playlist #100
Francisco Espregueira
With more than three years of history o sótão has been a secret platform dealing some of the highest carat underground music released by independent artists and labels. It focuses on music made by people that understand it or play it on a superior level.
Some can be somehow primitives, who have fashioned out of relatively limited playing technique some special idiomatic approach, through beats & samples, words, ideas for sounds or just deconstructing brilliant music made before. Others are sophisticates, well equipped academically. Men and women whose performances are beyond technical reproach. A third category comprises artists who are able to bring to their projects the passion of the first group along with the musicianly values of the second, usually leaving a mark of their own on many of us.
O sótão's #100 playlist travels through time, embracing all of the genres we've broadcast here. It starts with the piano of Ahmad Jamal, the trumpet of Miles Davis, the saxophone of John Coltrane and the spirituality of Sun Ra. It brings the best music currently being made in London, the most creative place of our time. On keys we have Henry Wu (aka Kamaal Williams) and Joe Armon-Jones; on saxophone Nubya Garcia; Yussef Dayes on drums; Maxwell Owin with ideas and gold touches, influencing something, that now, is a movement. A beautiful one.
From the north of Europe we listen to Ivan Ave - he speaks through his music with magnificent word choices, with magnificent beats, with magnificent influences and musical partnerships. Through samples & beats it's impossible to forget about FloFilz and the german school of beatmakers; and Ol' Burger Beats with collages of sounds and moods in his album "Mind Games". Kiefer, DJ Harrison and Alfa Mist have proved to be three exceptional composers. Knxwledge and his star-partner Anderson Paak are setting trends. The right kind of trends. And all because they know what soul music is all about.
And we go back. To the voices. Marvin Gaye. Curtis Mayfield. Frankie Beverly. D'Angelo. Erykah Badu. Back to them and their voices. From the 70's, through the 80's, to the 90's with the afro-american hip hop movement that influenced so deeply our world. Dilla, Pete Rock, DJ Premier producing. Biggie Smalls, 2Pac, Q-Tip, Common and Nas being real. They're the best of the best.
Further south... to our core. Warm melancholy with projects of Tango and beautiful spanish and portuguese words. Con el "Sabor a Mi" de Los Panchos, un clásico; e o violão de João Gilberto.
This is o sotão. Here, at night, with a cigarrette... it usually goes like this.