena Vista Social Club’s self-titled album, and one of my personal favorite album’s of all time, The Lonesome Crowded West by Modest Mouse. I’ve heard the songs on Lonesome described as ‘hypnotic’ and I can definitely relate to that. The Lonesome Crowded West is the second album from Modest Mouse, following This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think…
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Shoplifters (2018)
Father and son team Osamu and Shota Shibata, respectively, are experienced shoplifters, working together with hand signals to procure some items from the supermarket in the opening scene. Clearly, they’ve done this before, they work well together, and afterwards, the two look happy just to be together. They stop at a street vendor’s stall to buy some warm croquettes, and then on their way home, they see a frail, young girl, who they’ve seen before, sitting alone in the cold. We soon learn that her name is Yuri (played by Miyu Sasaki) and she is around four years old. Osamu offers her one of their croquettes and lets her come…
