In many ways 2018 has been a year of awakening for me. For ages now, my music discovery journey has been stubbornly stuck in neutral. The truth is I got lazy and was caught within the comfort zone of my dated iTunes library. I needed something to push me to expand my horizons and this blog did just that.

theMAZE has been a gift. It has introduced me to sonic geniuses such as Frank Ocean, Kamasi Washington and Julian Lage; rekindled by love for hip-hop with A$AP Rocky, J. Cole and Prabh Deep; and taken me back to my indie roots with bands like TOLEDO, Bahamas and The Helio Sequence. Just to name a few…

This blog, for me, has been more than just a series of curated playlists. The music I listened to cushioned blows and prolonged highs in a year full of change. It woke me up each morning, accompanied me to work and back, pushed me to climb harder and calmed me to sleep every single night. Music has been the only thing that could have ever filled a tiny corner of the immense void in my life. I am thankful that it did.

Music is an expression of my inner self. I hope by sharing some of what I am listening to, followers of theMAZE discover a few pieces of music that speak to them as well.

And so it ends… here is my final jam of the year.

1. Garden – Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs
2. Is There a Place I Can Go – Trudy and the Romance
3. Lonely Man of Winter (Doveman Mix) – Sufjan Stevens feat. Melissa Mary Ahem
4. Boss – Little Simz
5. Lovers Rock – TV Girl
6. Ramble On – Led Zeppelin
7. Icicle Tusk – Fleet Foxes
8. Gallipoli – Beirut
9. Lady Boston – The Good, The Bad & The Queen
10. New Moon – Steve Gunn
11. Harvey – Her’s
12. Love in the Time of Socialism – Yellow House
13. Goodbye L.A. – Blah Blah Blah
14. My Love – Bahamas
15. We Are Fine – Sharon Van Etten
16. Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To – Mohammed Rafi

Playlists: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube

I cannot believe I have missed TEED’s music. I have been a Disclosure fan from day one and TEED has exactly the same vibe. I was intrigued to learn about his love for Indian music. If you want to hear super funky remixes of A.R. Rahman and Bapi Lahiri songs check out TEED’s Boiler Room set – SUPER! I love the bouncy bass line in his song Garden. Hope you caught them in Mumbai a few weeks ago!

Finally, another genre defying band emerges – Trudy and the Romance (there is no Trudy in the band), is absolutely refreshing. The band describe their song Is There a Place I Can Go as “a love song about family, friends and coming of age in the new world. It’s a juvenile ballad using all the spank & tools we had to make the biggest bang.”

Everything that Sufjan Steven’s touches turns to gold. The story behind Lonely Man of Winter is lovely. As a marketing campaign for his Christmas boxset, Sufjan wrote this song in 2007 and transferred ownership of the song to the winner of a promotional contest. The winner did not release the song but instead gifted the rights back to Sufjan. Perfect.

Little Simz is anything but little. Boss is a prolific and provocative in your face rap that stings. In a stark contrast to much of the over produced hip hop out there, Little Simz’s instrumentation is minimal but piercing.

We all need a little bit of indie-pop in our lives. TV Girl is just that. Loud synths, melodies stuck in minor keys, lovers who cannot connect and unexpected samples from noir films.

Led Zeppelin’s music dominated my disc-man as a teenager. Strangely, I never paid attention to the lyrics of Ramble On which is set in Page and Plant’s version of Middle Earth! Sauron and Gollum are fighting over a girl rather than the Ring. Hilarious and incredible at the same time. I always default to Led Zeppelin when I need a shot of rock.

Icicle Tusk is a single off of Fleet Foxes debut self-titled EP from 2006. They released less than 200 copies! A lost gem of a song that was finally re-released in November this year. The harmonies are raw and lush at the same time.

Oh Beirut, I have missed thee. The story behind their latest single is classic and best told by Zach Condon –

“We were seeing signs for a city called Gallipoli. We get out of the car and we just decided to go for a walk and in that moment we happened to hit a procession. We happened to walk in at the exact moment as the Saint was leaving the church, carried by a bunch of priests. Behind them was this frenetic kind of brass band.

Sound was bouncing off the walls, and simultaneously every church bell in town was ringing, which just made for utter chaos. And the city is just claustrophobic, streets winding —you would have to live there your whole life to know where you’re going. We just got lost with it for an entire night. The next day, I wrote the song I ended up calling ‘Gallipoli,’ entirely in one sitting, pausing only to eat.”

I have just one word to describe Gallipoli – transcendent.

The Good, the Bad and the Queen reunited after eleven years. The supergroup consists of Blur/Gorillaz Damon Albarn, the Clash bassist Paul Simonon, the Verve’s Simon Tong, and Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen. Their album is described as a concept album of what it means to be British. And nothing depicts this better than the haunting Welsh choir in Lady Boston.

I will be honest, New Moon speaks to me because it sounds like a song by The Verve. Steve Gunn has masterfully captured Nick McCabe’s soundscape especially towards the end of the song.

Harvey is sweet summer song that just makes me want to roll down my car windows and sing along. Try it.

Love in the Time of Socialism is a wholesome love song, It reminds me of how much brighter the world looks when you experience it with somebody you love.

A friend of mine just left the city and moved to the beach to get away from the madness that is Mumbai. Goodbye L.A. captures that familiar feeling of being trapped in a chaotic and careless city. The more I listen to this song, the more I question when I will drop out of the rat race of Mumbai and start living.

An age old question – should we care what other people think about us? I have come to realise at bit late in life that I most certainly do not. My Love is a song off the soundtrack of the film Tribes of Palos Verdes which questions just this.

An oldie for most people, but for me Sharon Van Etten’s We Are Fine is a new discovery. It is a duet with Zach Condon of Beirut that describes Sharon’s experiences with anxiety and panic attacks. It is a reminder to all people who face anxiety that you are not alone and reaching out to people that love you is the best way to get through it.

Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa is one the most moving films I have ever watched. It is story about the despair, isolation, selfishness and materialism of modern society. Yeh Duniya agar mil bhi jaye translates to “What is this World to me, even if I can have it?” and is a beautifully tragic song sung by the legendary Mohammed Rafi.

Playlists: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube