AURAL FIXATIONS

Jake Israel's
Essential Playlists

I listen to a lot of music.

An unreasonable amount, probably.

These are the songs, artists, records, deep cuts, obvious choices, forgotten gems, and occasional hill-I-will-die-on selections that survived decades of listening, collecting, discovering, arguing, reconsidering, and pressing repeat.

Six playlists (so far). Hundreds of songs.

Your mileage may vary. Mine won’t.

MORE OF AN ALBUM PERSON?

Me too. Some records are simply too good to be chopped into playlists. No skips, no shuffle, no compromises.

EXPLORE THE PERFECT 10 →

Great songs. Full stop. Hits, misses, deep cuts, discoveries, guilty pleasures without the guilt, and anything else good enough to earn another listen.

Genre is somebody else’s problem.

PS – Who else did you expect to be on the cover?

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Music for lowering the temperature without lowering the standards.

Downtempo, ambient, electronic, acoustic, atmospheric, and assorted sounds for when everything could stand to be considerably quieter.

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Synths. Guitars. Drum machines. Hairspray. Crockett + Tubbs. And yes, even drug budgets.

Nobody remembers asking for moderation.

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Low lights. Slow burns. Heavy breathing.

You can figure out the rest.

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I have absolutely no idea why Dear Rouge isn’t one of the biggest bands in the world.

Consider this my formal complaint.

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Listen past the noise and you’ll find extraordinary melodies, enormous emotion, and surprisingly layered songwriting.

Trent Reznor is basically our Beethoven. Just with better equipment.

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For Context Yet, Completely Irrelevant

A properly sequenced mixtape was once a legitimate form of communication. Some of us took this responsibility far too seriously.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere...

THE MOMENT OF CONTACT

Questions?
Comments?
Kudos?
A New Project?

Have a project, an idea, a question, or an interesting problem that refuses to behave? Maybe there’s something to make, something to solve, something to learn, or a conversation worth having.

Make contact. Bring me an idea, a problem, or even pure, unmitigated chaos.

I’ll bring an opinion.