What We Are Listening To: Monster Children NYC #13
Hello, my name is Naz Kawakami. I’m the new Editor in Chief of Monster Children based in New York City. Did you know that for a number of years, I was a radio DJ? You probably did because I never shut the fuck up about it. My show was called Night Drive, every Thursday from midnight to 3AM. Those were good times. A lot of sex, drugs, and partying were done in that little Honolulu radio studio. None of it done by me, but it’s still cool to think about.
Anyway, since taking this Editor job, I spend most of my day the way I spent my days as a DJ: listening to music. Some good, some bad. Some old, some new. Every Friday, I compile the week’s worth of music into a playlist. Songs we’ve been enjoying, songs we’ve just (re)discovered, and songs that offer a preview into what features we have coming out soon. Not the newest, not the rarest, just good music. The mood of the week over at the MC New York City office for you to judge and enjoy.
The last ten days has been a good one in music. Albert Hammond Jr released his long-awaited, nineteen-track double album, Melodies On Hiatus, and NYC’s weirdest and most enthusiastic band, Geese, released a brand new and very sarcastic album, 3D Country. Both of these albums have been on a heavy rotation as I spend a lot of time taking the train twenty three stops up to the Upper West Side from Bushwick, thinking about how I am wasting my life and how every breath and every step and every minute of every day becomes another week, month, year wasted doing nothing of any importance or significance, and how it is no longer a matter of decades, but of years until I age out of relevance.
Anyway, Albert Hammond Jr’s new album feels like a collection of ideas cataloged over time, intrepid and simplified, not over indulging but focusing on quality of melody. This method pays off and is definitely our album of the week. If you haven’t read our interview with the man yet, find it here. Meanwhile, Geese’ new album sounds like sarcasm to a sinister degree, as though the album itself is hiding some bloody knife, a skeleton in the closet, and uses high-energy calamity and pretty melodies to distract you from finding the ear in the grass. Both very good, and both featured heavily in this week’s playlist.
The rest of the playlist is filled out with the music that I’ve been going insane to. Enjoy.
Questions, comments, concerns, complaints, movie recs, hit me, here.
