It’s rainy season and if you find yourself standing outside in a torrential downpour, that’s because October is one of Eugene’s rainier months of the year. Well, it’s one of the nine. Here’s a soundtrack for those long strolls in the rain:
Julianna Barwick – “Pyrrhic.” Most of Barwick’s music conjures daytime fairyland imagery, but her recent album Nepenthe‘s element is rain. I advise listening to this song around 1:30 a.m. while twirling around in the field of grass near the reservoir on 26th and Lawrence while it’s lightly raining.
Marianne Faithfull – “Penthouse Serenade.” This is one of the more lighthearted cuts from Faithfull’s gorgeous yet unrelentingly melancholy 1987 album Strange Weather. Listen from an empty room in the top of PLC during a rainstorm for best experience.
Bvdub & Loscil – “Aether.“ This cut from Brock Van Wey and Scott Morgan’s dub-techno epic Erebus at first seems to spray the listener like a gentle dust of rain. But then shelf clouds begin brewing; divine voices swell from the heavens and you’re caught in a Biblical-scale storm.
Donato Dozzy – “Vaporware 1.” Italian producer Donato Dozzy makes deeply organic-sounding electronic music that contrasts shimmering instrumental leads with wet, squelchy backdrops. “Vaporware 1″ is the musical equivalent of that shine the streets get at night after the rain.
Philip Jeck – “Wholesome.” Decades before chillwave and vaporwave, Philip Jeck pioneered the use of warped samples to evoke a certain nostalgic loneliness. Detached and muffled yet oddly joyful, “Wholesome” evokes obscure memories of rain-swept places.
Vladislav Delay – “Kohde.” I’ve included Vladislav Delay on a few of my lists for no less a reason than that he’s my favorite ambient artist (tied with Gas, whose Pop is one of my favorite rain albums but is unavailable on Spotify). “Kohde” exemplifies the wet and windy soundscapes he’s known for.
Destroyer – “Bay Of Pigs.” Dan Bejar is a Vancouver native and Cascadian weather runs in his blood. Rain is a frequent image in his lyrics, but his foggy, atmospheric arrangements evoke that form of precipitation on their own.
Bill Orcutt – “Heaven Is Closed To Me Now.” Former punk noisemaker Bill Orcutt now crafts solo guitar epics with an intriguingly primal quality. His 2011 album How The Thing Sings is proof you don’t need samples, synths, or even bands to make evocative and engaging music.
Vangelis – “Blade Runner Blues.” While Eugene certainly isn’t 2019 Los Angeles, the weather’s pretty similar. Vangelis’s eerie synths seem to cut through layers of storm clouds, making them a perfect accompaniment to Ridley Scott’s rain-soaked film and pretty much any other rainy environment.
(Not on Spotify) Tink – “When It Rains.” Chicago rapper Tink’s Winter’s Diary 2 is one of my favorite hip-hop releases of the year so far, in no small part due to this song. Though it’s firmly rooted in contemporary musical traditions, it feels timeless due to its romantic exploration of a universal yet highly specific theme – in this case, sex in the rain.
Follow Daniel Bromfield on Twitter @bromf3