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Watching The Sky With Our Hands In Our Pockets [Spotify]

Yo La Tengo - Nowhere Near
Hum - Apollo
Death Cab For Cutie - A Lack of Color
Smashing Pumpkins - Landslide
Great Lake Swimmers - Moving Pictures Silent Films
The Weakerthans - Sounds Familiar
Nada Surf - If You Leave 
Peggy Lee - Where Or When

Steve Albini once said, "Punk rockers can do anything. If punk rockers were running NASA, we'd be drinking tea on the moon by now." 

So this playlist is an imagined conversation between an astronaut and the person they've left behind. Part break-up, part hello, with interruptions and transmission failures and all the ups and downs of being together and being apart. 

About Playlist Club-er: Emma Lannie (@sleepyem) 

Emma Lannie writes stories, organises literature events, makes books with Time Travel Opps and blogs sporadically here.

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Fred and Janet [spotify]

Marty Wilde — Abergavenny
Soft Cell - Where The Heart Is
Jackie Lee - The Town I Live In
Morecambe & Wise - Positive Thinking
Those Dancing Days - I'll Be Yours
Sister Sledge - Thinking of You
Cliff Richard & The Shadows - In The Past
The Pale Fountains - Thank You

This is mostly about a yearning for the past. I still bore my wife bringing up stories of how we first met and then unmet and my kids patiently listen to tales of when I was a kid a long time ago. Thank you kids for your patience.

So this is a healthy stab of teen family melodrama (Soft Cell, Jackie Lee), out and out kitsch nostalgia (Marty Wilde) and straightforward romance (Cliff, Sister Sledge). Even the newest track from These Dancing Days reminds me of love affairs and indiepop from 25 years ago not 2 years ago.

And Eric & Ernie (it would have been Roy Castle if i could have found it)  prompt me of where I was happiest. In my front room in the 70s. Lying on the floor in front of the TV with the two people who I've named the list after.

About Playlist Club-er: Jem Stone (@jemstone)

Jem is a father of three from mid Sussex, works for a large broadcasting company and is waiting for Bobby Gillespie to give him back that biography of Joe Meek that he lent him 22 years ago. He owns the entire Sarah Records back catalogue. 

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Lonely Hearts Love Songs by Will Humphrey
No Pussy Blues - Grinderman
I Don't Want Love - Antlers
Challengers - The New Pornographers
Come On, Let's Talk About Our Feelings - Fight Like Apes
Indiscriminate Act of Kindness - Foy Vance
Sweet Little Mystery - John Martyn
Lucky You - The National
The Shadowlands - Ryan Adams

I've always been interested in love songs (or sad songs, depending on how you're taken by 'em) that play with the idea of wistfulness - the idea that things could have somehow turned out differently if you'd have put more (or less) effort in.

I don't find any of these songs depressing or uplifting, really. They're more musings on what's happening to you right now, whether it's Nick Cave's blood and thunder wit upon ageing on the Grinderman track, Foy Vance's charity storytelling or Ryan Adams's extended refrain at the end of The Shadowlands.

What's more, no matter who I talk to - everyone views these tracks in different ways, depending on their mood. That, I think, is the power of wistful songs. Also, there's a few shouty little numbers in there too..it's not all maudlin.

About Playlist Club-er: Will Humphrey
Will Humphrey is a tall, cheerfully cynical planner type. He's a mildly obsessive Stoke City fan that spends most of his free time trying to hit small round balls into bigger holes with curious implements. He can be found here on t'terwebs.

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Errors - Supertribe
Duchess Says - Tenen Non Neu
Boom Bip - Manabozh
Ane Brun - Do You Remember?
Lambchop - The New Cobweb Summer
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
Greenskeepers - Vagabond
The Horrors - Whole New Way

It's a bit of a grab bag, but specifically made of songs I like from things I don't. Mostly, albums, but in a few cases entire bands that I think are shit. Usually these songs were the first thing from them I heard, and nothing else in their work or that album quite lived up to the promise. Waifs like these tracks are easy to forget about in the midst of Spotify and gigabytes of MP3s.

