various / 14 tracks

14 SAD songs

We're suckers for bleak and melancholy sounds come autumn/winter. After a bit of foraging in our hard drives, we've come up with a string and song-based counterpart to our recent 'Crepuscular Electronica' selection, rounding up achingly beautiful shoegaze, drone, pop and experimental sounds from the last 20 years. At one extreme, we're immersed in Gate's 1994 noise ballad, 'Sadness Sings', and the electro-acoustic practices of Stian Westerhus and Simon Scott, beside the breathtaking, dissonant keen of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's 'Their Helicopters Sing' and Samara Lubelski's exquisite ghosting, 'All The Tired Horses'. At the other we've included desiccated drone-pop from Grouper's classic 'Wide' album and the lushest shoegaze strains of Should and Zelienople, complemented by the pop-friendly malaise of PINS and Amen Dunes and succinct measures of darkness from Slaves, Sam Willis and Halls. Now, we're not intending to make light of SAD (pun sub-consciously intended), but in our untrained opinion, sometimes poor mood + bleak music makes for the most life-affirming experience.