2014 Songs of the Year: Part One - 60 through 51

It's that time of year and as always I'm a little late out of the gate (blame the fact that advertising, my day job, doesn't make compiling this sort of list in December particularly easy!)

I didn't do a songs list last year but as I've focused more on posting one off tracks in 2014 it felt much more relevant. I'm going with a top 60 format and will be posting ten every day or so, then I will look to cover the top ten albums of the year.

I won't comment on these early ones (I just don't have the time sadly!) but where possible I've included a free streaming link or video, otherwise I expect a Spotify player.

Finally before we dive in, I wanted to call out four songs that very nearly made it but just missed out. Stills by Panes, Restless by Oyinda (big hopes for 2015!), Levitation by Marz Léon and Everything We Touch by Say Lou Lou. And with that, on to the list...

Click the Prev post button at the bottom of this post to get to Part Two.

60. Mess On A Mission - Liars

59. Hold Me - JJ

58. Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck) - Run The Jewels feat. Zack De La Rocha

57. Summer Jorts (Some Cats Still Do) - Lockah

56. Origins - Max Cooper

iTunes - http://smarturl.it/MCKindred A few years ago I did a remix of a track by Dominik Eulberg called Sansula, which featured an instrument of the same name. After the release a builder of sansula instruments in the Netherlands was kind enough to give me one as a present in case I wanted to use one again in a live recording, which I have finally got around to doing now with this track! My process consisted of me sitting in my studio (badly) playing the thumb plucked sansula for quite a while, so that I could go back to the recording and pull out some useable loops as a starting point. I wanted a nice warm analogue chord progression to complement, but more in the high bass and low mids than my usual chord progression that's down really low, to fill the mix with the warmth as much as possible. The track still needed something though, so I turned to some spare recordings of my favourite vocalist - Kathrin deBoer, from some of our previous recording sessions. I didn't want to go for the usual full lyrical approach of a vocal collab track, I just wanted to add some small snippets of human feeling to round off the track properly. The release is coming out on Fields on the 1st of December along with an intense synth experiment with a Prophet 08, and beautiful remixes from David August and Throwing Snow. If you're not into buying music there is also a new website I have just launched which will be providing exclusive new free downloads for all in return for signing up to the website - http://www.maxcooper.net/downloads

55. Let Me Down Gently - La Roux

54. Heroine - The Night VI

53. Johnny and Mary - Todd Terje

52. Getaway - EBY feat. IIRIS

51. Oasis - Alpines

More to follow...