About Playlist Club-er: David Hayward (aka @Nachimir)
David Hayward is a videogames odd-job man and professional bad example. He produces a bunch of UK games events such as upcoming A Bit of Alright on Feb 3rd.

image c/o David Hayward

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Svartsyn [Spotify] 

Blond smiles and a history of dark tunes from the outskirts of Norway.

About Playlist Club-er: Einar Sneve Martinussen (@snve)

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Shhh Secret Santa [Spotify]

Jose Feliciano – Feliz Navidad
The Waitresses – Christmas Wrapping
The Handsome Family – Stupid Bells
Brenda Lee – Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree
Lilian Briggs – Rock N' Roll Polly Santa Claus
MC Lars – Gary The Green Nosed Reindeer
Tom Jones – Baby It's Cold Outside
Eels – Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town
The Fall – No Xmas For John Quays (Peel Session)
Pet Shop Boys – All over the world
The Aislers Set – Christmas Song 
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – The Power Of Love
Sufjan Stevens – That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!

Its A Playlist Club Secret Santa. This week we've asked some of our Playlist Club chums to generously donate one whole festive track to our Secret Musical Santa's Sack. As its secret we're not telling you who inflicted what onto the playlist so you can love/ despise or pity them all in equal measure. People good with numbers might also note that this weeks playlist is shockingly >8 songs long. Just this once we've decided to break one of the golden rules (its a Christmas Miracle!) after all we think its what baby Jesus would have wanted.

Enjoy...

Brought to you by
Tigershungry, Topfife, Minkette, Nachimir, Benburry, Infovore, Myyada, Blowupchurch, Duncangeere, Mday, Anjali28, Doougle, CJ_Parker

Oh yes & a special mention for this track which was suggested but sadly an ask too far for Spotify.

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Smithery - Working Songs [Spotify]

Carter Burwell — The Wicked Flee
British Sea Power — It Comes Back Again
Hans Zimmer — Radical Notion
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis — Song For Bob
Hanz Zimmer & James Newton Howard — A Dark Knight
Nine Inch Nails — Right Where It Belongs
Ennio Morricone — L'estasi dell'oro (The Ecstasy of Gold)
Clint Mansell — We're Going Home 

Music is an important part of the rhythm of work.  Where once there were drum beats propelling ships across oceans, and workers songs propelling mean and women across fields, there are now stereos playing eighties classics radio in offices, and rows of headphone-clad desk jockeys.

This is a playlist for the knowledge-reaper, the concept-wrangler, the strategy-smith.  A concentrated soundtrack to your own daily heroic battle.  Refrains and themes, jeopardy and hazard, contemplation and doubt, belief and purpose.  Cue the strings, and get things done.

About Playlist Club-er: John Willshire (@willsh)

Marketing, Economics, Making, Stories, Art, Music, Analogies & Puns.
Founder of Smithery: 'Make Things People Want' rather than 'Make People Want Things'. 

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Health – Tabloid Sores (Nosajthing Rmx)
Com Truise – Cathode Girls
Pictureplane – Real is a Feeling
Lunice – Hitmanes Anthem
Zackey Force Funk – Noizeinbrain (feat. Kutmah)
Hudson Mohawke – Thunder Bay
Rustie – City Star
Kingdom – Dreama

Clear Light is a playlist. It's not about anything really.

About Playlist Club-er: Christoffer Hedborg (aka @c_hedborg)
During the day Christoffer makes games at his desk at Might and Delight. During the night he makes them in his bed, unless he's busy exhibiting indie games at various clubs in Stockholm with f/.

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Good Evening Mr Brown [8tracks]

1: Shake Aletti — Inside Out (Toy Tigers Remix) 
2: SSion from the album BENT — PSY-CHIC
3: Of Montreal — Gallery Piece Stems (Minitel Rose Remix)
4: Phil RetroSpector — Dont Mo (Yazoo VS Four Tops)
5: DJ Lobsterdust — Stayin' Hot (Nelly vs. Bee Gees) 
6: The KDMS — Tonight (Box Codax Remix) 
7: Telonius, Prince Albert — Last Night (Extended Club Mix)
8: PULL UP TO THE BUMPER PHASE5 MOOMBAHTON REWORK

Love songs that contain a lot of lust. Because there's nothing hotter than the real deal.

