Mixtape: Wilderness
I generally like to have a song to set the tempo for the New Year. Previously, Lisel's "One at a Time" in 2023, Pigeon Pit's "Milk Crates" in 2022, and Yasmin Williams' "After the Storm" in 2021 have proven to be helpful companions in thinking about how time might unfold.
In 2024, we enter an uncertainty carried over from previous days, months, years and even decades. I'm sort of dreading it! I haven't quite come up with a perfect song to continue this somewhat recent tradition, but I keep coming back to "The Wilderness / The Color of Gold" by Luxury. Lee Bozeman, the band's frontman, has always been something of a lyrical labyrinth — truths and questions wrapped in layers of literary references, gorgeously crooned and growled, depending on the meaning or subversion intended. You never quite know what he's getting at, but you feel every word anyway.
"The Wilderness" plays with that idea of uncertainty: "Packed up my bewilderment / Tied a knot I know / Opened up the furnaces / Built for when the trumpet blows." Bozeman comes back to that image often, of trumpets heralding the apocalypse, but here tangles the chaos and wonder to an ordinary action that collapses the tension by literally tying everything together. Holding both things at once — a phrase that's been echoing in my head a lot lately — but not giving into the anxiety of that weight. That seems like a good place to start. —Lars Gotrich
P.S.: ICYMI, I was on NPR's All Songs Considered at the top of 2024, recapping 2023 in the experimental music that mapped time and space. It's the year-end Viking's Choice episode, for those who look forward to that! (I'm slowly writing my personal year-end music, podcast and comics list for the newsletter… that will come out when it comes out.)
P.P.S.: If you're new here, hello! I typically make a new mixtape every week or two, accompanied by a short intro. Every now and again there will be an essay or a list.
Stream the Viking's Choice mixtape via BNDCMPR. Follow my Bandcamp collection. Tracklist below:
Accidente, "Lxs invisibles (de Balestrini)"
Switchblade, "Daydream Lover"
Nathalie Joachim, "Ki moun ou ye"
Linda Ayupka, "Mandaana (Francis Ayamga's Top Link Remix)"
Hyper Gal, "Tenshi 天使"
Grisaille, "Blessures"
A Bad Diana, "Behind the Curtain of the Sun"
Haul, "Persefoniak"
The Lord & Marthe, "The Eye of Destiny"
Marthe Lea Band, "Herlightens Vei"
Julia Holter, "Spinning"
Rosalie Sorrels, "Some Other Place, Some Other Time"
Anika Pyle, "Arizona"
Allison Lorenzen, "Words (Low cover)"
Luxury, "The Wilderness / The Color of Gold"
Mint Mile, "Brigadier"
Bad Moves, "New Year's Reprieve"
Liquid Mike, "K2"
Pissed Jeans, "Moving On"
Hands of Goro, "Archduke of Fear"
Hilma Nikolaisen, "Red Flag"
Henriette Eilertsen Trio, "Kulturistisk inngang"
Birdstriking, "Mountains in Yakushima"
Conception Huerta, "The Crack is Illuminated"
Peter Brötzmann & Paal Nilssen-Love, "Butterfly Mushroom"
The Chisel, "Those Days"
Nasti, "Ruin Everything"
BIB, "Bitter Mind"
India Gailey, "I long (Sarah Rossy)"
Mali Obomsawin & Magdalena Abrego, "Believer"
Be Safe, "In a House"
Bedbug, "Halo on the Interstate"
David Nance & Mowed Sound, "Mock the Hours"
Amanda Brown, "Light Lingers On"