“Listen In” is a weekly feature in which we ask musicians to curate a mixtape-length YouTube playlist of songs they’re currently digging.
Listening to Cities Aviv’s latest release, 2012’s excellent Black Pleasure, it’s hard not to be wowed and/or disoriented by the sonic landscape. Out is the left-of-center boom-bap that characterized his debut, replaced with music that’s altogether more challenging–stuttering, mechanical beats rub shoulders with big synth lines and rapping that’s often obscured by a metallic layer of reverb.
The Memphis-bred rapper’s “Listen In” playlist gives a tour of the kinds of alternately blissful and confrontational sounds that populate that record–ambient trance and techno, brutal southern sludge metal, and queasy lo-fi internet rap are all here. Click the big play button above to hear the whole playlist, and scroll down to see and play individual songs.
“Sunrise on Epsilon,” Aurasfere, 1994
“ADV ALT DIV,” Blam Lord, 2013
“All That I Need Is to Be Loved,” Moby, 1995
“Will That Never Dies,” Crowbar, 1993
“Type of Way,” Rich Homie Quan, 2013
“Feel the Heat,” Vomito Negro, 1990
“Transparenza,” Extreme, 1990
“Pedigree,” Dean Blunt, 2013