About Playlist Club-er: Åsk Dabitch (@dabitch)

Dabitch hates to write about herself in third person but loves to use the royal we. 

Image credits: Dabitch, Cannes, France summer 2011

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War Breaks Out [youtube]

SISTERS OF MERCY — TEMPLE OF LOVE (12'' Version)
Sigue Sigue Sputnik — Love Missile F1 11 (Bancock Remix)
MARRS — Pump Up The Volume (UK 12" Remix)
Falco — Rock Me Amadeus (Solieri/Extended Version)
Blancmange — Dont Tell Me (12" Version)
Yazoo — Situation (12" Version)
Bronski Beat — Smalltown Boy (12" Version)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood — Two Tribes (Annihilation Mix)

This playlist is a memory of the eighties; of naughty cigarettes, staypress trousers, “Frankie says” T-Shirts and a holiday in Blackpool. That’s it. 

About Playlist Club-er: Marcus Brown (@MarcusJHBrown)

I am Marcus. I smoked cigarettes in the 80’s.

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• Asap Rocky- Wassup
• Tyler Gary- She's Hot
• Dirty Paraffin- Download This On Mp3
• Earl Sweatshirt- Earl
• Madvillain-Papermill
• Death grips- Guilotine
• Lil B- Pretty Boy Muzik
• Tyler Gary- Violins

All the tracks in this playlist are from albums that were released in the last couple of years for no pounds and nothing pence. It only lasts about 20 minutes but they're all tracks that still make me want to be a rapper. Click the download button on each track to be taken to the relevant artist's site for the full free releases.

Playlist Club-ber: Scott James (aka @rinzence)
I'm Scott James and I have twitter, tumblr, facebook, google plus, ALL of them! I even have a my very own website too?!
I love footwork and garage.
I love video games.

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Jumping and Pecking [8tracks]

• Jumping And Pecking - Ivor Cutler
• The Shape Of Things - Blossom Dearie
• The Neighbours - Jonathan Richman
• You Gotta Be a Hustler if you Want to Get On - Sue Wilkinson
• The Little Black Foal - Jake Thackray
• Treachery - Kirsty MacColl
• The Girls From the Streets - Scott Walker
• Downtown - Petula Clark

A playlist of wonky pop and folk music made by solo artists before 1990.

Playlist Club-ber: Ricky Haggett (aka @kommanderklobb)
Ricky makes videogames. He is a co-founder of independent developer Honeyslug, and is currently working on Frobisher Says, Hohokum, Wild Rumpus. He once saw Ivor Cutler in Kentish Town.
http://klobb.posterous.com

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Cold in Scandinavia [Spotify]

• The Knife – Silent Shout
• Ólafur Arnalds – Fok
• Röyksopp – What Else Is There?
• Björk – Heirloom
• Johann Johannsson – The Rocket Builder (Io Pan!)
• Fever Ray – Keep The Streets Empty For Me
• Message To Bears – Hope
• Mew – Am I Wry? No

I've been noticing how much of the new music I'm listening to is coming out of Scandinavia. There are some possibly obvious reasons why of course, with a turn to the melancholy and a belief in recommendation engines being two likely culprits.

Anyway, the plan was to put together a list of new, entirely-Scandinavian music I've been enjoying. What we've ended up with is not entirely new, not entirely Scandinavian, with three tracks from the same vocalist and a bit of a mishmash of styles. I think I'm still safe in the claim of melancholy, though.

Hope there's something you haven't heard before. Hope there's
something you like.

Playlist Club-ber: Ben Burry (aka @benburry)
Ben works as a site reliability engineer, wrangling monsters in Shoreditch. He spends a lot of time at the BFI, a lot of time listening to glitchy electronica and not enough time tinkering with hardware. He is older than he feels.

