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How We Danced in 2025
Well, it’s that time of year again: the ball has dropped, roses have been paraded, resolutions have been made, and now it’s time for me to stress over my year-end playlist of dance music. Actually, since “numerical alliteration” affords me 25 spots this year, I didn’t bite off too many fingernails trying to whittle down my favorites from the last twelve months. This year’s collection is my usual mix of deep, funky, disco, tech, organic, and progressive house, so without further ado, I present my 25 from ’25! PROFF, Michael Cassette, Above & Beyond, Chicane, Qrion, and Romain Garcia all…
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How We Danced in 2024
In a poetic bit of coincidence, I had exactly 24 dance music Spotify likes from last year, so naturally this year’s edition must be a Top 24 of ’24 list. Well, it’s two lists actually, since the tracks fall nicely into two halves. (Bonus discovery: each half can fit perfectly on a single CD, in true “mix tape” fashion.) Part 1 – Oceanic Nostalgia The first part is almost entirely melodic deep house. For reasons I can’t quite explain, more than half have an aquatic vibe, hence the name of the list. Some have oceanic album art (Purple Disco Machine,…
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Anjunadeep Explorations 2024
Note from the editor: Anjunadeep Explorations is an annual music festival and label showcase in Dhermi, Albania. Many dozens of artists – all associated with the label in some way – play sets ranging from two to twelve hours across five different stages. Monday: We just finished up a fun weekend in Minnesota seeing family, so our itinerary ended up being slightly different this year, but basically the same thing: MSP – Chicago – Athens – Corfu. Even though we’ve done this travel day before, this one seemed to drag on forever. Get us to coastal Greece already! Tuesday: Just…
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How We Danced in 2023
Hot on the heels of last year’s retroactive post, here are my twenty favorite dance tracks from this past year. I cheated slightly, as the Yotto track is actually from 2022, but it’s new to me and also the perfect opening track for this list. This year’s list is a lot of deep or progressive all the way through, with some piano, disco, and tech house in the middle to really get the house party going. Chicane released a pretty good album this year, so he appears twice. I think Nevertheless is an amazing opening or closing track and had…
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How We Danced in 2022
Yes, yes, I know that I’m over a year late for this. But since I’ve now started posting about music, I figured I would also start posting my year-in-dance-music Spotify playlists. I started making these playlists only a year ago, so one retroactive post doesn’t feel too egregious. Upon picking my favorite 20 tracks from 2022, I realized they neatly fell into two camps. The first list is pop-adjacent in places, with a few “peak time” bangers and lots of emotional vocals. If you played this for someone not into dance music, they still might find something here that they…
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Amsterdam Dance Event
Note from the editor: ADE is a yearly conference for the dance music industry. There are many hundreds of events across the city, day and night, for five days, ranging from workshops to panel discussions to small parties to huge concerts. Monday: We knew that jet lag was going to be bad for this trip and that manifested immediately. Our 10-ish-hour flight from SFO left in the afternoon, so just as we were starting to feel sleepy, we landed in Amsterdam and it was time to start our day. Fred, our wonderfully quirky Airbnb host, thankfully let us check in…
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Anjunadeep Explorations 2023
Note from the editor: Anjunadeep Explorations is an annual music festival and label showcase in Dhermi, Albania. Many dozens of artists – all associated with the label in some way – play sets ranging from two to twelve hours across five different stages. Monday: Here we are again, on the same SFO – Newark – Athens – Corfu itinerary as last year. An uneventful but long day. Tuesday: We meet up with Ville and Kristiina in the Athens airport and fly to Corfu. Once again, we head to Angsana Corfu for two nights to deal with jet lag, be pampered…
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Anjunadeep Explorations 2022
Note from the editor: Anjunadeep Explorations is an annual music festival and label showcase in Dhermi, Albania. Many dozens of artists – all associated with the label in some way – play sets ranging from two to twelve hours across five different stages. Monday: Started off the week right by getting on a plane to Europe. It only took me 40 years to get there! Tuesday: Pretty uneventful travel, other than the hassle to get a taxi from the airport to Angsana since there aren’t enough taxis to go around. Angsana is a beautiful property on the coast, with amazing…
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Fleet Week Air Show
In a sign that maybe the world is returning to normal, San Francisco this year was once again visited by sailors and ships during the annual Fleet Week. Planes and jets fly over the city and the bay four afternoons in a row and the Saturday air show is the highlight of the weekend. San Franciscans all over the city flock to their nearest rooftop day party for food and drinks in the beautiful weather and to watch the show above. Most people schedule their afternoon to be ready at 3:00, when the Blue Angels appear for about 40 minutes…
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Alaska
Back in 2018, when I went to Hong Kong by myself, I had gone on an Airbnb walking tour and met Jereme, a fellow American who was also traveling solo to see Above & Beyond at their annual milestone show. We each had traveled with our “real” cameras, so we bonded instantly over music and photography and traveling. (It also helped that we were the two oldest people in the tour group.) We kept in touch after that trip and met up in 2019 (with the girlfriends too) at The Gorge for another Above & Beyond weekend. Since that 2019…
