New posts from mutebenny.micro.blog
Big Resolution Energy
Hello dear reader, welcome to this digital space!
This microblog is an experiment in support of my new years intention to be creative each day and align my values more closely with the tools I use. I’ll be posting a wide variety of (mostly independent) music, excerpts from books and articles, updates from my music and art projects, and maybe some vegan recipes.
I’m interested in how digital networks can be used for more egalitarian purposes. How can we feel more human and embodied in a time dominated by abstraction and extraction at an unimaginable scale? How can we joyfully disentangle from inhuman(e) systems and find/build community at the same time?
You can find my hushed yet expansive chamber folk music and official newsletter musings over at mutualbenef.it
I believe you can subscribe (at your own risk) to a weekly digest of these posts.
Thank you for visiting, nice to meet you, my inbox is always open to swap art or ideas!
Jordan
mutualbenefitmusic (at) gmail.com
Love Me Or Leave Me by Nina Simone
Today’s song is Love Me Or Leave Me by Nina Simone (1965)
I love our local radio here in NYC and one tradition that has become a big part of our holidays is WKCR’s Bachfest which airs non-stop Bach and Bach-related music from Christmas Eve to the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Although it has run for 48 years, it only became a part of my life during a COVID lockdown when we were stuck inside and used the radio to feel more connected to a sense of place. The moment stayed with me deeply and now gives tradition, texture, and a bit of an endurance challenge to the year transition.
This year, amid the organ fugues and piano suites I was surprised to hear Nina Simone’s voice but then it made sense. Her training in classical piano before moving on to her multifaceted blues/jazz/soul style was in full force as she interpolated Bach’s piano style into a remarkable solo in the middle of an already great swing song.
Happy new time spiral!
Juana Molina - DOGA
Juana Molina - caravanas (2025)
Yesterday we held a rare party in our tiny apartment where we cooked pots of vegan soup to nourish our friends for the new year. At some point I played Juana Molina’s album DOGA and it felt like a perfect fit for the warm buzz of the gathering. The hypnotic sing-songy pop experiments stay mostly even keeled but bursts of well-placed sound design made it rise back into awareness prompting many to ask “what is this?” and writing it down for a closer listen later. I recommend her whole discography!
Eyvind Kang - Riparian
Eyvind Kang - Riparian (2025)
This record was a gift to my partner from Kou Records, a new and promising experimental record label. The album consists of two solo longform improvisations performed with a baroque oddity known as a viola d’amore. Kang switches between bowing and plucking while also flowing on the margins of musical traditions ranging from middle eastern, to Chinese, to many others that lay beyond my knowledge. I couldn’t believe he was creating all of these textures on one instrument.
There is something about the spacious, contemplative way Kang plays that invited my full attention in a way that many longform solo performances don’t. Perhaps that says more about my need to work on my attention span but nevertheless, it was very much worth braving the cold for this beautiful surprise LP in our PO Box.
I have been moving all the newsletters I subscribe to over to a RSS feed with the hopes that it takes the feeling of “getting behind” on reading to something that fosters open curiosity. It is bringing back fond memories of my 2010 Google Reader feed. Here’s to a more fun internet!
Reimagining Country and Mississippi Records
I’m finding part of the point of this blog is not only to share music I’ve been enjoying but to document how I found it to show all the non-algorithmic vectors of music discovery. There are millions of good songs out there but I’m more interested in it being part of an interesting community or connecting in some way to deeper ideas. Having extra context gives music so much more power.
So with that said, I’m a big fan of the curation of Mississippi Records and the care they put into their reissues of music from all over the world so when they emailed their year end reflections I made it a point to go through the recommendations (which unfortunately don’t seem to be archived anywhere online). My favorite rec so far has been the Reimagining Country radio show on NTS online radio. I was immediately pulled in by host Jamal Khadar’s conversation with musician and educator Valerie June about the African roots of Americana music and the porous boundaries of genre histories. Plus the music selections interspersed throughout were really on point, I’m excited to follow future episodes.
One track that stuck out to me was the minimalist hill country blues of Jessie Mae Hemphill so I’m including her song Standing in the Doorway Crying
🎵
