Make Space 35

clapping and clapping and clapping

Listen to “Make Space 35” on Spotify

This week’s playlist has me thinking about Andrew “Lovefingers” Hogge. From 2006 to 2009, Hogge—a DJ and producer—used his website to share leftfield vinyl-rips from his vast record collection. Roughly one song per day. The tunes were beguiling, and often sublime, too. This was the heyday of music blogs—that brief window before the internet started to suck—and for me, Lovefingers.org was king.

At the time, I was deep into making DJ mixes in Ableton—mostly house and techno—but the tunes on Hogge’s website invited me to craft something slower, something more contemplative and drowsy. Not ambient, just gentle and warm. Mixes for lazing around in bed on summer afternoons with S.

One of these mixes became the de facto soundtrack for a road trip through Morocco in 2009. Minutes before leaving our host’s apartment in Marrakech, I attempted to burn a few CDs for the drive, and the mix—mellow to the point of being narcotic—was the only one that finished in time. I was embarrassed. This was decidedly not road trip music. But it was our only CD so we listened on loop, the dusty city giving way to long, arid highways and, eventually, the sea. Somehow it worked. Set and setting.

When I hear these songs now—many of which are woven into this week’s playlist—I see J and G and S crammed into the backseat of our beat-up navy sedan, sunburned and windblown, long hair whipping out the windows. I see the royal blue of the fishing boats in Essaouira, an ecstatic blue, a blue that also laced the intricate tile-work at our hotel and embroidered the collars of kaftans. I see the musicians’ castanets, clapping in triple time—clapping and clapping and clapping—radiant in the hot afternoon sun, the seaside city packed with festival goers intent on listening to the best Gnaoua music in the world. I see a shack on the edge of a seaside cliff in Ouassane, a restaurant—all billowing tarps and corrugated plastic. Flies and sand and fish tagine. Nutmeg and saffron. Fresh bread. Mint tea. Youth. I see two boys helping us fix a flat in the Atlas Mountains. Saving us, really. They wouldn’t take our money so we gave them a deck of cards. I see this all before my eyes. It’s beguiling—and often sublime, too.

Thanks for listening.

Your bud,

Ross

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Art @ Sharon Core