Recently, I’ve realized that a lot of my favorite music involves the melding of experimental practices with traditional song craft and/or tonality. While I love both pop and experimental music on their own, their co-mingling can yield some of the most fascinating results and seems like the most logical move for both genres. As a result, songs often become formally deconstructed and/or through-composed, while experimental compositions become more formal and, in certain cases, tonally centered.
In recent decades, the cross pollination of these genres has really become much more readily apparent, and 2013 seems to be a particularly good year for music of this nature. When compiling these tracks, I realized that one could make a truly massive mix tape of tunes that exhibit these characteristics from this year alone. The tracks presented here are some of my personal favorites that tend to fall in the middle ground between the two genres, but a few lean slightly more toward the experimental (Wakesleep) and some toward the pop (Ashley Eriksson). Additionally, the mix was organized so that there’d be tonal and/or timbral relationships between each track.
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[00:00] Ashley Paul - “Soak the Ocean”
[04:20] Bill Baird - “Spring Break of the Soul”
[11:59] Ashley Eriksson - “Mother Nature’s Promise”
[13:30] Howe Gelb - “Man on a String”
[18:32] Lee Noble - “Remind Me”
[24:50] Ryan Power - “Well on Your Way”
[31:41] Wakesleep - “Web Ice2”
[34:51] Baptist Generals - “Floating”