November 2026
No rankings, no algorithms. Just ears.
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01Post-punk
Some evenings call for the darkest record I own, and that is this one. I reach for it carefully, because I know where it takes me. Cut weeks before Ian Curtis took his own life, it plays like a record that already knew: Martin Hannett's synthetic chill, the synths, the electronic drums, that voice sinking into a graveyard baritone. It closes the Factory circle Unknown Pleasures opened. Never a casual choice. But when it goes on, nothing feels more true.
Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗
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02Dub
This one I keep for late at night, when I want to vanish. After King Tubby, Lee Perry and Burning Spear, the dub island was asking for Augustus Pablo: the man of the melodica, a child's toy keyboard that in his hands turns mystical — the 'Far East sound.' East of the River Nile is hypnotic, Eastern-tinged instrumental dub, mixed by King Tubby: it sounds like a submerged prayer. Volume low, lights off, and I dissolve into it.
Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗
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03New wave
There's a restlessness I can't sit still with, and this is it. Still in new wave, I reach Remain in Light, where David Byrne and Brian Eno blow rock apart into Afro polyrhythm: it's funk, it's Fela Kuti run through a nervous New York mind, layers of groove that never stop. 'Once in a Lifetime' alone would be enough, but it's the whole trance that takes me. I put it on when I need the body to move before the head does.
Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗
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04Avant-garde
This one makes me smile, and in November I need that. After Battisti, Italy's other giant of literate pop: in 1981 Battiato, fresh from years of extreme avant-garde, made a pop record and outsold everyone in Italy to that point. But what pop — 'Centro di gravità permanente,' 'Bandiera bianca,' 'Cuccurucucù': ironic, learned songs, thick with quotation, that you still catch yourself singing like summer hits. He took the avant-garde's intelligence and put it in the charts. I play it and go back to an Italy I thought I'd forgotten.
Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗
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05Krautrock
I keep this for early morning, with the house still quiet. I close the year in krautrock, where I'd already been with Harmonia. If August's Tago Mago was Can's wild face, Future Days (1973) is their luminous one: motorik dissolving into ambient — water, air, the most unhurried, hypnotic groove the band ever laid down. Music that flows rather than attacks. On with the first coffee, and time stretches.
Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗
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