Like he did last sum­mer, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has put togeth­er two eclec­tic music playlists–one for a hot sum­mer day, and anoth­er for a sum­mer evening. And they’re both pret­ty chill, the stuff vaca­tions are made of. If you have Spo­ti­fy (down­load it here), you can start stream­ing all of the songs below. And if you want to know more about Clin­ton and Trump’s favorite songs, check out this piece on Rolling Stone.

The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Day­time

1. Love­Hate Thing — Wale
2. Smooth Sailin’ — Leon Bridges
3. Ele­va­tor Oper­a­tor — Court­ney Bar­nett
4. Home — Edward Sharpe and the Mag­net­ic Zeros
5. Many the Miles — Sara Bareilles
6. Tightrope — Janelle Mon­ae
7. Clas­sic Man — Jiden­na
8. So Ambi­tious — Jay‑Z, feat. Phar­rell
9. Me Gus­tas Tu — Manu Chao
10. For­ev­er Begins — Com­mon
11. The Man — Aloe Blacc
12. As We Enter — Nas & Dami­an “Jr. Gong” Mar­ley
13. Sin­ner­man — Nina Simone
14. U Got the Look — Prince
15. Rock Steady — Aretha Franklin
16. Good Vibra­tions — Beach Boys
17. Don’t Owe You A Thang — Gary Clark Jr.
18. Man Like That — Gin Wig­more
19. II B.S. (edit) — Charles Min­gus

The Pres­i­den­t’s Sum­mer Playlist: Night­time

1. If I Have My Way — Chrisette Michelle
2. Espera — Esper­an­za Spald­ing
3. Tell It Like It Is — Aaron Neville
4. Alright — Ledisi
5. Trapped By A Thing Called Love — Denise Lasalle
6. Lady — D’An­ge­lo
7. So Very Hard to Go — Tow­er of Pow­er
8. Mid­night Sun — Car­men McCrae
9. Cucur­ru­cu­cu Palo­ma — Cae­tano Veloso
10. Green Aphro­disi­ac — Corinne Bai­ley Rae
11. I’ll Be There for You / You’re All I Need — Mary J Blige / Method Man
12. Lover Man — Bil­lie Hol­i­day
13. Crim­i­nal — Fiona Apple
14. Acid Rain — Chance the Rap­per
15. My Fun­ny Valen­tine — Miles Davis
16. Do You Feel Me — Antho­ny Hamil­ton
17. I Get Lone­ly — Janet Jack­son
18. Lean In — Lizz Wright
19. All Day Music — War
20. Say Yes — Floetry

via CNN.

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Every direc­tor who casts Cate Blanchett—whether in peri­od block­busters like Eliz­a­beth or Aus­tralian indies like Lit­tle Fish­es—lets the cam­era dwell on her face for sev­er­al silent beats in almost every scene she’s in. It’s almost a way of estab­lish­ing her face as a char­ac­ter all its own, with its sharp fea­tures and con­sum­ing stare. Just above, Mas­sive Attack’s video for their new song, “The Spoils,” takes this ten­den­cy deep into the uncan­ny val­ley.

Open­ing with a shot of Blanchett’s eyes, then sev­er­al long, lin­ger­ing looks at her face in close-up and deep chiaroscuro, the video quick­ly becomes more abstract and alien as it decon­structs her beau­ty into var­i­ous kinds of arti­fice. It’s an art-house motif we’ve seen used effec­tive­ly with oth­er actress­es known for their strik­ing good looks—Scarlett Johans­son in 2013’s Under the Skin, for exam­ple, or last year’s Ex Machi­na with Ali­cia Vikan­der.

These are films that defa­mil­iar­ize their famous actress­es and dis­rupt our com­fort­ably shal­low ideas about beau­ty and gen­der. “The Spoils”—scored by a band known for their cin­e­mat­ic sound (and occa­sion­al­ly Oscar-win­ning film sound­tracks) and their polit­i­cal stances—functions beau­ti­ful­ly as a mini-exper­i­men­tal film that takes us into pro­found and unset­tling ter­ri­to­ry. This should come as no sur­prise; its direc­tor, John Hill­coat, also adapt­ed Cor­mac McCarthy’s The Road into a film from which, for all its bleak­ness, we can hard­ly look away.

Mas­sive Attack is also known for work­ing with some of the most soul­ful of UK singers, includ­ing Shara Nel­son, Tracey Thorn, Eliz­a­beth Fras­er, and Sinead O’Connor. In “The Spoils,” they col­lab­o­rate with an Amer­i­can, anoth­er name we asso­ciate with the best of hazy, atmos­pher­ic 90s chill-out music, Mazzy Star’s Hope San­doval. The results are hyp­not­ic, as in all Sandoval’s work, and lush­ly, metic­u­lous­ly pro­duced.

