I've recently read a column from Hua Hsu about his favorite musical moments of the past year, and it prompted me to consider a few minutes of music that have stuck out to me lately as well. So, here is the first installment of a (hopefully) recurring series of these instances.
1.) I keep flip-flopping on whether to sell my car, an endlessly troublesome 1999 Volkswagen Jetta that I nevertheless love dearly. Like a good hair day on the eve of a cut, it has caused me much strife. But late the other night, I was driving and listening to this (2:40 - 3:12), an equally uplifting and silly riff from Erik Skantze's 'Stargaze', and decided I should keep the damn thing. No, I wasn't soaring through the Nordic night, as the song might evoke, but rather cruising home on an eerily empty Washtenaw Avenue. It's a ridiculous, over the top, spaced-out track (UFO noises and all), but I like it, kind of like this car (I should get those noises checked out).
2.) King Krule has, to me at least, long been filed in a hipper-than-thou category that can be sort of intimidating. I like his records, but they're pretty dark; that being said, live cuts from Marshall and his surprisingly tight band are definitely worth checking out, even if you've never gotten into his stuff. They're energetic, meld whirring electronic effects with jazz-influenced ballads, and feature a ghost-note prophet of a drummer named George. Here's a cut (2:03 - 4:20) from their Tiny Desk set that I keep re watching.
3.) A record that I was kind of late to the game on is called 'Jardîn' by Gabriel Garzón-Montano, but there are a lot of great moments throughout. My favorite comes from a song called 'Fruitflies, where he finds a perfect synth bass tone (2:50 - 3:17) that I've since been trying to recreate.
4.) Montreal based producer Kaytranada has an impressive catalog as both a backing producer and a solo artist, with one of my favorite records, 99.9%, to his name. He also has a lot of otherwise-unreleased cuts on Soundcloud, which somehow still exists. He's a sampling wiz, and there's a particularly smooth example in this (0:45 - end).