Kranky Style - 2 playlists to celebrate 20 years of Kranky Records

When people talk about Chicago's history of fiercely independent record labels, they usually bring up Touch and Go, Drag City, and Thrill Jockey. It's too bad that Kranky Records, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2013, doesn't come to mind more often, because it certainly belongs in that company—it's proved just as reliable, creative, and uncompromising as any of those better-known imprints. (from Kranky's 20 Uncompromising Years, Chicago Reader)

I was not a fine connoisseur of Kranky Records music, but when I read articles such the one above, or this one, or this other one, I wanted to know (& listen to) something more about this label. So I entered in a world made with the kosmic kranky sounds of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Deerhunter, Atlas Sound, Tim Hecker, Low, Grouper, Labradford, Out Hud... And I liked it.  

Results: two playlists. The first one is a kind of unofficial and absolutely questionable best of, compiled basically on the preferences of Last.fm community, revised by some personal aesthetics. The second one is a new evidence of the incurable encyclopedical pathology affecting myself, made possible by Kranky official website: a complete archive of all Kranky albums I found on Spotify (it's a heavy one: 1385 tracks). 

So you have two roads diverging in the dark Kranky wonderwood, you can enjoy the most travelled one or shuffle into the infinite forest. Both, I slowly discovered, may give you great satisfactions. 

KRANKY STYLE 69

KRANKY ARCHIVE*

* Chronologically following the catalog numbers, from the oldest to the newest. I haven't found just 14 of almost 200 albums: Beat (Bowery Electric, Krank014), Pan American (Pan American, Krank025), 360 Business / 360 Bypass (Pan American, Krank041), F (Fontanelle, Krank048), The River Made No Sound (Pan American, Krank051), Avec Laudenum (Stars of the Lid, Krank059), The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light (Growing, Krank073), Kranky Compilation (Various Artists, Krank077), Cached (Nudge, Krank083), The Pyschic Nature of Being (Linches, Krank086), Precis (Benoit Pioulard, Kranky098), Temper/Precis (Benoit Pioulard, Krank123), Nothing Ever Happened (7") (Deerhunter, Krank126), A Winged Victory for the Sullen (A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Krank157). As usual, their lack may be local, in my own country's Spotify catalog. 

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The Polaris Music Prize Spotify Encyclopedia

('Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! cover!)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor's 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! won the Polaris Music Prize 2013, "an annual award given to the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales or record label". Their statement of appreciation was not so appreciating. Anyway, in this month-long wait for the new album of another well-known (but not very spotify-friendly) Canadian band, I decided to update some previous playlists I made about the Polaris Prize. And I added two new ones!

So:

playlist #1(the new one): all winning albums from 2006 to 2013.
playlist #2 (the other new one): all shortlisted 2013 albums, just to catch the Canadian sound of the year

playlist #3 (updated): mammoth with all shortlisted albums from 2006 to 2013

playlist #4 (updated): mammoth lite, with three songs each shortlisted album from 2006 to 2013

Enjoy!

POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE WINNERS (2006-2013)

(two albums missing: Final Fantasy's He Poos Clouds, Arcade Fire's The Suburbs)

POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE 2013 SHORTLISTED ALBUMS

(all 10 albums, bingo!)

POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE SHORTLISTED ALBUMS (2006-2013)

(full albums / 927 songs)

POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE SHORTLISTED ALBUMS (2006-2013)

(3-tracks each album / 237 songs)

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Mercury Prize Collection on Spotify (update: 2013 Shortlist)

Arctic Monkeys and Savages, I love them. 
But I love Laura Marling more: give her the Mercury, judges! 

Time to fly to Mercury again.

Let Pitchfork explain why:

The shortlist of nominees for the Barclaycard Mercury Prize, which honors the best British album of the past year, as chosen by a panel of British music critics and industry folks, has been announced. Last year's winner was Alt-J. Previous winners have included PJ Harvey, the xx, Pulp, Portishead, Arctic Monkeys, Antony and the Johnsons, Franz Ferdinand, and more This year's shortlist is: 

Arctic Monkeys: AM
David Bowie: The Next Day
Disclosure: Settle
Foals: Holy Fire
Jake Bugg: Jake Bugg
James Blake: Overgrown
Jon Hopkins: Immunity
Laura Marling: Once I Was an Eagle
Laura Mvula: Sing to the Moon
Rudimental: Home
Savages: Silence Yourself
Villagers: Awayland

They are all on Spotify and you can listen to them in the first embedded playlist below. While if you wanna dig in the past, the other two playlists are some old Spotirama peanuts, just updated: Mercury Prize Winners from 1992 to 2012 and the huge The Complete Mercury Prize Mammoth (1992-2013).

Enjoy!

 MERCURY PRIZE 2013

(all 12 shortlisted albums)

MERCURY PRIZE WINNERS

(all 21 winning albums from 1992 to 2012, 2013 yet to be announced)

THE COMPLETE MERCURY PRIZE MAMMOTH

(all shortlisted & winners from 1992 to 2013) 

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Take care, this last one is huge: 231 albums, 2730 songs

Missing albums: 21
("missing" means "missing from my italian Spotify", maybe they're available in other countries; the year refers to when the album was shortlisted)

Rising Above Bedlam (Jah Wobble, 1992)

Head Like a Rock (Ian McNabb, 1994)

Into the Blue (Guy Barker, 1995)

Elastica (Elastica, 1995)

Seven Last Words From the Cross (James MacMillan, 1995)

Days Like This (Van Morrison, 1995)

Help (Artists For War Child, 1996)

The Beltane Fire/Caroline Mathilde (Peter Maxwell Davies/BBC Philarmonic, 1996)