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True NWOBHM [YouTube]

• Jaguar - Dutch Connection
• Marseille - Rock you Tonight
• Tokyo Blade - Night of the Blade
• Raven - Don't Need Your Money
• Trespass - One of These Days
• Tyrant - Hold Back the Lightning
• Iron Maiden - Prowler (soundhouse tapes version)
• Bitches Sin - Down the Road

Get out yer cardboard guitar and enjoy!

Playlist Club-er: Mark Magill

Magill is a true punk who's been putting out records forever. Mark has released records with Grampus 8 (pop punk), Meow Meow! (indie pop), Down & Outs (street punk) and currently SSS (crossover thrash)

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Brickbats and Brimstone [spotify]

Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds — Mbube
Elvis Presley — Blue Moon
The Velvet Underground — Pale Blue Eyes
Arvo Pärt — Summa
Gram Parsons — Hickory Wind
Blur — No Distance Left To Run
Donovan —  Turquoise
Suede — The Next Life

"Often, now that the dog days have passed and the evenings blur with a greenish glow at twilight, I'll think of crooked sand tracks through the pine plantation, the buckled asphalt on the long, east roads and the fields of husk and dirt surrounding the Beet factory chimneys that burnt the air of my youth. And, in early October, uncertain how to proceed, I'll listen to this soft, low music again."

About Playlist Club-er: Andrew Pendrick (@andrewpendrick)

Andrew Pendrick is minor folk hero in his native Nova Zembla for his role as Chief of Propaganda in the Student Uprising of 1996. His portrait of the American poet William Fort-Dene (a distant cousin) hangs in the only Moldovan restaurant in London and his play,  "A Gorilla In The Roses"  remains unperfomed. He currently lives incognito in the west of Sheffield, England, spending the last two years attempting to resolve his 'Solus Rex' chess problem. 

Image by Andrew.

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Go Back. What Was Must Never Be. [spotify]

Nic Jones — The Little Pot Stove
Dan Deacon — Wet Wings
Davy Graham — She Move Through The Fair
Gorodisch — Moth To The Flame
The Watersons — The North Country Maid
Directing Hand — Down In Yon Forest
Iva Bittová — Ne Nehledj 
Laurie Anderson — Same Time Tomorrow (live) 

The title of my list is taken from the first line of Alan Garner’s novel Thursbitch. Garner, in turn, borrowed it from Jean Cocteau’s film Orphée. I first thought I was compiling a celebration of Folk Music, the songs which my parents passed on to me as a child. But as I listened for suitable songs, I was haunted by Thursbitch's tale: an 18th century Cheshire salt-trader's shepherding of the Earth using ancient ritual, broken by the planting of a Christian Church. I dreamed folk memories of the Pennines, bleeding into visions of Albion. I thought of the trade and hunting routes which brought hominids from the East, crossing the sunken kingdom of Doggerland. I wrote an essay on the subject, and then crossed it out. I felt the pain of the incorrigible nostalgic when I realised that a map is not the same as the thing mapped. So... the playlist begins with a song that took roost in my head during a childhood narrow-boat holiday, (back when Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin's "It's My Party" was Number One). It finishes with a song I heard recorded, from the gods at Saddler's Wells Theatre, with my new girlfriend, who eventually gave birth to our two kids and then became my wife. It is an incomplete, inaccurate, incomprehensible and intimate map of (English?) history. Io! Euoi!

About Playlist Club-er: Dan Sumption (@dansumption)

Dan Sumption set up the web agency Hard Media in 1995 and, three years later, sold it to Leo Burnett's, where he rode the dot com boom. After several more years of freelancing and working for private clients, he wound up at the BBC building the iPlayer, and now works for YouView creating the interface for the next generation of connected TV. Most people, however, know him as the guy who totes a camera around Sheffield at night, posting the resulting pictures on Facebook and at danshotme.com. He also blogs, less freely and less often than he used to, at www.sumption.org. In his spare time, he fosters children and dreams of owning goats, growing walking-stick kale, and building a masonry stove covered in fancy ceramic tiles. Possibly green ones.

