Fluxblog #401: Recommendations Edition

Plus, may I interest you in my own podcasts and playlists?

Dec 29, 2022

This issue of the newsletter collects a few things I’ve done this year that I’d like to resurface, and then is just me recommending other cool things I like. This newsletter is free, but if you’d like to support me you can either do a one-time donation on Ko-Fi or sign up for the Fluxblog Patreon. This would be an incredible time for a one-time donation - my money is going to be extremely tight for the next few weeks and if you can contribute it would be most meaningful right now. I hate to say this but it’s true!

I recorded a full season of Fluxpod episodes this year which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. I’m very happy with these episodes and you should listen to them if you have not already! I try to make the episodes fairly evergreen so you can really just listen whenever. [Spotify | Apple]

• Tom Scharpling of The Best Show, this one goes all over the place
• Nabil Ayers, on his book My Life in the Sunshine
• Karina Longworth of You Must Remember This on a lot of music/film topics
• Briana Cheng of 4AD on how A&R works today
• Brian Hiatt of Rolling Stone on writing cover storie and profiles
• Danpilled V - Steely Dan chat with Carrie Courogen and Jesse Hawken
• Flopuary with Molly O’Brien, a philosophical riff on the idea of flopping
• DJ Louie XIV of Pop Pantheon on… pop stars
• Eric Renner Brown of Billboard on the state of the live music industry
• Will Sheff, formerly of Okkervil River, on his first solo album

More new episodes to come in 2023! Let me know if you have any guest requests.

This year I launched the “universe” series of playlists in which I present a major artist’s body of work in the larger context of that artist’s collaborators. This has taken a few different shapes – in the cast of Nile Rodgers, it’s presenting his prolific session and production work, while in the case of Wu-Tang Clan, it’s more about presenting sample sources, features, and the members’ solo work. Here’s a list of some I’ve released so far – if you want detailed liner notes, go back through my newsletter archives.

The other big series I ran with this year was “This Was Summer…,” a purely nostalgic exercise in recreating the music that was in the air at a particular moment in time.

Plus…

• This Was Autumn 1991 [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
• This Was Autumn 1998 [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]

LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS

• Stargirl by Emma Baker [Spotify | Apple]
This is a podcast series of monologues and conversations about notable female stars across various disciplines who have some kind of “it” factor that Baker explores and attempts to define. The episode about Jia Tolentino is a great place to start.

• Nymphet Alumni by Biz, Alexi, and Sam [Spotify | Apple]
This is a podcast by three zoomer/millennial cusp women who go deep on fashion/style trends, and in many cases try to define existing aesthetics that are still forming.

• Episode 1 by Charles Austin, Branson Reese, and Andrew Hudson [Spotify | Apple]
Episode 1 is a comedy podcast in which every episode is the first and only episode of a fictional podcast, has been around for a while but really clicked with me this year. I strongly recommend The Christmas Pencil and Silly Night Fun Time In New York, though both technically stray from the core premise of the series as parodies of Hallmark Christmas movies and SNL, respectively.

• Pretty Dim Wonder by Charles Austin, Dan Boeckner, Raina Douris, Zola Jesus, etc
[Spotify | Apple]
This podcast sitcom – a “implausible bartender adventure comedy” as they describe it – is an Episode 1 side project that goes hard on highly specific jokes about bars and being in a low-level indie band.

• Garbage Day by Ryan Broderick on Substack
A lot of people try to cover the “internet” but no one does it as well as Ryan, who is extremely well informed and has a skill for zooming out and looking at what’s really happening on a macro level. Also, he’s very funny.

• Many Such Cases by Magdalene Taylor on Substack
Magdalene Taylor is another excellent internet reporter and in this Substack she’s been digging into what I can only describe as the ornate perversions of miserable weirdo men on the internet.

Fluxblog: Music Blog

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