Proverbs & Songs (John Surman, 1998)

Sleepless (Kate Rusby, 1999)

Violin Concerto (Nicholas Maw, 2000)

Sunshine Hit Me (The Bees, 2002)

Conversations With the Unseen (Soweto Kinch, 2003)

Untitled (Terri Walker, 2003)

Melting Pot (Zoe Rahman, 2006)

This Is My Demo (Sway, 2006)

The Eraser (Thom Yorke, 2006)

Basquiat Strings (Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford, 2007)

In Rainbows (Radiohead, 2008)

Sensible Shoes (Led Bib, 2009)

Tongue n'Cheek (Dizzee Rascal, 2010)

The Replacements 2013 Comeback Setlist

From Brooklyn Vegan:

The Replacements (Paul Westerberg, Tommy Stinson, plus fill-ins Dave Minehan [guitar] and Josh Freese [drums]) played their first show in 22 last night (8/25) at Riot Fest Toronto. Kicking things off with "Takin' a Ride" from Sorry Ma, I Forgot to Take Out the Trash, their 22-song set hit most of the highlights of their catalogue, including "I Will Dare," "Alex Chilton," "Kiss Me on the Bus," "Bastards of Young," "Can't Hardly Wait," and a few covers too. You can listen to the full show (via Slicing Up Eyeballs), watch a bunch of video from it and check out the full setlist below...

... and, if you're in studio mood, you can also listen to the full setlist - original versions, covers included - on this Spotify playlist.

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The Big Spotirama Guide To Rock en Seine 2013

We're getting close to Rock en Seine 2013 in Paris. It will be from 23rd to 25th august, I will be there and I'm quite excited of watching the new Nine Inch Nails show, along with Franz Ferdinand, Belle & Sebastian, Savages, Eels, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, alt-J and many more. As usual I made a Spotify playlist of it, as a warm up. This time, though, I did something different: the playlist is not made with mini greatest hits by any artist playing at the festival (or with the songs I hope they will play). Instead, it's made with songs that actually will probably be played at the festival. 

How can I say it?

Well, I exploited setlist.fm archive again. 

I looked for each artist in Rock en Seine schedule.

I isolated their last ten concerts.

I just kept the ones played in 2013.

I picked all the tracks in the setlists available on Spotify.

The idea is: they already played these songs in 2013? Likely they will do it in Paris, again.

That means that I just included in the playlist artists who have a setlist.fm record. Some of the missing ones have their music on Spotify, but I kept the setlist.fm rule as the strongest one: songs are allowed only if I know they've actually been played in the last months. 

Hey, wait! Is it not a gigantic festival spoiler?

Yes, in some way it is. If you will be in Paris at the end of august and you prefer not knowing what songs you're likely going to listen to, please stop reading now. Instead, if you're like myself and you appreciate the chance of warming up your festival experience (and picking your personal schedule) listening to what it's going to be played, well, enjoy!  

... but don't forget: while some artists have a very fixed setlist (99% they will play what's in this playlist), some others prefer to follow a Springsteen/Pearl Jam path, changing regularly their setlists. So this playlist is not a perfect crystall ball. 

PLAYLIST STATS

Number of tracks: 589

Artists: 41
(out of 56 in the official line-up) 

Missing (no sufficient setlist.fm data available): 15

Chance the Rapper, The Computers, Patrice, Hola A Todo El Mundo, VV Brown, Fritz Kalkbrenner, Jackson and His Computer Band, Kid Noizes, JC Satan, Fi/she/s, Major Lazer, Wall of Death, St. Lo, Alex Hepburn, In The Valley Below

Artists with more songs in the playlist 

(always based on setlist.fm data and relative availability on Spotify): 

34 Belle & Sebastian

27 System of a Down

26 Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

24 Eels

22 Phoenix

21 Vitalic, Mac Miller

19 Nine Inch Nails

18 Surfer Blood

16 Skip The Use

Possible covers 

(I included the originals in the playlist)

Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross - What If We Could? (may be played by Nine Inch Nails)

Fleetwood Mac - Oh Well (Eels)

Small Faces - Itchycoo Park (Eels)

Bette Midler - Wind Beneath My Wings (Eels)

College - A Real Hero (alt-J)

Rosie & The Originals - Angel Baby (System of a Down)

The Call - Let The Day Begin (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club)

London Posse - Gangster Chronicle (Tricky)

Motorhead - Ace of Spades (Tricky)

Public Enemy - Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos (Tricky)

Ian Brown - Dolphins Were Monkeys (Eugene McGuinness)

George Jones - Just One More (Tomahawk)

Bad Brains - How Long Can A Punk Get? (Tomahawk)

Giorgio Moroder - The Chains (Vitalic)

Amadou & Mariam - Sabali (Vitalic)

Blur - Song 2 (Skip The Use)

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Skip The Use)

The Smiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (Johnny Marr)

The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again (Johnny Marr)

The Smiths - London (Johnny Marr)

The Smiths - Still Ill (Johnny Marr)

The Smiths - How Soon Is Now (Johnny Marr)

The Crickets - I Fought the Law (Johnny Marr)

Electronic - Getting Away With It (Johnny Marr)

Electronic - Forbidden City (Johnny Marr)

Scott Matthews - Elusive (Lianne La Havas)

Daft Punk - Get Lucky (Daughter)

R.L. Burnside (and others) - Rollin' & Tumblin' (Valerie June)

Sonic Youth - 100% (Wavves)

Michael Jackson - Human Nature (Laura Mvula)

Patrick Wolf - Time Of My Life (MS MR)

LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yrself Clean (MS MR)

THE SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

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