That said, tak­en sep­a­rate­ly, the song los­es some of the arrest­ing emo­tion­al pow­er it has accom­pa­ny­ing HIll­coat’s Twi­light Zone images. You may be put in mind of the House intro with its x‑rays and organs shroud­ed in dark­ness, scored to Mas­sive Attack’s “Teardrop.” But we can also com­pare “The Spoils” to “Teardrop”’s offi­cial video, above, anoth­er lin­ger­ing med­i­ta­tion on human iden­ti­ty and per­son­al­i­ty.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

The New Radio­head Album is Out; Watch a Paul Thomas Ander­son-Direct­ed Music Video for One of the New Sin­gles

David Fincher’s Five Finest Music Videos: From Madon­na to Aero­smith

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

They’ll nev­er be worth as much as the alleged box of first edi­tion Super­man comics left in my father’s room when he shipped out to sea, alleged­ly giv­en to the dump by his moth­er, though she for­ev­er denied it; but those over­stuffed box­es full of cheap mix­tapes from the late 80s and 90s in my clos­et have to be worth some­thing, right? If only to the inter­net… the Inter­net Archive, a more spe­cif­ic place, and yes, it’s the one that hosts the Way­back Machine, pre­serv­er of web­pages no one updates or, real­ly, vis­its any­more.

But this is not a sad sto­ry about what hap­pened to Web 1.0! But a hap­py one about where your mix­tapes will go, because they are need­ed. Just as a recent gen­er­a­tion decid­ed to bypass the six­ties and go back to the sources of Hen­drix and CSNY so future hip­sters of today ignore oughties retreads and return to the world just before the inter­net. They go full anti­quar­i­an with it, with authen­tic peri­od cos­tumes and peri­od-era equip­ment, which means they often sound ter­ri­ble. They need cas­settes to get it right.

The cas­sette has already made its way back in a big way, rein­tro­duc­ing the sound of ear­ly syn­th­pop, indus­tri­al music, DIY indie rock, and a genre called “tape exper­i­men­ta­tion” that encom­pass­es any­thing from avant-garde musique con­crète to the lat­est pro­duc­tion of spliced togeth­er cas­sette tape. The sound of decay­ing tape—a soup of hiss and muf­fled, warped, out-of-tune copies of songs—birthed dark, sludgy met­al and per­fect­ly cap­tured the sound­tracks of hor­ror movies. And, imper­fect­ly, the sound of every­thing else. These were “the days when the audio cas­sette was the stan­dard method of music shar­ing… gen­er­al­ly the mid-eight­ies through ear­ly-nineties,” points out The Noise-Arch Archive, which hosts just such a col­lec­tion, on just such a (dig­i­tized) medi­um. 30 gigs of tape hiss.

One needs a reli­able guide like, say, Tom Waits, to under­stand how weird depres­sion-era music was. This archive makes sig­nif­i­cant head­way in con­vey­ing the same infor­ma­tion about the Bush (the first) and Clin­ton (the first) years. One need only lis­ten to Church of the Tapes­lice / Time­s­plice at the top, as much as that’s pos­si­ble, to get a fla­vor of how. It’s a mélange of Frank Zap­pa-like sound col­lage, Res­i­dents-like sar­don­ic absur­di­ty, Devo-like black humor, and free-form-the-DJ-is-real­ly-stoned-lev­el goofi­ness you’ve heard at least once late night on your col­lege radio sta­tion. But they aren’t all this off-putting, and they aren’t all this approach­able either.

Psy­cho­ma­nia, fur­ther up, lives up to its name. It opens inno­cent­ly enough, with some sort of non­de­script­ly trib­al dit­ty, lilt­ing, if unset­tling. Then the mix shifts into full gial­lo mode, the loud, pun­ish­ing synths and descend­ing har­monies of doom that com­prise the scores of “Spaghet­ti Slash­ers.” Expect the obscure of the obscure in every tape in this col­lec­tion. “Much of this mate­r­i­al defies cat­e­go­ry,” Noise-Arch advis­es, “and has there­fore not been giv­en one.” Much of it sounds like some­thing you might rec­og­nize, only a few uncan­ny removes from your point of ref­er­ence.

The col­lec­tion above—its bare­ly leg­i­ble cov­er describes a com­pi­la­tion from “Fetus Pro­duc­tions” in Australia—opens with some real­ly off-kil­ter elec­tro-lounge music and pro­gress­es into a full-on syn­th­pop opera. None of this music, obvi­ous­ly, should be missed. Nor the music stored in impor­tant archives cur­rent­ly occu­py­ing my clos­et. I’ll nev­er sell it. Because who wants a bunch of worn-out crap­py plas­tic tapes? It’s what’s on them that we need to pre­serve. Even the hard-to-love slack­er non­sense of I Was a Teenage Com­mu­nist (The Secret Con­fes­sions of Oliv­er North).  Enter The Noise-Arch Archive here.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Great Mix­tapes Richard Lin­klater Cre­at­ed to Psych Up the Actors in Dazed and Con­fused and Every­body Wants Some!!

Atten­tion K‑Mart Shop­pers: Hear 90 Hours of Back­ground Music & Ads from the Retail Giant’s 1980s and 90s Hey­day

A Mas­sive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alter­na­tive Music, in Chrono­log­i­cal Order

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness