Playlists
“Architecture is frozen music” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“[…] is music liquid architecture?”― Frank Gehry
I was 12 when I got my first bass guitar. It was a Fender Squier, and I thought it was the most beautiful thing ever. After school, I would play the same three Iron Maiden songs over and over—or as much as a teenager could afford. But I wasn’t really good at it, or at least not as good as some of my friends—read: teenage metalheads. I didn't have an amplifier, which may have been an important factor in not even knowing what I was doing. But I wasn't pretending to know, either. To me, the bass was a way to create a gravitational pull: rhythm.
Just listen to "Around the World" by Daft Punk (1997). With a few plucks, it brings everything into common patterns.
And that is magical.
I still enjoy sharing patterns with other people. Now, I make (mostly eclectic) playlists. Enya, Blondie, Phil Collins, Rachmaninoff, and Kraftwerk have been long companions.
I like to think of playlists as architectures that set bodies in motion. Instead of genre puritanism, what matters to me is that they get us moving together.
Below are a few of my playlists. They tend to be long (3-5 hours… in this [attention] economy?) and lack internal order, so I suggest listening to them on Shuffle.
PS: Have you read about the history and political economy of the Shuffle feature?
…And all I got was this lousy playlist
Bar hopping on a Sunday afternoon. There will be Cocchi Negronis and Tamales.
Fellini on the Dancefloor
A dreamlike disco spirale of pan-linguistic seduction. Velvet nights and shimmering bodies. Best played with a concoction in hand and your feet slightly out of sync.
Symmetries and Lines
A selection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century composers who work through limits via motivic economy and structural minimalism. Precise, intensely direct.
Low Sun
West-coast rock, low-key Americana, Peruvian psych, surf guitars. Everything else stays unadorned.
Sabroso
It's a hot summer weekend, and you're driving back from Black Sands Beach, CA.
Voyage 3,000
Step away for a minute. Not acoustic nor synthetic.
Abstract space
For late evenings or when you need to zero in on something. A white box in the middle of nowhere.
Refrains & intensities
When you need to spin in circles. Patterns, repetition, and variations. Expect the unexpected.
Trick or Beat
I'll be dancing with the werewolves of London (or whoever shows up after dark).
Brain food
Textures to quiet the noise and carry you inward. Best with headphones, steady breath, and no destination.
Writing
A playlist for when you need to sit down and get into the zone. No recognizable melodies, no voices.
Soundscape Architects
SOUNDSCAPE ARCHITECTS is a game developed in collaboration with visual artist Dayana Camacho, where players imagine new worlds together. To do so, they become sonic world-makers: explorers, cartographers, rhythm machines. Together, players build a place out of vibrations, trace topologies, transform geographies, maybe meet new people, nap, and drink some tea. They imagine scenes in this world, then decide how their characters respond. A sonic-eco-social in-between-ness, neither here nor there, where kindness and kinship are the common denominators that bring people and critters together. Soundscapes can be vast, unpredictable, and full of breathtaking vistas. They may also hide portals to other dimensions, where time and space dissolve. As ecologies, they are living, breathing knots that react to what happens to them. Being a soundscape architect, then, is not an easy task.