Welcome to week #3 of the Steel Orca Songs of the Week.

For anyone who’s read the first two posts already (or, more shockingly, has been with this newsletter since the beginning), thank you. I appreciate it very much. If you’re enjoying what I’m putting out there thus far, please share it with a friend. I’m starting this completely fresh (without any existing social media or email contact list) so I appreciate whatever help you can give me to get the momentum going. The first two weeks have been pretty encouraging, so all the more reason to hit it hard and stay consistent with the content moving forward.

Again, as noted in other posts, the premise of the Songs of the Week was meant initially to be exceedingly simple - I pick five songs a week that I like, and I share them on Substack. I’m realizing, however, that the act of listening to enough music to curate five songs, research them, get appropriate media content, and actually write up the post takes a long time. I have a young family and a more than full-time job, so I’m busy. Again, I’m not complaining. This is more excited about something than I’ve felt in recent memory, but I’m realizing that there’s only really one time to work on this, and that’s when I’m supposed to be sleeping.

So with all of that said let’s get into it. I would highlight that I worked harder on this week’s post than the last two week’s posts combined, because fundamentally I suppose I’m now starting to see the power of this platform. I have barely scratched the surface and it seems that at least some people are resonating with either the writing, or the music selections, or both. I am obviously hoping this continues, and that momentum continues to build. I’m going to do what I can to see that it does. So if that means less sleep, so be it. Who needs sleep anyways?

Playlist Breakdown

So without further ado, here are the songs for the week of October 7th, 2022.

Note: For the people who are new to this, either open Spotify separately (which should allow you to play these songs directly in the browser), or click the Spotify icon in the top right of the playlist to open the playlist in Spotify. If you’re on a mobile device this is all probably not an issue as most of this stuff is pretty seamless on mobile.

If you love this and can’t work all this out (but would like to), reach out to me directly via the comment functionality below. I would expect that this is pretty straightforward for most people, but I get that technology has its idiosyncrasies.

I have to say I thought about these songs and this playlist a lot this week. I’m not sure that I’m ever going to be prepared to put this much mental attention into five songs like I did this week again, moving forward. That’s being honest.

I think it’s basically that I am realizing that people might actually read a Substack post and listen to some songs and that this might actually be worthwhile so that got me excited and basically had me buzzing on the idea of producing this post all week long. It’s the same reason that I stayed up late last night making the new logo and I’m staying up late again writing this post. I’m excited. I knew I wanted to write but I guess I didn’t realize how jazzed I would get about it when I finally started going.

I spent a lot of time this week picking which five songs would make the list, then I spent a bunch of additional time picking which order the songs should be in. Like I said, I’m probably not going to be spending that much time on this moving forward, but it was fun this week. I guess we’ll see.

Łaszewo - Colors

I love this song. I told my daughter that it’s about coloring.

In my opinion, the bit at ~1:20 of this song (when it really kicks in) really encapsulates what I’m looking for from a musical experience (awe-induced piloerection).

My personal favorite music festival is Shambhala. This song ,in my opinion, is a good aural approximation of when it hits just right.

Flight Facilities (featuring Emma Louise) - Arty Boy (Ninajirachi Remix)

So one thing that I’m realizing as I write these posts is that an obvious criticism of all of this will be “you only love that remix because the original song is so great, why don’t you write about the original?”

To which I say: Start your own music newsletter.

Honestly though it’s a legitimate criticism but I’m not going to do that both due to time constraints and because honestly I don’t care to. If someone vehemently (I love that word) argues that the original is better in the comments, then I’ll listen. Otherwise I’m not claiming to know everything about every song and every artist - I’m just saying I like these songs.

All of the people on this song are from Australia. This is, for all intents and purposes, an Australian song. Australia quietly (maybe not so quietly) has a super awesome music scene. I should go there some time.

Anyway I was listening to this song again this morning and I realized what it reminds me of - The Girl from Ipanema. Mostly the staccato-ness.

Autograf (featuring Janelle Kroll) - Metaphysical (Daktyl Remix)

This is a remix of a very popular song that most people who follow electronic music have probably heard extensively. The original song is great. This remix is also great.

My favorite thing about Daktyl is that apparently when he makes his music he hides in a cabin in the woods (apparently in Yosemite) for solitude. That’s awesome. I haven’t gone to Yosemite specifically because I heard it’s completely overrun by tourists (this is as per my Dad) but definitely sometime.

I can’t give any credit to Daktyl for this but one of my favorite aspects of this song is the lyrics, specifically this:

Where do you love?
Is it something we can discuss?

I like that because it proposes that “Where do you love?” is a taboo discussion for a person to have. Clever writing.

Janelle Kroll sings the lyrics. I assume that Daktyl, Janelle Kroll, and Autograf are all friends as another great song by Daktyl, Oscillate, has her singing on it as well. That song will probably make the Songs of the Week at some point.

My sister has told me that I should get into meditation. This song suggests the same. Maybe I should.

Young Franco (featuring Pell) - Juice (Castelle Remix)

This song was almost the song of the week. If the next song wasn’t so awesome it would have been.

I sent this to my buddy to listen to it and he responded with, “Well looks like I’ll be using juice as a regular phrase now.”

This song is great and super catchy and this remix is excellent. If you look up Castelle he doesn’t have a big internet presence and is seemingly a little hard to find. This song came out in 2020 but sometimes these things take a bit to gain momentum I guess. Based on this song I assume (hope) we’ll be hearing more from him in the future.

Best Song of the Week 🙌🎵

Kodak to Graph - Iamanthem

In my opinion this song is a masterpiece. This has been on repeat for me all week. I just blasted this in a 2016 Kia Soul and it shredded.

This song is all about the drums. The drums were played live (I haven’t looked it up but I’m assuming that based on the fills and sound) and based on a quick review of their live shows seems like live drums is a regular thing. The drum breakdown starts at around 3:20 and my favorite part is around 3:35 (I know very specific) when it’s a snare fill to a bass drum fill. It sounds sick and I imagine this song would be super fun to play for the drummer.

Based on the picture above, the sound, and the live drums, seems like Kodak to Graph would be a hella fun show to see, plus it’s so weird and seemingly obscure that you get serious hipster points. Then when you look up their Instagram you realize that this is a seriously artistic group. They are the real deal. They are definitely one of my new favorites to the point of wanting to buy a t-shirt or something but I looked and they seemingly don’t have any for sale.

I am officially a hipster now.

Ok that’s it for me this week. This post came out a bit later than I would have liked but I’m at my in-laws for Canadian Thanksgiving (we just call it Thanksgiving) and I stayed up too late in the hot tub smoking cigars and drinking Scotch with my father-in-law. Good times.

As always, if you want to follow the ongoing Steel Orca Spotify playlist Admin Login (updated week over week) click the link below, or leave a comment and let me know your opinion on my music choices (or give me suggestions for the future).