At Take Magazine, we take music seriously, regularly featuring New England’s coolest, most unusual and most diverse set of musicians and music-adjacent artists. In the past two years of publishing, we’ve brought you everything from Grammy-award winning pop stars to musicians crafting their own experimental instruments. As the music industry reinvents itself, and people continue to subvert and transcend genre classification, we promise to continue to scour basement shows, online forums, and music festivals for the region’s best.

In the meantime, we’re upping our music game to bring new music right to your ears. Each time we feature a musician, we are going to ask them what they’re listening to and then create a playlist for that artist on our Take Spotify channel. Though not all the artists on these playlists are from New England, several New Englanders have already made the cut. For example, Vermont’s own bedroom pop crooner Bella Ortiz-Wren, aka bella, shared a Ruth Garbus track on their playlist. Garbus is also a super confessional dreamy pop crooner from Vermont like Ortiz-Wren…who knew there were so many!

Some of these playlists feel like a personalized mixtape (see The Rap Scholars‘ playlist or the picks from Home Body), while others are lists of full albums from different artists. Either way, you’re guaranteed to hear something new or fun and familiar.

In addition to these custom playlists from featured artists, Take Magazine staff curated a playlist of some of our favorites. The strange diversity of tracks on the Staff Picks playlist mirrors the eclectic tastes of our staff as a whole. You’ll find catching pop tunes from New England heroes, classical chamber music, sad bastard indie, neo soul, and much more. We’ll be adding more tracks to the playlist each week, so be sure to check on it frequently.

But wait there’s more. We want to know what you’re listening to as well.

Submit your favorite songs right now to pr@takeindustries.com email or get us on any social media platform with the hashtag #heytakealisten with an artist name and the title of the track you’re currently obsessed with. Check our Spotify channel soon and see if your pick made it on our list. Extra points for New England bands and songs we haven’t yet heard.

Playlists From Across New England

The Rap Scholars

David Seidel aka Mysterybear

bella

Soggy Po’ Boys

Jenn Van West

Molly Brown

Home Body

Top image: Hannah Mohan of And the Kids, featured on our staff Spotify playlist | Photo by Montgomery Sheridan

The post Take a Listen: A Spotify Playlist Just for You appeared first on Take Magazine.

To the unsophisticated ear, drone music might be construed as little more than grating noise that lacks any semblance of melody or rhythm—the sort of senseless, monotonous racket they use to flush ruthless dictators from their mansions. But for accomplished electronic composer Dave Seidel, this ambient, dynamic, and experimental style—and its boundless possibilities—helped vivify his creative juices nearly 15 years ago, at a time when he began questioning his lifelong devotion to songwriting.

“I had sort of drifted away from music around 2003, but became rejuvenated in terms of composing when I figured out this is the kind of stuff I really wanted to do,” says Seidel, known to drone fans as Mysterybear. “I decided there were things I wanted to explore, in terms of drones and special tuning, and once I actually delved into it myself, I realized it’s a good focus for me. I’ve had a ton of ideas ever since.”

David Seidel performing in Rochester, NY, photo by Rob Nuuja

The sounds that the Le Monte Young-influenced Seidel produces are dynamic and textured. His music challenges the listener with a multilayered range of long sustained, minimalist tones that are delicately interspersed with glorious feedback and intriguing noise fragments. Needless to say, it isn’t for everyone.

“In some pieces, I use a technique called binaural beats and to get the true effect, you need headphones,” says Seidel, who is a software engineer when he’s not writing music. “It’s almost an acoustic allusion, in a way; you need headphones in order to hear it in the center of your head. I think of each piece as an instrument I assemble with everything that I have.”

Seidel, who first picked up a guitar at 12 and studied classical music at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, did stray from New England for about a decade, moving to Brooklyn where he survived as a session player. Seidel says that when he can find venues that book “the non-pop stuff that I do,” he plays his epic pieces live throughout New England and the Northeast. He also travels for various music festivals, including last year’s Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States conference in Minnesota.

“I would have been making music wherever I ended up, but I think that, because I ended up being a late bloomer in terms of the type of music I wanted to make, the fact that I was in this environment was completely inspirational,” Seidel says.

“I feel at home here,” he says of New Hampshire. “I live in a rural area near a town; I’m not really in town, so I have constant inspiration from the natural world around me. I can’t imagine ever not living in New England, because it is a big part of my identity.”

Want to hear what’s on Seidel’s Spotify list? Check out our Take a Listen channel.

David Seidel
Peterborough, New Hampshire
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Top image, David Seidel performing at Toadstool Books, Peterborough, New Hampshire, photo by Tom DePlonty

The post David Seidel Likes to Drone On appeared first on Take Magazine.