The Musik Lounge

As I was contemplating this piece, sitting with the three albums being inspected, I was struck with a lot of thoughts around my journey to Jazz. Recently I mentioned my first hearing Kind of Blue and my inability to grasp the beauty of it at the time. I was a high schooler who was consumed with rap just beginning to step away from the stars of the era and digging into an underground that was vibrant and diverse. I had more digesting to do. This is a repeated pattern throughout my sonic history. I find some music that strikes a chord and I dig in. The napster fueled download era was a dream. Then came the blog era which also rewarded this kind of deep dive. I was trapped in a purgatory of my own making as streaming took rise and was fairly tuned out from anything that wasn’t equally dark and hopeless. As I emerged from that darkness and began hearing names I hadn’t heard of before, exploring this world of modern Jazz became the new quest. Initially it seemed too vast, too much. But I ...

Another edition of The Musik Lounge for your ears! Tune in live Sundays from 1-3 PM PST @ KTQA.org . UPDATE: This episode is no longer available for streaming, if you would like to hear it hit me up ! Tracklist: Swallows Fly Free “Only Now” Armand Hammer ft. Pink Siifu “Trauma Mic” Beat Junkies “They Don’t Understand” Theon Cross “40tude” Hidden Orchestra “Skylarks” Kyoko Takenaka & Tomoki Sanders “Midnight Jungle In Africa” Pharoah & The Underground “The Ghost Zoo” Pawz One & Preed One “Love Hate” Kamaal Williams “Dogtown” Pastor T.L. Barrett & The Youth For Christ Choir “Here I Am” Carlos Nino, V.C.R., Josh Johnson, Nate Mercereau & Jamire Williams “Mighty Stillness” Lina “God Loves Me” Phil Ranelin “For The Children” DJ Shadow “The Wreckoning (Instrumental)” DJ Shadow “You Played Me” The Black Flames “Dance With Me (Supermix)” Kipp Stone “The Sun Is Medicine” Matthew Halsall “Water Street” The Guess Who “Share The Land” Irreversible Entanglements “Our Land Back” ...

As I contemplate what I’d like this column to be I can’t help but laugh at the fact that I’m sitting at work listening to Gucci Mane & Waka Flocka’s 2011 project Ferrari Boyz . This is amusing to me because I do meditation work at a rehab facility. Alas my ears wander. I’m not listening to this out of an incessant love for the project, rather out of the self serving desire to clean up my Apple Music library. The limits placed on one’s personal streaming library are rather absurd to me and as someone who tends to add, add, add and listen later I regularly max it out. So at some point I have to listen, listen, listen to even out and delete, delete, delete to open new sonic doors. This one will be a strong delete. Fall has come to the Pacific Northwest and as if on cue, the first day of fall was filled with gray, rain and chills. I’m not complaining, I’m one of those born and raised PNW natives who find enjoyment in our often criticized weather. I’m only talking about the weather to e...

Another edition of The Musik Lounge! Tune in live Sundays 1-3 PM PST @ KTQA.org . UPDATE: This show is no longer available for streaming, reach out to me if you'd like to hear it! Tracklist: John Coltrane “Blue Train” Ziggy Marley “True To Myself” Sneaky Jesus “Chinski Sprzedawca Smazonych Kasztanow” Sixtoo “Daggers On All Corners (Live)” Mike Nyoni “It’s Only A Dream” Hidden Orchestra “Nightfall” DJ100Proof “Stereo” Foisey “Things Change (Instrumental)” Nothing_Neue “Koi” KrushT “Sergei & Brittany” LeMoti “Bellina The Octopus” Daedelus “After After Ever” Mr. Figz “Love Theme” Tirzah ft. Coby Sey “Hive Mind” B. Visible “Sonderling” Jeremiah Chiu “In Electric Time” Dungeon Family “6 Minutes (Dungeon Family It’s On)” Resavoir ft. Whitney “Sunday Morning” Daniel Villarreal “Sunset Cliffs” Airto “Wind Chant” billy woods & Moor Mother ft. Wolf Weston “The Blues Remembers Everything The Country Forgot” B.B. King “(I Believe) I’ve Been Blue Too Long” Dan Ubick “The Silver Queen” ...

  What led me to this social music I find myself so enraptured by today? I grew up a fiend for hiphop, I found my way into working with rappers as a member of the media and as an aspiring label owner . I found my way to being a fiend for substances and in the process let my love for the art form slip away. Recently a question was posed on a jazz subreddit I lurk on about what was your doorway into the music. I was instantly flooded with a memory of my High School student chemistry teacher Ms. Simmons sharing a burned copy of Kind of Blue with me. The fuse was lit, and I didn’t dislike that record - but it would take some years to get me back to it and to dig deeper. When I started exploring dollar bins at an assortment of record stores as a Freshman in Seattle and picked the brains of diggers I’d begun to cross paths with my interest in this distinctly American artform started to enlarge. At this point it was all about the samples, although at times I would find things that I enjo...

Another week, another edition of The Musik Lounge for your ears! Tune in live Sundays 1 - 3 PM PST @ KTQA.org ! Thank you for listening. UPDATE: No longer available for streaming, reach out to me if you would like to hear it! Tracklist: Irreversible Entanglements “Six Sounds” Exile “San Pedro Cactus” Billian “Infinite Blue” Carlos Nino ft. Andre 3000, Nate Mercerau, Cavana Lee & Mia Doi Todd “Conversations” Armand Hammer “Woke Up & Asked Siri How I’m Gonna Die” Binker & Moses ft. Max Luthert “After The Machine Settles” Weldon Irvine “Quiet (In Memory of Duke Ellington)” Kipp Stone “Petrichor” Jake One “NSB” Jake One “SE” Jake One “Hunter” Dana & Alden “It Moves Like A Snake” Kassa Overall ft. J. Hoard “Maybe We Can Stay” Sugar Minott “No Vacancy” Contact Field Orchestra “Dorado Alucinari” Ike & Tina Turner “So Fine” Al Green “Perfect Day” Ahmad Jamal “Invitation” Ezra Collective ft. Nao “Love In Outer Space” Henry Franklin “Blue Lights” Jose James “Bird Of Space”...

After a much needed end of summer vacation to the beautiful wilds of Montana it was nice to get back into the studio and hit the airwaves! So much amazing music hitting my ears right now, I barely scratched the surface. Catch the replay above, available for a month and tune in live Sundays 1-3 PM PST @ KTQA.org . UPDATE: This episode of the show is no longer available to stream, if you would like to hear it feel free to reach out to me ! The Musik Lounge, Vol. 25 - 9.10.23 Cut Chemist & DJ Numark “Swing Set” Esther Phillips “Black Eyed Blues” Malombo Jazz Makers “Abbey’s Mood” Kofi Flexx ft. billy woods “Apothecary” Yuseef Dayes “Birds of Paradise” Irreversible Entanglements “root <=>branch” jaimie branch “borealis dancing” Les McCann “Medley: But Beautiful/It Could Happen To You” Josiah Steinbrick “Notes on Colored Paper/Whistling Tanka” Makaya McCraven “The Fours” Lennie Dale & The Sambalanco Trio “Sambar De Mudar” Maxwell “Sumthin Sumthin” Thee Marloes “Logika” Jay Sca...