[You can order Jason’s book here.]
Alice Coltrane, Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana (1977): I call this my “morning vibes” album and listen to it almost daily. I really love religious music, whether it’s gospel or old records of cantors singing in gigantic synagogues. There’s just a kind of beauty and purity you get when somebody is singing their praises to whatever they believe and I love that. Alice Coltrane was just on another level. This particular album just blends so much and takes you dancing through the cosmos and is a nice post-meditation album for me.
Drab City, Good Songs for Bad People (2020): When I was in my 20s I went through a heavy phase where I listened to a ton of Portishead and Stereolab and any haunting, beautiful film music that was or sounds like it could be from the ‘50s and ‘60s that I seem to be revisiting. So Krzysztof Komeda and stuff off of Kind of Blue, but also the Twin Peaks soundtrack. Drab City just sounds like a descent into night, like bad things are going to happen in the dark and the only thing that’s going to save you is daylight. It’s been helping me formulate this novel I’ve been playing around with.
Arthur Russell, Love Is Overtaking Me (2004): I’m a massive Arthur Russell fan, but I’ve somehow skipped over this one. I don’t know — I guess I just never thought “Gee, I want to listen to Russell’s country folk album,” but I also make a lot of dumb decisions. That was one of them. This is a really lovely summertime album, but it also shows just how incredibly diverse of an artist he was.
Unwound, Leaves Turn Inside You (2001): It’s funny, there are truly seasonal songs and albums, like I have a difficult time listening to the Beach Boys in the winter or will listen to “The Summer Ends” by American Football all the time towards the end of August. Leaves Turn Inside You isn’t a seasonal album, per se, but there’s just something about “leaves turn” in the album title that makes me think of fall. That, and I once took mushrooms and wandered around a forest listening to it and that was in late October, so I guess there’s some psychological psychedelic connection. The first few minutes of “We Invent You” … that feedback. Damn. It’s just too beautiful. I put it on after I heard Vern Rumsey had passed and I was sobbing by the time “Look a Ghost” started.
8Ball & MJG, Comin Out Hard (1993): I was thinking about growing up and making skate videos with my friends. I feel like homemade skate videos from the 1990s got pretty crazy and artsy if you had a friend that was looking to maybe learn a little more about basic editing. I definitely see skate video influence popping up more and more in unexpected places, but the best thing to me was always the soundtracks. My friends and I made a video once which features me throwing a Slurpee at some security cops that kicked us out of a skate spot we loved. The whole thing moved to “Armed Robbery” by 8Ball & MJG, and putting it on this playlist I’ve been playing around with made me revisit this album. It’s a classic.
Quicksand, Slip (1993): Another one that actually made it onto that skate video. I learned about Quicksand by skating to this album and my friend telling me “The dude was in Gorilla Biscuits.” For some reason I couldn’t wrap my teenage mind around that and figured he was just bullshitting me. Walter Schreifels is one of those guys like Steve Albini or Tim Green who I tend to put a lot of trust in terms of the bands they play in and the stuff they produce, but I think this album has aged especially well. There’s just something really comforting about this one, how certain parts sound like Fugazi and others remind me of You’d Prefer an Astronaut by Hum.