CP Radio 005
A select curation of tracks for the month of February, 2025
Expressing the feeling of a month through music, music that when it stands alone may not be immediately indicative of the month, but when paired next to others plays an integral role in the bigger story, is a fun and creatively stimulating process. A process that, for me, comes far more easily than the act of communicating the same feeling through words.
Sure, there are some months that are more clearly defined throughout the year, and thus easier to write about - like the months of December, March, or October for example. Some of this may be because of the seasonal transitions, in other cases it could be due to the prominence of popular holidays that time of year. And, actually, singling out a month to dive into on its own may not be that difficult, but as I write our fifth installation of Tibi’s monthly playlist project, it appears to be a growing creative challenge to truly figure out how to express the smaller, more nuanced differences between that of November, December, January, and now February. As with all creative challenges, when it may feel as though you’re in a rut, the best way out is ironically to just dig deeper. I want my writing here to act as an extension of the feelings evoked by the tracks I have selected - a conceptual piece of work to outline what February may represent, and why these songs are relevant in this context.
February is the shortest month of the year, but the days are growing longer relative to those of January. It’s the last month of winter, typically a snowy month, as the temperature conditions are just right, not too cold and not too warm. Life right now is a bit ephemeral, icy and bitterly grey. The thing is, though, I actually kind of like February - mentally I find it to be an encouraging month as we’ve passed through the darker depths of the tunnel that is winter, the skies are brighter for longer, and I can begin to see hope for the spring season on the horizon. Valentine’s day is also housed in the month of February - a holiday loved by some, loathed by others, and treated with indifference by most, the category I fall into. Oh, and NYFW is upon us. The streets of SoHo are crawling with beautiful and eccentric characters - models run from casting to casting, editors and journalists move from press appointment to appointment, and street photographers, hidden in plain sight, capture these moments in real time to be seen across social media around the world. So, there is a decent scent of creativity and life in the air, moodily colored by the steel skies, but accentuated because of the muted nature of the current environment.
The songs I’ve chosen cross a range of melodies and genres, but all together paint a pretty picture of February. Coming off of two weeks of curating a house music set for a show at Virgo in the East Village, I was eager and excited to explore new music, as in the time leading up to my sets, the music I listen to is purely geared toward the collection of songs I seek to play live. I then found myself crate digging through my Dad’s 1970s and ‘80s record collection, revisiting some of my favorite artists like Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan - music that just felt right, and paired perfectly with walks down my favorite cobblestone street, Crosby Street.
So, yes, there is some Dylan and S&G on this track-list, complete with their beautiful instrumentalism and prose which can certainly be a nice, calming aid this time of year - a way to get lost in the music. Where some tracks provide a stable melody and bassline element to let the mind wander, enter your own world, Dylan is one of those artists where, when listening, you enter his world - his voice and lyrics acting as the key for admittance. And while this is all well and good, needed at times, I of course wanted to make sure we covered our bases for range purposes. The more I listened to this playlist over the last couple weeks, the more it’s grown on me. At first, I am always a bit apprehensive, unsure if I am doing something well - I am most definitely my own worst critic. Lacking confidence in the decisions I’ve made coupled with being so immersed in the singular project at hand that it is difficult to view the work, a playlist in this case, with a fresh set of ears. Thus, right before we’re about to launch the playlist, I take a step back, stop listening and writing about it for a few days, and then I come back to it - with that break in time everything changes.
All of a sudden I can see things from a newly evolved perspective. It’s an interesting process that I have found helpful with writing too - I’ll write and outline the same thing for days, step away from it for a week, and then return to the work, re-reading the writing, aware of the overall, overarching concepts I wrote about, but the sentence structure, the verbiage, the way I pieced it together, not at all. I’ll think, at times, that someone else broke into my apartment and edited my work, and it’s the same thing with music, photography, and any other creative endeavor. The songs I originally wanted to highlight from this playlist are not the songs I am gravitating to today, the day of the release. And with that in mind, and the hindsight from pulling away from this mini project, the three tracks to shout out from this set of music, the songs I now realize guided my approach to this month all along are, This is How We Walk On the Moon, Wicked Game, and Happiest of all memorial days.
Jose Gonzalez’s This Is How We Walk On The Moon was a song that I have had in my Tibi Music Bank playlist for several months now, and when I building out this playlist, I knew it had a critical spot in the top quarter of the list which is the area meant to ease you into the set, starting with Enigma’s Sadness, paired with several other ethereally beautiful tracks, before flowing into Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game, by way of Simon and Garfunkel. I actually can’t take credit for Wicked Game’s presence here, the track was recommended to me from a very creative friend off of an Instagram poll where I asked followers what songs feel the most like February - I received some really great responses, all applicable to the month in their own right, but there was something intrinsically special about Wicked Game and the way that Only Living Boy in New York glides into the immensely distinct guitar progression from James Calvin Wisely’s Stratocaster whammy. To round it out, as the playlist continues to proceed through a journey of sound, moving from classic artists/tracks like the Rolling Stone’s Heaven, picking up some pace with Nina Simone’s Sinnerman, we land on a song called Happiest of all memorial days. Echonomist, the Greek maestro behind the track, is a new addition to my music library after I just discovered him, unintentionally, at the grand opening of Unveiled underneath the William Vale hotel. Admittedly I am slightly embarrassed that it took me this long to find him, as his music touches on that perfectly sentimental blend of lyricism, melody, and a deep house bassline that ties it all together - a wonderfully appropriate sound for the month.
I worked hard at organizing the playlist this month, so that there was an intentful flow from top to bottom, progressing from genre to genre in a defined and yet frictionless way. The more I listen to it while I write this, the more I realize that it could be the best one yet, but that’s for you to judge - let me know what you think, give it a listen in order, or not, but in any case, I hope you enjoy this curation, from us at Tibi made especially for you.
A melodically rich and smoothly flowing curation. Maybe not very February (at least mine is less seductive), but definitely a performance.
9/26 tracks made it into different playlists, with six landing in a playlist called 'Groovy mornings at home'.
The closing song, though, felt like it was leading forward rather than wrapping things up - now I want an extension.