What We Are Listening To: MC’s New York Office #22
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.
This week, the oppressive winter months broke in New York City. Spring has mother fucking sprung. It is warm and light and the air feels cleaner and I am inside of my bedroom with the window open and my cat drooling something disgusting on my lap and looking with some disappointment at what I’ve been listening to lately. It’s a real fucked vibe. A whiff of dog piss drifts in through my window and stings my nostrils. I hit play on Sky Ferreira and my cat gives me a look. I understand what she means.
Someone close to me and a decade younger than me remarked recently that my musical taste is checking their Tumblr account. That stung, but wasn’t too far off from where I’m at these days. I fuck with Sky, but that’ll come later. First on the list, ‘Station’ by Zastava, a band from Detroit - no easy feat. Being a band from anywhere that isn’t LA, NYC, London, or the internet feels like an enormous challenge these days, but I reckon Zastava are one of those bands that genuinely are waiting for the rest of the world to realize how good they are, and the world will with time. Until then, I am happy to gloat that I knew them first.
‘good’, the single by Winter, as well as the remix by Water From Your Eyes are two songs that I am shocked weren’t my most played tracks last year. If I’m feeling sexy, I listen to the original. If I’m feeling like a dancer, I listen to the remix. It is rare in my life for me to be as impressed by a remix as an original, if only for the sake of my nativist pride, but WFYE does a good job at making a good song even better. For those happy dancing times, The Village is a song that makes me want to leap in a crowded pub with a group of white punters, as does everything by Sex Mask.
There has been a fair amount of Eastern European dance music in my feed lately. I think that this may be due to inhibition. When I can’t understand what they’re singing about, there is hardly anything for me to glom onto and pretend to be too intellectually enthralled to dance. I don’t know what that song is called or who it is by, but you’ll know it when you hear it.
Am I happy about the recent virality of Yacht Rock banger ‘Be Like A Woman’, by Chris Rainbow? No. No, I am not. And so in protest, I throw a pie at the groove of that easy track by following it with the hammer over the head that is ‘Technophelia’ by Geneva Jacuzzi, only to lay you gently to a romantic sleep with ‘Whisper’ by Martin Rev, a song so gentle that it sounds like it has forgotten it is a song.
Finally, we arrive at Sky. Fun fact about this song: it is tied to one of my earliest sexual experiences, which, like so many others of my age, is also tied to an American Apparel employee. A mere teen fresh out of high school, I began dating a girl who managed the AA store in my local mall who would play this constantly. One day we made out in the back seat of my dad’s car and I saw her boobs. It was quite a thing. She came to her senses before anything got too serious, but that night and song will live on in my heart and libido forever.
To counter that romance, I introduce the solemn (damn, I’m broke, my feet hurt) Ice Cube’s underrated early cut: ‘Down For Whatever’, a song that doesn’t quite ever say ‘fuck you,’ but only because it is so relaxed that it doesn’t feel the need to. Snail Mail has a new album out and it is quite good, so between rap tracks, I have slipped her single, ‘Tractor Beam’ in like a sampler like how fast-food places will slip a regular fry into your onion rings so that you get to give it a try and order more next time. Then it goes right back into some fuck shit that makes me feel like a boss while examining celery stocks for the freshest and least damaged bunch in the 14th street Trader Joe’s.
All together, it is likely the opposite of what you’d like to hear on a clear and crisp spring day, but we are a magazine for contrarians and imbeciles, so really I’ve kind of hit the nail on the head.