If April is the cruellest month – as T. S. Eliot famously wrote in The Waste Land – then this cheery Boat Floaters playlist should be just the tonic.
I’ve packed April’s selection with plenty of feel-good tunes, with the summer only over yonder. Quantic’s newest offering, Atlantic Oscillations, will get you moving, while the next song, by Lagos queen Oby Onyioha – and from 1981 – serves up sage advice, especially in these uncertain times: Enjoy Your Life.
Haffi Rock, the Mungo’s Hi Fi whopper – described to me as “Jahmageddon” by someone at a beach-based festival at the start of the decade, when it was released – is one of my all-time Boat Floaters, and I’ve used it here because it always takes me back to the sunshine.
Beat 54 (All Good Now), by California-based Jungle, came out last year, but I have only discovered it recently.
Guts’ Voyaging Bird is another uplifting track, and for me a highlight of his new, and very good, Philantopiques album.
However, my tune of the month is Berlin-based producer par excellence Kapote’s review of a 1970s German funk tune: Schlaraffenland. Apparently, Schlaraffenland is the German equivalent of the mythical Cockaigne: the land of milk and honey. What’s not to love?
Tell me what your favourite tune. Hope it’s a tough choice.
Yours in music,
Ollie (Boat Floaters)