Sit back and enjoy the music
I got to admit that I didn’t know much about either of these two DJs until this song, EVO, got featured on a couple of Armin van Buuren’s A State of Trance compilations (#908 & #909), but we will all know about them if they continue producing tunes like this one. Manuel Le Saux is a Roma-based DJ & Producer and Unbeat seems to be a DJ from Slovakia. Here’s to more tracks like EVO. Give it a listen in the mixtapes below:
Polish pianist, composer and singer Hania Rani just released her second album, Home, of soothing melodies, with its centrepiece being the relaxing F Major. Although not very famous –yet–, her first album, Esja, was widely successful and won her several awards in her home country.
F Major is a great piece but equally great is its accompanying music video, which you can watch below, in which Hania plays the piano against a stunning Icelandic backdrop.
Featured on the following mixtapes:
Gareth Emery is a British Trance producer and DJ who has won prestigious awards and released multiple studio albums. Within the DJ/Trance world, he’s as well-known as somebody could get, but not necessarily outside of it. Besides, even if you had heard of him before, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss Long Way Home, because it is so good, that I simply had to add it to the Electronic Mixtape even though it was released six years ago. No doubt about it.
Featured on the following mixtapes:
Marga Sol is the official resident DJ at Buddha Bar, Santorini and her music has been featured in thousands of compilation albums, including Buddha Bar and Ministry of Sound. In spite of all that, I wasn’t aware of her existence until I heard this track –What I Long For, from her 2019 album: Coastline– on an AI-generated playlist from one of the two major streaming services. It is possible something similar is happening to you now.
This is a great chill out tune that I would love to hear while sipping a cocktail in Santorini or the Balearic Islands. Sadly, we’ll have to settle for listening to this song at home during the Covid-19 quarantine. Thank you, 2020.
@margasolmusic #margasol #chillout
Featured on the following mixtapes:
All Time Low is as popular as a punk rock band can be nowadays. I’m posting this well aware that most people will know who they are. That being said, the track from their new album (Wake Up, Sunshine) I’m recommending here is not even being mentioned –let alone promoted– as a potential future single and is, in my opinion, the best one on the record. It would be a shame if the band’s casual listeners didn’t get a chance to hear it. Give it a listen.
For a review of their 2023 single Tell Me I’m Alive, click here.
Featured on the following mixtapes:
*Drawing made by Okamura Yuta.
Yosi Horikawa‘s Bubbles has been featured on the popular series of Chill Out compilations: Café del Mar, so it isn’t exactly unknown. However, most people have probably never heard of either this track nor the Japanese composer, which is a shame because Yosi Horikawa is one of the most original artists out there. Just listen to Bubbles below to see why I honestly believe that.
Also, do yourself a favor and listen to it using headphones or some good speakers. It takes the experience to a whole new level because of something called stereo imaging.
Featured on the following mixtapes:
Sheppard is an Australian band that reached an international audience in 2014 with their hit Geronimo (highly recommended if you haven’t heard it). So far, they have been unable to match that success with their subsequent releases, but they got a good candidate in “Come Back”, which is part of their attempt in 2020 to release one new song each month.
Give it a try below (and of course, it has been added to the Indie and Pop Mixtapes already) but be warned: this track could cause Last Song Syndrome. Listen to it at your own risk.
Featured on the following mixtapes:
I’m going to kick things off with this cool new song from The Mowgli’s, released earlier this year.
Although the Californian band, which is named after a former band member’s dog that was, in turn, named after the character from the famous Rudyard Kipling’s novel The Jungle Book, cannot be considered an unknown act, they’re certainly not mainstream yet. If “Wasting Time” is any indication of where the direction they are heading to, then that’s likely to change soon. The song’s chorus cannot be any catchier.
Featured on the following mixtapes:
A great song can transport you back to the first time you heard it or to a period of your life when you were often listening to it. This not only makes me enjoy the songs I like even more, but also to be always searching for the next one I will love. For me, few things in life beat that feeling you get when you hear a great song for the first time. I guess meeting the love of your life qualifies but that would probably be the full list.
And that’s the reason why I’m always visiting obscure music portals/blogs or listening to Spotify/Apple Music recommendations, trying to spot that great song I hadn’t heard before, kind of a white whale if you like. The thing I find frustrating though is that most of those blogs and playlists are full of uninspiring songs I find tolerable at best. You have to listen to 40 tracks in order to find one you more or less like, let alone one you really love. I think this happens because the people creating those lists only care about finding songs that match a certain criteria: being considered from a certain genre (which in itself can be very broad), recently released, and/or from certain artists. As they try to please as many people as possible with their playlists, they end up being too inconsistent.
Anyway, over the years, I’ve managed to build a decent library of songs I like. Whenever I’m not searching for new music, I listen to my own playlists, and on those occasions when friends happen to listen to one of them, they usually compliment the songs and ask for their details. Friends ask for my recommendations quite often as well.
This is why I came up with the idea to document the little new gems I happen to find on my constant search for great songs. I’m not going to retrospectively add all my favourite songs on this website (that would take me forever), but I will include old ones from time to time in addition to the newer tunes. I’ll try to stay away from tracks that are already very well known, but the only criterion I will really have for featuring songs here is that I have to genuinely like them.
Of course, this means that in order to enjoy my recommendations, you need to be into the same musical genres I’m into. Therefore, I hope you enjoy Alternative Rock, Indie, Pop-Punk, Ambient/Chill Out, and occasionally Pop or Trance tracks; because that’s what you will find here.
If you are an artist and would like to be featured here, I’m happy to listen to your songs (in which case please get in touch through the Contact page or social media), but I cannot make any promise about adding your song to my mixtapes (playlists). As mentioned above, I have to genuinely like your songs.
That being said, I hope you like my mixtapes and come back often.
Sincerely,
Me.