Charcuterie Music
If you haven’t read my book Bedroom Rapper (and if you’re subscribed to this newsletter and haven’t yet, you need to cop that), there’s an essay in it about my experiences DJing at restaurants. People often ask me how I find music. I usually have trouble explaining succinctly because there isn’t really a tidy answer. For me, it’s a multi-pronged system that your average person wouldn’t have the time or patience for. Nevertheless, I thought it might be interesting to detail my discovery process here, which I would describe as a partial rejection of the algorithmic curation model that we’re subjected to as listeners by streaming apps.
There are some obvious things you can do: look for new releases in your chosen genres on Beatport, Juno and Boomkat, follow your favourite artists and labels on Bandcamp / social media / streaming apps so you get alerted to their new songs, check out compilations and reissues, watch DJs on Boiler Room, listen to NTS, ISO Radio and The Lot Radio, join record pools and promo lists, stay plugged into music press outlets. Algorithmic suggestions from streaming apps can be helpful as well.
Plus there’s real world stuff, such as word of mouth, going to the club or shopping at a physical store. I’ll often go to a used record shop and spend an hour or more to “clear” the entire place, making sure no relevant corner has been left unturned. I find this process incredibly meditative and it’s something I do in every city I go to on tour. Sometimes the smallest towns have the biggest tracks.
The combo of Discogs and YouTube is pretty much unbeatable for music discovery. If I’m into a particular producer, I’ll use Discogs to check out every song they’ve ever made or worked on. Going down a wormhole like this can lead to great results. When you’re searching, follow your intuition. If you find a banging Swedish ‘80s coldwave track on a compilation, check out other compilations the group has been on and listen to other bands from the same label. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
If I notice a few bangers have come from the same label, I’ll go to their page on Discogs Marketplace, change the filter to Price Highest and then comb through the label’s most valued records. But don’t stubbornly ignore singles that aren’t considered valuable either. Some of the best stuff doesn’t figure into financial speculation. You can also search through entire sub-genres and apply various search filters to get granular around your specific interests. Looking for the hottest italo disco records released in 1982? Got ‘em right here.
As you can imagine, this can all be very time-consuming. There’s a lot of guesswork and trial and error involved, hours spent separating the wheat from the chaff (which itself is a skill developed over time). I’ve spent entire days looking for music where I’ve only come away with three or four songs. But it’s still incredibly rewarding when you do strike gold. When it comes to hunting for music, the well never goes dry.
There’s always something new to discover and the landscape changes as you do. You learn to move past that initial surge of excitement at finding something to coldly assessing the true value of a record: will I still like it in five years? Five days? Five minutes? Some of what I was into back in 2017 might not catch my ear today. A finely tuned filter will save you money in the long run. Pre-pandemic, I was really into ‘90s acid house. In 2020, I was all about ‘80s digital dancehall. Most recently, I combed through the entire Drexciya discography. As my interests shift, so do my targets. Different artists and tracks appear to be lit up and glowing when I see them.
What is Charcuterie Music? It’s music for restaurants that I’ve refined over the years. I think of it as songs that work as background noise but are also compelling if you decide to focus in on them. Tunes that could inspire you to imagine a different version of yourself. There’s a particular sensibility or attitude I’m looking for, a sense of longing tinged with optimism. I’m attracted to naïve playful music that feels like a pure, true artistic expression. I love a good cover version. There’s nothing more exciting than someone putting a classic into a new context. I enjoy demos where the artist is still searching for the form around the song as well as flawed homemade recordings that use primitive drum machines instead of full band arrangements. I love songs where the title is something like “I Love Music” and the artist’s name is J.T. and it’s the only song they’ve ever released.
This isn’t a contest to find the most obscure tracks though. Some of the songs are well-known or even rinsed into oblivion in DJ corners. It’s not totally about taste either. Some of these songs might be too cheesy for you but they’re exactly right for me. Ultimately, I hope you come away with at least one song you really love. And if not, you can still apply my methods to whatever you’re into. It’ll work best if it’s something you’re personally passionate about. I don’t hold myself as a musical authority of any kind and don’t believe I’m more gifted at digging than anyone else. But I have gotten better at knowing what I like and how to find it and that has been helpful.
I really honed in on this concept early in the pandemic when I started live-streaming on Twitch and called those sessions Quarantunes. That’s when the ethos solidified for me and I started to realize exactly what I was looking for. I thought of it as Songs For A Party That May Never Come. The search is an obsession. I might not find every great African disco track but I’m gonna do my damnedest to try. This isn’t a list of my favourite songs per se, just songs that work for a particular setting. I’m sure every music nerd has a thing like this, just with a different name and aesthetic. For me, it’s Charcuterie Music.
Over the last little while, I’ve been building a rolling playlist with most of my go-to restaurant DJing tracks over the years. Now when you go over to a friend’s house this spring or a backyard BBQ in the summer, you can just throw it on random and some interesting songs will play. Putting this playlist together is my version of how comedians will end a set with their best material and then never use those jokes again. I hope it will encourage me to continue to make digging for tracks a more consistent part of my artistic practice. As much as I enjoy doing it, I can tell by the timestamps on my files that I’ve had sporadic surges in activity over the past few years that have been interrupted by live performance and real life and I want to make that a thing of the past.
I’ve been reading Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983 by Tim Lawrence and Music Is History by Questlove and my favourite part of both books are the lists! Those lists are impossibly significant to me, the personal history of DJs throughout time, etched into stone for eternity. In many ways, Charcuterie Music is a statement of my life. Growing up with funk music around the house, there’s a lot of the DNA of my parents in what resonates with me. Whether it’s a song that I find profoundly moving, something completely unserious or a peak hour anthem that could bring a crowd to a state of rapture, it’s all in here and of equal importance.
If you’re in Toronto, please come to this month’s edition of Frequencies at Handlebar this Thursday March 30th. The lineup features Parallel World producer Korea Town Acid and current collaborator myst milano so it’s not one to miss. Get your tickets here
You can find me updating my playlists or hanging on TikTok, Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram. You can listen to my music on Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp and you can get Cadence Weapon merchandise here. Pick up your copy of Bedroom Rapper here and please rate it on Goodreads
This is genius! 🎯 grateful for the new playlist!