A big part of Otto Paraploo is that we listen to music while we work and play.
Listen here, then buy it from the artist.
The Gambia is a river with a country wrapped around it ... a strip of land a few miles wide on either bank, running inland from the Atlantic, with Senegal on ev…
Here's To LifeShirley HornShirley Horn chose every song on this record herself ... She was fifty-eight ... The record is from 1992, on Verve, and it is the one people mean when they say…
SabelaThandiswaWhat do you say back to a voice that was recorded before you were born? ... Sabela is the Xhosa word for answering when you are called ... and this song is the…
SeteFatoumata DiawaraSete means powerless ... It is the word for what a small girl is on the morning the older women come for her, and Fatoumata Diawara has now written that morning…
LawnsCarla Bley"Lawns was conceived during a rehearsal at Larry Willis's house," Carla Bley said ... "It was how his mother, with a strong accent, pronounced Lawrence" ... So…
Un, Deux, TroisSaint PrivatGuitar, bass, drums played with brushes, and a woman singing in French in Vienna ... That was the working band Saint Privat kept in its early years, and it is w…
Via con mePaolo ConteAsti is a town in Piedmont known for a sweet sparkling wine and for a lawyer who kept a grand piano ... Paolo Conte practiced law there for years and wrote song…
Le LoupMai LanThis one is for children between four and nine ... and it is free ...
Une autre histoire d'amourTim DupWhat will be left of it? ... That is the question printed on the cover of the record this song comes from ... Qu'en restera-t-il ? ... and the song's own title…
I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)Grace JonesTake a tango by Astor Piazzolla, written in 1974, and put a reggae rhythm section under it ... Sly Dunbar on drums, Robbie Shakespeare on bass, the two Jamaican…
ElectricityGuy GarveyIt started with an email ... "Hello, I love you, please can we work together?" ... That is what Guy Garvey is said to have written, cold, to Jolie Holland, a si…
Km 83Françoiz BreutKilometre eighty-three ... On a French road that is a small stone at the verge, white with a red cap, a number painted on it, and nothing else ... You pass a th…
BackstageJay-Jay Johanson"Backstage is usually an area where no one is allowed to come in, except me" ... Jay-Jay Johanson said that about the record this song names, and then said what…
DaylightPederLook at the credits and something is odd ... the man whose name is on the record does not sing it and did not write the words ... Peder composed and produced it…
Jockey Full of BourbonYoun Sun Nah"I always knew that one day I was gonna sing Jockey Full of Bourbon," she said ... "Now the time had come" ... A Korean jazz singer, a Tom Waits song from 1985…
Tous les joursSaint PrivatSaint-Privat is a village in the south of France, small enough that most maps tend to skip it ... Valérie Sajdik has lived there for twenty years, and when she…
Between the BarsMadeleine PeyrouxWhat does a singer do with a deceased man's song? ... Elliott Smith died in October 2003 ... Less than a year later Madeleine Peyroux put this one, from his 199…
JE NE SERAI JAMAIS.ZélieLille, then Paris ... twenty hours a week of contemporary dance at the conservatoire, a body trained to say things without words ... Then, at seventeen, somebod…
PoussièreLaura CahenApproximately three films are folded into this song and nobody would know unless she told them ... She did ... In Poussière, Laura Cahen said, she is talking ab…
L'arc en cielJean-Louis MuratTwo letters after the album's name ... Baby Love D.C. In the France of 2020 everyone knew what they stood for — déconfiné, let out of lockdown ... Jean-Louis Mu…
Les gens qui doutentColine Rio"A very intimate song for me, one I listened to with my family when I was younger," Coline Rio said of it, and then added the thing that matters ... because of…
VIEWSNoga ErezThree voices trade the song, between them ... Noga Erez, from Israel ... Ori Rousso, who has made every record with her and is credited here as ROUSSO ... and R…
L'absenteMaud LübeckA house, the summer of 2017 ... That is where the record was made — at home, most of it, by a woman playing nearly every part herself, with the piano and the vo…
PesanteurPoppy FuséeShe found it in her own inbox ... A song she had written about four years earlier and sent to herself, the way we send ourselves things we mean to come back to,…
La danse des ombresFrançoiz BreutWhat do shadows dance to? ... Not to the music in the room — to the light ... Move the lamp and the whole floor changes partners ... The title of this song is a…
J'veux tout savoirHélène SioA piano and a voice ... Almost nothing else on the record — no band, no strings, no bed of electronics under it ... Whatever the song is going to do, it does wi…
GoMichelle Gurevich"I felt that I need to be closer to my audience," she said, explaining why a woman born in Toronto moved to Berlin ... Her audience was in the East — Eastern an…
Comme je t'ai aiméAlice on the roofOne evening, alone, in the shut-in months of 2020, a Belgian woman at a piano wrote a song about how much she had loved someone ... That is where the record say…
Ashes to AshesWarpaintThe title is the oldest sentence in the language for putting somebody in the ground ... David Bowie borrowed it in 1980 for a song about a man he had invented e…
La TerreCamilleOn the new record this song appears twice ... Once at track seven, once at track twenty-one, the same title both times, on an album that runs backward — Adolesc…
airIchiko Aoba and NATUREIchiko Aoba, and beside her, credited as a musician, NATURE ... Not a metaphor ... A series called Sounds Right, made with Brian Eno's people, lists nature as a…
Je Veux Etre à VousSammy DecosterTen years is a long time to carry a second record around inside a person. Sammy Decoster made one album in 2008, Tucumcari, a road movie sung in French, and the…