Image: Lady Canning's Plantation at night by "Dan Sumption"

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Music as Medicine [spotify]

The Mountain Goats — Half Dead 
The Smiths — Still Ill
Rocky Votolato — Suicide Medicine
Leftover Crack — With The Sickness
NOFX — Take two placebos and call me lame
Health — Glitter pills
Friendly Fires — Lovesick 
Phoenix — If I ever feel better

The idea for this Playlist Club mix saved me from the tail-end boredom of recovery as I was finishing off two duvet days spent sick from work. 

When in good health, everyone wishes that they could spend the odd extra day in bed after the weekends. But when you're forced to spend a day in bed, it rarely comes with that soothing feeling of rest and relaxation and the welcome sigh of relief at not being a slave to the alarm never arrives. No, instead those anticipated feelings of deliciously taking a day off whilst the whole world works takes the form of cold bathroom tiles on hot knees and hours spent twisting and turning to keep your head afloat in a turbulent sea of bedsheets. 

These songs have all ended up coming from artists that I've had brief, intense love affairs with over the years (some more than others) and maybe the intensity and frequency with which I listened to these bands somehow reflects the brevity of the bug I had, turning my world upside down for a couple of days then leaving me feeling slightly worn-out and ready to get back to normal.  

When illness strikes, any good doctor would prescribe lots of rest and plenty of medicine. I'm sure that, had I not been advised to never darken the doors of the GP's surgery for fear I would strike down the whole of West Leeds with my illness, my doctor would have provided me with a 'script for these eight tracks as a cure. 

About Playlist Club-er: Gemma Critchley (@GemStGem)

Gemma works in advertising by day and writes stories by night. When she's not doing that, she tinkers around with digital bits and bobs, writes her blog for the one a day project or drinks tea whilst daydreaming of adventures far away from Leeds.

Image: Potions and Lotions by Kath Harding at Behance Network

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Sonic Youth — Teen Age Riot
Bruce Springsteen — Darkness On The Edge of Town
Chef Raekwon — Knuckleheadz
Roy Orbison — In Dreams
The Fall — Hotel Bloedel
Letta Mbulu — What's Wrong With Groovin'
Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity — Season Of The Witch
The Beach Boys — God Only Knows

The Number 91. From a bus route I used to take from Crouch End to the Aldwych. The journey in was always upbeat. The journey back usually more melancholic and wistful. 

This playlist is culled from my most popular tracks on iTunes and lives on from when I used to work in London and take the number 91 bus  to work (when it was too wet to cycle). It's in that well trodden crypto-fascist-hippy genre, in literature terms somewhere between Laurie Lee, Joseph Heller and Bret Easton Ellis. I'd like to think most people inhabit that spectrum of emotions somewhere in their day, oscillating between light and dark. It's interesting to me because of what it excludes as much as what it contains. I wanted to include Claro Intelecto recent stuff and Boo Williams' early work, but neither live on Spotify. Their music manages to be both simultaneously. Crystal Castles were too bleak for me today but I do love them for a descent into dark. And Katell Kleineg's last album At The Mermaid Parade has a few wonderful tracks that could have replaced the Beach Boys. Again, not on spotify but always in my head. Thank you.

About Playlist Club-er: James Boardwell (@jamesb)

I'm James Boardwell. I blog at Technogoggles and am a Director of Folksy.

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Sunday Dad [Spotify] (bonus youtube playlist link)

• Cat Stevens – Wild World
• Bob Marley & The Wailers – Redemption Song
• Lou Reed – Vicious
• Nico – Venus In Furs
• David Bowie – The Jean Genie
• Thin Lizzy – Whiskey In The Jar - Full Length Version
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Purple Haze
• The Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil

When I was young the house was always filled with music on a Sunday. If Mum was in charge then it would be great female vocalists of the 50/60s such as Nina Simone and Diana Ross or just some classic Motown. More often than not it would be Dad's music playing as he did some DIY round the house or slept off his afternoon visit to 'Church' and the Sunday dinner. This playlist is about the Sunday music of my Dad. The photo shows the classic music centre used to spin the long players, you can just about make out the cover of Aladdin Sane and you can clearly make out my Dad's mullet and 'tache circa 1984. 

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