June '24
80s month I guess
80s-style pop that is catchy and fun and groovy all the way through. All 6 of these tracks bang. And my gosh, have you seen the Loretta video? It's gorgeous and Ginger Root is absolutely dreamy in it.
Ginger Root (from California, real name Cameron) studied film, then switched to music when he found the film industry stifling, but he puts his training to good use making these filmic music videos that link together into narratives and have a superbly done VHS-era aesthetic. Check 'em out, they're art!
Silky fuckmusic — easily the sexiest album I've ever heard.
Saâda Bonaire is a German DJ named von Richthoven and two terrifyingly beautiful women. This album was recorded in the 80s but wouldn't be published until 2013, by cultural archaeologist publisher Captured Tracks. In the 90s they recorded another album – in the catacombs beneath a sex shop, according to Spotify – which Captured Tracks unearthed in 2021.
The album to dance to before God alone. Half the tracks are hot and shakin', the other half luscious and dreamy, and they all groove. Perfumed Garden is liquid beauty. Sam the Samba Man is transcendent. The singer, Liz "Dizzy Lizzy" Hewson – Rah's wife at the time, who divorced him "amicably" in the 90s and quit music shortly after, never to sing for anyone else – has an angelic voice, floating in saudade like Astrud Gilberto's, but sweeter, with the melancholy buried deeper.
I've been listening to Sam the Samba Man (and its remixes) on loop for the last few days. Singing and dancing to it in the shower, in the kitchen late at night, in my room with the door locked and the curtains drawn and everything washed in purple, or sitting on my futon in the living room, slowly collecting movies on an old and temperamental computer. This is the kind of song that fills something inside.