for when the moon goes behind the clouds…
As the month of October dwindles down to its last embers, let’s explore an older mix from my collection; highlighting various songs, artists, and albums that evoke an autumnal soundscape.
MIX 106 / .22, or [the october chill], is a mix from October 2024. It is comprised of 46 songs, and has a runtime of 4 hours and 3 minutes. Some notable features include various tunes by experimental hip-hop duo model home, “Halloween” by Sonic Youth, Atmosphères by György Ligeti (recorded by the Vienna Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, conducting), as well as music by Fan_3, Kronos Quartet, Sen Morimoto, Yo La Tengo, Megadeth, Brandon Banks, Antent, The Dead Texan, The Durutti Column, Last Exit, and Stars of the Lid, among others.
. . .
~They tell us autumn’s a-comin’ and soon everything around us will die
Only a fool believes that he is different from the birds in the sky
All those birds go chasin’ some better sunny days
You can’t hear them singing ‘cause they’ve all gone away~
The Flaming Lips: My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion (2006, WB)
. . .
The leaves are falling as I look out of my window. Once a vibrant green and thickly spread across many branches, they are now shades of gold and orange, sometimes red. They crunch under your feet. Pretty soon, nothing will be left. When I originally made this mix two years ago, I was swept up in the idea of a cold October breeze. You know the kind. Autumn strikes me as one of the most versatile times of year for music & art. Whereas a time of the year like summer, mid-July for instance, may conjure up images of bright lights, days at the beach, or destination vacations – couple this with a sonic palette of energetic pop and dance music, and you can just about taste the syrupy goodness of your favorite colored freezer pop. Autumn, on the other hand, can manifest in multiple ways. Fall festivals, haunted houses, hiking retreats, days at home with a good book + a mug of warm cider. Pure bliss. Now, here’s the thing: what genre would you say sounds the most like autumn? Unlike summer, I find it a lot harder to narrow down.
On one hand, you have the quieter albums and sounds. Take the opening track of Harold Budd / Brian Eno’s The Pearl, for instance:
It’s the early morning fog over a quiet lake. The trees sway, naked in the wind. There’s a faint aroma of seasoned firewood in the air. Brian Eno’s synthetic treatments nestle Harold Budd’s piano work ever so gently – the synthesizers and tape effects are reminiscent of faraway birdcalls, or memories of a time soon forgotten. Budd develops his ideas and improvisations over the course of this album, bookending with a quasi-reprise of the first tune, only an octave lower, achieving a much muddier and hazy quality. A long day’s journey into night, with our humble narrator finally falling into a doze. It doesn’t get much better than this.
The Pearl was a landmark album in the early ambient scene, and next to tracks like “Agua” and his work with Cocteau Twins, some of Harold Budd’s most revered work to this very day. As a whole, this record is far more concise in its intention and scope, especially when comparing it to Budd + Eno’s earlier collaborations, such as The Pavilion of Dreams and Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror. There are instances of intervallic and melodic recall, motif, and in the instance of “Their Memories,” repurposing an earlier improvisation from Ambient 2 (as heard on “The Chill Air”) as a quieter and far more introspective piece. It has a yearning, poignant, almost apprehensive quality to it; as Harold’s piano work slowly becomes enveloped by Eno’s tape treatments, the wash of sound rises into the ether, passing over to an uncharted territory where we can no longer reach it. It speaks to the quieter moments of autumn – watching squirrels in the park as they forage for their hibernation stashes, enjoying a scenic train ride in the valley, raking dead leaves into a large pile before the late afternoon rainstorm, the list goes on.
Conversely, you have the far more intense pieces like this one:
I was fortunate enough to witness this piece played live by a major orchestra – I want to say I was around 11 or 12. At the time, I had no idea what was going on, and I was actually quite disturbed by its audacity for a long time thereafter. Despite this flurry of confusion and anxiety, I still understood that it made a profound and tremendous impression on my ear. I should also add: this was the piece that started the concert, to which they immediately followed it up by playing a Wagner Prelude, and then finishing out the evening with Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. It remains, to this day, some of the craziest concert whiplash I have ever experienced. Had I known what a privilege it was back then to see such a piece performed live … hindsight is 20 / 20.
