STEPHEN TO ANNE MARIE:

SB: What is your favorite song?

AM: It’s gotta be rezlo “Enjoy The Ride” but Aphrodite by TRESOR was a close second. Aphrodite has this Bestfriends meets John Mayer thing I really love.

SB: Have you heard any of these tracks before?

AM: Only The Japanese House which is a band I’ve just gotten into - I’m a little jealous that you beat me to that one.

SB: A) What is your favorite album of all time? B) What (in your opinion) is the best/greatest album of all time?

AM: I was going to say my favorite album was Random Access Memories just to beat you to the punch but...I have a heart. These are really hard questions for me, considering that I’m fairly sentimental about everything. I don’t think I have a favorite album. I think I have albums that stick out in my memories now because I realize they were important to me at these quantum life shift moments that I didn’t realize were happening at the time.

Continuum by John Mayer came out when I was in my first year at Syracuse and I have so many wonderful memories with that album playing in the background. There’s really nothing like the first year you spend out on your own in the world, especially in a new city. Many of Mayer’s albums move me but that one and Battle Studies have the most. Same thing for for channel ORANGE in New York in 2012. My Brooklyn friends and I were hoodlums and goofs with dreams but, man, we had each other and that was all we needed. Mumford & Sons’ Babel takes me back to Paris in early 2013. Red Pill Blues reminds me of Christmas 2017 and the early months of 2018. Paul Desmond’s From the Hot Afternoon I discovered on a recommendation last year and that album just kills me. In general, there’s always one mainstream album slaying me during the day while an obscure album is slaying me at night.

Because of my obvious over-sentimentalism I feel I can’t even make a statement about greatest album of all time in an objective/technical sense. That said, I would love nothing more than to surround myself with more knowledgable music aficionados and hear them constantly debate it.

ANNE MARIE TO STEPHEN:

AM: What is your favorite song?

SB: It was really close this time around. Got it down to Grey Area and Hug Me and then had to play both on loop for about 20 minutes to decide. In the end, got to give it to Grey Area cause it just puts me in a vibe that I'm thoroughly enjoying right now. 

AM: Have you heard any of these tracks before?

SB: This one I'm really mad about. The only one I've heard is The Carol In Her Eyes. It was the 17th and last cut song on my March playlist and I am so very much regretting it right now. It's such a weird, melodic, beautiful song that I'm so disappointed in myself. But a huge nod to you and glad they made it to a KC list!

AM: If you could take a top notch, lights out lecture course featuring one genre of music, which genre would it be? Follow up, who alive in music today would you want to teach it?

SB: I feel like you already know the answer to this and I'm going to do my best not to launch into a 20-paragraph obsessive monologue. The first answer would be electronic music, mostly because it's something that I think I could eventually achieve on my own in the late nights while the city sleeps. Side note, I'm planning on getting FL Studio in the near future and starting to dabble in beat making. Stay tuned for that.

Who would I want to teach the class? Well, Thomas and Guy-Manuel of Daft Punk, of course. Not just because I'm obsessed with their music, but mostly because their music technically sits within Electronic, but they pull inspiration (and sounds) from all genres and all decades, so if they were to teach me, it would be a much more wholistic approach rather than someone who's just been producing 3-layer 808 loops for a few years.