With the full realization that this is not unique to me, Autumn is my favorite time of year. Nostalgia is largely to blame; the smell and scratch of a plastic Ben Cooper mask, walking to school with Badfinger on the Walkman, piles of leaves on the side of the road that my mom insisted 100% has a child hidden inside so steer well clear of them, a giant orange moon on a crisply cold and damp evening... But now in adulthood in the here and now I feel a connection to nature in these months that I don't feel in other seasons (you guys can dimestore shrink whatever that means that I feel a deeper connection to the death cycle than the birth of Spring) and of course music and sounds take on a deeper resonance in the darkening days. These are the months I pull out my British folk records, and delta blues albums and ESP Disks.. Reaping and sewing.

On this batch of songs however, I didn't go thematic in any way. They aren't necessarily meant to be "Autumn' songs (though the argument could easily be made that this list works pretty damn good on these chilly nights). I just wanted to pull out a snapshot of where my head is at right now. This is what is playing in my kitchen in the morning, during the day in my office, in my car and on the home turntable after we put the kids to bed. About 95% of this music was released or reissued in the past couple of years and then there's a few outliers that have stuck around in my head for some time and I'd feel like a liar if I didn't include them.. Here you're going to find worldwide psychedelic guitar burners (melted AND fried), groove explorations, underground hip hop, liberated jazz, fukked dub, and a current of politics expressed lyrically and / or sonically.

This is my mood and headspace lately, so I hope there's something here y'all can get out of these songs too. I guess let me know what you think in the comments and I'll try and reply over the next few days.

As they say on the great internet mystery machine, Reddit.. Ask Me Anything.

love and respect always

Ben Swank

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