Happy Belated Valentine's Day Vibes
Given that not being a big fan of Valentine's Day is just as much of a cliche as expecting flowers and chocolates every time February 14th rolls around, I kinda keep my trap shut about it. That along with The Horrors™ made me completely blank on it the day of, but it occurred to me that one of my favorite parts of the holiday is DJ and producers usually take the opportunity to make some great themed mixes. Have a few of my faves from Flying Lotus and Dela.
Flying Lotus' Lovers Melt Series
The Lovers Melt series is perfect for folks who're boo'd up and looking for something to have on when they're making it do what it do. Like playing board games, and conducting a bible study. They'd also go pretty great as an alternative to the average playlist that gets thrown on shuffle at a local club's "grown and sexy" night. Funk, soul, dub, psych rock, jazz, you'll run into the Soft Machine and United States of America right alongside Ann Peebles, Donald Byrd, and Bobby Womack. The latter-most opens up the second installment with one of my favorite songs, which scratches the surface of the late Mr. Womack's world-class status as a dirtbag. Go look up what happened between him and Sam Cooke's widow. And her daughter. Anyhow, the first two were done for Stones Throw's old podcast, and the third was (and still is, if you dig) posted on the Brainfeeder site. There was a fourth mix done for a BBC Radio residency with J-Rocc that ended up on a portion of Apple Music that I don't think exists anymore? If that's not the case, holler at me.
Dela's Broken 🖤's Mix
On the other end of the spectrum of Valentine's Day feelings, French producer Dela served up a mixtape full of sad, mostly soul songs. Given the output that you can still cop on his Bandcamp—lots of really solid sample based boom-bap for blog era spitters like Blu and underground mainstays like J-Live—the songs that show up shouldn't throw you for a loop, but they go down just as smooth as you'd want for soothing some heartache. Also has one of my favorite Stevie songs in there.
I tried to find a streamable version this one out there, but it probably came from a blog that is well in the wind now, so have the full download.
Happy belated Valentine's Day, enjoy.
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