What I find particularly striking about Atmospheres is how, because of its incredibly dense polyphony, timbre takes the driver’s seat. We hear a lot of these unique textures reveal themselves as the piece progresses – shrill metallic winds give way to rich, earthy strings; spiccato strings and pitch-less extended techniques in the winds and brass create an effect almost akin to the hollow winds of a dead forest, or the tide rolling in at a beach. When regarding the season of autumn, one might consider this as a “spookier” track or just downright unsettling because of its lack of tonal center / ambiguous sense of time. Be that as it may, but I would implore you to look deeper into what this piece is trying to accomplish. A lot of Ligeti’s earlier work – including this piece – fell victim to being used as underscore for various films, a la Kubrick, which I don’t necessarily embrace. I can acknowledge the intention (or whatever you want to call it), but taking a composer’s work (especially without permission) and imposing it upon your own work comes off as a little shortsighted. We’ve seen this sort of thing before with the Fantasia series by Walt Disney. This piece truly stands on its own as a landmark of mid-century modern classical innovation, and it should be appreciated as such without any sort of artistic interpolation.
On an unserious note, and returning to Disney for a brief moment:
If it hasn’t been made apparent from the jump, here’s something you’ll soon discover about the MIX 106 playlists: sometimes my song selections have no correlation to the main concept (if there is one at all). “Geek Love” is one of these songs.
I had a compilation CD of various Radio Disney “jams” back in the day, which featured this song and its accompanying music video on a bonus DVD disc (albeit in a slightly censored form – the “Oh my God!” sample was edited to “Oh my gosh!” because y’know, it wasn’t lame enough already). There’s really nothing autumnal about Fan_3’s “Geek Love” – a track so ridiculously disingenuous and tropey (even for its target audience back in 2004), it’s really no wonder why she never had a true hit.
Anecdotal evidence leads me to believe Fan_3’s short-lived career as a teen pop / rap idol came from a hybrid Geffen Records / Disney-led campaign, something we’ve seen a countless number of times before. Occasionally it works out in their favor tenfold (Raven-Symoné, Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, Sabrina Carpenter), and other times, you’re the Sprouse twins.
When you search for Fan_3 on the internet these days, very few results pop-up that don’t point back to Disney in some form or another. Perhaps the “disingenuous” factor that plagues this track is not entirely at the fault of Fan_3, but rather executive intervention, something we know Disney is notorious for. Everything about Fan_3’s aesthetic, flow, and musical style feels coached or fabricated. They are trying their damnedest to sell you this sterilized illusion of a street-smart late-adolescent’s Cinderella story, complete with the horrendous appropriations of AAVE and culture-as-costume platitudes, despite the fact she grew up in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles. I don’t buy it.
In the end, Fan_3 was never able to successfully carve out a place for herself in the teen pop oeuvre, and she was eventually dropped by both Disney and Geffen before she was able to release her first full-length album (in Disney’s case, it was alleged she was caught smoking marijuana during a promotional tour with Radio Disney). Just another face in the crowd, chewed up and spit out by the music industry.
To wrap up this post, let’s take a another look at two more featured artists on [the october chill]:
The sounds and stylings of the DC-based duo, model home, are not easily defined. Producer Pat Cain and vocalist Davonte Squire (aka NappyNappa) have carved out their own place in the underground music scene, layering industrial lo-fi rhythms with percussive jazz horns, improvised vocal riffs and rhymes, and pockets of generated noise that make for a hypnotic collection of recorded music and live performances. Their stream-of-consciousness flow never feels at odds with one another – like chamber musicians that can pick up on the smallest of inflections and gestures, their much lauded discography is a testament to the synergy of Cain and NappyNappa, and their trust in one another’s musicianship. Very few can achieve this level of collaborative artistry. (for more about model home, click on this link.)
Brandon Banks is an artist and model from the City of Champions, Inglewood CA. A self-taught guitarist, his songs are heavily inspired by such genres as R&B, funk, and experimental pop. “Autumn” is an introspective track from his earlier catalog, that tells of a soured romance and the mental anguish that follows. It is apparent from the first listen that Banks’ lyrics are heavily inspired by the greats of poetry – Banks himself has cited Langston Hughes as one of his first introductions to the art form. His body of work is a refreshing tonic in an age where short form content and chasing virality runs rampant. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to write from such an honest and personal place in yourself. Brandon Banks is an artist you will want to keep on your radar. For further listening, check out his latest release, Sonnets, from last year.
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Thanks for reading!