Welcome to week #7 of the Steel Orca Songs of the Week.

Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal 📸:Clara Beth/steelorca.io

…and just like that a week has gone by and it’s Friday again. This week went fast. Honestly, I shouldn’t complain, but I’m a bit tired. With Halloween 🎃 parties last weekend, and trick or treating Monday, I feel like I was in a bit of a haze. (I went as a pirate🏴‍☠️ by the way.) And yes, I have been sneakily eating candy all week.

The intro picture this week is in honor of both the general vibe of the playlist (maybe a little more on the meditative/reflective side 🧘), as well as the fact that we had our first major snowfall earlier this week. So now we’re back in the throes of winter. Time to get used to it I guess. The ski hills are even opening early.

Finally, before we get to the playlist, it was also Día de los Muertos 💀 earlier this week (“officially” on Wednesday but depends on your locality I guess), so we were listening to this playlist a lot. In particular, we all love this version of La Llorona sung by Ángela Aguilar, which we hadn’t heard before. If it wouldn’t have been such an awkward fit for the playlist I might have included it, given how many times I listened to it this week.

Playlist Breakdown

Here are the songs for the week of November 4, 2022.

Youtube Music ▶️: Songs of the Week #7 - Steel Orca

So what is the deal with the playlist this week? Like I mentioned above - it’s a bit more introverted, a bit more self-reflective, but still with some proper dance music awkwardly wedged in the middle. It’s a bit more of an audio journey this week. I hope you enjoy. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

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ill.gates - More Tea

Well ill.gates is definitely a man with style. He has been around for quite a while, and I understand he’s relatively popular, but I haven’t really delved deep into his music until now.

According to this website, he’s currently touring with Figure (who I also love and will feature later on) on the Videodrome 📺 tour. Based on reviews, their live show is way better than the Cronenberg movie of the same name.

This song is a really great sort of eastern-sounding electronic jam, with my favorite Bruce Lee quote mixed in 🌊:

Empty your mind
Be formless, shapeless like water
Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup
You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle
You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot
Now water can flow, or it can crash
Be water my friend

David Scott - Aurora

More deep house 🏠. I think that’s what you would describe this as. Honestly I have no idea - I’m not super familiar with genres.

So this song has a vocal edit but honestly I haven’t even listened to that yet - I feel like listening to that would ruin this version of the song for me, given that my favorite part of this is the simple foundational repeating piano melody.

Hailing out of Cape Town, South Africa, this song was written and performed by David Scott, who also performs as the Kiffness (who is seemingly much more popular than David Scott, with almost 1.3 million Youtube ▶️ subscribers). Apparently, as the Kiffness, he does a lot of singing/remixes that involve cats 😺.

Fred again.. - Delilah (pull me out of this)

“Oh my god. I knew we were going to dance, but we danced so hard.”

So anyone who follows dance music probably is well aware that Fred again..'s new album came out October 28th, and it’s just as good as we all expected. It’s everything that everyone loved about his recent Boiler Room: London set (almost at 10 million views in a little over 3 months) in album form.

2022 is Fred’s year. As an indicator of the level of his success, when he recently cancelled his appearance at Porter Robinson’s Second Sky Festival, only the original EDM pioneer legend Skrillex himself was deemed a worthy replacement headliner.

Given how much I listened to this (and made others listen to it), this could have easily been the song of the week. This album is an instant classic, and will no doubt be in the rotation indefinitely.

thomfjord - Intrastellar

This song came out April 17, 2020 and in my opinion the name for this song feels pretty accurate. There’s a lot of detail and idiosyncrasy to this song, and it feels like you’re sort of on a spiritual journey as you listen to this song. It feels sort of meditative and spacey 🌌. It’s listed as “Dance/Electronic” on Google but there we go with those music genres again. I can’t get a handle on them 🤷.

I have been sitting here writing and rewriting this paragraph to attempt to describe how I feel about this song - it feels like one man’s artistic life’s work. This feels like thomfjord’s musical Mona Lisa 🖼️, as it were. Like this guy spent all this time (who knows how long) working so hard to get this one song exactly right, exactly the way he wanted it, and it worked. He did get it exactly right. It sounds exactly the way it should sound (at least I think so, which is why it’s on this list).

His website (which is just marketing for this EP) is great as well, and fits this song perfectly as an analogy. It’s simple, but it’s idiosyncratic, and if you don’t pay attention you miss the small elegant details.

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Song of the Week 🙌🎵

CRi - Friends In Secret

(The real question at this point is how long can I stay up and still write clearly? I guess we’ll find out. 😴)

CRi (real name Christophe Dubé) was born in Québec City, but moved to Montreal in 2012 to pursue music and follow in the footsteps of other local DJs like Kaytranada and A-Trak. His debut album Juvenile (which this song is from) came out October 16, 2020:

“Juvenile is an ode to youth, innocence, and dreams. The melancholy of the past and the hope of the future shape the mood of this album. The project revisits what resonated with me when I was young, and blends it with what drives me today. It’s a way for me to take stock of an era, and turn the page on something new.”

In this interview with Brendan Hanson from CULTR, CRi describes his musical influences:

“A lot of Montreal artists inspire me, Jesse Mac Cormack, Men I Trust, Patrick Watson, Karkwa, TOPS, Kaytranada and so on, it’s hard to be concise, there are so many talents that come from here. The city itself is also very inspiring, just fighting winter is an endless source of emotions. The rather calm atmosphere of the city and the proximity to nature gives me a kind of quietness that allows me to create. My musical influences are quite diverse but if I had to choose three I would say Moby, Caribou, and Saint-Germain.”

This song is undoubtedly the best song of a great album. As a fan of both Moby and Caribou (I don’t really know Saint-Germain), I feel like you can really hear those influences in this song. CRi is definitely an artist to keep your eye 👁️ on in the future.

That’s it for this week from all of us here at the Steel Orca.✔️👋

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