Archives – 2023 – November – 26  

The League Of Extraordinary Tracks II: 4. ALL CHANGE! – Polls
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Here’s where you can vote in the latest round of the League Of Extraordinary Tracks! Our theme this week is ALL CHANGE! – line-up changes, collaborations, and side projects.

How to join in? It’s simple:

  1. Go to the Playlist Post and hear the 11 new tracks.
  2. Vote for UP TO FOUR of your favourites but remember – you should only vote for songs you didn’t already know!
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League Of Extraordinary Tracks S2E3: ALL CHANGE!

Please pick up to FOUR of these tracks.

DO NOT PICK TRACKS YOU ALREADY KNEW!

Spotify and YouTube playlists in the playlist post.

The poll has expired!

The League Of Extraordinary Tracks II: 4. ALL CHANGE! – Playlists
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Welcome back to the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY TRACKS, our weekly (in theory) music discovery game. Eleven players submit tracks each round on a theme – the idea is to find stuff we the voters haven’t heard yet. This is the playlist post – once you’ve heard the songs, go and vote in the poll post.

This week’s theme is – well, it’s complicated. Originally the submitted idea was “Introducing…” – debuts by musicians on songs by others, like guest verses or debuts of later jazz bandleaders. A cool theme, but very tricky to research (since, by the nature of things, debuts of famous people tend to be well known in their own right). I asked to expand it to include more broad shifts like band line up changes, collaborations, aliases and side projects. And in the end line up changes and side projects were what almost all the players went for. So I renamed the week to “ALL CHANGE!”

The Spotify playlist is missing a final track – the Orb and Alan Parker collaboration – it’s the final song on the YouTube list:

I’ll leave it to the players to explain how each track qualifies. For now, just enjoy the sounds they’ve selected. Thanks to them for wrestling with a tricky brief!

Ringing The Changes:

  1. HERBIE HANCOCK – “Wiggle Waggle”: From 1969’s Fat Albert Rotunda
  2. BY STORM – “Double Trio”: From 2023’s Double Trio EP.
  3. V/Z – “Habadash”: From 2023’s Sueno Assente
  4. PROPAGANDA – “La Carne, La Morte e Il Diavolo”: From 1990’s 1234.
  5. EKKAH – “Last Chance To Dance”: From 2014’s Last Chance To Dance EP.
  6. THE OTHER TWO – “Selfish”: From 1993’s The Other Two And You
  7. MAM – “Ongelofelijk”: A 1989 single!
  8. LEAVES’ EYES – “Across The Sea”: From 2018’s Sign Of The Dragonhead
  9. TSOL – “Flowers By The Door”: From 1984’s Change Today?
  10. NANCY VANDAL – “Egg Sandwich”: From 1996’s The Interrogation Room
  11. THE ORB ft ALAN PARKER – “Grey Clouds”: From the 2007 compilation Annie Nightingale Presents Y4K

Special note: One contestant was unable to submit this week, so I found a track instead. But I’m not going to tell you which it is!

The League Of Extraordinary Tracks II: 3. INSTRUMENTALS – Results!
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We’re back! Apologies for the late running of this round – I’m juggling a lot of different projects at the moment (and writing a lot more for Popular of course). But we have Round 4 finally ready to go so here are the RESULTS of our League Instrumentals week. Thanks to our players for what I thought were a particularly strong and varied set of tunes!

Things are still pretty tight at the top but there was a clear winner last week, several votes ahead of the two joint-second place tracks: kosmische vibes from Ashra and post-(Daft)-punk electro fun from Ratatat. The winner though was the whistle-while-you-work rhythms of the Ghana Postal Workers, a field recording nominated by JOE KAY who moves into the lead in our overall scoreboard. He’s only a few points ahead of the field, though, with much to play for.

The Week 5 challenge is going to be a festive special – 21st Century Christmas Songs! As for Week 4, that’s a bit trickier to explain – maybe I should just put it up…

The Discourse