The tunes of February

Per usual, the first half of February is still the exam period at my university. It is a wonderful time for bingeing albums and discovering new genres while buried in a couch somewhere in the university lab. My go-to styles for this kind of setting are alt indie, smooth jazz, and neo soul. Actually, any sort of mellow-ish music with some modern or alternative spin on it will reliably put me in learning mode in no time.

I would like to briefly introduce you some artists from the genres mentioned above, that I’ve been listening to on repeat for the past month:

Paolo Fresu

This Italian jazz trumpet player has been all over my Spotify recommendations and to be fair the algorithm was spot on with this one.

I am amazed at the range of emotions Paolo can convey with an instrument originally created as a signaling device in hunting (yes I will take any opportunity to take a jab at trumpet players).

Tom Misch

To be honest, this very artist has been my greatest motivation to write this post in the first place. The first song from him I remember listening to was Sisters With Me from the pre-release of his album Full Circle coming out at the end of March. Something about this song is so comforting and down to earth, I just couldn’t not share it.

If you’re used to getting bored to death by indie artists with their one track of ukulele and strangely emotive vocals, I dare say you will be pleasantly surprised by this one. Get ready for harmonies and saxophone solos and genuinely interesting musical compositions.

But calling Tom Misch an indie artist is doing him a huge disservice. As one might easily deduce from some of his other work, Tom likes to dab into many genres and experiment. And the common denominator in all of them is jazz.

Oh, how much time I could spend talking about how much I love this specific mix of genres – jazz and rap/hip-hop. Though I can already hear the purists (from both sides) calling it sacrilegious.

Syd Matters

An honorary mention at the end of this post is the artist I keep circling back to every now and then. This french band, fronted by Jonathan Morali – also an interesting artist himself – is mostly known from the original Life Is Strange soundtrack.

Even though I must admit Obstacles is an absolute banger and a great choice for the videogame, Syd Matters is so much more than just a soundtrack.

Brief research on Wikipedia while writing this post revealed that the name of the band originated from kinda jamming together the names of two Pink Floyd band members. And Syd Matters notably takes some inspiration in them, while still firmly staying in the indie genre.

February (though it’s not yet over) has been dark and cold (as any other winter month really). It’s important to me to have some good music to pull me through those “tougher” times. I hope some of them might strike your fancy as well as they did mine.