Angels Are Playing With My Heart

Something special for a blue-tiful Monday...

"And I wept both night and day,

And he wip'd my tears away,

And I wept both day and night,

And hid from him my heart's delight."

- William Blake, 'The Angel'

I've recently realised that a large percentage of the songs that turn me on are about angels... Kate Bush's The Red Shoes LP has a permanent place within arms-length of my turntable, and I often listen to "Lily" (really loud) before heading off to work. If this track - which stars angels Raphael, Uriel, Michael and more - doesn't get you through the day, nothing will...

"Gabriel before me,
Raphael behind me,

Michael to my right,

Uriel on my left side

In the circle of fire."

- Kate Bush, 'Lily'

Last week I compiled a playlist for the launch of the awesome new Love Jozi T-shirt range and in the process rediscovered Lamb's "Gabriel", which was a fittingly heavenly accompaniment to the fabulous Ts and fantastic wallpaper. Probably the zenith of Lamb's should-have-been-more-illustrious career, it has been on repeat ever since.

"I can fly

But I want his wings,

I can shine even in the darkness

But I crave the light that he brings,

Revel in the songs that he sings:

My angel Gabriel."

- Lamb - 'Gabriel'

"Gabriel" also got me thinking about angelic conversations and holy connections - and then searching for angel-related records. After ditching Abba's "Angel Eyes" and some dubious business from the likes of Wang Chung, I was left with a selection of ten more-than-decent ditties with celestial overtones. And because I wanna give you devotion, I thought I'd share them all with you...

The Angel-ise folder available for download below contains acts whose divine output might best be described as "art pop": the aforementioned Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, CocoRosie, Roxy Music, Massive Attack, St. Etienne...

It also features a pretty out-there collaboration between the late Jeff Buckley and Nymphs' vocalist Inger Lorre (from the Kicks Joy Darkness album, a tribute to Beat poet Jack Kerouac), and an easier-gliding collaboration between ace South African emcee Zubz and vocalist Ziza, who's the singer in Suplex (see the last post below).

DJ Dexterity - Angel-ise Playlist [61 Mbs]:

CocoRosie - Terrible Angels

Cocteau Twins - Oil Of Angels

Four Tet - My Angel Rocks Back and Forth

Inger Lorre & Jeff Buckley - Angel Mine

Kate Bush - Lily

Lamb - Gabriel

Massive Attack - Angel

Roxy Music - Angel Eyes

St. Etienne - Angel (Broadcast Remix)

Zubz ft. Ziza - Remember, Drunken Angels Don't Sing

DJ Dexterity's Angel-ise Playlist

*Tip: Use WinZip or WinRAR to unzip this little taste of heaven.

Where The Wild Flowers Grow

Coming on like the lovechild of Jeff Buckley and Kate Bush, Rufus Wainwright is a maverick who operates at an event horizon where jazz, rock, folk, classical, gospel and even opera converge. He labels his richly-layered output "Baroque Pop".

Like Jeff Buckley, Wainwright is the progeny of rock royalty - his parents are Loudon Wainwright III and folk singer Kate McGarrigle - and the two met a couple of times before Buckley's untimely death. Wainwright's "Memphis Skyline" is a tribute to Buckley and references "Hallelujah", the sweeping Leonard Cohen-penned number that is the late singer's best known song and that Wainwright regularly plays live (and actually recorded for the 'Shrek' soundtrack).

Thankfully the connections between the two end there. Wainwright made it through the mythical late 20s that are so often the end days for musicians, overcoming a crystal meth habit, temporary blindness and a vicious sexual assault to emerge mostly intact – and on a career path that's still yielding seductive results.

Wainwright at his most baroque: performing "Agnus Dei" off the 'Want Two' album, live in Central Park

Wainwright excels at reaching left of field and positioning the oddities he finds out there in between cosy pop cushioning. It's an MO that climaxes in captivating songs, critical commendation and, for the most part, mainstream obscurity. His half-a-dozen albums have met with high praise and low sales, but that hasn't deterred him from pursuing a unique trajectory that's included collaborations with the Pet Shop Boys, Burt Bacharach and Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons.

Long before the latter made a surprise cameo on the microphone for sublime DFA-signed disco evangelists Hercules and Love Affair (their self-titled debut may just be the best album of '08), Wainwright enlisted the services of playful dance music duo Supermayer to tear apart and stitch back up "Tiergarten" (off his most recent long-player, 'Release The Stars'). The unlikely get-together resulted in one of the finest dancefloor highs of last year. In fact, it's one of the most memorable techno moments of the millennium, period.

Written for his German boyfriend, "Tiergarten" takes its title from the massive Berlin park that houses the Reichstag and the Brandeburg Gate, and fittingly it gets re-fitted by the Berlin-based dream team of Superpitcher and Michael Mayer. As Supermayer, this odd couple unleashed the extraordinarily diverse "Save The World" album (on quintessential techno label Kompakt) in 2007.

As impure as it is impressive, that record flirts with indie, lounge, jazz and an array of strange instrumentation, strapping the disparate strands onto streamlined digital arpeggios and pile-driving bass pulses. The outcome: thrillingly animated anthems like 'Two Of Us' and 'The Art Of Letting Go'.

Supermayer go even further out on their remix of "Tiergarten". It's what might have been born out of a meeting between Burt Bacharach and Giorgio Moroder - if it was scripted by Steven Spielberg. Techno with a human heart, digital abstraction with feet firmly on terra firma: super-heroic sonics in the midst of the collosal rainstorm that is the track's centre-piece. I suggest you get wet...

Rufus Wainwright - "Tiergarten"